To the ignorant, any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be Magic.
That said, I am going to state here what I think Magic is.
There are several levels of Magic as far as I’m concerned.
- Divination or Seeing
This would include Precognition, Premonition, Deja Vu, Prophecy, Mind Reading, Remote Viewing and such. These things have in common that are “information gained” through means other than the five recognized physical senses. I know someone who can, upon hearing a snippet of a conversation, tell what the participants were feeling and thinking at the time…even way outside the topic of the conversation. - Mental Manipulation
“These are not the droids we are looking for.” My favorite Hollywood example of such. Projecting a thought into another’s mind such they do NOT recognize it as NOT their own thought, and they act as if that was the thing they WANTED to do. - Electrical Manipulation
Causing a change in the operation of an electrical device without directly interacting with it in the physical realm. Streetlights that blink out when you pass under them falls into this category. - Field Interaction
I remember the old radios which tuned by means of a variable capacitor…a series of plates with a mechanism to vary how much they overlapped. I could NOT tune one of those directly, as my own capacitance field interfered. I have also had random malfunction of electrical devices when I was in proximity. A cash register which would NOT work until I stepped back a foot or two. These kind of interactions can be measured physically so in that aspect they don’t really qualify as “magic” per se. - Physical Manipulation
In “The Dragon And The Witch“, the part where the Dragon manipulates the weather by means of a black scrying mirror is based on the very real impact I seem to have on weather, when my attention is focused on that very thing. By will alone, changes in the weather are made. I have many such stories, and the natural tendency to this ability without specific conscious intent is one of the reasons I started to look into Magic in the first place. - Teleportation
This is a physical manifestation of “Remote Viewing” where the “viewer” is actually present remotely. I have heard of times of “bilocation”, where the human was “present” in more than one place at the same time. - Manifestation
The creation of a physical object out of “thin air”. The term “manifestation” is used for many things, such as healing or fortune as well. These are also valid uses, but the outright generation of physical matter is the pinnacle of manifestation.
What Is NOT Magic
Illusion, misdirection, sleight of hand and so forth. While they appear magic to the uninitiated, there is always a physical explanation. Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us” television program illustrates this well. I often wonder what they would think if presented with an instance of actual magic.