magic circle

magic circle

See also: Magic Circle

English

Noun

magic circle (plural magic circles)

  1. A circle marked on the ground by a practitioner of magic, used as magical protection or to form a magical area.
    • 1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 77:
      Witches are often accused of the same sort of Devil worship as the Black Magic followers. They claim that their only practice which probably would not meet with popular approval is dancing naked round a magic circle[.]
  2. In traditional cultures, a circle drawn on the ground marking out a sacred, protected, or ritually charged space.
    • 1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 165:
      On moonlit nights they stood within the Magic Circle and gazed on the glory of the moon, and trembled to the answers that came in the swish of wing as bat-like birds sped by.
  3. (mathematics) An arrangement of natural numbers on circles such that the sum of the numbers on each circle and the sum of numbers on diameter are identical.
  4. (video games) The imagined space, separate from the real world, in which players in a virtual reality system experience immersion.

Coordinate terms