Magic Everywhere

Martha Brockenbrough's daughter complained that "There' s no magic in this land. It's all in the fairytale land. This isn't FAIR! I want MAGIC!" Martha contemplates how magic is to be found every single place one looks.

Magic Words in Everyday Life

Magician Gordon Meyer has discovered a way to track "how people discover and speak about magic in their everyday life. As Eugene Burger (and others) have observed, magic is thoroughly ingrained in every aspect of our society. To find it, all you have to do is look."

The Word Magic

"The word magic still exists and will exist as long as man is a human being; for if evolution is a fact there will always be effects whose causes are not yet discovered." —Eduard Herrmann, "Thought Reading and Thought Transference"

Signs and Wonders

(Image source.)

"The magic sign speaks primarily to the imagination, even though it might require some intellectual grasping." —The Thomist, 1958

Magic via Imagination

"The first step into magic is the human imagination. The world of the mind and the world of matter are both real, but in different ways. In fact, if one is more important than the other, it's probably the world of the imagination, where the world of human artefacts, well, all of it, actually originates. The basic paradigm of science tends to rule out consciousness, imagination, because they're not repeatable in empirical laboratory conditions. So it struck me that perhaps through magic there might be a different way to interact with the mind. This might in fact have been what magicians were talking about all along." —Alan Moore, via Phantasmaphile

Mesopotamian Magic

"Magic language is usually distinguished from ordinary language. There are, in principle, three ways to achieve such a distinction. The first is to use a sacred language. The second is to use poetic, heightened language. . . . A third possibility is almost restricted to magic or ritualistic uses of language, and that is Mumbo-Jumbo. All three possibilities are used in Mesopotamian magic."
—I. Tzvi Abusch, Mesopotamian Magic, 1999

Rim-ram-rom-rum-rurifal-runcifer

This sing-song magic word of fairy lore echoes the tradition of ritually-chanted angelic names. The word is meant to be said three times while one lies flat on the ground. For those who are kind to animals but uncertain of the syllables, a long chain of glowworms will spell out this word as if “it were in gold letters upon the earth.” The effect of the word is a revelation of glamour—the unveiling of an enchanted woodland. As Edward H. Knatchbull-Hugessen describes it Tales at Tea-Time (1872),

The word had scarcely passed his lips for the third time before an occurrence took place which filled him with astonishment. A veil seemed to have been suddenly withdrawn from his face, and the whole scene before him had marvelously changed. Immediately before his eyes, within a few yards of the spot where he had lain down, appeared a forest, full of magnificent trees spreading out their branches towards the skies, heavy with luxuriant foliage. . . . Amid their branches a myriad birds poured forth the sweetest and most entrancing melody.