Shona Witch Doctor in Zimbabwe (Source: Wikipedia).

Many people believe in the power of magic—they believe that supernatural forces exist that can be controlled to help them shape their lives and the lives of others. Since time immemorial, shamans have been employed by the members of their community to control or appease otherworldly forces in order to reduce chaos and unpredictability. In this way, magic has always been a means to an end.

Performing magic tricks has always been a means to an end. Sleight-of-hand is used by shamans and witch-doctors to assist the process of healing people from illness or in attempts to predict the future. Over the past centuries conjuring has lost this practical application in Western culture and performing magic tricks has become a source of entertainment.

Not all modern conjuring is, however, totally without purpose. Many professionals use magic tricks in their day to day activities. People in health care perform or teach magic tricks to help people overcome their illness, teachers perform magic tricks to help students understand abstract concepts and computer programmers have looked at conjuring to design software interfaces.

Follow the links below for more detailed information about the practical uses of performing magic tricks:

• Healthcare: How can conjuring be used to help cure people from illness?
• Education: How can conjuring be used to assist the learning process of students?
• Computing: How conjuring be used to design software interfaces?