Git Magic

Why not just use the reflog to recover?  For example:

$ git reflog show HEAD

You can use a branch name, such as 'master', in the place of 'HEAD' too.  That will show the
different sha1's that the branch (or HEAD) has stored over time with information about what
caused the change (a commit, a merge, a reset, a checkout, a rebase, etc.)  You can also use
the named versions to obtain an old revision, e.g.

$ git reset --hard HEAD@{12}