According to John Gager of Princeton Univ. as published in a 1999 “Numen” edition—and if I interpreted his complex commentary properly: 

Among ancient Greek authors, the word mageia (magic), meant the following: 

(1) ethnographically associated with the Persians [please note: Persian is used interchangeably with Iranian although Persians were among many tribes of Iranian stock—that is, all Persians are Iranians, all Iranians are not Persians]; and 

(2) having “expertise in things concerning the gods”… 

What’s interesting is that at some point there was a paradigm shift and the ancients used the word magic in both a positive sense and a negative sense—whereby early philosophers and medical scientists started minimizing traditional healers as magicians or fake…  

Magic does not come before or after religion; rather religion may contain magic… now some ancients began distinguishing between “true magic” versus fake magic… 

Hence, Gager leads us to square one--unclear as to how we may use the word magic…

 

[pic NetGalley: “Stephen Flowers explores the history, theory, practice, rituals, and initiations of the Mazdan magical system practiced by the Magi of ancient Persia, who were so skilled and famed for their effectiveness that their name came to mean what we today call ‘magic.’ The prestige and reputation of the Magian priests of Mazda is perhaps most iconically recorded in the Christian story of the Three Wise Men who visited newborn Jesus”… for educational purposes only]