On Wikipedia I found the following quote from the ↑Philip K. Dick of our times, ↑Alan Moore, author of e.g. ‘↑Watchmen,’ ‘↑V for Vendetta,’ ‘↑From Hell,’ and ‘↑The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,’ illustrating his quite secular vision of magic—the vision of a real magician:

I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness … Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman. (Alan Moore in Vylenz 2005)

Compare that to ↑David Abram‘s (magician, anthropologist, and author of ‘The spell of the sensuous,’ 1996) notion of magic:

You know, we open up the newspaper in the morning and we focus our eyes on these little inert bits of ink on the page, and we immediately hear voices and we see visions and we experience conversations happening in other places and times. That is magic! (David Abram in Abram & London 1999)