The hand is quicker than the brain

While a Magician Works, the Mind Does the Tricks

According to some recent research, it appears much of a magician's art relies on gaps in our perception, which they have learned to exploit:

...a team of brain scientists and prominent magicians described how magic tricks, both simple and spectacular, take advantage of glitches in how the brain constructs a model of the outside world from moment to moment, or what we think of as objective reality...For the magicians...the collaboration provided scientific validation, as well as a few new ideas. For the scientists...it raised hope that magic could accelerate research into perception. “Here’s this art form going back perhaps to ancient Egypt, and basically the neuroscience community had been unaware” of its direct application to the study of perception, Dr. Martinez-Conde said...

There those darn Ancient Egyptians go again, figuring everything out thousands of years ago! Heh!