how does magick work in your world?

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Zane Curtis

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how does magick work in your world?

Short answer: it doesn't. In my novel, magic doesn't work in the sense it generally works in most fantasy stories, because I'm more interested in magic as a psychological phenomenon, rather than as some sort of tangible material force.

To give you an example, I once saw a documentary with an African witch doctor in it. Someone had injured a cow (which eventually died), and it was the witch doctor's job to identify the guilty party, and this was how he did it. He heated a knife in the fire until it was red hot, and to each person in turn he said: "I'm going to press this knife against your leg. If you're guilty, it will burn you, but if you're innocent the magic will protect you."

Now, when he pressed the knife against each man's leg, he did it edge on, so very little of the knife was actually touching the skin. It looked impressive, but the way he did it, nobody was going to get burned. The guilty man was the guy who flinched away from the knife before it touched his skin. This whole performance only worked because, when the witch doctor told them magic would protect them from burns, they actually believed him. The innocent men he tested in this way didn't flinch at all.

To me, that's a lot more interesting than your standard D&D wizard throwing fireballs. I can write convincingly about that sort of magic.
 

katiemac

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That's interesting Zane. There's a whole phenomenon out there like this, going so far as to relate to genius animals.

There was one instance, can't remember when or the horse's name now, but this horse could do math. The owner would ask a question, and he'd tap out the answer. Two plus two equals four, he'd tap four times with his hoof.

Turns out, the horse was just really tuned in to his owner's subconscious encouragement to the horse - body language, facial expression - and just knew when the owner wanted him to stop.
 

WVWriterGirl

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Magic in my current world is deity-derived (i.e., only the dieties wield it). I don't explain it because it's made clear in the three instances it's used in the book.

WVWG
 

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I've spent a lot of time thinking about magic. in each of my stories, magic works differently, and in each has a different source. i'm addicted to inventing new magic systems.


the crucial points, IMHO are to make sure that the magic is self-consistent, somewhat predictable (the reader shouldn't be left thinking "What?"), interestingly explained, defined by laws, and the impact of magic should be taken into account in creating the society. apart from that, anything goes.

In fact, nothing says each story has to be limited to one type of magic.

i have used, in various stories,

magic gained through meditation- someone who understands the universe can alter it. sadly, seeing the world as it really is isn't always healthy.

magic that is a reflection of the power of a god or magiucal race, invoked through pure force of will.

magic is the power of elemental spirits bound in physical form

magic is the shadow world impinging on the real world. everyone has a shadow endowed with magical powers, with their significane to the overall world reflected by the powerof thier shadow.

magic is simply the powerof a wish, the strongest desires being able to shape the world around them

magic is weaving the tapestry of fate- there's a tapestry which describes the entire world, and some people can manipulate it.

magic is the power of the earth itself working through human vessels.

magic is really technology from an alien race

magic is the manifestation of spirits who house themselves in the bodies of wizards.



I don't think there's anythign wrong with the wizard hurling fireballs, but not all of my stories have suuported it, and some are definitely more subtle than others. it all depends on the desired tone of the story.
 

Zane Curtis

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katiemac said:
There was one instance, can't remember when or the horse's name now, but this horse could do math. The owner would ask a question, and he'd tap out the answer. Two plus two equals four, he'd tap four times with his hoof.

Yes, that's another one I've heard of before. There's also the whole phenomenon of cold reading. (You can google that if you're interested in this subject.) It raises a whole lot of interesting questions about deception and self-deception. There's lots of dramatic potential in this, which, as a writer, I don't mind at all.
 

katiemac

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Zane,

Did a quick search on Google and clicked the first link. I've never come across that specific term before, but the idea reminds me of a time where I had my fortune told. Everyone said this particular woman was really amazing, but in actuality (like the horse) all she did was watch for facial expressions and keener interest to develop her theories on your life.

Neat stuff.
 

preyer

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these 'mentalists' are great con-men, their 'magick' based purely on the odds, profiling, the willingness of the sucker to be duped, and observation. i'm sure there are other factors i'm not thinking of off hand. i think if you recorded your conversation with one you'd find more often than not you unwittingly told the 'fortune-teller' everything about yourself and they just told it back to you.

in stories, though, is describing how magick works preferable nowadaze?
 

azbikergirl

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Magic in my story is really the manipulation of 'chi' energy. It takes a great deal of concentration, skill and energy, and most of the magic users focus their spells through special gems with particular properties. This enables them to 'store' magic in gems, or simply use the gems to assist with the magic they are casting. Quality varies from gem to gem, just as with diamonds and such, so some gems are considered jewelry grade, others are varying degrees of magic grade. Some will crack into little bits if the energy being focused through them is too strong for their constitution. Others, such as the one that bears my novel's title, are so pure and strong that they will never break.

