Magic: From
Arcane Arts to Fantasy
Introduction
The word magic has come to mean many different
things to many different people, from 15th-century alchemists to the
wise men who figure into the Nativity story of the Christian New Testament,
from the works of serious occultists like Aleister Crowley, who was called the
wickedest man of his time, to a benign description of the works of Walt Disney.
Magic has been as abstract and fictional enough to be used as a mechanic in
fantasy role-playing games and as concrete and deadly serious enough to be used
as the rationale for executing hundreds of people on the mere suspicion of
being practitioners.
These practitioners have
been called many different things over the course of English’s history,
including magi, wizard, and necromancer
and have been alternately considered great thinkers or wicked manipulators of
evil spirits. I will examine the history of the word magic, discuss how these various words came to be associated with
its users, explore the fascinating history behind the cycling semantic shift of
magic and semantically linked words between
connotations of evil and of good over the centuries, and finally discuss an
emerging new morphological unit –mancy
as a reinterpreted productive morpheme.
Old Persian Maguš
Magic, magician, mage, and magi
all stem from the same ancient source, traceable to the Proto-Indo-European
root magh-, which the American
Heritage Dictionary defines as “to be able, have power” (Indo-European Roots
Appendix “magh-”), and which is
likewise the root of mighty and machine and even, it has been argued,
the modern Chinese wu, “shaman,” via
contact between Old Persian and Old Sinitic cultures in the early first
millennium BCE—Victor Mair, a major
proponent of this idea, produced as his chief evidence that the earliest
instances of the character for the Old Sinitic word of shaman, myag,
was written as a cross with equidistant arms, that this character was the basis
of the modern character for wu, and
that that same symbol is found in ancient and medieval European magic circles
and spells as a sign of magical invocation (Mair 1990).
There is only one word
that emerges from magh- which has
connotations with supernatural powers and abilities—might and machine, for
example, are quite natural means of power and ability—and it is from this root
that all modern senses of magic emerge,
namely the Old Persian maguš (Mair 1990). Maguš became a term in ancient Persia
designating a class whose position was lofty and quite powerful, holding court
with kings, usually serving as priests of the Zoroastrian religion, analogous
to the Levites of Israel. One of the first Greek uses of the term was in
connection with Xerxes, who would not act without first consulting with his maguš (Encyclopædia Iranica, “Magi”). This priestly class’ reported powers or duties included
stargazing, performing religious rituals and sacrifices, and interpreting
dreams.
Greek Magos; Latin Magus
The word maguš
would be
adopted into Greek as magos and
shortly thereafter into Latin as magus, and
although the reference was identical to the Persian—that is, referring to the
priestly class of Persian royal courts—the reference became pejorative. The religion of Zoroastrianism and its
magi came to be viewed by the Greeks
and Romans with ridicule and became associated with a sinister sort of magical
rites, including conjuring the spirits of the dead (Encyclopædia Iranica,
“Magi”).
Alternatively,
Dio Chrysostom zealously speaks out in favor of the magi in the first century
CE, noting that “the Greeks … ignorantly apply the term to magicians” (qtd. in
Grant 1953)—ignorantly, he claims, because the Persian Magi were in fact
worshippers of his own pantheon of gods, namely Zeus and Helios! He held this
belief, false as it was, firmly enough, claiming boldly that “the Magi … rear
for Zeus a team of Nisean horses … the most beautiful and the largest to be
found in Asia” (qtd. in Grant 1953). Other Greek sources attempted to likewise establish
Zoroaster as the founder of Mithraism, largely on the basis of the
“self-definition” of Mithraism as an expression of “the mysteries of the
Persians” which was linked to Helios worship (Encyclopædia Iranica, “Zoroaster
v., as Viewed by the Greeks”).
