Definition of the word magic

Recent Examples on the Web

When the postseason rolls around, perhaps Mr. October’s magic rubs off on those in the home dugout of Minute Maid Park.


—Michael Shapiro, Chron, 24 Mar. 2023




Nowell immediately found some Manhattan magic, picking up a loose ball and flinging up a shot that banked in for a 3-pointer and delivering a perfect pass to Carter for a layup.


—Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press, 24 Mar. 2023




Relive the magic and check out all of Samsung Galaxy’s many activations in the photo set below.


—Mike Sheffield, Billboard, 24 Mar. 2023




Egg hunt by age group, petting zoo, family-friendly DJ, magic show, face painting and visit from Easter Bunny.


—Luann Gibbs, The Enquirer, 24 Mar. 2023




Lately that magic has been there for the outset, far less of Butler pacing himself toward his typical take-charge finishes.


—Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 23 Mar. 2023




Taylor Swift Eras Tour:5 magic moments at State Farm Stadium that Arizonans saw first Taylor Swift Eras Tour opening acts Glendale was the only city on the Eras Tour to see Paramore as Taylor Swift’s direct support.


—Ed Masley, The Arizona Republic, 23 Mar. 2023




The lead would not hold up, Gonzaga finding more March magic.


—Ben Bolch, Los Angeles Times, 23 Mar. 2023




The magic of it is everyone’s performances and the timing—everyone’s hitting their marks exactly.


—Town & Country, 17 Mar. 2023

Image: Framework The Framework Laptop 16’s magic butt isn’t the only trick up its sleeves.


—Sean Hollister, The Verge, 23 Mar. 2023




Activities include a magic show, crafts, balloon art, face painting, photos with the Easter Bunny and train rides around the outdoor shopping center.


—Linda Mcintosh, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Mar. 2023




Teddy is the genius who puts Daisy and Billy together on a hunch that the two will create magic onstage.


—Dana Feldman, Forbes, 22 Mar. 2023




My most favorite magic trick in the presence of shame, vulnerability and discomfort is to disappear myself, entirely.


—Jenna Wortham, New York Times, 22 Mar. 2023




Advertisement Copperfield rallied the magic community to honor her.


—Michael S. Rosenwald, Washington Post, 21 Mar. 2023




The magic pioneer was set to be honored by the University of Las Vegas College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame on Tuesday, which will reportedly still go as planned with Copperfield inducting her, which was the plan from the start before Dea’s passing.


—Marisa Sullivan, Peoplemag, 20 Mar. 2023




His 24 points were his second-highest figure of the season behind only that magic night in San Francisco.


—Dustin Dopirak, The Indianapolis Star, 17 Mar. 2023




Researchers at Coventry University in England discovered that the magic performance-enhancing ratio appears to be 6 milligrams of caffeine for every 2.2 pounds of body weight.


—Chris Gayomali, The Week, 17 Mar. 2023

And there’s hardly a deer hunter alive who doesn’t dream of taking a buck that eclipses that magic 200 number.


—Scott Bestul, Field & Stream, 9 Jan. 2023




Vega connects that magic to the trappings of digital culture, which has led to, among other things, El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as national currency, despite many of its citizens not owning smartphones.


—Dallas News, 14 Dec. 2022




Naturally, then, speculation about the film’s reshoots has led to rumors that a few Lokis might magic their way into Doctor Strange and Wanda’s orbit.


—Savannah Salazar, Vulture, 5 May 2022




Still, Richardson Jackson clearly knows how to direct actors and pulls magic out of her cast, creating a production worthy of August Wilson’s legacy.


—Dave Quinn, EW.com, 14 Oct. 2022




Buckley had a vast tonal range from which to choose in his musical palette, from deep trauma to horror to otherworldly magic.


—Jazz Tangcay, Variety, 14 July 2022




The auction house, through glossy catalogs and (increasingly) online offerings, can magic up artistic legitimacy that once only museums or scholars could assign.


—New York Times, 23 May 2022




The book opens the door to magic and brings readers inside its world by revealing the artistry, inside history, and fascinating traditions of a subject long shrouded in mystery.


—cleveland, 18 Mar. 2022




Like most restaurants, high-end sushi counters survived the earliest part of the pandemic by cutting all that magic away and focusing on takeout.


—New York Times, 4 Jan. 2022


See More

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Magic or magick most commonly refers to:

• Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces
• Ceremonial magic, rituals of magic
• Magical thinking, the belief that unrelated events are causally connected, particularly as a result of supernatural effects
• Magic (illusion), the art of appearing to perform supernatural feats

Magic or magick may also refer to:

Art and entertainment

For radio stations, see § Radio stations.

