A couple of years ago I stumbled across the works of Ioan Petru Culianu, a brilliant scholar of religion,

gnosticism and Renaissance magic. He defined magic as “a science of imagination, a technology of the

mind to investigate the world and ourselves, a mode of operating to shape reality itself”.

The word 'magic' comes from the Old Persian, through the Greeks, who borrowed the word μαγεια

(mageia) to refer to the science and religion of the 'Magians', the Zoroastrian 'Wise Men', and the Greeks

had an enormous respect for their special powers, beginning with dream interpretation.