Pliny
the Elder, a contemporary of Dio Chrysostom, however, identified Zoroaster
firmly and falsely as the founder of magic, though more particularly
astrological magic (Encyclopædia Iranica, “Zoroaster v., as Viewed by the
Greeks”). It is worth pointing out that there existed, to generalize, two sorts
of magic to the pre-Christian Greeks, namely legitimate sacerdotal magic, or
theurgy, and a necromantic rogue magic, or goety, and the sense of the term magi—from which was derived the noun
form magikos to refer to the practice
of magic, from magos and –ikos, denoting more or less “after the
manner of a magos” (OED, “magic”)—encompassed
both theurgy and goety in the pre-Christian era. There therefore existed multiple senses for the word magos and magus as the range of the term expanded to include the meanings of
priests of “oriental mysteries” and astrology or as sinister magicians.
English: Magi
The
pejoration of magos and magus took an interesting turn with the
literature of the Christian era. Although no existing Christian texts can be
definitively dated earlier than the 2nd century CE, it is in them
that the word was preserved into modern English: the plural magi. Generally, magi is most frequently used in English to refer to the “wise men”
of the Gospel of Matthew. The story goes that these men, traditionally numbered
three, were men of high station in a land somewhere east of Judea, who saw a
star in the sky and took it as a sign that a messianic figure had been born.
They made the trek to visit Joseph, Mary, and young Jesus in Bethlehem, bearing
gifts for and revering Jesus. The Greek word for these men was μάγοι (Matt. 2:1, Codex Vaticanus), and the story includes details that suggest that the
intended reference was indeed to Persian magi:
(a) the men were stargazers, such that they were able to observe a new star in
the sky and interpret its meaning; (b) the men were apparently of high status,
for the story indicates they were granted an audience with, and were well
treated by, Herod the Great, and their gifts were expensive; (c) they came from
the east, which had at this point already become associated with orientalism
and mystery; and (d) the men were in communion with God in some manner, such
that they could be warned by divine communication not to alert Herod to Jesus’
location. The Zoroastrian connection to the Christian nativity has cause no
small stir, but that is beyond the scope of this paper.
While the connection of
the magi to the birth of Christ may
have eventually lead to the amelioration of the meaning when used in that
sense, the singular magus became more
pejorative, perhaps because of the figure of Simon the sorcerer. He is
described in the book of Acts as a convert to Christianity who attempts to
purchase a privilege in the church (hence the sin of “simony”). He is not
described as a magus but rather as μαγεύων, “practicing magic.” This Simon
is a Samaritan, linking him to a different (but related) religious tradition
from Judaism, which Christianity was a sect of at that point, but his magic is
not addressed in the New Testament beyond a passing mention. The
pseudepigraphical story in the Acts of
Peter, however, go into far more detail, describing a rivalry between Simon
Peter and Simon Magus, wherein a strong dichotomy emerges between the acts of
God and the workings of magic, which are called the works of deceit and of the
devil (Dalgaard, n.d.). This can be seen as a continuation of the theme of
theurgy versus goety, as theurgy became more associated with sacramental
mysteries in Catholicism and goety retained association with necromancy and
conjuration (OED, “Theurgy”). The theme of this dichotomy played out over the
centuries while Christianity spread throughout Europe and into Asia and Africa.
Likely from these stories, the word magus
gradually became associated with pagan practitioners of ritual magic who
resisted the Christianization of Europe (OED, “Magus”). Magus began to be used primarily as a pejorative term
disassociating the legitimate forms of occult or supernatural ritual invoking
the spirit of the legitimate deity from rival forms of occult ritual invoking
the spirits of rival deities.