Film and television

• Magic (1917 film), a silent Hungarian drama
• Magic (1978 film), an American horror film
• Magic (soap opera), 2013 Indonesian soap opera
• Magic (TV channel), a British music television station

Literature

• Magic in fiction, the genre of fiction that uses supernatural elements as a theme
• Magic (Chesterton play), 1913
• Magic (short story collection), 1996 short story collection by Isaac Asimov
• Magic (novel), 1976 novel by William Goldman
• The Magic Comic, a 1939–1941 British comic
• Magick (Book 4), 1913 book by Aleister Crowley
• Magyk, 2005 novel by Angie Sage
• The Magic (book), 2012 self-help book by Rhonda Byrne
• Magic (American magazine), 1991–2016 magazine for magicians
• Magic (music magazine), 1995–2016 French pop music magazine
• Magic, Inc., a 1940 science fantasy novella by Robert A. Heinlein

Music

Performers

• Magic (rapper) (1975–2013), also known as Mr. Magic (real name Awood Johnson), American rapper
• Magic!, Canadian reggae-pop band
• The Magic Drum and Bugle Corps, a music group

Albums

• Magic (Amii Stewart album), 1992 album by Amii Stewart
• Magic (Axel Rudi Pell album), 1997 album by Axel Rudi Pell
• Magic (B’z album), 2009 album by Japanese rock duo B’z
• Magic (Ben Rector album), 2018
• Magic (Bruce Springsteen album), 2007 album by Bruce Springsteen
• Magic (Djumbo album), 2008 album by Djumbo
• Magic (Exo-CBX album), 2018 by Japanese band Exo-CBX
• Magic (Four Tops album), 1985 album by the Four Tops
• Magic (Gillan album), 1982 album by British rock band Gillan
• Magic (The Jets album), 1987 album by The Jets
• Magic (Jolin Tsai album), 2003 album by Jolin Tsai
• Magic (Jorma Kaukonen album), 1985 album by Jorma Kaukonen
• Magic (Kiri Te Kanawa album), 2005 album by Kiri Te Kanawa
• Magic (Smash Mouth album), 2012 album by American rock band Smash Mouth
• Magic (T-Connection album), 1977 album by funk band T-Connection
• Magic (T-Square album), 1981 album by Japanese Jazz fusion band T-Square
• Magic (Tom Browne album), 1981 album by Tom Browne
• Magic (Twins album), 2004 CD released by the musical group Twins
• Magic, by Dreams Come True, 1993 album by Dreams Come True
• Magic, by Paul Mauriat, 1982 album by Paul Mauriat
• Magic (EP), a 2009 EP by The Sound of Arrows
• The Magic (album), 2016 album by Deerhoof
• Magick (album), 2004 album by John Zorn

Songs

• «Magic» (B.o.B song), song by American hip hop recording artist B.o.B, from the 2010 album B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray
• «Magic» (The Cars song), song by American rock band The Cars the 1984 album, Heartbeat City
• «Magic» (Coldplay song), song by British rock band Coldplay from the 2014 album, Ghost Stories
• «Magic» (Disco Montego song), song by dance duo Disco Montego from the 2002 album Disco Montego
• «Magic» (Dragon song), song by New Zealand-Australian rock band Dragon from the 1984 album Body and the Beat
• «Magic» (Kylie Minogue song), 2020 single by Australian singer Kylie Minogue, from the album Disco
• «Magic» (Ladyhawke song), song by New Zealand recording artist Ladyhawke from the 2008 album Ladyhawke
• «Magic» (Mystery Skulls song), song by American musician Luis Dubuc from the 2014 album Forever
• «Magic» (Nick Drake song), song by Nick Drake from the 2004 album Made to Love Magic
• «Magic» (O’G3NE song), 2014 single by Dutch group O’G3NE
• «Magic» (Olivia Newton-John song), 1980 song by Olivia Newton-John, from the soundtrack to the film Xanadu
• «Magic» (Pilot song), song by Scottish pop rock band Pilot from the 1974 album, From the Album of the Same Name, later covered by Selena Gomez
• «Magic» (Robin Thicke song), 2008 song by American R&B singer Robin Thicke
• «Magic» (Sean Smith song), 2017 single by Sean Smith
• «Magic» (The Sound of Arrows song), song by Swedish duo The Sound of Arrows from the 2011 album Voyage
• «Magic (What She Do)», 1985 single by New Zealand band DD Smash
• «Magick» (Klaxons song), song by London band Klaxons from the 2007 album Myths of the Near Future
• «Magic», by Axel Rudi Pell on the album Magic
• «Magic», by Ben Folds on the album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner
• «Magic», by Bruce Springsteen on the album Magic
• «Magic», by Colbie Caillat on the album Coco
• «Magic», by Count Basie on the album April in Paris
• «Magic», by Future on the album Pluto
• «Magic», by Gabrielle Aplin on the album Dear Happy
• «Magic», by The Guess Who on the album Now and Not Then
• «Magic», by Jolin Tsai on the album Magic
• «Magic», by Justin Timberlake
• «Magic», by Michel Legrand on the album Magic
• «Magic», by Mick Smiley on the Ghostbusters soundtrack
• «Magic», by One Direction on the album Take Me Home
• «Magic», by Paul McCartney on the album Driving Rain
• «Magic», by The Pussycat Dolls on the album Doll Domination
• «Magic», by Rainbow on the album Difficult to Cure
• «Magic», by Rina Aiuchi
• «Magic», by Ryan Adams on the album Cardinology
• «Magic», by Sasha with Sam Mollison on the album The Qat Collection
• «Magic», by Secret on the album Secret Time
• «Magic», by Smash Mouth on the album Magic
• «Magic», by Status Quo on the album Ain’t Complaining
• «Magic», by Stephanie Mills on the album Stephanie

