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Magician

         There are two kinds of magicians: the supernatural or occult that get their power outside of the natural world from God, and the natural magician. A natural magician often involves bad religion. In the Bible, Moses was a prophet, he followed the word of God preforming different miracles and things out of the ordinary. He would use, “a wand, or perhaps a staff or sword” to complete what God asked of him, like parting the sea, and along with his brother Aaron who was also a prophet did other miracles like turning the Nile into blood (Copenhaver 2015, 9). Often today magicians are pictured as individuals with wands performing acts that seem impossible as well. However, magicians are not meant to mimic the people of God, nor were they anywhere near as powerful as them. Magicians were all the other people (the outsiders) who were practicing bad religion.
             In Exod. 7:11-8:15, Aaron threw his wand down in front of the Pharaoh and it became a snake, “Egyptian magicians did the same with their mysteries: each threw down his wand and it became a snake. But Aaron’s wand swallowed their wands” (Copenhaver 2015, 10). Aaron along with Moses were representing the one and only powerful true God as the Christian religion has. They were following his words and performing these extraordinary acts through the power of God. That is the reason why their snake ate the magicians snake, because the magicians were using other gods, they were not part of or linked to this one and only true God.
Plato is known for exposing practices that are similar to religion as well as ones which deviate from religious norms, such as the practices and secrecy of magicians “whose heinous crimes against society aggravate their offences against the gods” (Copenhaver 2015, 113).
There are also other views of magicians in regards to natural magic, which is closer to science and nature. Natural magicians believe the world is connected through natural sympathies, which views the universe as being interconnected. According to Campanella who was a philosopher during the late Renaissance and who focused on the philosophy of nature, magic, science and natural religion, magic is just not understood science. Campanella states in section 11.7 On Sense and Magic “A person can be called a ‘magician’ if he knows how to use plants, actions and other appropriate things to produce all these results in a human being” (Campanella 2015, 534). So according to natural magic a magician is really just a scientist. 

Key Words: Magic, Supernatural, Sympathy/Antipathy

 Bibliography:

 Campanella, T. (2015). Science is Magic: Campanella, On Sense and Magic, 4.5-6. In B. P. Copenhaver, The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (534). Penguin Classics.

 Copenhaver, B. P. (2015). The book of magic: From antiquity to the Enlightenment. London: Penguin Classics.

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