On a very interesting
side note, this occasionally resulted in deities invented precisely for the
purpose of condemning political opponents on the suspicion of having worshipped
them during Europe’s Inquisitions. The famous image of the devil on the modern
Tarot card has its origin in such an invented deity, Baphomet, which was taken
quite seriously by occultist Eliphas Levi, the alias of Alphonse Louis Constant
(“Eliphas Levi” was his attempt to find a Hebrew equivalent for “Alphonse
Louis”), from whose work came the Tarot tradition. In fact, Baphomet was the
name of the idol the Knights Templar were ostensibly burnt at the stake for
worshipping, which ultimately proved to be nothing but a less-faithfully
transmitted form of the name “Muhammad”—they were really being accused in some
way of having become disciples of Islam in the course of the Crusades, on the
false notion that Muslims worshipped Muhammad as their god (compare the archaic
English word mammet, false idol,
which is also a reduction of the name “Maumet” or Muhammad) (OED, “Baphomet”
and “mammet”). Notwithstanding the absence of any historical cult of worship of
“Baphomet” beyond medieval misinterpretations of Muhammad’s role in Islam, the
figure remains a powerful image in occultism and the primary inspiration of
much modern satanic imagery, thanks to Eliphas Levi’s, and later Aliester Crowley’s,
influence. As an aside, one might well conclude that, consequently, a
remarkable amount of popular Western notions of Satanism and goety—a devil with
goat-like features or a goat’s head, the goat’s head superimposed over a
pentagram (another of Eliphas Levi’s works), and the pop-culture connection
between the Illuminati and the Knights Templar—is ultimately derived from
simple distrust of Islam.
English: Magic
The etymology of magic
(from Middle English magik; various
spellings) in English derives ultimately from the Greek magikos via Latin ars magica,
abbreviated as magica, through
French magique. Early attestations of
this new English word appear in the late 14th century CE. There
appear to have been at least two senses of the term attested to in Middle
English roughly matching the aforementioned dichotomy of theurgy and goety. Before
this point, the English translation of magos
was wicca according to the Three Kings Cologne (qtd. in OED, “Witch”),
or witch in Modern English, used also
to refer to Egyptian magicians and in reference to Simon Magus (OED, “Witch”).
The sense was generally negative, frequently used in accusation, and included
in a list of banishable crimes under the Laws
of Aelfred in the 9th century CE (OED, “witch”). With the
introduction of the magic vocabulary,
there came another, more positive sense, associated with medieval hermetic
traditions with Platonic roots. This may be seen as theurgy, and was called natural magic or white magic, which related more specifically to “the manipulation
of the supposed occult properties of the natural world” (OED, “Magic” 1b), seen
as a legitimate, necessary, and even sacred field of study, pursued by
Christian monks and mystics, likewise taking form among the Jewish Kabbalists. It
is from this field that we inherited alchemy and eventually chemistry, integral
to the development of modern science. Without any helpful adjectives, however, magic generally held the more negative
connotation with goety, and developed semantic overlap with the corresponding
English word it nearly displaced, wiccecræft or modern witchcraft, “regarded as falling outside the
province of religion proper” (OED, “Magic” 1a).
The modern “Disney” sense of magic began cropping up around the 17th century in
largely literary contexts, attested to as early as 1616 in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale with the line “Oh, Royall
Peece: There’s Magick in thy Maiestie” (qtd. in OED, “Magic” 2). This
figurative sense of magic embodied the sense of something glamorous, grandiose,
mystical, or impressive, and survives today perhaps most saliently in its use
by the Walt Disney Company as a branding tool, tapping into the company’s roots
in the business of creating animated films based on fairy tales. Some examples
of the Walt Disney Company utilizing this word as branding can be seen in the
Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, where one can be transported by
“Disney’s Magical Express” to the “Magic Kingdom,” where theme park cast
members will wish guests “a magical day.”
“White magic” or “folk magic” was practiced and taken
quite seriously in parts of the English-speaking world into the 19th
century, when farmers would perform traditional folk magic in hopes of improving
the chances of a good harvest—they did not see this as incongruent with their
Christian beliefs, and even clergymen were known to participate (Bushman 2006).
Even in the final years of the 19th century, belief in magic was
taken seriously enough that an Irishman burned his wife alive on the suspicion
that she was a faery changeling (McGrath 1982). However, these instances were
limited to quite rural areas, and although there was something of a pushback
from occultists and self-styled magicians and wizards such as the famous
British writer Aleister Crowley who, inspired by Eliphas Levi, attempted a sort
of restoration of pagan ritual magic and to reclaim the prestige and relevance
of magic in the 20th century, magic began to be spoken of primarily
as a fictional or superstitious phenomenon.
