Kateryna,

Fundamentally, you can set up stipulative definitions -- "this is my 
definition for what I'm doing now, and I make no larger claims about it" 
-- or you can set up definitions within the context of argumentation 
about magic more broadly. Within the latter, you can either go the 
historical route -- "this is the definition they used, and I am sticking 
to that" -- or you can engage with the longstanding discourses about 
defining magic within the various disciplines that have gotten involved. 
But a few caveats are in order:

1. The various attempts to come up with new clever names and then shunt 
off "magic" somewhere else are the usual defensive gestures we always 
see in this context. The problem does not lie in the name, and only a 
somewhat confused essentialist will really defend this sort of gesture 
when push comes to shove.
2. The category in question is of course a second-order, scholarly one. 
But at the same time, it has a first-order, historical application and 
delineation -- or a range of them -- in the various historical 
trajectories of the West; meanwhile comparable (probably) categories 
seem to appear in many other parts of the world. For this reason, 
"magic" isn't going to go away just because the definitions do not work.
3. The category in question is not, in my considered opinion, firmly 
definable in an appropriate and effective fashion.
4. Therefore, we have a fundamental quandary. We have a category 
referring to material, but we cannot define the category and we cannot 
make large claims about the material because we cannot classify it. And 
yet, there is every reason to think we are actually making muddleheaded 
progress despite these apparently insuperable obstacles. So we need to 
ask what it is we are doing, and why it is working, as well as why it is 
not working and in fact cannot work.
5. Purely stipulative or historical definitions always collapse, because 
either the material or the formulation invariably undermines the 
definition. The invariability of this collapse has implications for the 
category.
6. Purely analytical definitions always collapse because they invariably 
fall out of the most elementary logical legitimacy. The invariability of 
this collapse also has implications for the category.

I have my own peculiar answers to why all these things should be, and my 
new book due out this April or so -- The Occult Mind -- will explore 
this, but I suggest taking very seriously the entirely quixotic nature 
of involvement with definitions of magic and related terms. Stayers's 
book _Making Magic_ is good and worthwhile, though I don't always agree 
with him, and should give you a fair sense of why this problem is a 
nightmare -- but an interesting one.

In any event, so long as you take for granted from the outset that the 
problem is insoluble and that the interesting question is why this 
should be so -- and why people keep resisting the fact -- you should 
have lots of material (and lots of fun) in your research.


Chris Lehrich

-- 
Christopher I. Lehrich
Boston University