Other uses in art and entertainment

• Magik (comics), a fictional superhero appearing in publications by Marvel Comics
• Magic (game terminology), an attribute in role-playing and video games
• Magic (trade show), an annual apparel show
• Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game

Businesses and organizations

Sports teams

• Egoli Magic, a South African basketball team
• Orlando Magic, a National Basketball Association team
• Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic, a New Zealand netball team

Other organizations

• Multi-Agency Geographic Information for the Countryside, a UK mapping service
• Magic (company), a magic book publisher and product retailer
• Magic, Inc. (organization), an educational think tank
• Magix, subsidiary of the BELLEVUE Investments GmbH & Co. KGaA investment group

Radio stations

Sorted alphabetically by call letters:

Canada

• CIMJ-FM (Majic 106.1), Guelph, Canada
• CJMJ-FM (Magic 100.3), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
• CJMK-FM (Magic 98.3), Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
• CJUK-FM (Magic 99.9), Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

United States

• KKMG (98.9 Magic FM), Colorado Springs, Colorado
• KKMJ-FM (Majic 95.5), Austin, Texas
• KMAJ-FM (Majic 107.7), Carbondale, Kansas
• KMGA (99.5 Magic FM), Albuquerque, New Mexico
• KMGL (Magic 104.1), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• KNEV (Magic 95.5), Reno, Nevada
• KBOI-FM (Magic 93.1), Boise, Idaho, formerly KZMG
• KYMG (Magic 98.9), Anchorage, Alaska
• WAJI (Majic 95.1), Fort Wayne, Indiana
• WDYK (Magic 100.5), Cumberland, Maryland
• WJGH (Magic 107.3), Jacksonville, Florida
• WLMG (Magic 101.9), New Orleans, Louisiana
• WLTB (Magic 101.7), Binghamton, New York
• WLXN (Majic 99.9), Lexington, North Carolina
• WMAG (Magic 99.5), Greensboro, North Carolina, former branding
• WMGC-FM (Magic 105.1), Detroit, Michigan, former branding
• WMGF (Magic 107.7), Orlando, Florida
• WMGN (Magic 98.1), Madison, Wisconsin
• WMGQ (Magic 98.3), New Brunswick, New Jersey
• WMGS (Magic 93), Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
• WMJI (Majic 105.7), Cleveland, Ohio
• WMJJ (Magic 96.5), Birmingham, Alabama
• WMJM (Magic 101.3), Louisville, Kentucky
• WMJX (Magic 106.7), Boston, Massachusetts
• WMXJ (Magic 102.7), Miami, Florida, formerly known as Majic 102.7
• WROW (Magic 590), Albany, New York
• WSPA-FM (Magic 98.9), Spartanburg, South Carolina
• WTHZ (Majic 94.1), Lexington, North Carolina, former branding

Elsewhere

• Magic Nationwide, a radio network in the Philippines
  • DWTM (Magic 89.9), Manila
  • DYBN (Magic 92.3), Cebu
  • DYBE-FM (Magic 106.3), Bacolod
  • DXBE (Magic 89.1), Davao
  • DXKB (Magic 89.3), Cagayan de Oro
  • DXKM (Magic 106.3), General Santos
• Magic 1278 (3EE), Melbourne, Australia
• Magic FM Aba, Nigeria
• Magic Malta, Malta government’s public broadcaster
• Magic (UK radio station), a radio station based in London and broadcast across the United Kingdom
• Magic (English former radio network), a former radio network in the United Kingdom
• Magic (New Zealand radio network), a radio network in New Zealand

Technology

For vehicles, see § Transportation.

