Status Updates From Magic in Western Culture: F...

Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vap'rous drop profound,
I'll catch it ere it come to ground;
And that, distill'd by magic sleights,
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion.
-- Shakespeare, Macbeth

Disillusioned by the classroom, rejecting even theology, [Christopher Marlowe's] Faustus turns to “these meta-physics of magicians” to find what he wants:

O, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honor, of omnipotence
Is promised to the studious artisan!
A sound magician is a mighty god.

Hellenes made and traded magic spells, they summoned the gods of Euripides in the language of Plato […] : to attract a lover […] halt menstruation […] attract business, win at dice, open a lock, catch a thief […] induce madness, cause insomnia […] reduce a fever, counteract poison […] heal a tumor, improve memory, send a dream […] see the future, consult the dead, invoke a god, and exterminate insects.

By the time [Pausanias] wrote the Description of Greece, the verb mageuô meant simply ‘do magic' or ‘work magic,' much the same as those English phrases. But behind the verb is a proper noun – Magos – first used centuries earlier as the Greek name for a tribe of Persians that specialized in religion, not magic. In that original application, mageuô would mean ‘Magize' or ‘do what a Magos does,' […]