Programmes

Magic Moments

Today magic is used as a form of entertainment. It still thrills us to see an apparently impossible phenomenon happen before our eyes. Reaching back through to prehistoric times, the pagan magicians, who could conjure material from nothing or predict the future, would almost certainly have been held in the highest regard.

They would not have been tricksters like the conjurers of today. In historic and prehistoric times, it would have taken great knowledge to understand the seasons, through their relationship to solstice. Predicting this yearly cycle would have been crucial to the agricultural societies of the time – a science to those who understood, but magic to those who didn’t.

The fine art of producing the first bronze artefacts would also have been greatly respected. The ability to produce a knife from an ore is still magical, even though we now understand the chemistry. As for drug-induced shamans talking to the spirits, they must have appeared exceptionally powerful.