Religion seeks to lift us from everyday matter towards spirit, while magic seeks rather to bring spirit down into everyday matter. While religion often reflects a 'quest for meaning', magic is more about 'sowing seeds of meaning'.
We shall see that magic does not deny truth, it positively embraces truth as a crutch to assist belief, but it equall embraces falsehood - and that makes it unacceptable in scientific culture. Magic embraces goodness, but it also embraces evil - and that makes it disreputable in religious eyes. Magic embraces beauty and it also embraces ugliness - and that can make it seem kitsch or 'cheesy' in artistic eyes.
Religion and Science are paths of denial, in the sense that a scientific statement should be one capable of being disproved, while a religious statement should be capable of being disbelieved.
