Word of the Week 6/03/18: Thaumaturgy

From Wikipedia:

"Thaumaturgy is the capability of a magician or a saint to work magic or miracles. Isaac Bonewits defined thaumaturgy as 'the use of magic for nonreligious purposes; the art and science of "wonder working;" using magic to actually change things in the physical world.'

"Kings of France and England were also called thaumaturges, as they were traditionally considered able to heal scrofula.

"The word was first anglicized and used in the magical sense in John Dee's book Mathematicall Praeface to Euclid's Elements (1570). He mentions an 'art mathematical' called 'thaumaturgy... which giveth certain order to make strange works, of the sense to be perceived and of men greatly to be wondered at.'

"In Dee's time, 'the Mathematicks' referred not merely to the abstract computations associated with the term today, but to physical mechanical devices which employed mathematical principles in their design. These devices, operated by means of compressed air, springs, strings, pulleys or levers, were seen by unsophisticated people (who did not understand their working principles) as magical devices which could only have been made with the aid of demons and devils.

"By building such mechanical devices, Dee earned a reputation as a conjurer 'dreaded' by neighborhood children. He complained of this assessment in his 'Mathematicall Praeface': 'And for these, and such like marvellous Actes and Feates, Naturally, and Mechanically, wrought and contrived: ought any honest Student and Modest Christian Philosopher, be counted, & called a Conjurer? Shall the folly of Idiotes, and the Malice of the Scornfull, so much prevaille ... Shall that man, be (in hugger mugger) condemned, as a Companion of the hellhoundes, and a Caller, and Conjurer of wicked and damned Spirites?'"