What is Magic?

I believe that these three words, in this particular combination, are three of the most important words in the life of any magician.

They serve as the beginning of a quest towards poetic knowledge, as well as both the quest, and the knowledge, itself.

I have spent over half of my life asking this question to myself and to others, as well as searching in books and other teachings for the answer. As I have written several times before, whereas I once believed that I had to understand magic in order to actually be a magician, I am now convinced that the only key to being a magician is to never stop looking for the key.

“What is Magic?” is a question filled with questions followed by a question mark. A self-referential quandary comprising of constant feedback— of which we can enter into simply by asking.

Such mental exercises, much like thinking about thinking, or imagining the imagination, produces divergent thoughts which shoot out from their source in an endless flow and in infinite directions, as they pierce through minefields of quantum potential. To hop on for the ride forever remains a mere question away.

Below you will find some answers people have sent me in the past.

Please submit your own in the comment field below.

Together we dream this world into being, a collaborative conglomeration of creatures constructing creative conclusions to collective conundrums. -Evan Smith

Magic is the amplification of wonder in a status quo world. -Charon Henning

Magic is being happy with your life as it exists… -Julie Statland

Magic is what you experience when you simply submit yourself to the passivity of existence. -Jonathan Frost

I am magical. You are magical. -Decoy

Magic is the incredible coincidence of existence, and every instant of it big or small, can, if we choose to see it as such, be proof of the wonder that saturates our universe. -Jennifer Strauss

Magic enlightens us, and reminds us that all of life is only a perception anyway. - Doug Travis

True to the nature of human self deceit, the illusion is in fact the denial of the present moment. -Daniel Merrill

Herein is found the societal benefit of Magic: it (ideally) causes us to question. -James Kroener

If you know what magic is then it is not magic. Magic is magic. -Beth Corbin

Magic is the realization that all things are as important and meaningful and filled with potency as we feel them to be, and so is magic the truth that things that are important or meaningful or potent to one person mean nothing to another. -Nelson Kelly

Magic is experiencing things not only for what they are but for what they can be. -Matthew Stephenson