TWO
Magic is the use of the imagination to create and manipulate images with the assumption that they manipulate their counterparts in everyday life.
Magic is greed, action motivated by extreme desire that cannot be satisfied by the more usual means.
Magic is fooling people; either oneself or others or both, doing so intentionally, unintentionally, or both. This allows for nine possible options, such as fooling only others unintentionally,fooling both others and oneself intentionally, etc. Yes, intentional fooling of oneself is possible and probably not uncommon.
Magic is the experience of symbolic power over life and death; achieved by imaginary control over change; and manifest in artful manipulation of being, doing, and relating.
Magic is the imposition of impossibility. The impossible is rendered possible. But the consequences are complicated. When we see a magic performance, we bring our assumptions about what is possible and real in life to bear on it. The magic challenges these assumptions by showing what is impossible and unreal. There is not necessarily a stalemate. When the performance is well-done and when we are open to it, a double change occurs. The performance becomes more possible and real, while daily life becomes more impossible and unreal. So when the understanding of what is real is subjected to what is understood as unreal, what was unreal becomes real and what was real becomes unreal.
This is a dumbfounding experience. We shake our heads in amazement. It amazes us that we are amazed. But this seems to be our nature.
Robert E. Neale, Tricks of the Imagination, The Linking Ring, February, 1996, pg. 87
An addendum:
Magic is the performance exercise of imaginative mastery that grants symbolic power over life and death by means of ritual control over change in the artful play of impossible effects of being, doing, and relating.
Robert E. Neale, The Magic Mirror, 2002
