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What was the purpose of this ancient magic? And who were the wizards who dealt in it? To find out I need to probe deep into our pagan past, to a time when magic was everywhere, and the people who controlled that magic were all-powerful. Professor Richard Rudgley, Pagans: Magic Moments, Channel 4 2004
At six hundred years older than Stonehenge, Newgrange in Ireland is a monument that sheds a remarkable shaft of light into a dark and magical past. It give us perhaps the first clue to magic in the pagan world. ibid.
We associate the full moon with everything supernatural ... The moonlight was considered a special source of energy. Our ancestors had a close relationship with the night sky. ibid.
Could it be that the legend of King Arthur’s sword in the stone is inspired by the magical smiths of the Bronze Age? ibid.
In 1999 treasure hunters were scouring the site of a Bronze Age hill fort near the German town of Nebra when they dug down and revealed a 3,5000-year-old bronze disc – the Nebra Star Disk, 1,600 B.C. The Disc was buried with a pair of fine swords and fine tools. This was the first evidence of a new and powerful cast of wizard priests. ibid.
There was no distinction between magic and medicine in the pagan world. ibid.
The Shaman figure has existed for tens of thousands of years. He is as old as magic itself ... He did this with the magic chemistry of the forest. ibid.
The Star Disc is embossed with gold leaf images of the sun, moon and thirty-two stars. ibid.
The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic. Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. Roald Dahl
I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book. J K Rowling
I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning. J B Priestley
Throughout the Hebrew Bible it is by miracles that God makes Himself known to his chosen people. Mysteries of the Bible s5e6: Magic & Miracles, A&E 1998
Why is Moses, perhaps the greatest worker of miracles in the Hebrew Bible, punished by God for miraculously drawing water from a rock? ibid.
Why is Magic forbidden? And what is the distinction between Magic and Miracle? Why did the time of miracles draw to an end? ibid.
All scholars agree about the Sea of Reeds. ibid.
For what seems a minor transgression Moses will suffer a terrible punishment. ibid.
King Saul bows down before the apparition. ibid.
Why didn’t Saul withdraw to fight another day? ibid.
The Witch of Endor has intrigued readers of the Bible. ibid.
The people of Israel persist in the practise of forbidden magic. ibid.
A spectacular contest between Magic and Miracle: Baal v Elijah. ibid.
Nowhere in this miraculous book of miracles – Hebrew Bible – does the word miracle occur. ibid.
When the lorry goes over that fellow, I knew he couldn’t be crushed: and I was spending my time trying to work out how they did it. They [Penn & Teller] make me angry. I think it’s all wrong. You know, they should be crucified by the Magic Circle. They will do a wonderful trick and then say, This is how it’s done. They’re mad. Well stuff you, mate. Nicholas Parsons, panel show host, re Penn & Teller
Anyone can do magic badly. But you have to be a genius like Tommy Cooper to get away with how he done it. Joe Pasquale
There is magic within
There is magic without
Follow me and you’ll learn
Just what life’s all about. Kate Bush, The Magician
Houdini, the great transitional figure between ‘magical’ acts and ingenious tricks, was at pains to explain that everything he did was a trick; he offered rewards, never collected, for any ‘supernatural’ act he could not explain. The Amazing Randi carries on in the same tradition, bending spoons as easily as Uri Geller. And yet in Houdini’s time, there were those who insisted he was doing real magic; how else could his effects be achieved?
Daniel Mark Epstein wrote about the Houdini believers in a 1986 issue of the New Criterion, which I read as I read everything I can get my hands on about Houdini. The thing was, Houdini really did free himself from those fetters and chains and sealed trunks dropped into the river, and survived the Chinese Water Torture (an effect used prominently in The Prestige night after night). But there were those who argued his tricks were physically impossible, and thus must be supernatural. Robert Ebert, review of The Prestige 7th September 2007
I have been in love with magic all my life. I’m no good at it, even though I bored my friends for years with cheesy illusions, and even today can make a dime disappear from your forehead. These days I am most impressed with the skills required for close-up magic. Teddy Nava, the son of writer-directors Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas, can make cards change while I am holding them in my hands. Now how does he do that? Not through divine intervention, I am fairly sure. But I was holding them! The trick is told when the trick is sold. ibid.
If you choose magic you will never be able to return to the life you once lived. Your world may be more ... exciting ... but it will also be more dangerous. Less reliable. And once you begin to walk the path of magic, you can never step off of it. Or you can choose the path of science, of rationality. Live in a normal world. Die a normal death. Less exciting, undoubtedly. But safer ... It is your choice Timothy. Always and forever your choice. Neil Gaiman
A so-called magician, more than a poet, must be born with a peculiar aptitude for the calling. He must first of all possess a mind of contrarieties, quick to grasp the possibilities of seemingly producing the most opposite effects from the most natural causes. He must be original and quick-witted, never to be taken unawares. He must possess, in no small degree, a knowledge of the exact sciences, and he must spend a lifetime in practice, for in the profession its emoluments come very slowly. All this is discouraging enough, but this is not all. The magician must expect the exposure of his tricks sooner or later, and see what it has required long months of study and time to perfect dissolved in an hour. The very best illusions of the best magicians of a few years ago are now the common property of traveling showmen at country fairs. I might instance the mirror illusions of Houdini; the cabinet trick of the Davenport Brothers, and the second sight of Heller – all the baffling puzzles of the days in which the respective magicians mentioned lived. All this is not a pleasant prospective picture for the aspirant for the honors of the magician. Alexander Herrmann, Cosmopolitan December 1892
The magician depends for the success of his art upon the credulity of the people. Whatever mystifies, excites curiosity; whatever in turn baffles this curiosity, works the marvelous.
Of course human ignorance is no longer a source of profit to the magician, as it was in the days of the diviner, the oracle, and the soothsayer. Few believe nowadays that the magician claims any supernatural aid. I will scarcely be believed, therefore, when I tell my readers that in a few cities in Italy and Spain in which I have performed hundreds came to see me as a curiosity, impressed with the belief that for the power he gave me I had made a compact with the devil for the delivery of my soul. In these cities I have seen people reverently cross themselves when I was passing. Alexander Herrmann, article North American Review July 1891, ‘The Art of Magic’
No one regards the magician today as other than an ordinary man gifted with no extraordinary powers. The spectators come, not to be impressed with awe, but fully aware that his causes and effects are natural. They come rather as a guessing committee, to spy out the methods with which he mystifies. Hundreds of eyes are upon him. Men with more knowledge of the sciences than he come to trip and expose him, and to baffle their scrutiny is the study of his life. Long years of training and exercise alone will not make a magician ... There must be some natural aptitude for the art; it must be born in a man, and can never be acquired by rule. He must be alert both in body and in mind; cool and calculating to the movement of a muscle under all circumstances; a close student of men and human nature. To these qualifications he must add the rather incongruous quality of a mind turning on contradictions. With a scientific cause he must produce a seemingly opposite effect to that warranted by order and system.
I know of no life requiring such a series of opposite qualities as the magician's. And after the exercise of all these qualities I have named, resulting in the production of the most startling and novel results, the magician has not the satisfaction, like other men, of the enjoyment of his own product. He must be prepared to see it copied by others, or after a short time discovered by the public. ibid.