From Conjure Wife:
Tansy Saylor:
“There are two sides to every woman… One is rational, like a man. the other knows. Men are artificially isolated creatures like islands in a sea of magic, protected by their rationality and by the devices of their women. Their isolation gives them greater forcefulness in thought and action, but the women know. Women might be able to rule the world openly, but they do not want the work or the responsibility. And men might learn to excell them in the Art. Even now, there may still be male sorcerers, but very few.”
Norman Saylor:
“The distinction between physics and magic is only an accident of history. Physics started out as a kind of magic, too — witness alchemy and the mystical mathematics of Pythagoras. And modern physics is ultimately as practical as magic, but it posesses a superstructure of theory that magic lacks. Magic could be given such a superstructure by research into pure magic and by the investigation and correlation of the forumlas of different peoples and times, with a view o deriving basic formulas which could be expressed in mathematical symbols and which would have a wide application. Most persons practicing magic have been too interested in immediate results to bother about theory. But just as research in pure science has ultimately led, seemingly by accident, to results of vast practical importance, so research in pure magic might be expercted to yield simlar results.”
“The work of Rhine at Duke, indeed, has been very close to pure magic, with its piling up of evidence for clairvoyance, prophecy, and telepathy; its investigation of the direct linkage between all minds, their ability to affect each other instantaneously, even when theyare on opposite sides of the earth.”
Tansy Saylor:
“I believe it is more akin to psychology….. Because it concerns the control of other beings, the summoning of them, and the constraining of them to perform certain actions.”
HEADOLOGY, I say. And a few strands, scribbles and scrapes just to make sure.
Here a cackle, there a cackle.