In this world where magic is perceived as fictional,
there is little practical need to distinguish between its forms, its merits,
good and bad sorts. Although the senses are retained to some degree—most
English speakers today understand that white
magic denotes something benign and black
magic denotes something sinister—the lack of practical application of magic
has led to a narrowing of the senses.
There is, however, at least one area where people remain
concerned with the senses of magic,
and this is largely within the specialized context of its fictional sense as
used in fantasy literature and film. A prime example is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. The sense of magic, wizardry, and witchcraft is hardly innovative in her books, and indeed she
relies on popular stereotypes to populate her magical world and to write its
history—sage old wizards wear pointed hats, magic users wear flowing robes,
flying broomsticks are a popular method of transportation, and spells and
incantations are uttered in a pseudo-Latin. All of this is largely relegated to
the setting; the actual plot and themes of the story focus much less on magic
and more on elitism, nativism, and ethnic cleansing. But in tapping into stereotypes,
made innocent through the whitewash of time and the fading of negative
connotations, Rowling revealed the really quite active and current negative
senses still current among some subcultures of English speakers. Not long after
the publication of the first Harry Potter
volume, accusations began to fly from certain religious groups insisting that
the novel taught and promoted witchcraft, especially in the sense of goety and
Satanism. A good example of this is the book Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace behind the Magick by
self-styled “cult expert” Richard Abanes, which attempts to interpret even the
narrative use of stereotypes of magic and magic users, which are indeed
inherited in some way from the colorful history of occultism and magic, as incompatible
with Biblical teaching. Other more wild accusations insinuated that the actual
magical incantations were authentic and of sinister origin (though this writer
wonders how incantations such as “eat
slugs” and “point me” fit this
paradigm) (Paavola, “Handbook of Occultism”) and that Harry Potter encourages children to play with Ouija boards, tarot
cards, and untold amounts of “occultic junk” (Chick “The Nervous Witch”). Absent
from these accusations is any acknowledgment of the historical legitimacy
within a religious paradigm of theurgical magic. As fascinating and newsworthy
as these accusations are, they represent only a fringe culture and are not
representative of religious adherents as a whole. Still, they do reveal that
there yet exists the goetic associations with magic in at least some currently
contemporary subcultures.
The Fantasy
Role-Playing Game and the Semantic Shift of the Suffix –mancy
Over the years, many etymologically unrelated and
semantically unrelated words have come to become inextricably linked with
magic, notably wizard, derived from
the stem wize or weis and the suffix –ard
indicating a mocking sense, as in drunkard
and bastard, originally referring
to a foolish old man who is overly bookish (OED, “Wizard,” “-ard, suffix”) but
presently can have no sense other than a practitioner of magical arts. A
fascinating and recent example this phenomenon is the suffix –mancy.
During the 15th century, the word necromancy entered the English lexicon,
strongly semantically linked with the sense of magic marked illicit or forbidden (goety). From the Latin necromantia, via the Hellenistic Greek νεκρομαντεία.
While the word in Latin and Greek dealt primarily with communication with the
dead, its meaning broadened in English to compete with both magic and witchcraft as the word for illicit magical practices (OED,
“Necromancy”). Words with the suffix –mancy
denoted a means of divination, such as pyromancy
and geomancy—that is, divination by
means of looking into fire and by means of interpreting tossed stones,
respectively.
While at first glance the suffix –mancy may appear to be related to magos, it actually derives from the Greek μανία, madness (OED, “Mantic”). In the 17th century, necromancy retained is sense of
divination via conjuring the spirits of the dead and fell under the category of
goety, a key example recorded in the Early Modern English in the King James
translation of the Bible, which relays the story of the Witch of En-dor whom
Saul, the King of Israel, consulted when legitimate means of divination failed
him; the Witch of En-dor summoned the spirit of Samuel, an Old Testament
prophet, who warned Saul of his impending doom (I Samuel 28:3–25, KJV). The
sense changed little into the 19th century, evidenced by its use in
Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the
accusation levelled at Joseph Smith, Jr., of being a “practicing necromancer”
for claiming to have communicated with angels—defined in this case, for the
purpose of clarity, as the spirits and/or resurrected persons of dead saints (Bushman
2006).