Computing

• Magic (programming), complex code behind a simple interface
• Magic (software), a layout tool
• ImageMagick, image manipulation software
• Magic Software Enterprises, a software company
• MagiC, an Atari ST operating system
• Gibson MaGIC, a network audio protocol
• Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge, a robotics competition
• MAGIC, a programming language by Meditech

Other technology

• HTC Magic, a mobile phone
• R.550 Magic, a missile
• Magnesium injection cycle, an engine design
• Magic (cryptography), a World War II cryptanalysis project
• MAGIC (telescope), Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, Canary Islands
• MAJC, a microprocessor design

Transportation

Aviation

• Airwave Magic, An Austrian paraglider design
• DTA Magic, a French ultralight trike wing
• Eurodisplay SR-01 Magic, a Czech ultralight aircraft
• Ibis GS-710 Magic, a Colombian aircraft design
• Ibis GS-700 Magic, a Colombian aircraft design
• Ibis GS-710 Magic, a Colombian aircraft design
• Ibis GS-730 Super Magic, a Colombian aircraft design
• Ibis GS-750 Grand Magic, a Colombian aircraft design
• Sunair Magic, a German ultralight trike design

Maritime

• HMS Magic, several Royal Navy ships
• Carnival Magic, a cruise ship operating 2011–present
• Disney Magic, a cruise ship operating 1998–present
• Magic (log canoe), a Chesapeake Bay racing canoe

Other uses

• Magic (horse), female miniature horse working as a therapy horse inside hospitals and hospice programs
• Magic (Middle-earth), magic as it appears in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional realm of Eä
• Magic Johnson (born 1959), American basketball player and businessman

See also

• Magica (disambiguation)
• Magical (disambiguation)
• Magician (disambiguation)
• Magik (disambiguation)
• Magique (disambiguation)
• It’s Magic (disambiguation)
• All pages with titles beginning with Magic
• All pages with titles containing Magic

• Superstition (disambiguation)

Magic (also known as wizardry or sorcery) is a category into which have been placed various beliefs and practices considered separate from both religion and science. Emerging within Western culture, the term has historically often had pejorative connotations, with things labelled magical perceived as being socially unacceptable, primitive, or foreign. The concept has been adopted by scholars in the humanities and social sciences, who have proposed various different—and often mutually exclusive—definitions of the term. Many contemporary scholars regard the concept to be so problematic that they reject it altogether.

The term magic derives from the Old Persian magu, a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, this term was adopted into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations to apply to rites that were regarded as fraudulent, unconventional, and dangerous. This meaning of the term was then adopted by Latin in the first century BCE. Via Latin, the concept was incorporated into Christian theology during the first century CE, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against (Christian) religion. This concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, when Christian authors categorised a diverse range of practices—such as enchantment, witchcraft, incantations, divination, necromancy, and astrology—under the label magic. In early modern Europe, Protestants often claimed that Roman Catholicism was magic rather than religion, and as Christian Europeans began colonising other parts of the world in the sixteenth century they labelled the non-Christian beliefs they encountered magical. In that same period, Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to create the idea of natural magic. Both negative and positive understandings of the term recurred in Western culture over the following centuries.

Since the nineteenth century, academics in various disciplines have employed the term magic but have defined it in different ways and used it in reference to different things. One approach, associated with the anthropologists Edward Tylor and James G. Frazer, uses the term to describe beliefs in hidden sympathies between objects that allow one to influence the other. Defined in this way, magic is portrayed as the opposite to science. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Émile Durkheim, employs the term to describe private rites and ceremonies and contrasts it with religion, which it defines as a communal and organised activity. By the 1990s, many scholars were rejecting the term’s utility for scholarship. They argued that it drew arbitrary lines between similar beliefs and practices that were instead considered religious and that, being rooted in Western and Christian history, it was ethnocentric to apply it to other cultures.

Throughout Western history, there have been individuals who engaged in practices that their societies called magic and who sometimes referred to themselves as magicians. Within modern occultism, which developed in nineteenth-century Europe, there are many self-described magicians and people who practice ritual activities that they call magic. In this environment, the concept of magic has again changed, usually being defined as a technique for bringing about changes in the physical world through the force of one’s will. This definition was pioneered largely by the influential British occultist Aleister Crowley and is used in occultist movements such as Wicca, LaVeyan Satanism, and chaos magic.

