Even magicians see it that way. "Magic is the Special Olympics of entertainment," says Penn Jillette, the taller, more verbal half of Penn & Teller. "I mean, Criss Angel is good-looking, he's smart, he's funny. Yet when he goes out with a piece of ass, it's a surprise." It sure is. But when rock and roll's most accomplished Lothario is a nice Jewish boy named Adam Levine and Hollywood is populated by a bevy of male Bugaboo pushers, why should it be? Hell, the most beloved character of this generation is a teenage wizard. So why is it so shocking that this insanely wealthy quasi-daredevil has the ability to conjure up A-list tail out of thin air? The man can make himself levitate. Have you ever managed to do that?

That particular talent is one that a dating guru and part-time prestidigitator named Mystery likes to show off in bars. And though Mystery doesn't teach students the real dark arts in his $3,000-a-pop pick-up seminars, he sees Houdini's medium as the ultimate aphrodisiac. "I've had girls tell me after a trick, 'Oh, my god, I love you,'" Mystery says. "That's the reality some magicians have the skill to evoke." Practicing this "attraction magic," as he calls it, has helped him gain a cultlike following via Neil Strauss' book The Game and VH1's The Pick-Up Artist. "David Copperfield dated a supermodel, I've dated a supermodel," he says. "Birthday-party magic is cheesy, yes, but women are fascinated by anything having to do with the unknown."

Modern magic's red-letter date was May 19, 1997, when David Blaine's first television special, Street Magic, aired, tempering supernatural hoodoo with realism. "For the first time, the audience reaction was more important than the performance itself," Jillette says. "Magicians had become so Engelbert Humperdinck and out of touch that Blaine just talking to people on the street was revolutionary." As Blaine palled around with Leonardo DiCaprio and hooked up with Daryl Hannah and Fiona Apple, his sleepy-eyed, bed-headed visage replaced Doug Henning's bucktoothed, mulletted mug as the face of magic.

And now there's Angel. "Everything's about the cult of the 20-to-34-year-old today," says magic historian Jim Steinmeyer, author of Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear. "They see how Criss Angel takes David Blaine's formula—the dark, counterculture character and the simplicity of eliciting reactions from people on the street—and how he builds on that every week on TV." Inevitably, part of that involves a touch of roguish smarm: Blaine pulled card tricks on unsuspecting ladies; Angel guesses the color of their panties.

It's no coincidence that two of last year's most talked-about movies were The Illusionist and The Prestige; both depicted magicians as dashing mad scientists, without rival for status and public adoration (Houdini would be proud). But perhaps the most evident sign that magic has turned a corner in the zeitgeist is that it's popping up in American Idol-style shows like America's Got Talent and NBC's upcoming Phenomenon, which will team Angel with Uri Geller, the aging Israeli "mentalist" heretofore best known as Michael Jackson's bestie and for having his "powers" debunked by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show in 1973.

There's more proof that the rising tide of interest is buoying up traditional, campy acts: Dutch illusionist Hans Klok, whose first U.S. solo show is at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, is cut from the same bedazzled cloth as Siegfried & Roy, but he has procured a comely assistant: Pamela Anderson. (Gossip rags have hinted the two are an item, and they've played along, but let's just say that it, um, seems implausible.) "People think we're having wild orgies backstage," Anderson says. "I'd hate to ruin a good story. But who doesn't like real showmanship? Magicians are sexy—they're the new rock stars."

No doubt Pam knows a thing or two about such matters, but no parallels can be made between magicians and rock stars without consulting the one man who qualifies as both. "Music and magic inspire wonder and awe," says Pixies drummer David Lovering, who took up magic after the seminal indie band broke up in 1993 and now makes a career of it between reunion tours. "The only difference is that a magician can make you think the impossible is possible. I'm not sure a band can do that. After all, religion was based on magic—some guy learned a trick and said he had superpowers." WWJD? He'd do magic? A stretch, perhaps, but magic begets mystery, which begets charisma.

So lock your cynicism about magicians in an airtight, transparent box, right next to your dog-eared copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And allow yourself to believe, for a careless second, that a floppy-coiffed guy from Lawng Island can hover 500 feet above the Luxor in a beam of searing xenon light that neither incinerates him nor smudges his mascara. Because if using your illusion can get you laid, then you really do have to believe in magic.