Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tl00127)

Magic. -- The very word magic bears within itself proof of its high origin.
The Latin Magus, the Greek Magos, a magician, gives us all those other words
that are so indicative of authority, wisdom, superiority.  Then we have
magnitude, magnificent, magniloquent, to express greatness in position, in
action and in speech.  With the termination slightly changed the same words
become majesty, implying dominion, and again, we have magisrate, anything
that is magisterial which again has been simplified into Master, and finally
by the process of word evolution has become plain Mister.  But the Latin is
only a transmitter of words.  We can equally follow up the historical
development of this root until we reach the Zend where we find it doing duty
as the name for the whole priestly caste.  The magi were renowned all over
the world for their wisdom and skill in occultism and no doubt our word
magic is mostly indebted to that source for its present existence and
meaning.  That we need not pause even here for back of the Zend "mag,"
"looms up the the sanskrit, maha, signifying great."  It is thought by good
scholars that maha was originally spelled Magha.  To be sure, there is in
the Sanskrit the word Maga meaning a priest of the Sun, but this was
evidently a later borrowing from the Zend which had originally derived its
root from its neighbor the Sanskrit.
                                       -- Lucifer, Vol. X. p.157

Magic -- The art of divine Magic consists in the ability to perceive the
essence of things in the light of nature (astral light), and -- by using the
soul-powers of the Spirit -- to produce material things from the unseen
universe, and in such operations the Above and the Below must be brought
together and made to act harmoniously.
                                        -- S.D., II, P.538

(JLM note: in the above quote, we must remember HPB's frequent use of the
word "astral" to signify "etheric.")

Magic is the second of the four Vidyas, and is the great maha-Vidya in the
Tantric writings.  It needs the light of the fourth vidya (atma-vidya)
thrown in in order to be WHITE magic.
                                        -- S.D., I, p.192