Magic

Foreword: Reading the article on the Multiverse is highly recommended before reading this article, or else you will be confused; you have been warned.

Magic Styles And Magic Theory

The Earth has seen about a dozen major styles of magic, each with its own literature and theory. These came from the civilized cultures of Europe, Egypt, the Middle East, India, China and West Africa. Every tribal or barbarian culture has its own style of magic too, although in many cases the differences between tribal styles would only interest anthropologists; primitive magic is strikingly uniform. On top of this, fantasy fiction has invented dozens of more styles of magic. Just describing all the major styles of magic would take a fat book of its own—and probably would be rather more information than most players would want!

Fortunately, the many styles of magic fall into three general classes: Natural Magic, Ritual Magic and High Magic. Although styles of magic seldom fit precisely and absolutely into a particular class, one type of magic usually dominates. Each class has a basic theory about how magic works.

Natural Magic

Most primitive styles of magic fall into this class. So does Alchemy and, to a large extent, Voodoo. Natural Magic assumes that various substances have intrinsic magical properties. These occult virtues are just as natural, in their way, as a substance’s color, taste or texture. According to classic Natural Magic theory, casting a spell is rather like baking a cake: one assembles the right ingredients and combines them in the right way, and the magic happens. The magic is in the ingredients, not the person casting the spell. The modern theory admits that in fact Natural Magic also involves the caster’s personal psychic energy, which acts as a catalyst to unlock and direct the magic of the spell’s ingredients.

“Ingredients” for Natural Magic include herbs, stones, parts of animals or humans, water from various sources, and pictures and images—usually of gods. Why does an herb or stone have one occult property and not another? The ingredients for a Natural Magic spell are selected according to five overlapping criteria:

The Law of Sympathy says that things which seem alike in some way really are alike, and can affect each other. By this reasoning, a plant with lung-shaped leaves must be good for breathing problems. Gold is bright and yellow like the Sun, so gold must promote life and growth the way the Sun does. Birds fly away, so a charm of feathers will make bad luck fly away. And so on forever.

Sympathy is strongest if the ingredient really does have the property desired for the “spell.” To cultures naive of science, there is no great difference between a curse, a poison and a gun; black magicians use all three. This might be called the Law of Reality. In a world of “real magic,” a Natural Magic spell might magnify the genuine properties of substances, such as using a drop of gasoline or a book of matches in a fire spell.

The Law of Contagion says that things once in contact can still affect the other. Thus, one can cast a spell on someone by doing something to a snippet of their hair or clothing. Just touching an object can be enough to pick up its magical powers. (Here one sees the reason for celebrity endorsements: use the same product as a famous person, the ads seem to promise, and you will gain some of the celebrity’s charisma.)

Any Exceptional Object is apt to seem magical. A four-leaf clover, for instance, only seems magically “lucky” because most clover only has three leaves. The first or last of anything is exceptional and magical.

Finally, some magical attributions are pure Tradition. Why is a rabbit’s foot lucky, when it didn’t help the rabbit? Why does the Yoruban god Orunla favor the colors green and yellow, or the Greek god Dionysus favor the panther instead of some other animal? If there was a reason, it was forgotten long ago.

Ritual Magic

When a Natural Magician invokes a god through the god’s sympathetic link to its image or symbol, the spell starts to overlap with Ritual Magic. This style of magic works through the agency of spirits and psychic influences, invoked and controlled through ritual. In its most grandiose forms, Ritual Magic claims to command even the gods, or God. Magic rituals involve magic words and prayers, the names of the spirits, special gestures, magical diagrams and talismans, pictures and images of gods, sacrifices and various symbolic tools. Either the spirits do what the magician commands, or they grant some magical power to the magician, or the magician’s own ritual-fortified spirit does the job.

In most of the sophisticated magical traditions, it is accepted that spirits operate in a separate world which touches the material plane but is not part of it. Each culture has its own name for the spirit world, and some cultures postulate many layers of spirit worlds, but in Western Mainstream Occultism this other dimension is called the Astral Plane. For this reason, magic which uses control of the spirit world to effect change in the material world fairly may be called Astral Magic or Spirit Magic instead of Ritual Magic

Note that even though Ritual Magic requires lengthy preparation, this does not mean that every casting of a spell requires a ten minute incantation with incense and a rune-struck circle. Some do, but super-sorcerers can toss Ritual Magic around as easily as High Magic. Ritual magicians can prepare their magic in advance, ready to be called upon at need. Traditionally, they do this by consecrating magic items such as wands and talismans, or by dealing with powerful spirits. The sorcerer does either of these in a long, fancy ceremony; after that, they can trigger the magic whenever they want.

