Magi. In Accadian, the language of the early Turanian inhabitants of Babylonia and Media, imga, signifying 'august,' 'reverend,' was the title of their learned and priestly caste. The Semitic nations afterwards dominant in Babylonia and Assyria adopted the learning and many of the religious observances of the early inhabitants, as also the name for the learned caste; and out of the Semitic form the Greeks made magos. Under the Persian empire the magi were not only the 'keepers of the sacred things, the learned of the people, the philosophers and servants of God,' but also diviners and mantics, angurs and astrologers. They called up the dead by awful formulas, or by means of cups, water, &c. They were held in the highest reverence, and no transaction of importance took place without or against their advice. Hence their almost unbounded influence in both private and public life. Apart from the education of the young princes being in their hands, they were the constant companions of the ruling monarch. Of their religious system the articles PARSEES and ZOROASTER will give a fuller account. Zoroaster, in the course of his great religious reform, reorganised the body of the magi, chiefly by reinforcing the ancient laws as to their manner and mode of life, which was to be one of the simplest and severest, befitting their sacred station, but which had become one of luxury and indolence, and by re-instituting the original distinction of the three classes of herbeds ('disciples'), mobeds ('masters'), and destur mobeds ('complete masters'). The food, especially of the lower class, was to consist only of flour and vegetables; they wore white garments, slept on the ground, and were altogether subjected to the most rigorous discipline. The initiation consisted of the most awful and mysterious ceremonies, and was preceded by purifications of several months' duration. Gradually, however, their influence, which was all-powerful during the epoch of the Sassanian kings of Persia, began to wane, and, from being the highest caste, they fell to the rank of wandering jugglers, fortune-tellers, and quacks, and gave their name (Magic, q.v.) to sleight-of-hand and conjuring tricks. But the name seems to have been also current as a generic term for astrologers in the East, as is evidenced by the New Testament narrative of the homage of the Magi to the Infant Christ.
According to the narrative (Matt. ii. 1-12) the three wise men came from the East to Jerusalem, led by a star, which at length guided them safely to the place of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where they offered their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. As the 'Three Kings' their names became celebrated in the middle ages, and Bede distinguishes them as Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The last was the Chaldean name for Daniel; Melchior signifies 'king of light'; Kaspar in some legends appears as Gathaspar, and in Syriac sources as Gudophorhem, in which we may perhaps recognise the name of the powerful Indo-Parthian king, Gondophares, said to have been baptised by the apostle Thomas. The bones of the three kings are claimed to be deposited in the cathedral at Cologne. In the calendar the three days after New-year's
Day bear their names, and their memory is preserved in the feast of the three holy kings—the Epiphany. The youngest of the three is generally represented in works of art as a black man.