Magic in the history of religion does not mean conjuring tricks. For modern members of the pagan community and for others in the past, it rather meant the art of effecting changes by the exercise of one's will. There are two major magical traditions in the West. One is commonly known as "High Magic" and the other as simply "Magic" or, tongue in cheek, as "low magic. The latter, natural magic, is seen as resting totally in the powers that are innate in us and in natural things rather than on the powers of "supernatural" spirits. The Gods, Ancestors, Spirits, are seen as part of the natural world. The natural world is seen as filled with sacred energy, not as a "realm of the devil" or a "fallen" world. Nevertheless, it acknowledged magic could be misused. The use of magic for evil purposes was feared and proscribed. This magic is based on a religious belief system that is still present among some of the oldest indigenous cultures in the world such as those of the American Indians and Australian Aborigines.

European "High Magic" on the other hand was much closer to official Christianity. It was practised in early days of the Church among Coptic Christians and had many followers among the medieval clergy. A pope was among the first to be put on trial for this! (ref ncohen and later in this chapter) It's medieval form believed in summoning demons and in forcing these demons to do one's will. It would often attempt this by invoking the power of the Holy Trinity. The "tamed" demons, were said to be imprisoned by this magic in rings or in glass jars, in order to force them to be available at all times to assist the magician. It's origin seems to have been in the dualism of Asia Minor, adopted into Judaism before the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and common in Gospel accounts that depict demons as infesting human lifes. If Jesus could cast out demons, then the Christian also could seek mastery over devils. High Magic was exorcism plus.

But this magic was quite unlike nature centred magic. It was based on entirely a different world-view and religion. Modern witches such as Starhawk defined their magic very differently. She defined it alchemically as "the art of turning negatives into positives, of spinning straw into gold". Dion Fortune, another influential writer on magic, called it "the art and science of changing consciousness according to the Will.". It was based on a belief that humans naturally have considerable spiritual and mental abilities and that when we are confident enough in our ability to use them, we can effect or help effect real changes in ourselves or in the world around us for good or ill.

Many 19th and 20th century historians have tried to impose their philosophical views on the medieval world. Thus magic was said to be opposed to religion - when it rather reflected different religious ways. Thus magic was said to be opposed to science since it was "irrational" - while more recent interpretations recognised "magic" as another way of seeing reality that is logical within its own parameters. (Ref. Dr Jolly) For many magic dealt with mental phenomena that was known through experience but which science had not as yet explained. (More on this Xref - near end of this chapter)

The work of modern historians of witchcraft is bedevilled by translations. For example, I read that Classical Rome portrayed the "witch" as a worker of evil magic. Yet the word "witch" is of Anglo-Saxon origin and was not known in Rome. What has happened is that the Classical reference to a worker of evil magic has been translated as "witch." It was common in that time for a rival religious teacher to label the work of another as "evil magic" to try to discredit them - and to use words that are today translated as "witch.." In this sense, the murders of witches did not start in the Middle Ages.

A notable example of this is the story of the death of the famous woman philosopher, mathematician and inventor known as Hypatia of Alexandria. She headed the Alexandrian Platonic School early in the 5th Century CE and invented a water distilling apparatus and one for measuring the density of liquids. Her charisma and eloquence was widely revered and many important people were her students. One of the few sayings of hers to have survived was that "all formal dogmatic religions are fallacious." It seems that the Catholic Bishop of that city, Cyril, saw her as a rival and organised against her. (He was also notorious for organising attacks on Alexandria's Jewish synagogues.) Around 415 CE stories started to circulate attacking her for working magic and for being a "witch". Shortly afterwards she was attacked by a Christian mob, dragged into a church and stripped naked. She was then murdered by having her flesh peeled from her with oyster shells or tiles. The mangled parts of her body were burnt. No one was ever punished for this crime.

