93: Magic.—The very word Magic bears within itself proof of its high origin.  The Latin Magus, the Greek Magos, a magician, gives us all those other words that are so indicative of authority, wisdom, superiority.  Then we have magnitude, magnificent, magniloquent, to express greatness in position, in action and in speech.  With the termination slightly changed the same words become majesty, implying dominion, and again, we have magistrate, anything that is magisterial which again has been simplified into Master, and finally by the process of word evolution has become plain Mister.  But the Latin is only a transmitter of words.  We can equally follow up the historical development of this root until we reach the Zend where we find it doing duty as the name for the whole priestly caste.  The magi were renowned all over the world for their wisdom and skill in occultism and no doubt our word magic is mostly indebted to that source for its present existence and meaning.  That we need not pause even here for back of the Zend "mag," "looms up the Sanskrit, maha, signifying great."  It is thought by good scholars that maha was originally spelled magha.  To be sure, there is in the Sanskrit the word Maga meaning a priest of the Sun, but this was evidently a later borrowing from the Zend which had originally derived its root from its neighbor the Sanskrit.—Lucifer, Vol. X, p. 157.