Most of the more famous, real-world traditions of magic are forms of Ritual Magic. Kabbalistic magic, for instance, is based on commanding angels and devils by using their names and the omnipotent Names of God. The Hermetic magic of the European Renaissance assumed that the planets radiated mysterious influences which one could concentrate and control by rituals directed at their ruling spirits. Hindu and Tantric magic stripped the “astral theory” down even further: they claimed that Spirit was the true reality and the physical world just a sort of collective dream. By developing one’s will through austerities, meditation and ritual, one could take over the dream and re shape it to suit oneself.

High Magic

High Magic is essentially fictional. In its pure form, it works without any instrumentality at all—no magic words, talismans or incantations, no images or herbal brews, nothing. This is the magic of gods and spirits themselves. Mythological gods, demons, djinns and the like don’t muck about with drawing magic circles or other hugger-mugger, they just wish for something and it happens.

High Magic is the sort of magic most often seen in comic books, where the emphasis is on action, not explanation. Many of the wizards in fantasy novels are basically High Magicians too. High Magicians in fiction may keep a veneer of Ritual Magic: they may say some magic words, wiggle their fingers or wave a magic wand, but precisely how the magic works is never explained. The magician can get along without these props if it suits the author’s purpose. These magicians seem to tap into cosmic energies or their own psychic power directly, without the help of spirits or collections of magic substances. Quick and flashy, High Magic is the style most obviously suited to super-mages and dimension lords.

Classes Of Magic And Dimensional Energies

The three basic kinds of magic dovetail neatly to the Kabbalistic model of the Multiverse that Champions Lore follows. All magic starts with the caster’s own psychic force, but humans don’t have enough intrinsic magic to do anything very impressive. Mages must use their intrinsic magic to tap into some external power source and shape it to their will.

Natural Magic employs the magical energies of the Earth itself. The substances used in Natural Magic are both conduits and batteries of this power. Natural Magic is the easiest form of magic to learn, because humans are part of the magic field themselves.

The catch is that a Natural Magician is totally dependent on their Foci and their connection to the Earth. Oh, Natural Magic will work in other dimensions for a while, as a kindness to players who would like to play a Voodooist or Alchemist…but away from the Earth, a Natural Magician’s spells gradually lose power and reliability. On Earth’s Imaginal Realms this loss will be a matter of days or weeks; in the Outer Planes, it could be a matter of hours. Spells built as Charges stored in a Focus will last indefinitely, but the Charges cannot be recovered off Earth.

Of course, Foci lost in the Outer Planes will be impossible to replace until the magician gets back to Earth. (In some of the Imaginal Planes such as the Land of Legends or Babylon, appropriate substances might be found.) All this will be part of any Magic Restriction they take as a Disadvantage. Ritual Magic draws its power from the Astral Plane. It works as well on any of the Imaginal Planes as it does on Earth itself. Some spells might not work in the Outer Planes, because the requisite spirits don’t exist on those dimensions. Only spells which literally summon an Earthly spirit are likely to be affected right away, though. Other spells will gradually become less powerful and reliable, but the magician won’t have trouble for a few days. Skillful Ritual Magicians might even learn how to adapt their spells to use the native spirits of the dimension.

High Magic works equally well throughout the entire Multiverse. Some dimensions naturally inhibit magic, but at least High Magicians will be no worse off than any other sort of wizard. The forces which High Magic calls upon are truly universal; they ultimately derive from the cosmic entities of the Upper Planes.

The classes of magic can be associated with the sephiroth on the central pillar of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the main filing system for Western occultism. The sephiroth show what dimensions supply the power for each class of magic.

Natural Magic draws its power from the Earth, in the sephira Malkuth in the Assiatic division of the Multiverse—the “Material World.”

