Mag

“ This prince, abandoned to luxury and indolence, reduced the science of the Magi to the level of one of his courtesans. What purpose did marvels serve if they failed in ministration to pleasure? Compel, O enchanters, compel the winter to produce roses; double the savour of wine; apply your power over the light to make the beauty of women shine like that of divinities. The Magi obeyed and the king passed from intoxication to intoxication. ”

“ Maggie had gone through the form of recalling this, and the light of their ancient candour, shining from so far back, had seemed to bring out some things so strangely that, with the sharpness of the vision, she had risen to her feet. “Well, with a ‘life’ Fawns will certainly do.” ”

“ As thro' the Gloom the Magus cuts his Way,
Imperfect Objects tell the doubtful Day.
Dim he discerns Majestick Atlas rise,
And bend beneath the Burthen of the Skies.
His tow'ring Brows aloft no Tempests know,
Whilst Light'ning flies, and Thunder rolls below. ”

“ And himself spake unto himself and said
(Heard only of the silence in his heart)
"Tarry thou here no longer, but depart
Unto the land of the Great Mage; and seek
The Mage; and whatsoever he shall speak,
Give ear to that he saith, and reverent heed;
And wheresoever he may bid thee speed,
Thitherward thou shalt set thy face and go.
For surely one of so great lore must know
Where lies the land thou sawest in thy dream:
Nay, if he know not that,—why, then I deem
The wisdom of exceeding little worth
That reads the heavens but cannot read the earth." ”

“ Now, if you sit perfectly silent for a long time and look at the sea, or the sky, or the running water of a river, something happens to you—a sort of magic. Not the violent magic that makes the kind of adventure that I have been telling you about, but a kind of gentle but very strong inside magic, that makes things clear and shows you what things are important, and what are not. ”

“ For ages the army of spirits, once so near, has been receding farther and farther from us, banished by the magic wand of science from hearth and home, from ruined cell and ivied tower, from haunted glade and lonely mere, from the riven murky cloud that belches forth the lightning, and from those fairer clouds that pillow the silvery moon or fret with flakes of burning red the golden eve. ”

“ THE MAGI, OR WISE MEN OF THE EAST. The Magi, or Wise Men of the East, extended their ramifications over Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, and probably, though with a different name, over China, and indeed the whole known world. Their profession was of a mysterious nature. They laid claim to a familiar intercourse with the Gods. They placed themselves as mediators between heaven and earth, assumed the prerogative of revealing the will of beings of a nature superior to man, and pretended to show wonders and prodigies that surpassed any power which was merely human. ”

“ No man, however, has this power of his own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings, ghosts or spirits; he cannot be said, as a spirit can, to be mana himself . . . he can be said to have mana.’ [3]
Class 3. Perhaps a special class should be made of the cases in which the magician feels as if his will-effort was the efficient factor. ”

“ Mago, my son, Hanno your scribe has undertaken to transmit to me, in writing, an account of whatever he may see rare or wonderful in the far-off lands to which you go; his genius seems bright and quick, but his youth renders him wild and unstable as a kid. ”

“ But the magic of which I speak is of a far more subtle and deeply refined nature, and those who possess it are alone in life, save when by some rare chance they meet their kind. Those who are deeply and mysteriously interested in any pursuit for which the great multitude of all-alike people have no sympathy, who have peculiar studies and subjects of thought, partake a little of the nature of the magus. Magic, as popularly understood, has no existence, it is a literal myth—for it means nothing but what amazes or amuses for a short time. ”

“ And what again is this power compared with the pure celestial knowledge to which magic delivers the key? a knowledge as much transcending the wisdom of angels as the son’s place in his father’s house is superior to a servant’s! Perchance the magician at this very moment is deeply absorbed in some investigation, and within a hair’s breadth of the revelation of some new and dazzling truth. ”

“ Now the grade of a Magister teacheth the Mystery of Sorrow, and the grade of a Magus the Mystery of Change, and the grade of Ipsissimus the Mystery of Selflessness, which is called also the Mystery of Pan.
16. Let the Magus then contemplate each in turn, raising it to the ultimate power of Infinity. Wherein Sorrow is Joy, and Change is Stability, and Selflessness is Self. ”

“ Magen, masculine, from the equivalent Middle High German and Middle Low German mage, Old High German mago, masculine, ‘stomach’; compare Dutch maag, Anglo-Saxon maga, Middle English mawe, English maw, Old Icelandic mage, Danish mave, ‘stomach’; Gothic *maga (genitive *magins) is wanting. ”

“ The great gods form his breakfast, the medium gods his dinner, the little gods his supper—the king consumes everything that comes in his way. Greedily he devours everything and his magic power becomes greater than all magic power. ”

“ I feel, however, that I have small justification for speaking of the frame of mind befitting those who investigate the great secrets of Nature. The magician’s power to compel her to disclose them has been denied to me. Miror magis. I wonder, I admire, and I rejoice in the safer, humbler walk which our profession opens to the less gifted, as it does to me. ”

“ When they came to themselves, they wept awhile and the folk assembled about them, marvelling at that which they saw, and questioned them of their case. So the young men vied with each other who should be the first to discover the story to the folk; and when the Magian saw this, he came up, crying out, ‘Alas!’ and ‘Woe worth the day!’ and said to them, ‘Why have ye broken open my chest? ”

“ Maggie waited a moment—Maggie could still tentatively smile. "When people learn we're here—and of course the papers will be full of it!—they'll flock back in their hundreds, from wherever they are, to catch us. ”

“ He stood like a magician above the world, penetrating at a glance the profoundest depths, mysteries, and perplexities of human nature, and having power at will to summon into open day all the foulest as well as fairest working of human passion. ”