Definition

The historian Owen Davies stated that the word magic was «beyond simple definition», and had «a range of meanings». Similarly, the historian Michael D. Bailey characterised magic as «a deeply contested category and a very fraught label»; as a category, he noted, it was «profoundly unstable» given that definitions of the term have «varied dramatically across time and between cultures». Scholars have engaged in extensive debates as to how to define magic, with such debates resulting in intense dispute. Throughout such debates, the scholarly community has failed to agree on a definition of magic, in a similar manner to how they have failed to agree on a definition of religion. Even among those throughout history who have described themselves as magicians, there has been no common understanding of what magic is.

Concepts of magic generally serve to sharply demarcate certain practices from other, otherwise similar practices in a given society. According to Bailey: «In many cultures and across various historical periods, categories of magic often define and maintain the limits of socially and culturally acceptable actions in respect to numinous or occult entities or forces. Even more basically they serve to delineate arenas of appropriate belief.» In this, he noted that «drawing these distinctions is an exercise in power». Similarly, Randall Styers noted that attempting to define magic represents «an act of demarcation» by which it is juxtaposed against «other social practices and modes of knowledge» such as «religion» and «science». The historian Karen Louise Jolly described magic as «a category of exclusion, used to define an unacceptable way of thinking as either the opposite of religion or of science».

Within Western culture, the term «magic» has been linked to ideas of the Other, foreignness, and primitivism. In Styers’ words, it has become «a powerful marker of cultural difference». It has also been repeatedly presented as the archetypally non-modern phenomenon. Among Western intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, magic was seen as a defining feature of «primitive» mentalities and was commonly attributed to marginal groups, locations, and periods.

The concept and term «magic» developed in European society and thus using it when discussing non-Western cultures or pre-modern forms of Western society raises problems, as it may impose Western categories that are alien to them. While «magic» remains an emic (insider) term in the history of Western societies, it remains an etic (outsider) term when applied to non-Western societies. During the twentieth century, many scholars focusing on Asian and African societies rejected the term «magic», as well as related concepts like «witchcraft», in favour of the more precise terms and concepts that existed within these specific societies. A similar approach has been taken by many scholars studying pre-modern societies in Europe, such as Classical antiquity, who find the modern concept of ‘magic’ inappropriate and favour more specific terms originating within the framework of the ancient cultures which they are studying. Alternately, this term implies that all categories of magic are ethnocentric and that such Western preconceptions are an unavoidable component of scholarly research.

Many scholars have argued that the use of the term as an analytical tool within academic scholarship should be rejected altogether. The scholar of religion Jonathan Z. Smith for example argued that it had no utility as an etic term that scholars should use. The historian of religion Wouter Hanegraaff agreed, stating that «the term magic is an important object of historical research, but not intended for doing research.» Bailey noted that, as of the early 21st century, few scholars sought grand definitions of magic but instead focused their attentions on «careful attention to particular contexts», examining what a term like magic meant to a given society; this approach, he noted, «call[ed] into question the legitimacy of magic as a universal category». The scholars of religion Berndt-Christian Otto and Michael Stausberg suggested that it would be perfectly possible for scholars to talk about amulets, curses, healing procedures, and other cultural practices often regarded as magical in Western culture without any recourse to the concept of magic itself. The idea that «magic» should be rejected as an analytic term developed in anthropology, before moving into Classical studies and Biblical studies in the 1980s. Since the 1990s, the term’s usage among scholars of religion has declined.

Etymology, history and conceptual development

Ancient world

The Old Persian maguš

The English words magic, mage and magician come from the Latin magus, through the Greek μάγος, which is from the Old Persian maguš («magician»). The Old Persian magu- is derived from the Proto-Indo-European *magh («be able»). The Persian term may have led to the Old Sinitic *Mᵞag («mage» or «shaman»). The Old Persian form seems to have permeated Ancient Semitic languages as the Talmudic Hebrew magosh, the Aramaic amgusha («magician»), and the Chaldean maghdim («wisdom and philosophy»); from the first century BCE onwards, Syrian magusai gained notoriety as magicians and soothsayers.

The Magi are mentioned in both the Book of Jeremiah and the Behistun Inscription of Darius I, indicating that they had gained considerable power and influence by the middle of the first millennium BCE. A number of ancient Greek authors discuss these Persian mágoi in their works. Among the first to do so was the historian Herodotus, who states that the mágoi were one of seven Median tribes and that they served as functionaries at the court of the Achaemenid Empire, where they acted as advisers to the king. According to Herodotus, these Persian mágoi were also in charge of various religious rites, namely sacrifices and the interpretation of dreams.

