Definition
In historical English law, magic denoted the practice of craft, sorcery, and witchcraft — acts believed to invoke supernatural beings, command occult forces, or produce effects beyond natural explanation. The term appears in English statutes as a category of prohibited conduct, functionally synonymous with witchcraft and sorcery as those terms were understood in early modern criminal law. Magic was not a freestanding common law offense with a defined technical structure but rather a descriptive label drawn from statutory language criminalizing a class of conduct rooted in religious, cultural, and political anxieties of the period.
The term has no operative place in modern Anglo-American law. Its legal significance is entirely historical — it belongs to the body of superseded English criminal statutes and serves as a research marker for understanding how pre-modern law treated heterodox religious practice and popular superstition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Primarily used today to describe stage illusion, conjuring tricks, and theatrical sleight of hand, as well as the supernatural power depicted in fiction and folklore. The Wiktionary definition also records a narrow technical initialism (magnetism-based interaction capture) with no legal relevance.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A comprehensive name for all of the pretended arts which claim to produce effects by the assistance of supernatural beings, or departed spirits, or by a mastery of secret forces in nature attained by a study of occult science, including enchantment, conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, incantation, etc."
The Webster's 1913 definition is unusually close to the legal meaning, which is itself drawn from popular and religious conceptions rather than technical legal doctrine. The key gap for researchers: the modern common usage is largely theatrical and fictional, which can create an instinct to dismiss "magic" as a non-serious legal category. In historical sources, it was a genuine statutory term carrying criminal penalties, and encounters with it in primary documents should be read with that gravity.
Common Confusion
Magic, witchcraft, sorcery, and enchantment appear in English statutes and legal commentary with considerable overlap and inconsistency. Historical legal writers, including those compiled in Bouvier and Black's, did not sharply distinguish among them. Researchers should not assume that a statute criminalizing "magic" and one criminalizing "witchcraft" necessarily had different scopes or different enforcement histories. These terms were used interchangeably in both the legislative drafting and the prosecutorial practice of the period. The more precise legal history lies in the specific statutory text rather than in the dictionary label.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "magic" in historical legal sources should treat it as a gateway term pointing toward a cluster of overlapping statutory offenses rather than a standalone doctrine. The principal English legislation on point — the Witchcraft Acts, including the Act of 1604 (1 Jac. I c. 12) and its predecessor under Henry VIII, and eventually the Witchcraft Act 1735 which shifted the offense from actual sorcery to fraudulent pretense of supernatural power — is the essential statutory context. The 1735 Act is particularly important because it marks a legal turning point: "magic" ceased to be criminal as a real phenomenon and became criminal only as a fraud perpetrated on credulous victims.
For colonial American research, parallel statutes existed in several colonies, and prosecutions under them (most notoriously in Massachusetts) appear in court records that may use "magic," "witchcraft," and "sorcery" interchangeably. Researchers working with ecclesiastical court records will find magic-adjacent offenses handled separately from common law courts, requiring attention to both tracks.
Modern fraud or consumer protection cases occasionally surface the term when prosecuting fortune tellers, spirit mediums, or those who claim supernatural powers to extract money — but these prosecutions proceed under fraud, theft, or deceptive trade practice statutes, not under any law of "magic" per se. The term in modern case law is descriptive, not doctrinal.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's and Bouvier's treat the entry as minimal and derivative. Black's identifies "magic" as it appears in English statutes, defining it as "craft and sorcery" and cross-referencing witchcraft. Bouvier's is equally spare: "witchcraft and sorcery." Neither dictionary attempts doctrinal elaboration, which is itself instructive — both major historical legal dictionaries recognized that magic was a statutory label rather than a developed legal concept with elements, defenses, or a substantial common law superstructure.
What both sources miss is the evolution across the Witchcraft Acts and the critical significance of the 1735 statute, which reoriented the offense from supernatural reality to fraudulent pretense. A researcher relying solely on Black's or Bouvier's would not appreciate that shift, which is essential for understanding why magic prosecutions look fundamentally different in seventeenth-century versus eighteenth-century records.
Jurisdictional Note
Magic as a legal category is an artifact of English law and its colonial extensions. Scotland maintained parallel but distinct statutory and ecclesiastical frameworks for witchcraft prosecution. No modern common law jurisdiction retains a criminal offense denominated "magic," though fraud-based analogs exist across all jurisdictions for those who fraudulently claim supernatural abilities for financial gain.