Practically every one of us has expressed some sort of an interest towards magic at least once in his/her lifetime. This is the most ancient science on earth; or perhaps, this is a sacred knowledge that enables us to gain control over animals, plants, nature in general. It may also be a mere fantasy, an enchanting fairytale for grownups who still want to believe in magic.
Greek word “mageia” refers to witchcraft, sorcery. Greek word “magos” in turn originates from the word “mod”, meaning “priest”; the same root in Chaldean means “mighty”, “all-knowing”.
Oftentimes, magic is referred to the kind of knowledge that has been passed to humans by celestial beings in ancient times. True, magic has followed humanity since its birth. Traces of the so-called “natural magic” can be found in burials of the Paleolithic era. Civilizations were appearing and disappearing, Egyptian ancient Greek polytheism has been changed by solitary Gods of Israelites, Muslims and Christians. Time has made us forget names of cities, people, catastrophes. Magic remained. Having survived an unbelievable amount of centuries, this knowledge of magic did not cease to exist along with mammoths and Neanderthals; it did not sink together with the great Atlantis and was not consumed by the Great Flood.> Magic has only been perfecting with time, writes TR.MD.
In times of antiquity it is possible to trace gradual division of the science into materialistic and idealistic. The theory of self-knowledge divides into positivism and mysticism. Interestingly, knowledge of magic served as the basis of those trends.
The fact that Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato and other famous philosophers-materialists of those times did a lot of traveling in order to acquire more knowledge and gain full insight into magic and kept their findings in secret serves as a distinctive proof of the above-mentioned statement.
One famous medieval philosopher Henry Cornelius Agrippa in his work “The Occult Philosophy” (1533) talked about magic in the following way: “Magic encompasses unique aspects of the most mystical things, Universal knowledge. It teaches us to differentiate things from one another and to find similarities between them. Magic is a possibility; it possesses tremendous power and is full of immense mysteries.”
Magical knowledge is inherited in every single one of us; it is in the human’s nature. To exist separately throughout the entire planet, humans have to have an inborn magical knowledge. Otherwise we would have already died out. Therefore, we can all be called magicians! Today however the “magician” within us had to make way for a civilized, rationally-thinking person…
Read the original in Russian: http://news.pravda.ru/society/2004/04/02/61731.html (Translated by: Anna Ossipova)