⭐ Magic Systems! ⭐

I'm not entirely sure what your question is. We can't decide for you how to approach your story. What are you hoping to get from this thread?

(Also, do ask yourself whether the thread itself is another form of procrastination. Talking about a story idea often feels like progress even when we're really doing that instead of writing.)

I'd suggest doing a lot of research into real-world witchcraft legends, as well as the actual beliefs of Wiccans (spellcheck says I didn't spell that right). I'm sure there's plenty of material out there. My magic systems tend to be rooted less in real-world magical beliefs. I just come up with cool powers and their limitations and go from there.

You might get more of a response in the SF/F subforum - there are several discussions of magic systems there, IIRC, though none quite touching on Wiccan-based practices.

As others have mentioned, if you're going to base it off "real world" witchcraft (of which Wicca, again IIRC, is but one iteration), do your homework very, very thoroughly. Misrepresentation is a major problem for Wiccan communities, and the last thing you want to do is add to it - especially if you're intending to offer something close to a real-world representation, and not the usual handwaved "I'm calling them witches because they use magic and it's a term everyone's familiar with, not because I'm trying to actually represent real-world people, practices, or beliefs, so roll with it." (Which can be potentially offensive, too, but that's another issue for another thread, I suspect.) Use your research to inform your story. You're not going to get the flash-bang, snap-your-fingers-and-a-dragon-appears kind of magic if you're going for realism, for instance... which would actually be potentially interesting, requiring some subtlety with your use of magic. If you want Harry Potter or D&D type magic, you're better off formulating your own system.

Right now, it sounds like you're still in the brainstorming stage. Before locking into real-world-based magic systems, what kind of story do you want to tell? What does magic need to do to enable it - to make it more exciting, to provide interesting possibilities and limitations? What kind of world do you want this story to take place in? What kind of characters?

The good thing about basing it on Wicca is that there are many different types and traditions, and many solitary practitioners who follow their own path as well. As long as the work is respectful, you aren't going to get any Wiccans saying "Well, that's not how I would draw down the moon!"
Now, Wicca isn't about instant results, but if you just want to study a system of ceremonial magic, then get a book of Wiccan ceremonies so that you can study it and take it further from there.
I will add that there are certainly Wiccans who have used these types of ceremonial magic systems in fantasy stories. While I now prefer the label 'agnostic pagan,' I've done it myself.

This thread might be better shifted to the SFF forum, but anyway -

What do you mean by "actual witch"? Real-life witches tend by and large to be practitioners of some form of Wicca, which is a religion as much if not more than it is a magic system.

I write contemporary "real-world" stories as well, and my magic is based more on Goetia and OTO than anything else.

I live in an area of Scotland with a long history of "real" witches. "Moray might be called the centre of witchcraft, for there were more examples here of witchcraft than can be found in any other district in Britain." JW Brodie-Innes, 1910

Our history isn't pretty. Lots of women murdered in really awful ways, usually for the minor crime of being a practising Catholic or running into a cross-dressing witchpricker wanting to make a few shillings extra. Isobel Gowdie reportedly murdered her landlord's child and possibly other adults with flint arrowheads (or was it her friend Lady Fowlis, using faerie arrows?), but even the judges for her trial admitted she was probably very mentally unwell.

There was a lot of sexual abuse, a lot of sexism, a lot of cruel and degrading deaths.

Real witch history isnae bonnie. I love writing about witches, and having fun with magic, but aspiring towards the reality of witchcraft isn't as great as it sounds.

(Also, before any of your sly writer-types get ideas, I've called dibs on the light-hearted retelling of the cross-dressing witchpricker story. )

EMaree said:

Real witch history isnae bonnie.

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werrd

DragonRhapsody said:

I suppose my world building problems are more along the lines of: if magic does exsist in this world, and it's a modern day world, what does that look like and is it in secret or is it out in the open (kind of like True Blood having Vampires in the open, etc).

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It doesn't have to be an either/or question. You could have magic(k) being practiced openly and regularly witnessed, but have a sod's law kind of thing going on that prevents it from ever being acknowledged by science (or skeptics, etc). The kind of magic(k) various Wiccans and Occultists (etc, because categorising the Pagan/Occult/etc community is like trying to herd cats*) I've known believe in is relatively subtle so wouldn't be too hard to write off as coincidence and if your world has more visually spectacular magic(k) in it then this could be put down to tricks and illusion.

*this is a quote from a prominent member of the community whose name I can't remember

For example, ages ago a lighthearted TV documentary investigated sod's law, in particular the question of whether bread always lands butter side down. In the experiment what side the bread landed on was 50/50, however the presenter noted that sod's law says that the experiment won't work, i.e. when you're not trying to prove the existence of sod's law, the bread always lands butter side down. If you're trying to prove the existence of sod's law, the experiment will fail because of sod's law and you'll get the odds predicted by random chance.

This might be a bit too comical/sarcastic/Douglas Adams-esque for the tone of your story though, but you could use it as a starting point and develop a more serious-sounding theory as to how magic(k) can be openly used yet never formally acknowledged, if that's the direction you want to take your story. (All this is, of course, just a suggestion.)

Note to non-Brits (because AFAIK sod's law is a British thing) - sod's law isn't the same as Murphy's law. There's a much deeper level of things going wrong in ways that imply the universe is out to get you and has an evil sense of humour with sod's law.