Perhaps the word "magic" pre-disposes a programmer against it. Especially us non-tolkien fans. But thinking about it more I say it aids transparency as far as I can know who reads or modifies my variablles. However, if by "magic", variables are unxplainedly altered then that's ACME territory.

Is this "magic" not the same as having a private variable within a class only accessible via magic hooks aka getter and setter methods which may spawn many actions in addition to getting and setting a variable?