The Magi travelled far beyond Mesopotamia and the Levant. They were present in India by at least the first century BCE, as well as in Ethiopia, Egypt, and throughout Asia Minor. Many ancient sources claim they were Zarathustrians, or that Zarathustra, who may have lived as early as 1100 BCE, was himself a Maguš; according to sinologist Victor H. Mair, they arrived in China at around this time. Ilya Gershevitch has described them as «a professional priesthood to whom Zarathustrianism was merely one of the forms of religion in which they ministered against payment, much as a professional musician earns his living by performing the works of different composers».

In ancient Greece and Rome

The term magic has its origins in Ancient Greece. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, the Persian maguš was Graecicized and introduced into the ancient Greek language as μάγος and μαγεία. In doing so it underwent a transformation of meaning, gaining negative connotations, with the magos being regarded as a charlatan whose ritual practices were fraudulent, strange, unconventional, and dangerous. As noted by Davies, for the ancient Greeks—and subsequently for the ancient Romans—»magic was not distinct from religion but rather an unwelcome, improper expression of it—the religion of the other». The historian Richard Gordon suggested that for the ancient Greeks, being accused of practicing magic was «a form of insult».

This change in meaning was influenced by the military conflicts that the Greek city-states were then engaged in against the Persian Empire. In this context, the term makes appearances in such surviving text as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Hippocrates’ De morbo sacro, and Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen. In Sophocles’ play, for example, the character Oedipus derogatorily refers to the seer Tiresius as a magos—in this context meaning something akin to ‘quack’ or ‘charlatan’—reflecting how this epithet was no longer reserved only for Persians.

In the first century BCE, the Greek concept of the magos was adopted into Latin and used by a number of ancient Roman writers as magus and magia. The earliest known Latin use of the term was in Virgil’s Eclogue, written around 40 BCE, which makes reference to magicis… sacris (magic rites). The Romans already had other terms for the negative use of supernatural powers, such as veneficus and saga. The Roman use of the term was similar to that of the Greeks, but placed greater emphasis on the judicial application of it. Within the Roman Empire, laws would be introduced criminalising things regarded as magic. In ancient Roman society, magic was associated with societies to the east of the empire; the first century CE writer Pliny the Elder for instance claimed that magic had been created by the Iranian philosopher Zoroaster, and that it had then been brought west into Greece by the magician Osthanes, who accompanied the military campaigns of the Persian King Xerxes.

Early Christianity and the Middle Ages

In the first century CE, early Christian authors absorbed the Greco-Roman idea of magic and incorporated it into their developing Christian theology. These Christians retained the Greco-Roman negative connotations of the term and enhanced them by incorporating conceptual patterns borrowed from Jewish thought. Like earlier Graco-Roman thinkers, the early Christians attributed the origins of magic to an area to the east of Europe, among the Babylonians, Persians, or Egyptians. The Christians shared with earlier classical culture the idea that magic was something distinct from proper religion, although drew their distinction between the two in different ways.

For early Christian writers like Augustine of Hippo, magic did not merely constitute fraudulent and unsanctioned ritual practices, but was the very opposite of religion because it relied upon cooperation from demons, the henchmen of Satan. In this, Christian ideas of magic were closely linked to the Christian category of paganism, and both magic and paganism were regarded as belonging under the broader category of superstitio (superstition), another term borrowed from pre-Christian Roman culture. This Christian emphasis on the inherent immorality and wrongness of magic as something conflicting with good religion was far starker than the approach in the other large monotheistic religions of the period, Judaism and Islam. For instance, while Christians regarded demons as inherently evil, the jinn—comparable entities in Islamic mythology—were perceived as more ambivalent figures by Muslims.

The model of the magician in Christian thought was provided by Simon Magus, or «Simon the Magician», a figure who opposed Saint Peter in both the Acts of the Apostles and the apocryphal yet influential Acts of Peter. The historian Michael D. Bailey stated that in medieval Europe, «magic» was a «relatively broad and encompassing category». Christian theologians believed that there were multiple different forms of magic, the majority of which were types of divination. For instance, Isidore of Seville produced a catalogue of things he regarded as magic in which he listed augury, necromancy, astrology, incantations, horoscopes, amulets, geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, enchantment and ligatures. Medieval Europe also saw magic come to be associated with the Old Testament figure of Solomon; various grimoires, or books outlining magical practices, were written that claimed to have been written by Solomon, most notably the Key of Solomon.

