So- what is it?

[TeaDidikai]

What is magic?

A very simple question I am sure- but not one that is always easy to put into words.

How do you define it?  

[Deoridhe]

I define magic as using incorporeal means to create corporeal changes via your own actions and/or will.  

[Fiddlers Green]

Sciences which have not been fully discovered.  

[TatteredAngel]

Oughtn't be so hard a question, but it is. For me, it's like asking "What is art?" I can tell you that I like art, and I can even show you some attempts of my own to create art, but actually pinning something down and saying that "this is absolutely art" is not something I feel qualified to do.

I think, as an answer I'd give if I really had to, I'd say that magic is a physical, substantial change in the world which has a cause that is insubstantial. I don't like the language of it, but that's why I really don't like trying to define it. I love English, but sometimes I just can't find a precision of meaning that gets across what I feel. And my above has gaps and inclusions it probably shouldn't. I mean, insubstantial-- like what, waves and photons? Does that make a sunburn magic? Yeeh.

Insubstantial and... somehow supernormal. Something twined, probably, with what is nonfalsifiable.

Oh hell, if I could pin down a definition and give a good, stable example, I'd win the James Randi Foundation challenge.