Magic and Witchcraft
Humankind has long been fascinated with the occult, and this fascination has manifested in many ways, from notions of wizards and witches, spells and incantations to contacting the dead, telling the future, turning lead into gold, and everything else conceivable thats outside the realm of ordinary human capability. The concepts of magic and witchcraft continue to exist even in modern day media like the Harry Potter book series and TV programs like Wizards of Waverly Place, and religious practices like Wicca and Stregheria. People are always interested in what is inaccessible to them, and they have compensated for that inaccessibility through daydreaming and spiritual pursuit.
A huge component of the typical human perception of magic is wish fulfillment. Its not uncommon for people to joke about wanting magical powers to make life easier. With magic you could fly or teleport instead of walking, you could conjure up a meal if you were feeling hungry, you could manipulate time and tell the future so that you could take the best course of action possible, you could read others minds and control how they behave. The appeal of magic and witchcraft are that they open up a world unlike ours, and people will always look to what they dont have or seek the unknown. Magic is funits a temporary escape in which our imaginations can run wild.
Magic and witchcraft have attracted both positive and negative attention from the publicthere are those who get fun out of the idea and those who even try to participate of their own accord, and there are others who denounce them as evil and dangerous, targeting witchcraft in particular. But controversy aside, people will always try to escape reality, and at the same time they seem to realize that we should be appreciative of the world as it is. Magic could get us everything we wanted, but would we still be happy? It might seem more glamorous to be a wizard than a Muggle, but Muggles dont have to deal with the rise of Voldemort. And maybe Alex Russo can chant a spell that induces her parents to let her do whatever she wants, but she realizes that its her real parents that love her. So while magic and witchcraft will always be a source of interest, its likely that for the most part theyll remain just that and nothing more.
