Basically there's no difference between a magic trick and psychic phenomena. They are both physical events for which the audience has no explanation. But some people will see an effect they can't explain as a magic trick; some people will think that as paranormal.

I am interested in why it is that people interpret these in different ways. As a performer you can affect how people interpret what you do. Over a long period of time, what has changed to what it is now; why is it different culturally? Why is it different in India, from that of Britain? In particular, why is it that people in the West may view inexplicable mysteries in the East in a different way than they would respond to the same thing at home? With the notion of the mystic East that West has, the people in the West may find an inexplicable mystery in India somehow more impressive, more mysterious, more mystical than a similar mystery at home, because India has this air of mystery to people from the West.

What were your initial projects like? Were they always related to magic?

No. First I had nothing to do with magic. First it was economic and social history, primarily social history and its influence on notions of national identity. A fascinating area: how people construct notions of themselves in relation to the nation. Of course in India, this is a huge issue. But not just India, everywhere.

In Scotland, where I come from, the people's notion of being Scottish comes from their knowledge of history, and most people's notion of national identity comes [from history]. It is something that matters to me. It matters to every country in the world. In Scotland, it is more political than perhaps in India... Perhaps parts of the Middle East and African states. But I think the same rules apply, that you believe you are Scottish or Indian in relation to what you are not. For example, if you are Scottish you are not English. That's the first thing you come across.

But magic became a main subject, because I feel I know more about the aspects of magic, and other people don't. And there's nobody else looking at it. They perhaps didn't have the ideas, the knowledge you get from being a magician. It is a very interesting subject area, as it deals with notions of facts, notions of vulgarity, notions of superstitions, rationality, scientificity and its relation to India, the notions of Orientalism, and how the Orient is viewed by the West.

How do you see yourself? As a magician, historian, or parapsychologist?

I would say I am a historian who has interest in certain types of psychology. And I was a magician, and I now use that knowledge to incorporate into academic areas.

From studying notions of ideology, how did you start studying the history of magic?

It depends on the history that interests me. I have liked certain bits of history like political history and socio-cultural history, but have liked all of psychological history: how people think, how people view the world, how people's thoughts are used to view the world. Not the physical and vertical world, but their ideas of what is possible, what they might be.

And magic is a way of getting at how people imagine their own world, and part of the world that's not their own. In a sense, getting into the mindsets of people of the past is a way of understanding how they think today. For example, the idea that as you became more modern, you became more scientific and rational; and the idea of magic and miracles defying the normal explanation.

But I think if you look at history, every period, every culture, believes in some sort of magic, some sort of miraculous events. But they see it in different forms. These used to be magic, then mesmeric, then it was psychic, then it was paranormal.

So miraculous events are always being reported, are always being believed in, but they are called different things, and in different numbers by people in the past.