Introduction to the History of Magic

The Persian prophet Zardosht was the founder of Zoroastrianism, and his followers were so knowledgeable and had such special religious pilgrimages that it fascinated and mystified the ancient Greeks, who called them sorcerers.

What we mean by magical techniques is the power and skill of the sorcerers, which is used to describe their ability to summon spirits and foretell the future, and the word sorcerer came into Latin and then was combined with Old French to produce the word magic in modern English.

Magicians in the Middle Ages were scholars who studied supernatural magic and were believed to have strange and mysterious powers.

One word used to describe their activities was conjure.

However, Nathan Bailey's Dictionary, published in 1721 AD, defines a magician as "a person who uses evil techniques to conjure up spirits and speak to the devil".

In fact, the English word conjure is a combination of the Old French word (meaning "**** together, unite") and the Latin root jurare (meaning "to curse").

From the 14th to the 18th centuries, no juggler dared call himself a magician unless he put his life on the line.

If he did, he got himself into serious trouble, and was even punished by being burned at the stake.

With the advent of the Age of Reason in the early 18th century, the word magician came to be used to refer to a person who performed tricks.

Those who performed tricks in the 18th century and those we call magicians today were called jugglers.

The word originated in Latin, then came into French, and was absorbed into English in the 12th century to mean an entertainer in general.

The sense of juggling in this word was added later, and it also refers to a person who performs an aerial toss solitaire.

There was also a group of performers who busied themselves with performances inspired by experiments in alchemy.

Chaucer, in The Franklin's Fables, called this group tregetours (meaning magicians who perform with the aid of machinery).

Chaucer admits that he has never seen their tricks, only heard of them.

These men used mechanical devices, lights and sound to enhance their performances, which is actually very similar to our modern magic stage</b> shows.

The word originally originated from the Old French trasgeter, meaning through or across.

By the 19th century, the word legerdemain (meaning trick, deception) was used for juggling.

The word is the English version of the French leger de main, which simply means "light in the hand".

Another word for magic that came into vogue in the 19th century was prestidigitation.

It was used specifically to refer to tricks or juggling.

The word was formed in 1815 by the Frenchman Jules by combining the two Latin words praestus (meaning flexible) and digtus (meaning fingers, toes).