History of magic

     As for the present-day world, magic is treated neither as the religion nor as the form of beliefs of certain countries and nations. However, it is still extant. Nowadays, magic is considered as a certain symbolic action seeking to meet a goal objective by force of non-material methods or through any other supernatural ways. 
 
    In the times of primitive order there were no such titles as a magician, a shaman and a priest. Every member of the tribe could appeal to spirits for help. At times the whole tribe pleaded for the successful hunting or heavy crops, and such group actions were of extra power.

    As for the days of Ancient Greece, special people called priests and priestesses, who devoted their lives to the service of one or other god, had already came into being. Ancient Helladic mythology presents a detailed hierarchy of Olympian gods and their lineage as well as explains the world creation and the origin of humankind.

    In the Middle Ages witches and enchantresses were faggoted being accused of aiding the devil. But the Holy Inquisition did not draw a sharp distinction between followers of paganism and adepts of really «dark» doctrines. Nevertheless, even at that time officially established Christianity denied blank polytheism, ceremonies and ordinances in case they were beyond its established canons.

    At the turn of XXth century a rising tide of interest in magic swept throughout the world. A great number of coteries and societies that held their meetings in secrecy sprung up. Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, Kabbalah and spiritualistic séances…It is a short list of «sacral» knowledge schools promulgated among men of education.
 
    The twentieth century paved the way of renouncing «synthetic» doctrines of the last decades and gave a start to new developments in magic, for instance New Age and Wicca magic. Apart from atheism and established religions, successors to occult knowledge of the past still persist in developed countries all over the world.