Ritual Magic operates through the Lower and Middle Astral Planes, which are filed under Yesod, the first and central sephira of the Yetziratic or Astral World. The astral power of Yesod flows naturally down the channel to the Earth in Malkuth, but with some effort a sorcerer can pull Yesod’s power to the Outer Planes of Netzach and Hod as well.

The High Magic energies used by most dimension lords and sorcerers of the Outer Planes come from the realms of Briah, the Mental World, by way of the sephira Tiphereth.

As for the cosmic entities of Briah themselves, their power is bound into the structure of the entire Multiverse. Beyond all limits, it flows down from Kether, the fountainhead of Creation itself.

Example Magics

High Magic: Superheroic Thaumaturgy

Superheroic Thaumaturgy is the stripped down, flashy, combatoriented magic used by Champions super-sorcerers and dimension lords, including the likes of Witchcraft and Tyrannon. Such sorcerers just wave their hands, perhaps chant a little rhyme, and balls and beams of light appear to do what they want. It is the most familiar form of High Magic and may be used as a model for other styles. The downside of Thamaturgy is that learning it takes longer.

Theory

Superheroic Thaumaturgy calls on the energies of the Outer and Upper Planes. For some spells, the Thaumaturge draws energy directly from the Upper Astral Plane or various Outer Planes and shapes the energy into a spell. In other cases, the Thaumaturge invokes a powerful dimension lord or cosmic entity—the “Higher Powers”— to tap a stream of power already partly shaped by that entity. The Higher Power does not actually cast the spell and create the effect. It may not know that it is being invoked. Rather, the invocation acts like a lens or filter, giving the magical energy a tendency to generate certain effects, making the Thaumaturge’s job easier.

Invoking Higher Powers this way doesn’t automatically make the sorcerer a Servant of Higher Powers. Most of the Higher Powers don’t insist on any special relationship with mages who call on their power for Thaumaturgy. They may notice a mage who repeatedly calls on them, however, and take action later. If the Higher Power approves of the sorcerer, it might become a Contact. On the other hand, if it doesn’t like the sorcerer it might cut off the sorcerer’s link to its power so that particular spell fizzles or blows up in the sorcerer’s face. If neutrally disposed, it might simply ask for some service in exchange for all the times its power helped the sorcerer.

What do the Higher Powers get out of this arrangement? One suggestion is that the more a cosmic entity’s power is used by sorcerers, the bigger that power grows. As an alternative explanation, some cosmic entities might permit lesser beings to use their special spells as a way to get publicity. Or perhaps when an entity reaches a certain level of mystical power, its magic “spills over” and the entity can’t really stop sorcerers in other dimensions from exploiting its overflowing power.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Users of Thaumaturgy are notable for their lack of limitations. Thaumaturges may call out little rhymes when they cast their spells—but not always. They make sweeping gestures to call their power—but blast off Entangle effects. They fire off spells as quick as thought, ducking and dodging enemy spells nimbly. Use of tools is rare and their magic seems highly reliable. Do they have limitations at all?

Quite possibly not. Few Thaumaturges, however, have reached this acme of austere purity. Some do use Foci, Gestures or Incantations, or they accept a little uncertainty in their magic through failure chances and perhaps even negative side effects. With time and practice they may lose such limitations.

Thaumaturgy is one of the most inclusive styles of magic a sorcerer can choose. No Powers are excluded. While Thaumaturgy itself does not directly employ spirits the way Ritual Magic does, Thaumaturges are not automatically excluded from also learning Ritual Magic spells or using Natural Magic items. In fact, many sorcerers may use Thaumaturgy for combat and other styles for non-combat effects. Generic Thaumaturgy imposes no Magic Style Restriction on its practitioners. Individual Thaumaturges may take a Magic Style Restriction to reflect a dominant “theme” in their magic or an inability to use other sorts of magic, but they don’t have to do so.

Notes

Thaumaturgic spells are often named after various extra-dimensional entities and power objects—thus, “Koriol’s Crimson Crystals” or “The Suns of Saravane.” The sorcerer often calls out the name of the spell, sometimes as part of a little rhyme. (Though this is just showing off.) The spells appear as simple luminous forms such as globes, disks, swirls and beams, maybe with zigzags, spurs and sparkles.