The ability to use magic is theoretically available to everyone, but the truth of the matter is that not everyone has what it takes (mental acquity, fortitude, etc.).
 

Ivonia

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katiemac said:
That's interesting Zane. There's a whole phenomenon out there like this, going so far as to relate to genius animals.

There was one instance, can't remember when or the horse's name now, but this horse could do math. The owner would ask a question, and he'd tap out the answer. Two plus two equals four, he'd tap four times with his hoof.

Turns out, the horse was just really tuned in to his owner's subconscious encouragement to the horse - body language, facial expression - and just knew when the owner wanted him to stop.

Actually, I read about this in my Psychology class, where some farmer claimed that their horse could count (via the tapping the foot). I think it was in Germany in the late 1800's or early 1900's when this took place.

What happened was, someone would ask the horse a math question, then look down on his foot to see him tapping. Then they would look back at the horse when it tapped the right number of times.

The reason why this worked is because the horse eventually caught on that anytime people looked at his hooves, he would tap, and then as soon as he tapped the right number, the people would look back up at him. He would then stop tapping. It was an unconcious thing that happened, whether the people knew it or not (there were skeptics, and they probably didn't know this either).


Regarding the medicine man in Africa with the hot knife test, they did similiar things back in the middle ages (and earlier, around the time of the Romans, but it was the Germanic tribes that did it if I recall my history class).

What they would do, in a case similiar to say, someone killing a cow, is they would do a test on them. Perhaps they'd have the suspects hold onto a hot iron bar, or they'd dunk them in water.

For the iron bar test, if they were innocent, after 3 days, their bandages would be removed and the wounds would be healing properly. But if they were guilty, the wound would be infected and nasty looking.

For the water test, if they were innocent, the body of water would let them sink, to "accept their innocence". If they were guilty, they'd float, meaning that the water "rejected" them (keep in mind this was way back when people didn't have a better justice system).

If you study history, you can see people sure did do crazy things back then (although maybe not as weird as today's stuff).
 

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preyer said:
these 'mentalists' are great con-men, their 'magick' based purely on the odds, profiling, the willingness of the sucker to be duped, and observation. i'm sure there are other factors i'm not thinking of off hand. i think if you recorded your conversation with one you'd find more often than not you unwittingly told the 'fortune-teller' everything about yourself and they just told it back to you.

in stories, though, is describing how magick works preferable nowadaze?

Actually that is not how mentalists work. Since this is not a magic forum I can lift a tip of the veil....ever heard of hypnosis? The way a mentalist works is this: He speaks to his "target" before the show, hypnotises them, asks them several questions. He wakes them up without them realising that they had been hypnotised. Once they're on stage he baffles every one by saying stuff like: your best friend, when you were five years old, was John Hackensack or whatever. The "target" is completely amazed at the accuracy. Also mentalists use special boards (very, very expensive ones). The “target” writes something on them and removes the piece of paper. The board is fixed and the mentalist can see what has been written. The board might be linked to a camera off stage or something. I just thought you might like to know.
Fraudulent fortune tellers however do work like that.
 

preyer

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from skepdic.com

mentalist

"Brilliant scientists and interested laymen who cannot detect how a magician produces a dove from an empty silk handkerchief or conjures an orange under an inverted teacup are not likely to discover the subtle secrets of a mentalist without prolonged study." --Milbourne Christopher, ESP, Seers & Psychics

A mentalist is a performer who uses trickery and deception to create the illusion of having paranormal or supernatural powers.

