The Ninja and the Blurred Lines Between Witchcraft, Illusionism, Psychology and Science

There is a lot of distortion in the way people today look back at many of the practices of ancient cultures. In many cases people discount things as simple superstition and magic when in actual fact they were highly effective practices which can be explained by science. It was not that these people were wrong in what they were doing, or claiming to do things that aren't possible (although there are also many examples of these things as well), but rather that they were wrong in the way that they described them. And actually in many cases this was not because of an error of understanding what they were doing, but a deliberate ploy to exploit the superstitions of others.
One of the best examples of what I am talking about can be found in the Ninja clans of feudal Japan. Many magical talents and accomplishments were claimed by the Ninja, and attributed to them by others. And, indeed, we can say today that the Ninja were masters of magic who used their skills to great effect; it is just that the magic they practiced did not involve the manipulation of supernatural forces, but was in fact the same 'magic' which is practiced by many people today, namely illusionism. Whilst magic, or illusionism, in modern western culture is regarded purely as a form of entertainment, in ancient Japan the exact same techniques were used to great effect in manipulating others to accumulate wealth and to fight the samurai.
The classic example of Ninja illusionism is the art of invisibility. The ninja were famed throughout Asia, and are today throughout the world, for there ability to supposedly appear and disappear at will. This greatly enhanced their skill and fame as the elite assassins of feudal japan. Of course nobody can be invisible; it just isn't possible; but that doesn't stop famous illusionists making the statue of liberty disappear, or an elephant, or some other huge object. Using the same principled of misdirection, the manipulation of light through mirrors, the knowledge of how to manipulate a persons blind spot and so on, combined with a good knowledge of camouflage, the ninja were able to achieve the impossible and make themselves invisible.
The Ninja were also masters of using misdirection in combat to increase the effectiveness of their martial art - Ninjutsu. They were also masters of using psychological tricks like 'controlling options' or hypnotic suggestion to control people and bend them to their will. This gained them a reputation for being able to cast spells on people and control them; a reputation which, of course, they were happy to have.
By pretending to have magical powers, and claiming that the talents which they did have were due to magic rather then technical skill, the Ninja were able to intimidate their enemies and increase their fame and reputation. This is a common ploy amongst ancient cultures. A good example is the African tribe of head-shrinkers. This tribe, one amongst many tribes of head-hunters, developed a technique by which they could dry out and shrink the amputated heads of their enemies. They would then display these shrunken heads as warnings to their enemies. But, of course, they never told outsiders that they were removing the heads from already murdered enemies and using and essentially chemical procedure to shrink them. Instead they claimed to have powerful magicians who could instantly shrink the head of anyone who threatened the tribe. As you might expect other tribes were reluctant to attack after seeing these grotesque displays of tiny heads.
There are many other examples throughout history were supposedly magical practices were actually based on the principles of psychology and science as we know them today, whether their exponents realized this or not. For example: Carl Jung, famous psychologist and student of Sigmund Freud, was a firm believer that medieval alchemy, practiced by many as a spiritual discipline rather than as a method for making gold, almost precisely mirrored his process of psychological growth known as individuation; and there is a great deal of evidence that the practitioner of ritual magic who thought they were evoking angels, demons and spirits were actually establishing a link between the conscious mind and powerful subconscious archetypes, and that in some case this may have lead to the ability to harness the power of the subconscious in much the same way that modern hypnotists do. In conclusions I would like to say that many ancient cultures were not as ignorant as we sometimes think, and in many cases we need to reevaluate the efficacy of ancient practices.