The Magic Circle

The Magic Circle is a British organisation, founded in London in 1905, dedicated to promoting and advancing the art of magic. Members must undertake not to reveal magic secrets to anyone except bona fide magicians, on pain of expulsion.

Applicants must qualify for membership, either through a performance exam or by a written thesis on a branch of magic, and if successful they will be designated Member of the Magic Circle (M.M.C.) Further distinctions may earn them the title Associate of the Inner Magic Circle (A.I.M.C.), a select group limited to 300 members. The Circle was male-only until 1991. There is a junior branch, the Young Magicians Club, which gained popularity through the success of the Harry Potter franchise.

History

The Magic Circle was founded in 1905 after a meeting of 23 amateur and professional magicians at London's Pinoli's Restaurant. At this founders meeting, chaired by Servais Le Roy, those present decided upon the name of the Society – it was initially felt that the name of the Society should be the Martin Chapender Club, in memory of the noted performer, and founding member, who had recently died at the age of twenty-five. However, it was then agreed that the name "Magic Circle" would be more appropriate and that this name shared the same initials as those of Martin Chapender. The first official meeting was at the Green Man public house in Soho, but meetings were later in a room at St George's Hall in Langham Place, where David Devant and John Nevil Maskelyne were regularly seen performing.

The Magic Circle (Waterhouse painting)

The Magic Circle is an oil painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style, created in 1886 by John William Waterhouse. The painting depicts a witch or sorceress drawing a fiery magic circle on the earth to create a ritual space.

History

The Magic Circle was shown at the Royal Academy in 1886, and, after Consulting the Oracle and St. Eulalia, was Waterhouse's third exhibit with a supernatural theme in as many years. The painting was well received at its exhibition, and was purchased for £650 the same year by the Tate Gallery, through the Chantrey Bequest. The painting was extremely successful with the critics and public alike.

Description

In a style typical of Waterhouse, the main character is a lone, female figure, placed centrally on the canvas. The surrounding landscape is hazy, as though it is not quite real, and the background figures are only discernible on close inspection, deliberately ensuring the witch is the only image of importance.

Waterhouse paid careful attention to the angles employed in this work, balancing the circle the figure is drawing around herself by the use of a triangle – her straight arm, extended by the straight stick, held out at 25 degrees to her erect body. The witch's power is emphasised by the determined face, by her exclusion of the ravens and frog – popular symbols representing magic – and by her command over the smoke pillar. Instead of billowing outwards or being affected by the wind, it remains in a straight line. A live snake ouroboros loops around the woman's neck.

Katherine Neville (author)

Katherine Neville (born April 4, 1945) is an American author who writes adventure novels. Her novels include The Eight (1988), A Calculated Risk (1992), The Magic Circle (1998) and The Fire (2008), which is a sequel to The Eight.

Katherine Neville was born in St. Louis, Missouri. After college, she moved to New York City and began a career in the computer field.

In the 1970s, Neville was an international consultant to the Algerian government, and in the late 1970s, she went to work at the Department of Energy's nuclear research site in Idaho. In between jobs and during school, she supported herself as a portrait painter and a model. These side jobs lead to her developing her own photography skills and eventually starting a photography business, which she ran for several years. She was featured in the Washington Post for reviving Teruo Hara's storied house.

In 1980, she moved to San Francisco and eventually became a vice president at Bank of America. After living in Europe for some time, Neville moved to Washington, D.C. She was married to the neuroscientist Karl H. Pribram.

Magic circle

A magic circle is circle (or sphere, field) of space marked out by practitioners of many branches of ritual magic, which they generally believe will contain energy and form a sacred space, or will provide them a form of magical protection, or both. It may be marked physically, drawn in salt or chalk, for example, or merely visualised. Its spiritual significance is similar to that of mandala and yantra in some Eastern religions.

Common terms and practices

Traditionally, circles were believed by ritual magicians to form a protective barrier between themselves and what they summoned. In modern times, practitioners generally cast magic circles to contain and concentrate the energy they raise during a ritual.

Creating a magic circle is known as casting a circle, circle casting, and various other names.

Techniques

There are many published techniques for casting a circle, and many groups and individuals have their own unique methods. The common feature of these practices is that a boundary is traced around the working area. Some witchcraft traditions say that one must trace around the circle deosil three times. There is variation over which direction one should start in.

Magic circle (mathematics)

Magic circles were invented by the Song dynasty (960–1279) Chinese mathematician Yang Hui (c. 1238–1298). It is the arrangement of natural numbers on circles where the sum of the numbers on each circle and the sum of numbers on diameter are identical. One of his magic circles was constructed from 33 natural numbers from 1 to 33 arranged on four concentric circles, with 9 at the center.

Yang Hui magic circles

Yang Hui's magic circle series was published in his Xugu Zhaiqi Suanfa《續古摘奇算法》 (Sequel to Excerpts of Mathematical Wonders) of 1275. His magic circle series includes: magic 5 circles in square, 6 circles in ring, magic eight circle in square magic concentric circles, magic 9 circles in square.

Yang Hui magic concentric circle

Yang Hui's magic concentric circle has the following properties

Magic Circle (virtual worlds)

In digital media, the "magic circle" is the membrane that encloses virtual worlds such as first-person shooters, online social environments, and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). As noted by Edward Castronova in Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, this membrane "can be considered a shield of sorts, protecting the fantasy world from the outside world." Instead of being impenetrable, however, an examination of contemporary virtual worlds reveals that the magic circle is actually quite porous. More directly, there appears to be a relationship between virtual worlds and the outside world. Even though virtual worlds display a range of attributes that are unique to their realm, they also exhibit characteristics deriving from the outside world. Castronova uses the term "synthetic world" because a synthetic world "cannot be sealed completely; people are crossing it all the time in both directions, carrying their behavioral assumptions and attitudes with them." As this suggests, elements of synthetic worlds are being evaluated in terms of their importance in the outside world. These newly established values, subsequently, gain significance on both sides of the membrane. Thus, it becomes difficult to determine the meaning of the word "virtual." As stated by Castronova, the "allegedly 'virtual' is blending so smoothly into the allegedly 'real' as to make the distinction increasingly difficult to see."