“ From his rebellious soul the serpent's blight.
II.
The fire that on the Magi's altars glowed
Spake to his soul in symbols and expressed
The immortal purity that without rest
Strives with the mortal grossness whose abode
Is in the heart. ”

“ But you have known Maggie a long while, and need to be told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is a thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. ”

“ Men exert on each other a similar occult power. How often has the influence of a true master realized all the tales of magic! A river of command seemed to run down from his eyes into all those who beheld him, a torrent of strong sad light, like an Ohio or Danube, which pervaded them with his thoughts and colored all events with the hue of his mind. ”

“ Nothing in fiction is more natural and life-like than the school-days of Maggie, when she goes fishing with her tyrannical brother, and when the two children quarrel and make up,--she, affectionate and yielding ”

“ But if you come to grief through your carelessness, remember that I told you so. If I wore the magic belt which enables you to work all your transformations, and gives you so much other power, I am sure I would make a much wiser and better King than you are. ”

“ Maggie in her crude form, with her hair down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once ornamental and useful. ”

“ It’s human nature over again. They covet what is not their own. They look at our flash money, and stretch out their hand to gather the forbidden fruit, and we fleece them.” No stranger has the slightest chance of success with a mob of magsmen in a railway carriage. The flat can never win, though to his own eyes it may seem impossible for him to lose. The cards are “doctored,” and the magsman’s sleight-of-hand is wonderful. ”

“ Another print—a companion to the foregoing—represents the still more complete discomfiture of the magus. The saint here occupies the right-hand side of the picture, and is raising his hand higher, with apparently a greater show of authority. The demons have all turned against their master the magician, whom they are beating and hurling headlong from his chair. They seem to be proclaiming their joy at his fall by all sorts of playful attitudes. ”

“ This amount of entertainment and assistance they were indeed disposed to extract from their actual impressions; they had been finding it, for months past, by Maggie’s view, a resource and a relief to talk, with an approach to intensity, when they met, of all the people they weren’t really thinking of and didn’t really care about, the people with whom their existence had begun almost to swarm ”

“ MAGI, or MAGIANS, a title which the ancient Persians gave to their wise men, or philosophers. Magi, among the Persians, answers to σόφοι, or φιλόσοφοι, among the Greeks; sapientes, among the Latins; druids, among the Gauls; gymnosophists, among the Indians; and priests, among the Egyptians.
The ancient magi, according to Aristotle and Laertius, were the sole authors and conservators of the Persian philosophy; and the philosophy principally cultivated among them was theology and politics; they being always esteemed as the interpreters of all law, both divine and human ”

“ I have heard an Alexandrine say that there are certain magicians which, in the middle of the market-place, in return for a few obols, will drive out demons and diseases, and call up the souls of heroes, and costly banquets, tables, dishes, and dainties, all as though ready for a feast; all which at the magician’s wand shall vanish away. ”

“ At last a young man, with a good heart and plenty of courage, set out to search for the ring. He took his way towards the sun-rising, because he knew that all the wisdom of old time comes from the East. After some years he met with a famous Eastern magician, and asked for his advice in the matter. The magician answered:
‘Mortal men have but little wisdom, and can give you no help, but the birds of the air would be better guides to you if you could learn their language. ”

“ When I was stuffed, the fairies stood by and slyly dropped some magic into my stuffing. Therefore I can do any of the magic that's inside me, but nothing else. You, however, are a wizard, and a wizard should be able to do anything. ”

“ Maggie had in due course seen her begin to "work" this fortunately natural source of sympathy for all it was worth. She took possession of the ground throughout its extent; she abounded, to odd excess, one might have remarked, in the assumption of its being for her, with her husband, all the ground, the finest clearest air and most breatheable medium common to them. ”

“ ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
043In the Adoration of the Magi we find the usual qualities of composition and feeling. One of the Kings has already rendered homage to the Redeemer, and is talking to St. Joseph, who thanks him with earnest devotion; and while the second falls prone before the divine Child, and kisses His feet with profound emotion, the third prepares himself to render the required homage. All around are elegant little figures of pages and servants, in life-like and natural attitudes. ”

“ "No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference," said Maggie, flushing a little. ”

“ If they once say ‘yes,’ he gives them a silver dollar each, and marks them, by biting the crown of their heads; and then they are taught to curse all that is holy—the Heaven, and the earth, and the fruits of the field, and the birds of the air,—all except the magpie, for that is the Devil’s own peculiar favourite. ”

“ In all that I had witnessed, and indeed in all the wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material human agency is always required. On the Continent you will still find magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. Assume for a moment that they assert truly, still the living, material form of the magician is present, and he is the material agency by which, from some constitutional peculiarities, certain strange phenomena are represented to your natural senses.... ”

“ It is the divine sentiment which is requisite for life in human science; it is the absolute of good, as the triple principle Being-Reality-Reason is the absolute of the true. These elucidations have been necessary for the proper interpretation of that beautiful symbol of the Magi adoring the Saviour in the manger. The kings are three—one white, one tawny and one black; they offer gold, frankincense and myrrh. The reconciliation of opposites is expressed by this double triad, and it is precisely that which we have just been seeking to explain. ”

“ The English alchemists, however, with a few exceptions, depended for a livelihood chiefly on their sale of magic charms, love-philters, and even more dangerous potions, and on horoscope-casting, and fortune-telling by the hand or by cards. ”

“ He opened his mouth in act to speak, shut it again, then drank some whisky and soda.
"Surely all this brings us to magic," I said.
"They used to call it magic. And magic was an attempt to get at the heart of things. ”