Ritual Magic: Hermetic Theurgy

Hermetic Theurgy is the dominant European form of Ritual Magic, built up over the course of 2000 years. Occultists have never agreed on a name for the European tradition of ritual magic. Many just call it “Magick,” with the “k” to distinguish it from stage illusions. (The most pretentious occultists even tack on a silent “e” at the end.) The name given in this work, “Hermetic Theurgy,” comes from the history of Western magic. This is the style employed by the likes of Caliburn, Earth's Archmage.

The Neoplatonists were the first Europeans to propose a complete theory of how magic worked. They used Theurgy (“God-Working”) to obtain visions of the gods and draw divine power down to Earth. At about the same time, Jewish mystics created Kabbalism, which likewise offered visions of God and control of spirits. Christianity suppressed Theurgy, but in the Renaissance, Europe discovered the ancient world’s magic as well as its art, law and science. Theurgic and Gnostic texts such as the Picatrix and The Emerald Tablet were called the “Corpus Hermeticum” because supposedly they had been written by Hermes Trismegistos (“Thrice-Great Hermes”), either the actual god or a mighty Egyptian wizard of the same name. The Renaissance occultists called themselves “Hermetic Philosophers”—calling oneself a philosopher was a lot safer than calling oneself a wizard!

The Hermetic and Kabbalistic occultists strongly influenced the writers of grimoires such as the Key of Solomon, but Kabbalism itself remained little known until the 19th century. 19th and 20th century occultists such as Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley later added Kabbalism and older Theurgic ideas such as the Astral Plane and pagan gods to the magic of the grimoires, to make modern Western Mainstream Occultism: hence, Hermetic Theurgy.

Hermetic Theurgy can be used as a pattern for other styles of Ritual Magic, such as Taoist magic or Tibetan Tantric magic. The particular Foci will differ, as will the relative emphasis on Gestures, Incantations and other elements, but that’s just window dressing. The technical differences between styles of Ritual Magic do not matter much in game terms.

Theory

Modern Western magic takes its theoretical base from astrology, kabbalism and the Theurgic notion of an astral plane where spirits dwell. Renaissance astrologers decided that rather than predicting absolute destinies, the planets radiated a mysterious influence which predisposed events on Earth to happen in various ways. For instance, a committee of savants blamed the coming of the Black Death on an especially baleful conjunction. Kabbalism gave each planet a ruling angel or demon who might be invoked to increase that planet’s effect on a magical operation. Kabbalism’s hierarchies of angels, heavens and “emanations” from God gave an acceptable, Judeo-Christian way to interpret the spiritual dimensions where Theurgy said the gods dwelled. The old Theurgists identified these levels of the Astral Plane with the crystal spheres around the Earth which held the stars and planets—neatly returning to astrology.

Self-proclaimed modern mages have very reluctantly admitted that the Sun and planets do not orbit the Earth in crystal spheres, and so their power is seldom invoked directly. Instead, occultists invoke the “sephiroth” (divine emanations) of kabbalism. The sephiroth, however, have been matched with the various planets, and so have acquired their associated gems, metals, perfumes and other correspondences: thus the astrological core remains. Tarot cards, pagan gods, kabbalistic angels and other mystic ideas further extend this mammoth, tangled web of symbolism. The kabbalistic “Tree of Life” (a diagram of the sephiroth) serves as a filing system.

Through intensive concentration on these symbols, the magician creates a “thought-form” on the Astral Plane. Whether the symbols of astrology, kabbalism and pagan gods refer to external powers or aspects of the unconscious mind is deemed irrelevant. What matters is that these symbols are channels of energy which can charge a thought-form with enough power to affect the physical world. Raising enough power, however, requires lengthy rituals.

Once a magician has built a spell out of thoughtforms, they can fire off the spell right away or store it for later use. In Hermetic Theurgy the most popular method is to bind the spell to a talisman. Once consecrated this way, the talisman can be used again and again. Another option is to personify the spell as a spirit which serves the magician or which confers a magic power the magician can then use at will. Again, whether the magician has summoned a real spirit or just imagined one doesn’t matter: the power acts as if it were a spirit. In these ways, Hermetic Theurgists use long ceremonies to gain magical powers they can use later at a moment’s notice.

