Yet, in the Western world, the concept of magic has strong connections with Western esoteric tradition and is quite often designated as "learned magic" implying hard learning and intellectual practices, in particular knowledge of ancient and secret languages. The former is an umbrella term for everything that is or might be perceived as magical. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes magic and witchcraft as two separate phenomena, connected yet distinctively different.
There is also some internal hierarchy of types of magic revealed in the dichotomy "magic versus witchcraft". For centuries in the Western European culture, magic has been a subject for an ongoing debate vacillating between the total rejection of this part of human spiritual life or reluctant acceptance of it.
In my article, I discuss a peculiar connection between the persisting ideas about magic in the Western world and Ursula Le Guin's magical world in the Earthsea universe and its evolution over the decades.
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