Short answers, pulled from the story.
The English word magic derives from the Old Persian maguš, meaning magician, which traces back to the Proto-Indo-European root megħ-magh, signifying the capacity to be able. The term entered the Greek language as mágos during the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, transforming from a neutral designation for a Persian priestly tribe into a label for charlatans and fraudsters.
Ancient Mesopotamians developed sophisticated rituals such as the Maqlû, or The Burning, where an effigy of a sorcerer was created, tried, and then burned to break the enemy's power. They also performed the Šurpu ritual involving the transfer of guilt onto objects like strips of dates, onions, and wool, which were then burned to purify the sinner.
Historical records indicate that around three quarters of those executed as witches were female, leaving only a quarter who were men. This disparity resulted from the legal vulnerability of women, who possessed little or no legal standing independent of their male relatives, and the conceptual link between women and magic in Western culture.
Italian humanists Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola introduced the concept of magia naturalis, or natural magic, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For these thinkers, magic was not the work of demons but an elemental force pervading natural processes, fundamentally distinct from the mainstream Christian idea of demonic magic.
European colonialists viewed the natives as primitives and savages whose belief systems were diabolical and needed to be eradicated and replaced by Christianity. By the nineteenth century, European intellectuals regarded magical practices and beliefs as an aberrational mode of thought, a sign of psychological impairment and a marker of racial or cultural inferiority.
Aleister Crowley, who favored the spelling magick to distinguish it from stage illusionism, defined magic as the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. This definition influenced subsequent magicians, including Dion Fortune, who stated that magic is the art of changing consciousness according to Will.