A Treatise on Magic

Greetings and Salutations,

you have all heard the word magic before, I'm assuming, and you have a general idea what the word means, but to what depths? When we say magic we can be talking about many different things, whether it's trickery, astounding facts, just an overall feeling of happiness or goodness, etc. Before we go on this journey together, let me tell you that because of its appeal to people, it is often used as a name for things; the list can go on for a very long time from computer products, games, music, books, etc. So I will avoid referring to those as much as possible.

Let's start with the boring version and slip right into the rest:

Magic in the real world is confined to illusory acts, sleight of hand, prestidigitation. A magician performs incredible acts that appear to be impossible or at the very least improbable, and calls them magic. By calling them magic he refers to being bestowed paranormal powers, making himself appear to be more powerful than others. This paranormal power is a common theme in many works of fiction, appearing in several overarching forms. The first is power granted to a person via a supernatural being, i.e. "the gods". By asking them and showing your devotion to their majesty and desires they give you access to a portion of their powers. This is why many religious people take a stand against magic, because it is power that a person yields for their own will, and because they are obviously asking other gods for this. The second is power granted to a person via knowledge, i.e. science. Through one's knowledge of how the world works, one can manipulate it do incredible things; it is often pointed to by a quote such as "Through [the person in question]'s understanding and close contact with nature, [X]".

This is cool, but where did magic come from?

I'm no historian, but I have studied a lot of early history and I can postulate two hypotheses, one for each of the basic forms. For the first, I think we can safely say that it comes from the beliefs of early religions. In the majority of old religions priesthood enabled a person to ask for magical or in this case, divine, intercession in life. The second I can imagine might have occured something like this:

"Get back, you scum!" yelled a man as he shoved someone back with lots of menace evident in his force.
"I didn't do it! Don't hurt an innocent man!" cried the man as he stumbled backwards and fell on his back.
"We'll see about you being innoc..." began the first man as he approached the man on the ground after stooping to pick up a large rock.
As he began to speak a bolt of lightning struck the ground in front of him, shattering shards of rock in all directions.

Granted, I do have a fairly good imagination, and we don't exactly have many sources from the dawn of humanity, but I feel this is a fairly logical explanation of what happened.

Regardless of its history, the word magic is here to stay and will be used in countless ways. I myself have used it before to explain something that I didn't want to spend a long time explaining. How does X work? Magic!

I hope you all have a magical and long life,

Farewells and Valedictions,
Eoin Anndra Davis