prompt writing: tutoring and the magic therein

Being a tutor myself, the idea of analogizing the tutorial arts with the more esoteric practices of "magic" seems a little absurd. That said, I suppose such a comparison might make a little more sense from the point of view of a freshman experiencing first-paper trepidation. In the eyes of such a student, the tutor holds the keys to the deeper mysteries of written rhetoric, or at least knows all of the cheap parlor tricks one needs to dazzle and divert his or her professors, depending upon the level of skepticism in said student; in short, the tutor may be an Aleister Crowley (sans the scandal, one hopes) or a mere Siegfriend-and-Roy.