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846 MAGGIOKE MAGIC French accounts acknowledged a loss of 4,957, and estimated that of Gyulai at 20,000, inclu- ding 7,000 prisoners. The results of the battle were the evacuation of Lombardy by the Aus- trians. MacMahon was created a marshal of Trance and duke of Magenta. MAOGIORE, Lake. See LAGO MAGGIORE. MAGI, the priestly caste of the ancient Per- sians. It was formerly held that they were a Median race, and that the revolution which gave them their supremacy was a Median out- break. According to Rawlinson and other recent writers, however, Magism was the old Scythic religion, which maintained itself in Persia after the Aryan conquest, and grew in power and influence despite the frowns of the court until Gomates, a Magus, was raised to the throne as successor of Cambyses. He was speedily overthrown and slain by Darius Hys- taspis, and the Aryan religion was restored in triumph over Magism. The wisdom of the Magi caused a secret knowledge of religion and philosophy to be ascribed to them. The name early lost whatever it originally had of ethnological significance, and came to indicate only a caste; and in later times it was applied to diviners and sorcerers of every nation. MAGIC, as explained by its adepts, the tradi- tional science of the secrets of nature, embra- cing all knowledge and constituting the perfec- tion of philosophy ; also the art of exercising preterhuman powers by means of occult vir- tues and spiritual agencies. Among the Chal- deans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Bactri- ans, Medes, and Persians, all the higher kinds of knowledge were confined to the priests, who not only exercised the sacerdotal func- tions, but attended to the healing of the sick and to the preservation of the secrets of re- ligion and of philosophy, including theology, medicine, and astronomy. These priests were either princes or the counsellors of princes, and were called magi, wise men or philoso- phers. Magic originally signified only the knowledge possessed by the priest (mag or magus), but was used at a very early period to designate all occult science, natural or super- natural, including enchantment and any extra- ordinary operations like those pertaining to al- chemy. Later it was applied by the vulgar to all necromancy and witchcraft. But the adepts in magic claim that the sorcerer or practiser of the black art differs from the true magician as the charlatan from the master of the art ; and Paracelsus inveighs against such as rank true magicians with conjurers, necromancers, and witches, " those grand impostors who vio- lently intrude themselves into magic, as if swine should enter into a fair and delicate garden." Cornelius Agrippa reckons several different kinds of magic, but these are gener- ally reduced to two : white or divine magic, or magic within its proper province, and black or infernal magic, to which belongs chi- romancy, the evil eye, the command of the elements, the power of transforming human beings into animals, &c. In white magic the devil devotes himself to the magician; in black, the magician devotes himself to the devil. The arts of magic are founded upon a pretended system of the universe, and have their root in astrology. Besides the four ele- ments, fire, air, earth, and water, each with diverse potential characteristics, a fifth essen- tial and superior element is introduced, vari- ously called the astral light, the soul of the world, and the primum mobile, which is the grand arcanum of transcendental magic, the tetragrammaton of the Hebrews, the Azoth of the alchemists, and the Thot of the gyp- sies. By this element, which abounds in the celestial bodies and descends in the rays of the stars, every occult property is conveyed into herbs, stones, metals, and minerals, ma- king them solary, lunary, jovial, saturnine, mercurial, &c., according to the planetary in- fluences. Everything human is represented in it, according to the Platonic notion, as Agrippa maintains, that everything below has a celestial pattern. In it thoughts are real- ized, and images of past persons and things preserved, so that spectres may be evoked from it and the mysteries of necromancy accom- plished. Separated and extracted from matter, it is the philosopher's stone and the elixir of youth. To have command of this element, to direct its currents, and to discern its moving panorama, is the highest attainment and the incommunicable secret of the magician. To reveal it is to lose it ; to impart it even to a disciple is to abdicate in his favor. The higher professors of magic have claimed that it de- mands superior intelligence enlightened by the severest study, a dauntless courage and an un- bending will, and discretion, devotion, and ha- bitual silence undisturbed by the temptations of the world. The terrors of initiation into ancient mysteries and mediaeval magical rites were designed to test and prove the strength and daring of the candidate. The man who has demonstrated his fearlessness amid confla- gration, shipwreck, tempest, and darkness, ter- rifies the salamanders, undines, gnomes, and sylphs into obedience, and can then evoke them from the fire, water, earth, and air by various modes of divination called respectively pyro- mancy, hydromancy, geomancy, and aeroman- cy. The magician should be impassible, sober, chaste, disinterested, inacessible to prejudice and terror, and without physical defect. He should not live exclusively in his laboratory, with his Athanor, elixirs, and crucibles. The intense mental concentration required by ev- ery magical operation should be followed by a period of repose. It is claimed that a tradi- tional key to magical arts has been preserved from the time of Solomon, its use being per- mitted only to the highest priests and to the elite of the initiated. This key is a hiero- glyphical and numeral alphabet, expressing by characters and numbers a series of univer- sal and absolute ideas. The celebrated word