Manly Palmer Hall
"The white magician labors entirely with the finer forces of the elemental planes. He is a builder - not a destroyer - and seeks to liberate rather than to dominate his fellow creatures." [Manly Palmer Hall]
Christopher Priest
"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge'. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn'. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call 'The Prestige'." [Christopher Priest, "The Prestige" (1995)]
Alberto Alvaro Ríos
"The curious measure, of course, is that we fail to recognize the most obvious notion in all of this: that we ourselves are the best magicians we know. What our bodies do, what our minds accomplish, and the context we can give to things, how we make it all fit together, this is something." [Alberto Alvaro Ríos, "Capirotada: ..." (1999)]
Eliphas Levi
“An idle man will never become a magician. Magic is an exercise every hour and every moment. He who performs great works must be absolute master of himself; he must know how to repress temptations of pleasure, appetite and sleep; he must be insensitive to success and indignity. Your life must be that of a will guided by a single thought and served by the whole Nature, which will submit to the mind in its own organs and, through sympathy, all the corresponding universal forces." [Eliphas Levi: Transcendental Magic: His Doctrine and Ritual]
See Also