A new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London explores the uneasy links between psychic fraudsters and good old honest magicians

At a wedding party a couple of years ago a magician came to our table and, in front of our eyes, pulled a bottle of wine through the table, cloth and all, before producing it from underneath. How did he do it? I have no idea. And I’d rather not know, as it would dent my sense of wonder.

Wonder is one of the joys of life, a joy endlessly threatened by expanding knowledge. Yes, there are ever more wondrous creatures revealed by Blue Planet, but once a new species has been discovered and documented it enters the realm of possibility. And it’s witnessing the impossible – an apparent contravention of the laws of nature – that feels most wondrous, with its suggestion of forces out there that we don’t understand.

Making the seemingly impossible happen before our eyes is the field of magic, and magicians have been guarding their secrets – and devising new ones – for centuries. As early as 1584 Reginald Scot apologised to professional conjurers for revealing the tricks of their trade in his book The Discoverie of Witchcraft, justifying his exposé on the grounds that it would prove to the superstitious that the seemingly supernatural could have natural causes.