MAGIC WORDS Magic (see magick) The only word was magic. -- Mort Rosenblum, The Secret Life of the Seine (1994) What is the magic word? Magic, said the god. Magic itself. -- "Poetry," Modern Poetry Association (19 6) Mystique: Discovering Magic means recognizing the illusory nature of the material world. -- Phillip Cooper, Esoteric Magic and the Cabala (2002) "Magic. The word evokes childhood memories of fireflies dancing in the dark, of fairies living in the garden; of dreams being so real they lapse over into waking time. We blew the fizz off dandelions in order to have wishes come true, or wished upon the first rising star. We breathed in magic and were not at all surprised by the wonders we encountered." The concept of magic "seems to stir up in everyone some hidden mental forces, some lingering hopes in the miraculous, some dormant beliefs in man's mysterious possibilities. Witness to this is the power which the words magic, spell, charm, to bewitch, and to enchant, possess in poetry, where the inner value of words, the emotional forces which they still release, survive longest and are revealed most clearly."4 Since well before our conceptions of conjuring tricks or witchcraft, nature has been weaving her magic and surprising humanity with her wonders. Physicist B.K. Ridley dispels the common association of magic with superstition. He explains that we are moved by natural forces of magic in a variety of ways through our everyday lives: What is not scientific is not necessarily superstition. Forces that move people exist which lie outside the scientific domain by their very nature -- everyday forces, neither supernatural nor occult, plain to everybody, part of the human experience. Even our everyday language employs the image of the mechanical effect of a force when we speak of being moved by a certain purely mental experience. Who does not respond to the power of form, of colour, of symbols, and is this not what used to be called talismanic magic? Who is not delighted and moved by Galen Gillotte, Sacred Stones of the Goddess: Using Earth Energies for Magical Living (200 ) 4 Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (1948) On Science (2001)