Mentalists and psychics rely on their subjects' selective thinking. For example, James Randi tells the story of Peter Hurkos, who was astonishing people with his ability to recite intimate details about their homes and their lives. Two of the persons who had their minds read by Hurkos and who were amazed at his accuracy were invited by Randi to watch a tape of the mind readings. It was "discovered by actual count that this so-called psychic had, on the average, been correct in one out of fourteen of his statements.... Selective thinking had led them to dismiss all the apparent misses and the obviously wrong guesses and remember only the 'hits.' They were believers who needed this man to be the genuine article, and in spite of the results of this experiment they are still devoted fans of this charlatan" (Flim-Flam!, 7).

sorry, not a lick about hypnotizing people. :) just educated guesswork and people's ability to not be able to see the forest through the trees.
 

preyer

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that water test was how they used to 'discover' witches, or so the story goes. i'm assuming it had other applications throughout history as well, but discerning witches with the water test is its most known use. i want to say that in old europe, where thousands upon thousands of 'witches' were hunted, maybe out little salem witch hunt look like a sunday tea, they imployed ye olde burning at a stake method, too, but DO NOT quote me on that.

i like the magick crystal method, btw. one short story i had quickly abandonned years ago defined magick as rather a web in which the magician had to know what 'string' to pull to get the desired effect. there was also a kind of 'butterfly effect' going on, too, which went towards explaining someone on the other side of the world's good and bad luck. then i decided no one really wanted to know my take on magick any more than they wanted me to write about a new vampire society, so i dropped it, heh heh.

i am fascinated by these things, though. in particular, cons and frauds, sleight of hand and dirty tricks. were i faster with my hands, i would have been a magician (seriously). anyone who's ever seen david copperfield perform knows what it's like to be amazed. anytime the fox network has one of those 'tricks of magic revealed,' you know where you'll find me rivetted to the t.v..
 

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Ivonia said:
For the iron bar test, if they were innocent, after 3 days, their bandages would be removed and the wounds would be healing properly. But if they were guilty, the wound would be infected and nasty looking.

Echh. Don't get me started. I originally began researching medieval history in Europe because I wanted to write a fantasy set in the usual medieval fantasy world, only I wanted to include lots of authentic detail to make it more vivid and real. But when I learned what medieval society was really like, that went pretty much by the wayside. There was no way I could romanticise that society, or present it sympathetically to a modern audience. These days, I'm a firm supporter of the enlightenment.

The reason why I cite the African witch doctor, is because it's quite different from the western idea of magic. In the west, we take it too literally. We think of magic as something that works (or that ought to work) exactly as advertised. We have lost the sense, if we ever had it, that magic involves subterfuge. The witch doctor was different. He used a trick to achieve the desired result, much as a stage magician would. And the difference is, it worked, because at some level he must have known it was a trick. He must have understood, as I understood, that the physics of the situation means that nobody was going to get burnt. He wasn't even looking for burns, he was waiting to see if someone would flinch.

Our idea of magic isn't like that. We stand in front of the top hat, tap it with the magic wand, and wonder why no rabbits appear, like they appear for the magician. So we conclude that magic isn't real. Even if the magician showed us how it was done, we'd say, "But that's not magic, it's just a trick." Then we sigh and start to daydream about what the world would be like if magic "existed". We go back to the old epics and read them as though they were the simple fables of a people who believed in magic, and totally miss the allusion and symbolism in those works. And yet, to me, it's these metaphorical and symbolic possibilities of fantasy that I find the most interesting. Fantasy is a kind of writing that, freed of the stifling commitment to literary realism, can tell stories through symbols, metaphors, and powerful imagery. That's what I want to do.

The kind of magic I'm most interested in is the kind a story teller uses to spin his tales. The kind of magic that occurs in the stories themselves won't be a whole lot different to that.
 

katiemac

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The basis of magic exists in one's personal psychology.
 

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preyer said:
from skepdic.com

mentalist

sorry, not a lick about hypnotizing people. :) just educated guesswork and people's ability to not be able to see the forest through the trees.

No, obviously not. Mentalists are magicians, like James Randi. It's a big no no for magicians to expose how other magicians work. I happen to know a few magicians/mentalists that is why I know how they do their stuff. If any of them ever read this and realised it was me I'd probably get a bollocking. LOL

James Randi btw is a bit of a fraud himself. He's always debunking fraudulent psychics but when one psychic was able to pass all his tests he just completely ignored that fact. LOL So much for him ever paying out his one million dollar reward, hehehehe


BTW Preyer, I noticed that you described Chaos magic (butterfly effect) which is a real form of magic, not one you invented. If you're interested in real magic you can drop me a pm.
 
