Magic is any act that produces powerful effects through the supposed assistance of a supernatural being, the ultimate power resting with a supposed creator-god. The difference between the Christian God and His pagan equivalents was the fact that "He"  defined Himself as "A Jealous God". The pagan creator-gods are represented as largely disinterested entities, who willingly subdivided their powers over nature among the various inhabitants of earth.. The One God allowed no such dilution of his powers. C.S. Lewis names Him: "the God of Nature - her inventor, maker, owner and controller."

Magic was an integral part of the pagan religions, the word originating with the Latin "magi". The Romans got this word from the Greeks who used it to identify ancient Persian priests, men who ultimately became infamous in the western world for their practice of necromancy and sorcery. The singular form of magi is magus, the female counterpart being a maga. From the last we have the Old French word "magicien" from which our word, magician.

 The overthrow of magic in the west was largely due to Christianity, which was opposed to calling upon either spirits of the dead or demons as sources of information. Surprisingly, the early Christians did not deny the utility of magic as science has done in this century. Magic was proclaimed not false, but evil, especially where it aimed at injury. Thus the "black arts" were divided from the "white arts" or "miracles". The latter were attributed to the helpfulness of God, who was sometimes said to act through his angels or saints.

All of the forms of magic depend on the principle that the life force is mutable. It is also a basic belief of magic that god-spirit, which dwells in all things animate and inanimate,  cannot be diminished or destroyed but only transformed from one form to another. As the Scots writer Robert Kirk said of the fay people: "It is ane of their tenets that everything goeth in circles." Within this circle individual men and women sought temporary advantage, seeking an extra large share of life force through magical means. The lust for power was considered legitimate since it led to better chance of favourable  subsequent reincarnations.

The essential principle of magic is sympathetic reaction, which is recognized in present-day science as well as the arts. In acoustic,  it is seen that a tuning fork,  sharing a rate of vibration with another of its kind,  will sound if only one is set in motion. This in spite of the fact that they are distant from one another. This is termed "sympathetic vibration" and something of this sort was thought involved in "sympathetic magic" where objects at a distance appeared to interact.



The theory of sympathetic magic rests on two principles:  1, The "Law of Similarity" which says that objects which share physical characteristics are spiritually linked; 2. The "Law of Contagion" which supposes that things which have once been in contact are similarly bound even after separation.

Working from the first of these premises, the magician infers that he can produce physical effects remotely by imitation. There may be a few mariners who still believe that one can "whistle up the wind" or "whistle down the wind" with a bit of simple mouth work. If one wants rain it is simply a matter of waving a wet rag in the air! This sort of activity was labeled  as an "Imitative" or "Homoecopathic Magic" by Sir James George Frazer.

In the second case, a vector or causative agent was involved, along the lines of contagious disease. This idea suggests that the physical condition of an individual can affected by manipulating some material  or object with which the person was once in contact.

This explains how it was thought possible to kill or disable an enemy by incorporating a hair from his head in a wax ball and either heating or destroying it. The first act was thought certain to produce a fever and the second death. This kind of magic which what Fraser called "Contagious Magic."

Further, the elder day magicians were certain that these laws extended to all of the physical world and thus granted power over the elements as well as the fate of  fellow men. The present-day sciences which have evolved from  these arts have similar objectives.

It used to be said that a natural scientist needed nothing more than keen observation and a hand lens but that hardly holds for this century! Science is  knowledge gained through observation, experimentation, and disciplined reasoning. Only the last is lacking with magic.

"Theoretical Magic"  does embrace a set of rules or natural laws which the magician thinks determines the fates of human kind and his world,  but  the theories of magical interaction do not hold up well in a laboratory setting.

Our ancestors were rarely interested in theory and thus practiced what might be called  "Practical Magic," an art which does not  demand high standards of repeatability. Practical magic was understood as involving the supernatural aid of an unseen God, gods or demi-gods.

The Old Norse, who came to our region, had no doubts concerning the reality of the three elder races, who they referred to as the "thrym", the "aesir" and the "elfs". It is on record that they fought with a little people in defense of their Greenland settlement. In Thorston's saga, the "Kampa Dater", or "Camp notes", he writes of encountering a "dverg", or dwarf magician who gifted him with magical abilities.

The French explorers were also familiar with "gods", "geants" and the "fee", and found correspondent "mn'tu'k", "kookwess" and "mikumwess" among the Micmacs. Champlain's shipmates claimed to have heard the horrendous voice of the giant Gougou and the cartographer himself became convinced that Miscou Island in northern New Brunswick was "the dwelling
place of some devil who torments the Indians."

There have always been nay-sayers, and the first may have been Marc Lescarbot, who wintered with Champlain in 1606-7 and went back to France
to write disparagingly of the Norsemen, Jacques Cartier and Champlain: "And as to the Gougou, I leave its credulity to the reader, for though a few savages speak of it and hold it in dread, it is in the same way that some
feeble-minded folk at home dread the Phantom Monk of Paris." On balance, it has to be recalled that Champlain was the more experienced explorer, a long time resident who surrendered his belief in the magical land of Norumbega, but continued to insist that Sieur
Prevert de Malo and his crew had heard "strange hissings from the noise it made."

Elsewhere in Canada, the English explorer Sir John Franklin spotted six inch high fairies who, "lead a life similar to the Indians and are excellent hunters. Those who have the good fortune to fall in with tiny
encampments have been kindly treated and regaled on venison..."

The Reverend John Murray had this to say of newly
arrived Scots: "Perhaps the only bad traits they brought with them were superstitions regarding witches, fairies, ghosts etc, and of course their fondness for whiskey."
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