The English words 

magic, mage and magician come from the Latin magus, through the Greek μάγος, which is from the Old Persian maguš. (𐎶𐎦𐎢𐏁|𐎶𐎦𐎢𐏁, magician).[12] The Old
Persian magu- is derived from the Proto-Indo-European megʰ-*magh (be able). The Persian term may have led to the Old Sinitic *Mγag (mage or shaman).[13] The Old Persian form seems to
have permeated ancient Semitic languages as the Talmudic Hebrew magosh, the Aramaic amgusha (magician), and the Chaldean maghdim (wisdom and philosophy); from the first century
BCE onwards, Syrian magusai gained notoriety as magicians and soothsayers.[14]

During the late-sixth and early-fifth centuries BCE, this term found its way into ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations to apply to rites that were regarded as fraudulent,
unconventional, and dangerous.[15] The Latin language adopted this meaning of the term in the first century BCE. Via Latin, the concept became incorporated into Christian theology during the
first century CE. Early Christians associated magic with demons, and thus regarded it as against Christian religion. This concept remained pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, when
Christian authors categorised a diverse range of practices—such as enchantment, witchcraft, incantations, divination, necromancy, and astrology—under the label "magic". In early modern
Europe, Protestants often claimed that Roman Catholicism was magic rather than religion, and as Christian Europeans began colonizing other parts of the world in the sixteenth century, they
labelled the non-Christian beliefs they encountered as magical. In that same period, Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to express the idea of natural magic. Both
negative and positive understandings of the term recurred in Western culture over the following centuries.