It’s a kind of magic…one dream, one soul, one prize, one goal/ one golden glance of what
should be…this is the beginning of one of the most beloved Queen’s songs. English people
love all kind of magic. To begin by literature. One of the first manuscripts in ancient English,
contains the epic poem Beowulf that can be considered the oldest ancestor of the modern
fantasy. The success of the magician Merlin, Doctor Faustus, Macbeth, as well as of Peter
Pan, Alice in Wonderland, until Harry Potter and the Lord of rings, testify the passion for
magic and the fertility of the English genius in this field.
But magic takes place not just in the dimension of imagination: people want it releases his
power in the real life to make possible all sorts of things, especially to run away the pain. As
it seems English people have ever had a particular rapport with magic. Pliny, Roman author
lived in the 1st
still fascinated by magic, and performs its rites with much ceremony…” today, after more
than two thousand years, that’s still true. Study found that in UK millions of people practice
magic, the majority of which has at least a College Degree.
The magic world declines in many ways: from cartomancy to exorcisms, from amulets to
different propritatories rites, the ritual of magic continues to exist today. Just think at the
enormous diffusion of horoscopes and astrology in general. An example more particularly
but still known it’s the ritual of Stonehenge, where, every year, on the day of the summer
solstice, thousands people gather to wait for the sunrise. The tradition is to sing and
dance until dawn, creating an atmosphere of contact with nature in order to enhance the
earth’s fertility. But magic has its own place also in the heart of London, the European
capital of economy and business, where, set in Cecil Court, there for one hundred years,
you can find the Watkins books, the biggest book shop in Great Britain specializing in
esoterica, frequented every day by hundreds of attenders. The question is why, despite
of extraordinary scientific and technological progress, people continue to be fascinated by
century A.C., in his Historia naturalis wrote: “At the present day, Britannia is
According to the facts we can’t maintain that today magic is just the fantastic, neither that
it’s a minor phenomenon like a simple medieval survival. Actually it’s something more…and,
above all, it’s a business. It is estimated that the turnover that revolves around magic
practices amounted approximately to five billions of pounds. As it often happens, what of
the past has not disappeared, becomes a business. That’s the case of magic. But, while in
the past people considered equipped of magic powers had a recognized social rule, today
people declare themselves to be skeptic to this kind of things and often who claims to be a
wizard are compared to an impostor. Despite this, people who address magic continue to
be countless. How can we explain that? Maybe the modern society, with all her scientific
and technological resources, cannot replace a vacant place that persists in people’s life, the
emptiness that is at the same time the ineptitude to face problems that life presents us. So it
happens to turn to magic, the last refuge against the evil and the pain. Until the magic keep
within the lines of a form of alternative spirituality, it doesn’t matter. The problem is when it
becomes fanaticism or, even worse, a swindle.
It would be desirable if, like in the Queen’s song, thanks to this kind of magic the hate that
lasts for a thousand years soon can finish. But for that, until now, any magic has worked.