Magic
Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, or language with the aim of utilizing
supernatural forces.[99][100]: 6–7 [101][102]: 24 Belief in and practice of magic has been present since the
earliest human cultures and continues to have an important spiritual, religious and medicinal role in
many cultures today. The term magic has a variety of meanings, and there is no widely agreed upon
definition of what it is.
Scholars of religion have defined magic in different ways. One approach, associated with
the anthropologists Edward Tylor and James G. Frazer, suggests that magic and science are opposites.
An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, argues that
magic takes place in private, while religion is a communal and organised activity. Many scholars of
religion have rejected the utility of the term magic and it has become increasingly unpopular within
scholarship since the 1990s.
The term magic comes 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 BC, this term was adopted
into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious rites that were
regarded as fraudulent, unconventional and dangerous. This meaning of the term was then adopted
by Latin in the first century BC. The concept was then incorporated into Christian theology during the
first century AD, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against religion. This
concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, although in the early modern period
Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to establish the idea of natural magic. Both
negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in Western culture over the following
centuries, with the former largely influencing early academic usages of the word.
Throughout history, there have been examples of individuals who practiced magic and referred to
themselves as magicians. This trend has proliferated in the modern period, with a growing number of
magicians appearing within the esoteric milieu. British esotericist Aleister Crowley described magic as
the art of effecting change in accordance with will.
Divination
Divination (from Latin divinare "to foresee, to be inspired by a god",[103] related to divinus, divine) is
the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or
ritual.[104] Used in various forms throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a
querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact with a
supernatural agency.[105]
Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to organize what appear to be disjointed,
random facets of existence such that they provide insight into a problem at hand. If a distinction is to be
made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and
often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African
medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes.
Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion.
Divination is dismissed by the scientific community and skeptics as being superstition.[106][107] In the
2nd century, Lucian devoted a witty essay to the career of a charlatan, "Alexander the false prophet",
trained by "one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous incantations, charms for your love-
affairs, visitations for your enemies, disclosures of buried treasure and successions to estates".[108]
Witchcraft
Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief
in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and
groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally and
thus can be difficult to define with precision,[109] and cross-
cultural assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term should
be applied with caution. Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or
medicinal role[110] and is often present within societies and groups
whose cultural framework includes a magical world view.[109]
Miracle
A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws.[111] Such an
event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity), a miracle worker, Witches by Hans Baldung.
a saint or a religious leader. Woodcut, 1508
Informally, the word "miracle" is often used to characterise any beneficial
event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural
disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other such
miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or
'beating the odds'. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.[112]
A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific
thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of
physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible
physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas
Jefferson and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God
regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work without, above, or against it as well. The
possibility and probability of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of
God.[113]