In early medieval Europe, magia was a term of condemnation. In medieval Europe, Christians often suspected Muslims and Jews of engaging in magical practices; in certain cases, these perceived magical rites—including the alleged Jewish sacrifice of Christian children—resulted in Christians massacring these religious minorities. Christian groups often also accused other, rival Christian groups—which they regarded as heretical—of engaging in magical activities. Medieval Europe also saw the term maleficium applied to forms of magic that were conducted with the intention of causing harm. The later Middle Ages saw words for these practitioners of harmful magical acts appear in various European languages: sorcière in French, Hexe in German, strega in Italian, and bruja in Spanish. The English term for malevolent practitioners of magic, witch, derived from the earlier Old English term wicce.

Early modern Europe

During the early modern period, the concept of magic underwent a more positive reassessment through the development of the concept of magia naturalis (natural magic). This was a term introduced and developed by two Italian humanists, Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. For them, magia was viewed as an elemental force pervading many natural processes, and thus was fundamentally distinct from the mainstream Christian idea of demonic magic. Their ideas influenced an array of later philosophers and writers, among them Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Johannes Reuchlin, and Johannes Trithemius. According to the historian Richard Kieckhefer, the concept of magia naturalis took «firm hold in European culture» during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, attracting the interest of natural philosophers of various theoretical orientations, including Aristotelians, Neoplatonists, and Hermeticists.

Adherents of this position argued that magia could appear in both good and bad forms; in 1625, the French librarian Gabriel Naudé wrote his Apology for all the Wise Men Falsely Suspected of Magic, in which he distinguished «Mosoaicall Magick»—which he claimed came from God and included prophecies, miracles, and speaking in tongues—from «geotick» magic caused by demons. While the proponents of magia naturalis insisted that this did not rely on the actions of demons, critics disagreed, arguing that the demons had simply deceived these magicians. By the seventeenth century the concept of magia naturalis had moved in increasingly ‘naturalistic’ directions, with the distinctions between it and science becoming blurred. The validity of magia naturalis as a concept for understanding the universe then came under increasing criticism during the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century.

Colonialism and academia

In the sixteenth century, European societies began to conquer and colonise other continents around the world, and as they did so they applied European concepts of «magic» and «witchcraft» to practices found among the peoples whom they encountered. Usually, these European colonialists regarded the natives as primitives and savages whose belief systems were diabolical and needed to be eradicated and replaced by Christianity. Because Europeans typically viewed these non-European peoples as being morally and intellectually inferior to themselves, it was expected that such societies would be more prone to practising magic. Women who practised traditional rites were labelled «witches» by the Europeans.

In various cases, these imported European concepts and terms underwent new transformations as they merged with indigenous concepts. In West Africa, for instance, Portuguese travellers introduced their term and concept of the feitiçaria (often translated as sorcery) and the feitiço (spell) to the native population, where it was transformed into the concept of the fetish. When later Europeans encountered these West African societies, they wrongly believed that the fetiche was an indigenous African term rather than the result of earlier inter-continental encounters. Sometimes, colonised populations themselves adopted these European concepts for their own purposes. In the early nineteenth century, the newly independent Haitian government of Jean-Jacques Dessalines began to suppress the practice of Vodou, and in 1835 Haitain law-codes categorised all Vodou practices as sortilège (sorcery/witchcraft), suggesting that it was all conducted with harmful intent, whereas among Vodou practitioners the performance of harmful rites was already given a separate and distinct category, known as maji.

By the nineteenth century, European intellectuals no longer saw the practice of magic through the framework of sin and instead regarded magical practices and beliefs as «an aberrational mode of thought antithetical to the dominant cultural logic – a sign of psychological impairment and marker of racial or cultural inferiority».

As educated elites in Western societies increasingly rejected the efficacy of magical practices, legal systems ceased to threaten practitioners of magical activities with punishment for the crimes of diabolism and witchcraft, and instead threatened them with the accusation that they were defrauding people through promising to provide things which they could not.

This spread of European colonial power across the world influenced how academics would come to frame the concept of magic. In the nineteenth century, a number of scholars adopted the traditional, negative concept of magic. That they chose to do so was not inevitable, for they could have followed the example adopted by prominent esotericists active at the time like Helena Blavatsky who had chosen to use the term and concept of magic in a positive sense. Various writers also used the concept of magic to criticise religion by arguing that the latter still displayed many of the negative traits of the former. An example of this was the American journalist H. L. Mencken in his polemical 1930 work Treatise on the Gods; he sought to critique religion by comparing it to magic, arguing that the division between the two was misplaced. The concept of magic was also adopted by theorists in the new field of psychology, where it was often used synonymously with «superstition», although the latter term proved more common in early psychological texts.

