Magic or sorcery is an attempt to understand, experience and influence the world using rituals, symbols, actions, gestures and language. Modern Western magicians generally state magic's primary purpose to be personal spiritual growth. Modern theories of magic may see it as the result of a universal sympathy where some act can produce a result somewhere else, or as a collaboration with spirits who cause the effect.
The belief in and the practice of magic has been present since the earliest human cultures and continues to have an important religious and medicinal role in many cultures today. Magic is often viewed with suspicion by the wider community, and is sometimes practiced in isolation and secrecy.
The concept of magic as a category separate from religion first appeared in Judaism, which derided as magic the practices of pagan worship designed to appease and receive benefits from gods other than Yahweh. Hanegraaff argues that magic is in fact "...a largely polemical concept that has been used by various religious interest groups either to describe their own religious beliefs and practices or – more frequently – to discredit those of others".