Is magic real?

Magic doesn't have to break physics to be real. Your brain runs on it: magical thinking feeds memory, creativity and how we bond.

The mainstream files magic under psychology and stage tricks. Look closer and the filing gets odd. Magical thinking turns out to be built into how we remember, create and bond. Tarot and meditation change people whether or not the cards know anything. And a stubborn line of lab work claims more: telepathy, precognition, mind over matter. Maybe the trick is calling it a trick.

• What it could changeIf consciousness can reach past the skull, as the telepathy studies claim, physics would need a place for the mind.
• How it touches todayPeople already use Tarot, energy work and meditation for what they do to them, whatever the theory says.
• Our futureThe oldest human habit may turn out to be one of our most useful tools.

• One philosophical account treats magic as real in the same experiential sense as qualities such as redness: it exists in human experience without necessarily existing independently in the external world.spencergreenberg
• Some researchers argue that magical thinking is a fundamental feature of human cognition and can support creativity, perception, memory, and social behavior.researchgate
• A more literal position holds that consciousness may produce abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, drawing on claimed laboratory evidence.deanradin