A historical study of the problem of magic and the figure of the magician. The author argues that the gap that separates our perception and vision of the world by the Renaissance man is not as deep as it seems sometimes. It takes extraordinary courage to claim that a magician is a prototype of depersonalized mass media systems, brainwashing mechanisms, and global mind manipulation that exercise occult control over the masses. Referring to the work of the greatest scientist and magician of the XV century, Giordano Bruno, whom Culianu calls "the great manipulator", the author notes that all magic is based on eros, including social or political magic, that there is an instrumental similarity between magic and erotic attraction: the magician, like the lover, builds various traps around the object of interest, and the art of love or seduction is structurally similar to the task of the magician.