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Roger J Carlson

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preyer said:
these 'mentalists' are great con-men, their 'magick' based purely on the odds, profiling, the willingness of the sucker to be duped, and observation. i'm sure there are other factors i'm not thinking of off hand. i think if you recorded your conversation with one you'd find more often than not you unwittingly told the 'fortune-teller' everything about yourself and they just told it back to you.
If you want some interesting reading on paranormal investigations and how many mentalists, mediums, and other con men work their "magic", look up Joe Nickell in Amazon. He's written several facinating books on the subject:
  • Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal
  • The Mystery Chronicles: More Real-Life X-Files
  • Psychic Sleuths: Esp and Sensational Cases
Also, look here http://www.csicop.org/si/ for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

Don't get me wrong. I love fantasy. I just like to keep it in fiction where it belongs!
 

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Wow, did this thread jump off topic. We were talking about prose fiction, right?

My own feeling is that I'm interested in any magic system an author cares to tell me about, so long as it isn't one more D&D ripoff. Even "systemless" magic, where the characters simply act in a world beyond their ken, appeals to me, but it's a lot harder to pull off.

My own novel, The Day of Clouds, uses a magic system based on a Taoist sort of duality. Eschewing the "light/dark" cliche, my duality instead concentrates on the material and the mental. The predominant culture calls these Truth and Shadow. Truth magic is transformational and permanent: it creates, destroys, or changes things. Shadow magic is ethereal and ephemeral: it's about illusion, divination, and control. Anybody can learn to use Shadow; to use Truth you have to be descended from a line of wizards.

Bringing more of one into the world necessarily brings more of the other. Removing one also expels the other, but it also weakens the world itself. (That's really what the plot of the book is about.) The world, called the Cast Realm, is a mixture of both in balance. There are those who say that the balance itself represents a third form of magic, the really important magic; but that culture lives out on the fringes and isn't taken seriously by anyone.

I could go on, but without the context of a story in front of it, it likely comes across as either boring or silly. I'd much rather you read the book. >8->
 

preyer

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i love 'the skeptical inquirer' magazine. thought about subscribing to it, but it's rather like 'archaeology today' in that i'm only really interested in about every third or fourth issue. the one article i read that really was interesting to me was about a book, several centuries old, that no one could decipher. that was just an interesting premise to me. could be a book of magick, no? or a hoax.

my magick system may not have been original, but it was the one i came up with. the way i figured it, if someone created a bottle of beer, there necessary had to be some kind of an impact. there was a slight (very slight) scientific basis behind it: if i was 'creating' something, i was using atoms, and since there are only a finite amount of atoms to use, those atoms had to come from *somewhere*, which would have an effect. a rough example would be if i used magick to fix my flat tire, that may alter a passerby's bifocals. can you see why i abandonned the 'system'? lol.

zane, i think you can romanticize that society at least to a point where you keep most of the history while making it palatible for most people. people romanticize the old west to no end, and that was just a short while ago, really. hell, if people can romanticize WWII, i reckon anything can be tarted up.

rjc, i'm with you: but, there are a lot of people who believe magick exists, and not the metaphorical kind, but real life spellcasting. isn't prayer a form of invoking magick? put in those terms, most of humanity believes in magick. just a deity for some help. i doubt most gods really want their pets practicing magick without their direction, though, any more than i'd like my shih tzu driving me to the store, heh heh.

magick of the phsychology? like able to lift a bulldozer off your child or slowing your breathing down to three beats a minute, that kind of stuff?
 

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preyer said:
i love 'the skeptical inquirer' magazine. thought about subscribing to it, but it's rather like 'archaeology today' in that i'm only really interested in about every third or fourth issue. the one article i read that really was interesting to me was about a book, several centuries old, that no one could decipher. that was just an interesting premise to me. could be a book of magick, no? or a hoax.

You're talking about the Voynich manuscript, and it's almost certainly an extraordinarily clever hoax. I read an article about it in Scientific American last year, in which a psychologist demonstrated that text with some of the statistical features of the Voynich manuscript could be randomly constructed using syllable tables and a Cardan grille.


my magick system may not have been original, but it was the one i came up with. the way i figured it, if someone created a bottle of beer, there necessary had to be some kind of an impact. there was a slight (very slight) scientific basis behind it: if i was 'creating' something, i was using atoms, and since there are only a finite amount of atoms to use, those atoms had to come from *somewhere*, which would have an effect. a rough example would be if i used magick to fix my flat tire, that may alter a passerby's bifocals. can you see why i abandonned the 'system'? lol.