In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, folklorists examined rural communities across Europe in search of magical practices, which at the time they typically understood as survivals of ancient belief systems. It was only in the 1960s that anthropologists like Jeanne Favret-Saada also began looking in depth at magic in European contexts, having previously focused on examining magic in non-Western contexts. In the twentieth century, magic also proved a topic of interest to the Surrealists, an artistic movement based largely in Europe; the Surrealism Andre Breton for instance published L’Art magique in 1957, discussing what he regarded as the links between magic and art.

The scholarly application of magic as a sui generis category that can be applied to any socio-cultural context was linked with the promotion of modernity to both Western and non-Western audiences.

The term magic has become pervasive in the popular imagination and idiom. In contemporary contexts, the word magic is sometimes used to «describe a type of excitement, of wonder, or sudden delight», and in such a context can be «a term of high praise». Despite its historical contrast against science, scientists have also adopted the term in application to various concepts, such as magic acid, magic bullets, and magic angles.

Modern Western occultism

Modern Western magic has challenged widely-held preconceptions about contemporary religion and spirituality. The polemical discourses about magic influenced the self-understanding of modern magicians, a number of whom—such as Aleister Crowley and Julius Evola—were well versed in academic literature on the subject. According to scholar of religion Henrik Bogdan, «arguably the best known emic definition» of the term «magic» was provided by Crowley. Crowley—who favoured the spelling «magick» over «magic» to distinguish it from stage illusionism—was of the view that «Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will». Crowley’s definition influenced that of subsequent magicians. Dion Fortune of the Fraternity of the Inner Light for instance stated that «Magic is the art of changing consciousness according to Will». Gerald Gardner, the founder of Gardnerian Wicca, stated that magic was «attempting to cause the physically unusual», while Anton LaVey, the founder of LaVeyan Satanism, described magic as «the change in situations or events in accordance with one’s will, which would, using normally acceptable methods, be unchangeable.»

The chaos magic movement emerged during the late 20th century, as an attempt to strip away the symbolic, ritualistic, theological or otherwise ornamental aspects of other occult traditions and distill magic down to a set of basic techniques.^[1]

These modern Western concepts of magic rely on a belief in correspondences connected to an unknown occult force that permeates the universe. As noted by Hanegraaff, this operated according to «a new meaning of magic, which could not possibly have existed in earlier periods, precisely because it is elaborated in reaction to the «disenchantment of the world».» For many, and perhaps most, modern Western magicians, the goal of magic is deemed to be personal spiritual development. The perception of magic as a form of self-development is central to the way that magical practices have been adopted into forms of modern paganism and the New Age phenomenon. One significant development within modern Western magical practices has been sex magic. This was a practice promoted in the writings of Paschal Beverly Randolph and subsequently exerted a strong interest on occultist magicians like Crowley and Theodor Reuss.

The adoption of the term «magic» by modern occultists can in some instances be a deliberate attempt to champion those areas of Western society which have traditionally been marginalised as a means of subverting dominant systems of power. The influential American Wiccan and author Starhawk for instance stated that «Magic is another word that makes people uneasy, so I use it deliberately, because the words we are comfortable with, the words that sound acceptable, rational, scientific, and intellectually correct, are comfortable precisely because they are the language of estrangement.»

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See also

• Magic deity
• Magician
• Spell
• Thaumaturgy
• Witch
• Witchcraft

References

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Magic (view authors). As with Myths and Folklore Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported).

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ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD MAGIC

Via Old French magique, from Greek magikē witchcraft, from magosmagus.

PRONUNCIATION OF MAGIC

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF MAGIC

Magic is a verb and can also act as a noun and an adjective.

WHAT DOES MAGIC MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Definition of magic in the English dictionary

The first definition of magic in the dictionary is the art that, by use of spells, supposedly invokes supernatural powers to influence events; sorcery. Other definition of magic is the practice of this art. Magic is also the practice of illusory tricks to entertain other people; conjuring.

CONJUGATION OF THE VERB TO MAGIC

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NONFINITE VERB FORMS

WORDS THAT RHYME WITH MAGIC

SYNONYMS OF «MAGIC»

The following words have a similar or identical meaning as «magic» and belong to the same grammatical category.

TRANSLATION OF MAGIC

Find out the translation of magic to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «MAGIC»

The term «magic» is very widely used and occupies the 2.328 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.

Principal search tendencies and common uses of magic

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «MAGIC» OVER TIME

10 QUOTES WITH «MAGIC»

Famous quotes and sentences with the word magic.

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «MAGIC»

Discover the use of magic in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to magic and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «MAGIC»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term magic is used in the context of the following news items.

REFERENCE

« EDUCALINGO. Magic [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/magic>. Apr 2023 ».