The ensuing work presupposes a fair knowledge of occult semantics and at least some degree of familiarity with the meta-physical world. As the word 'magic' itself tends to have con-troversial overtones for the uninitiated - there still being people who associate it either with what are ignorantly referred to as the 'black arts' or with entertainers who produce objects from hats by sleight of hand - a clear definition is necessary.
I could not hope to put it better than the late A.E. Waite. In his book. The Occult Sciences, he writes:
The popular conception of Magic, even when it is not identified with the trickeries of imposture and the pranks of the mountebank, is entirely absurd and gross.
Magic, or, more accurately, Magism,' says Christian in his Histoire de la Magie, 'if anyone would condescend to return to its antique origin, could be no longer confounded with the supersti-tions which calumniate its memory. Its name is derived to us from the Greek words MAGOS, a Magician, and MAGELA, Magic, which are merely permutations of the terms MOG, MEGH, MAGH, which in Pehlvi and in Zend, both languages of the eldest East, signify "priest", "wise" and "excellent". It was thence also that, in a period anterior to historic Greece, there originated the Chaldean name Maghdim, which is equivalent to "supreme wisdom", or sacred philosophy. Thus, mere etymology indicates that Magic was the syn-thesis of those sciences once possessed by the Magi or philosophers of India, of Persia, of Chaldea, and of Egypt, who were the priests of nature, the patriarchs of knowledge, and the founders of those vast civilizations whose ruins still maintain, without tottering, the burden of sixty centuries.
Ennemoser, in his History of Magic (as translated by Howitt), says 'Among the Parsees, the Medes and the Egyptians, a higher knowledge of nature was understood by the term Magic, with which religion, and particularly astronomy, were associated. The initiated and their disciples were called Magicians - that is, the Wise - which was also the case among the Greeks ... Plato under-stood by Wisdom nothing less than a worship of the Divinity, and Apuleius says that Magus means, in the Persian language, a priest ... India, Persia, Chaldea and Egypt, were the cradles of the oldest Magic. Zoroaster, Ostanes, the Brahmins, the Chaldean sages, and the Egyptian priests, were the primitive possessors of its secrets. The priestly and sacrificial functions, the healing of the sick, and the preservation of the Secret Wisdom, were the objects of their life. They were either princes themselves, or surrounded princes as their counsellors. Justice, truth, and the power of self-sacrifice, were the great qualities with which each one of these must be endowed; and the neglect of any one of these virtues was punished in the most cruel manner.
This scholarly and erudite apology continues for several more pages, but the essence of its message is the same throughout and applies even more so today than when it was first published in 1891.
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