Potential Origin Of Human Mysticism

(This is presented in the book as a potential origin, it may or may not be canon - the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, however, is canonically a misremembered encounter between The Dragon's minions and The Naga's champions)

As an example of how humans might have learned magic, here are the Nagas and the lost civilizations of Agharti and Shamballah.

The Nagas are described in The Mystic World for 5th Edition and elsewhere. For here, suffice to say that they are benevolent serpentmen with obscure connections to their great enemy, the Dragon. Six thousand years ago, the Nagas created the first human civilizations worthy of the name. The Dragon had just manifested on Earth. It was already at work, recruiting people by guile or force for its grim empire of Agharti, based along the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Nagas responded by creating the nation of Shamballah in what is now Mongolia.

The Nagas never forced the proto-Mongols into civilization. They just showed them the advantages of sanitation, a food surplus and specialized professions, and the proto-Mongols accepted. The Nagas not only taught the Shamballans how to work metal, use the wheel and many other useful arts, they guided them in evolving a system of government based on clan councils and taught them about justice and honor. The Shamballans quickly developed a martial code very much like that of the Medieval knight.

The Nagas picked the proto-Mongols for their martial valor; as nomadic herders, living on the harsh steppes of central Asia, they were the toughest, bravest people in the world. The Nagas knew, however, that stopping the Dragon would require more than lances, swords and bows. The Dragon was teaching its minions to use magic. The Nagas did the same. The best and the brightest of Shamballah’s men and women learned Thaumaturgy from the Nagas, so that sorcery could be met with sorcery.

After centuries of war, the Dragon won. Agharti destroyed Shamballah. Its cities were razed to the ground. But the Dragon also lost; while its energies were focused on Shamballah, the Nagas had planted other civilizations in other parts of the world, such as Dilmun in the Middle East and Cibola in South America, and they wrought Agharti’s doom. Mythology dimly remembers that ancient conflict as the battle between Marduk and Tiamat. The Dragon bent its will to corrupt or destroy these other civilizations in turn, but a third wave of cultures was already rising: Egypt, Sumeria, Mohenjo-Daro, the Minoans… History was on its way.

The first wizards, Shamballan and Aghartan, had to learn Thaumaturgy: no other style of magic was known. The Astral Plane was empty, for the faerie-folk, demons and other creatures of legend were not yet born. It was Dragon chained in humanity’s collective unconscious that linked mankind to the Astral Plane and made its dreams turn real. Thus the Netherworld, oldest of the Imaginal Realms, formed in the Dragon’s belly and Faerie, the next realm, condensed on its back.

The Dragon, the Nagas, and the wizards recognized the potential these new spirits had as allies. The Dragon, with its vast mental power and inside view of humanity, was most successful at recruiting or creating spirits. Hence it is that an entire Parterre is devoted to its service and even the faerie-folk are less than friendly to their human creators. Hence it is too that the craft of dealing with spirits has always been viewed with suspicion.

Still, no one could deny that the craft was useful. The astral spirits were more easily commanded than the forces of the Outer Planes. As the centuries passed, there were more and more types of spirits, too: atavisms, nature spirits, demons, ghosts and gods. Eventually, some mages didn’t bother learning Thaumaturgy, relying exclusively on the new spirits. Thus did the first styles of Ritual Magic evolve.

Natural Magic fissioned off as well. From the first, the Nagas and the Dragon had taught their disciples how to use material objects to focus their will. Some substances, they found, already had natural affinities for some kinds of magic. Indeed, they had magic of their own: if one could tap this power, one could conserve one’s own energy. Again, some mages eventually turned this “supplemental” art into whole new styles of magic.

By the start of recorded history, Ritual Magic and Natural Magic both flourished beyond the control of either the Dragon or the Nagas. Both types of magic got tangled up in religion, producing hybrids such as Voodoo and Classical Theurgy. Indeed, most of the really creative work in magic has been in Ritual and Natural Magic: very few new styles of High Magic were ever developed. Still, there are quite a few Thaumaturges out there.

Research in every field continues, for the same reason as when the new magic styles began. The war against the Dragon has never stopped, only gone underground. The Dragon and its minions still seek new ways to conquer and subvert mankind, and humanity’s defenders still seek new ways to block the Dragon’s evil schemes.