quotations about magic
Magic is the ancestor of technology, the ancestor of what we call applied science. Medicine springs from it. The individual medicine man or Big Medicine among the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent was a man who, by reason of special ability and training, was able to do things that the ordinary individual could not do in the way of controlling mysterious forces of nature. The word "medicine" was applied not merely to what we call medicine, but to rain making, cloud making, wind making, getting strength into the war party, harming their enemies, etc. When we want anything done in what we call the arts of technology, we go to a special individual, e.g., physician, engineer, carpenter, plumber, who has a special training. The medicine man was a man technically trained and able to control mysterious forces. Of course, the ordinary member of the tribe as a hunter, fisher, etc., had his training, and he could do the ordinary things in the ordinary way. But if he wanted anything special done, he went to the medicine man--the Shaman.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Field of Philosophy
Magic is often lampooned, usually by those who know little about those who practice it, how it works, how its successes and failures can be explained, and how it relateds to religion or science. Apart from those Christians who associate magic with their devil, this denigration is a hangover from when magic was considered a primitive phase of human cultural evolution. According to this prejudice, a primitive belief in magic was followed by the growth of religions and then, quite recently, by progress towards proper scientific experimentation and rationality. In this context, saying that you work magic is like admitting to superstition.
GRAHAM HARVEY
What Do Pagans Believe?
Natural Magick therefore is that, which considering well the strength and force of Natural and Celestial beings, and with great curiosity labouring to discover their affections, produces into open Act the hidden and concealed powers of Nature.
HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
The Vanity of Arts and Sciences
We do not need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
J. K. ROWLING
speech to Harvard Alumni Association, 2008
Where magic is concerned, there is always an initial decision, an initial willingness to let it enter your life. If that is not there neither is magic.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Books of Magic: The Road to Nowhere
You either have the magic or you don't. There's no way you can work up to it.
FREDDY MERCURY
Circus Magazine, April 1975
We can choose to function at a lower level of awareness and simply exist, caring for our possessions, eating, drinking, sleeping and managing in the world as pawns of the elements, or we can soar to new and higher levels of awareness allowing ourselves to transcend our environment and literally create a world of our own -- a world of real magic.
WAYNE W. DYER
Real Magic
Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Sourcery
Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Books of Magic: The Invisible Labyrinth
Children see magic because they look for it.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Ghosts of Wind and Shadow", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection
True Magic is the greatest of all natural sciences, because it includes a knowledge of visible and invisible nature. It is not only a science but an art, because it cannot be learned out of books and must be acquired by practical experience.
L. W. DE LAURENCE
Great Book of Magical Art
It is not so much by any power inherent in himself that the magician works, as by the ductility of that material of gaping credulity upon which he operates.
ROBERT BELL
The Ladder of Gold
Magic and all that is ascribed to it is a deep presentiment of the powers of science.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
I don't know what holds the bloody world together. Unless it's Magic.
JOHN NEY RIEBER
The Books of Magic: Bindings
Natural Magick is taken to be nothing else, but the chief power of all the natural Sciences; which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy, and which is indeed the active part of the same; which by the assistance of natural forces and faculties, through their mutual & opportune application, performs those things that are above Human Reason.
HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
The Vanity of Arts and Sciences
It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
There is nothing special in the world. Nothing magic. Just physics.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Diary
It always seemed to me they're sort of alike ... magic and music. Spells and tunes. For one thing, you have to get them just exactly right.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tales from Earthsea
True magic is the art and science of changing states of mind at will.
DOUGLAS MONROE
The 21 Lessons of Merlyn