I was wondering how to say this in Thai but found a load of different words for magic in Thai. I'm not talking about magic tricks but the ability to puts spells on people or levitate objects, things like that. Is there a common expression in spoken Thai which means something similar to "Do you believe in magic?"

เวทมนตร์ is 'magic' as in 'Sourcery' which ios what you are referring to. "Magic" is Paul Daniels/David Copperfield nonsense tricks. Magick is the general term used as to not confuse the two in occult circles.

Edited March 22, 201412 yr by HeavyDrinker

If you want to ask somebody about magic and spells, you can use เวทมนตร์คาถา or คาถาเวทมนตร์

Such as คุณเชื่อเรื่องเวทมนตร์คาถาไหม

Alternatively you can use ไสยศาสตร์ which will mean magic as well as anything supernatural.

คุณเชื่อเรื่องไสยศาสตร์ไหม

This question will be about equivalent to the English question "Are you a superstitious person?", which obviously one must be if one is to believe in magical spells. I'd recommend you to use the word ไสยศาสตร์, unless you specifically want to mean magic spells and incantations, in which case you should use เวทมนตร์คาถา or คาถาเวทมนตร์.

For the record, magical tricks is มายากล

I think คุณเชื่อเรื่องเวทมนตร์คาถาไหม is probably what I'm looking for. A lot of Thais believe in witch doctors and that kind of thing and I'm interested in asking about that.

Would ไสยศาสตร์ include things like lucky numbers? If so I think the question would be too general.

No, actually lucky numbers is considered to be part of fortune telling which is another group of "science". In Thai culture, fortune telling and luck is not really considered to be "supernatural" and not ไสยศาสตร์.

Astrology and fortune telling is called โหราศาสตร์ and you can see it's considered a "science" by the word ศาสตร์. The same goes for ไสยศาสตร์ which basically means the science of magic.

ไสยศาสตร์ would include things like miracles such as walking on water, etc...