By the 20th century, writers of fantastical
fiction began to reinterpret the suffix –mancy,
rendering it more or less productive. Little research has been done on this
subject, so far as I have been able to discover, perhaps owing to the low
prestige and visibility of the social group most likely to utilize this
particular innovation. One of the first recorded examples of this is in J.R.R.
Tolkien’s The Hobbit where Sauron, a
character embodying evil and a former lieutenant of a being intended as an
analogy to Satan, is referred to as “the Necromancer” who had once dwelt in the
“hill of Sorcery” (Tolkien 1937). It is not explicitly stated why he is called
this, although in the later Lord of the
Rings trilogy, it is revealed that he has in his service undead men—that
is, human beings who had been dead but through Sauron’s magic now served him
beyond death. The sense of divination appears to be missing in this sense of
the term, which appears to be concerned entirely with the magical ability to
manipulate the dead. In subsequent fantasy literature, and especially in
fantasy role-playing games, the term necromancy
is used almost exclusively in this sense, as in Diablo II, Dark Souls, and
Dungeons & Dragons. Conspicuously, a similar sense of pyromancy exists, meaning something like
“pyrokinesis” or “the ability to manipulate fire by magical means.” Most dictionaries,
if they include this sense at all (OED, American Heritage Dictionary, and
Merriam–Webster do not), claim that it is a malapropism of pyrokinesis. While strictly true, I suspect that further study
could bear out the hypothesis that this sense of pyrokinesis came about through
four-part semantic analogy to necromancy
in the traditional sense of divination and necromancy
in the sense utilized by Tolkien, who inspired much of modern fantasy
literature:
necromancy (divination via the dead) : necromancy (magical power over
the dead)
pyromancy
(divination via fire) : X
necromancy
(divination via the dead) : necromancy (magical power over the dead)
pyromancy
(divination via fire) : pyromancy (magical power over fire)
In any event, this sense of the pyromancy is current in fantasy
literature and role-playing games (n.a. “Pyromancer”). What encourages my
hypothesis of this pattern of analogy is that in these contexts, the suffixes –mancy and –mancer are largely productive, assigning the meaning [+ magical
power or influence over stem word].
Thus new combinations such as cybermancy,
eromancy, aeromancy (with the new sense), and cyromancy are possible and in active use, as in the video game E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy and the William
Gibson cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.
This innovation has even provoked a movement within the RPG community to stifle
these new forms (n.a. “Whatevermancy”). Regardless, it is likely that even
those who strive against this development would understand approximately the
meaning of stiflemancer, grammarmancer, and even be able to
derive some sense of portmanteaus utilizing the suffix, such as reprimancer or legitimancer.
Regardless
of the historical roots of the suffix, the suffixes –mancy and -mancer have
been reinterpreted, at least in this context, into something synonymous with
magical ability.
Conclusion
Magic is a massive
subject with incredibly polysemy, far too large for this paper to handle in its
entirety. Senses of magic have shifted between legitimacy and illegitimacy as
it comes to encompass various magical practices and systems, or even the
absence thereof, but consistent in all of these senses is that of something
sublime, supernatural, and powerful. Its practitioners are portrayed as
anything from foolish wizards and devil-worshipping witches to sage magi and
wise priest-kings. But today, as the semantic economy of English finds little
use for such diversity of meaning for a word that, for most speakers, is firmly
rooted in superstition and fiction, most of these meanings become homogenized. It
seems the future of the senses of magic, if there is one, rests in the hands of
those few who take it seriously enough to think about it very much, whether
they are modern-day practitioners after the fashion of Crowley and Levi,
fearers of magic for the sake of their religion, or simply writers and lovers
of fantasy.
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