Magic is a much-used term with a complex and controversial history. As a concept and a practice, it has attracted the attention of theologians, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, artists, and historians over the centuries. This Very Short Introductionexplains why. Magic has been defined in terms of the false religions of others, as an evolutionary stage in human thought, a universal state of mind, and a liberating expression of the imagination. For hundreds of millions of people today, no matter their religious persuasion, magic is a real force that helps them to overcome misfortune, poverty, and illness. Indeed, with magic as relevant today as it ever was, it raises questions about the meaning of human progress.
Defining ‘magic’ is a maddening task. Over the last century, numerous philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and theologians have attempted to pin down its essential meaning, sometimes analysing it in such complex and abstruse depth that it all but loses its sense altogether. For this reason, many of those researching the practice of magic in the past and present often shy away from providing a detailed definition, assuming their readers understand it to pertain generally to human control of supernatural forces. Away from the scholarly world, ‘magic’ continues to pervade popular imagination and idiom. People feel comfortable with its contemporary multiple meanings, unaware of the controversy, conflict, and debate its definition has caused over two and a half millennia. In common usage today, ‘magic’ is uttered in reference to the supernatural, superstition, illusion, trickery, miracles, fantasies, and as a simple superlative. We talk of the ‘magic of cinema’. The literary genre known as ‘magical realism’ has considerable appeal. Modern scientists have ...