Not really, no. What's wrong with the idea of magic with side effects? I could easily see this figuring into a story -- especially a humorous story, but it could be done seriously as well. What really matters, of course, is how good the story is.
 

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preyer said:
do you explain it? how does it function?

In one of my worlds, it's genetically inherited by those descended from a race that lived before a serious cataclysm disrupted the world (which was caused by those who wielded it). But it is also physically draining on the user unless they know how to draw "essence" from other sources. And most of those sources are elemental.

In the other series I write, the gods choose who will have the power by marking them in a special way, but in order to use the power they must sacrifice one of the five senses. Which means the mage folk are either blind, deaf, mute, can't taste anything or can't feel. And yes, they have to come up with methods of compensating for the loss of the sense they choose to sacrifice to release the power.

Laura J. Underwood (A Little Bit of Travis Tea--My ATLANTA NIGHTS can poke out your EYE OF ARGON any day!)

DRAGON'S TONGUE forthcoming from Meisha Merlin in the Summer of 2006. Preview a copy at http://www.embiid.net.

 

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Chaos magick works on the assumption that every act of magick has a side effect. It's not like the law of three that most Wiccans adhere to. (am I getting too technical here for non magicians/witches?)

Chaos magick works like this: say you need rain for your garden and you cast a spell to make it rain. Your garden is watered but because of your act of magic that rain doesn't fall in another area, which also needed the water. Because of this, crops wilt away which in turn will lead to people starving etc. etc. cause and effect.

Law of three is what most wiccans believe. Every act of magick that you use will come back in threefold to you. That's why wiccans tend to talk about white and black magick. White being magick used to help another person (or higher magick) on a spiritual level and black magick being used for personal and material gain (a big no no according to the fluffy wiccans. LOL)

Which is also why they are afraid to use magick against someone…they’re afraid it’s going to come back and bite them in the arse. LOL Can’t say I ever noticed any nasty side effect myself. Neither have any of the people I cast spells for. (yes, I do know what I'm talking about and I do believe in magick because it works.)
 

Richard

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Actually that is not how mentalists work. Since this is not a magic forum I can lift a tip of the veil....ever heard of hypnosis? The way a mentalist works is this: He speaks to his "target" before the show, hypnotises them, asks them several questions. He wakes them up without them realising that they had been hypnotised.

Complete rubbish, I'm afraid. Mentalists use much more practical tricks, like asking people before hand, asking their friends, using cold reading to make people think they've received answers they haven't, having their assistants do a bit of checking up for hot reading, or doing very basic tricks like reading the movements of their pencil. They have absolutely no need for anything more dynamic than that; although certainly I'm not surprised that people would claim they'd been hypnotised when sheepishly realising they'd spilled the beans.

James Randi btw is a bit of a fraud himself. He's always debunking fraudulent psychics but when one psychic was able to pass all his tests he just completely ignored that fact. LOL So much for him ever paying out his one million dollar reward, hehehehe

Which psychic? I've seen that claim a lot about various people, and looking them up always reveals that they comprehensively failed to so much as pass the preliminaries.

BTW Preyer, I noticed that you described Chaos magic (butterfly effect) which is a real form of magic

You'll have to pardon my sceptical look at this point.
 

preyer

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i'm skeptical, too, but, hey, if someone believes in wicca, well, there are worse things to believe in, i reckon. i do believe in hypnosis, but only as far as the subject is willing to be hypnotized, which i think is a major premise for its effectiveness, eh? folk like rasputin, well, i think people had the notion he was a magician beforehand and went into any meeting with him under powerful assumptions, greatly fascillitating his odds of 'hypnotizing' a person (at least, the popular version of him has him a great magician, even if the legend doesn't measure up with the facts, necessarily).

i've never heard of chaos magick, but, yeah, my particular version of magick was very close to that, though not quite on the same scale or with such strong implications. i gave it up because i felt it was trite, though the way i wrote certainly had a lot to do with my feelings towards the 'system.' also, it was rather two-fold, and lacking pinpoint focus i thought the idea needed to work and, most importantly, be entertaining. :)
 
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