MAGICIAN.—This term, once a title of renown and distinction, has come to be wholly perverted from its true meaning. Once the synonym of all that was honorable and reverent, of a possessor of learning and wisdom, it has become degraded into an epithet to designate one who is a pretender and a juggler; a charlatan, in short, or one who has “sold his soul to the Evil One;” who misuses his knowledge, and employs it for low and dangerous uses, according to the teachings of the clergy, and a mass of superstitious fools who believe the magician a sorcerer and an enchanter. But Christians forget, apparently, that Moses was also a magician, and Daniel, “_Master_ of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers” (_Daniel_, v. 11). The word magician then, scientifically speaking, is derived from _Magh_, _Mah_, Hindu or _Sanscrit_ Maha—great; a man well versed in the secret or esoteric knowledge; properly a sacerdote. MANTICISM, or mantic frenzy. During this state was developed the gift of prophecy. The two words are nearly synonymous. One was as honored as the other. Pythagoras and Plato held it in high esteem, and {xxxv} Socrates advised his disciples to study Manticism. The Church Fathers, who condemned so severely the _mantic frenzy_ in Pagan priests and Pythiæ, were not above applying it to their own uses. The Montanists, who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia, who was considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the μάντεις (manteis) or prophets. “Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were of the number,” says the author of _Prophecy, Ancient and Modern_. “The Montanists seem to have resembled the _Bacchantes_ in the wild enthusiasm that characterized their orgies,” he adds. There is a diversity of opinion as to the origin of the word _Manticism_. There was the famous Mantis the Seer, in the days of Melampus and Prœtus, King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter of the prophet of Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and mantic frenzy by saying that “in the inner recesses of the mind is divine prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns more vividly is called furor” (frenzy, madness). But there is still another etymology possible for the word _mantis_, and to which we doubt if the attention of the philologists was ever drawn. The mantic frenzy may, perchance, have a still earlier origin. The two sacrificial cups of the Soma-mystery used during the religious rites, and generally known as grahâs, are respectively called _Sukra_ and _Manti_.[40]