The term magic refers to human actions that are believed to influence human or natural events through supernatural power. For anthropologists it is a neutral term, though the actions involved may be classified as productive, protective, or destructive. Sorcery belongs to the category of destructive magic but does not encompass all of it, since certain socially approved forms of destructive magic (e.g., to protect property or to prevent adultery) are not considered sorcery. Sorcery is destructive magic that is regarded as antisocial and illicit, the resort of misguided persons who should instead have used arbitration or litigation for settling the issues that have aroused their anger, envy, or malice. Thus, the practice of sorcery is destructive magic illicitly applied.

All magic, whether productive, protective, or destructive, licit or illicit, has four recurring elements: performance of rituals or prescribed formal symbolic gestures, use of material substances and objects that have symbolic significance, utterance of a closely prescribed spell or of a less formal address, and a prescribed condition of the performer.

Magic and witchcraft need to be considered together. Sorcery, the illicit form of destructive magic, is closely akin to witchcraft in the special sense, since the same moral status is accorded those who are believed to practice or to be involved in it. Beliefs in both sorcery and witchcraft involve magical methods of identifying the supposed sorcerer or witch; and it is permissible to apply destructive countermagic against either sorcerers or witches. Moreover, both beliefs derive from the same worldview, or cosmology, one that has been described as the closed predicament (i.e., one in which any alternatives to traditional beliefs are unthinkable) as opposed to the open one that is considered to prevail in more enlightened modern societies. The third of these similarities has made the study of witchcraft and sorcery relevant to the philosophy of science (see A coherent explanatory system).