When the Angle-Saxon and German peoples were converted in the second half of the first millennium, they retained so many of their traditional beliefs that effectively their "Christianity" was transformed. A very similar process happened among Aborigines in Australia where some have been so selective that they have created practically new religions unlike anything preached to them. Among Germanic peoples, this was partly because missionaries adapted their message to gain them more converts. Thus in Germany Saints replaced Gods - and performed much the same function. Relics of saints substituted for pagan sacred objects in the working of magic. Christ became the ultimate war-lord whose support magically guaranteed success. This militarisation of Christianity had started earlier when the Emperor Constantine invoked Christ to gain military victory. It would culminate in the Crusades.

The evidence from that time shows that we cannot separate out "magic" as something that was only done by people self-identified as Pagan - no matter if this is what the Church at various times taught, no matter if magic were relabelled. If magic is pagan, then many among these early "Christians" were also pagan - and indeed were seen as still pagan by some preachers. Despite conversion to Christianity, many retained a belief in various natural powers and used these in magical ways. The retained "pagan" cures or "spells" were holistic. They aimed at curing both the soul and the body and engaging the will of the patient in the work of healing. Thus they often combined chants and ritual with herbs and sound medical knowledge. They often simply added a Christian invocation to a pre-existing remedy.

Magic differs from prayer. When people pray for help or forgiveness, they beg for the intercession of a superior supernatural being, or a saint existing in a supernatural world. They see themselves as sinners and as ultimately weak and unable to save themselves. But with magic, we attempt to use our natural powers with, perhaps, the help of other natural entities, to affect a change.

Our power comes from our union with nature and the divine creating energy. Our knowledge of natural powers is experiential and includes such as yet ill-understood phenomenon as telepathy and prophecy, When we observe inexplicable happenings, we know these are achieved by natural causes that we do not yet understand. The divine energy is part of nature, not of a supernatural world. In working magic we join our energy with others - as happens in coven magic. We also may ask other creatures, spiritual beings or energies to join with us - - including the spiritual beings and deities of Nature.

Someone said "Magic is what happens when one takes off the blindfold, Magic is what the world does with us... not what we do to the world." It is very instinctual. All children instinctively try to do magic.

Children have sometimes asked: "Jani, are you a white witch or a black witch?" My usual answer is: "Neither. I am a green witch. " Magic is for me ultimately green, for it comes from nature and is dependent on nature. It is thus a good energy, a divine energy, a blessed energy. It is for me allied to the divine energy that underpins our world. It is of itself good - but it can be distorted. If we use it for evil, we are trying to turn the power of the earth against itself to hurt the balance of creation. I rarely come across the harmful use of magic - but this may be for the same reason that I rarely come across pornography on the Internet, I have not been out looking for it.

But I have read Egyptian and Coptic "love-spells" dating back to the early centuries of Christianity which I thoroughly dislike. These called on Deities or Angels to bind another person to force them to love the person casting the spell. The person casting the spell was frequently a Christian male. These were sometimes inscribed on tablets of lead or on pottery bowls and thus survived. Sometimes they were corner-spells, meant to protect the client against all curses. They were sometimes attempts to harness the forces of nature to bind another person or to harm them. The targeted person was often identified to the spirit by the presentation of something like a sample of a victim's hair.

Recipe - books of such spells, in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, were found in the Cairo Genizah (the used-paper store-room of the medieval synagogue in Cairo, Egypt), The researchers examining these at the University of Michigan have testified that "numerous medieval manuscripts -- in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and many other languages -- attest to the vitality of such recipe-books throughout the Middle Ages." (ref. Magical section of their website.)

An example from such a book:

Take bran of first quality and sandalwood and vinegar of the sharpest

sort and mould cakes. And write his name upon them, and so hide them,

saying into the light the name of Hekate, and "Take away his sleep from

so-and-so," and he will be sleepless and worried.

If these had efficacy, then it came from the focus these objects gave to the human will - and the focus such objects would give to the fears of their intended victims if they got to know of their existence. But the existence of such harmful acts of magic no more means that magic itself is wrong than we could say that intercourse is wrong because sometimes it turns to rape