Theories of magic (and their weakpoints)

Welcome to my lecture on Theories of magic. Throughout this lecture, I will assume you are somewhat familiar with Goron's classification, but I shall try to keep references to minimum.

Multiple theories around magic have been proposed. Some of them more are more successful than others. For the most part they cover different bits of magic that just cannot be explained by weave theory or simplify the concept such that it is easy to teach and understand - usually at the cost generality.

Let's dive in!

Elven weave theory

This is the default theory of magic. It is by far the most general and neatly explains and predicts various phenomena (as we shall see).

As name suggests, Elves were the ones who came up with the idea, which should not come as a surprise given their natural affinity to magic.

As for the actual theory, it all boils down to weave integrity. Essentially, the spells and magics are just manipulations of this weave. You can pull some energy from the weave or insert some into it, but over time, it should average to net-zero effect. We refer to the stress (or sometimes lack thereof) of the weave as weave integrity.

The weave has a natural tendency to equalize its integrity (i.e. return-to-zero law) and any further increase or decrease may be made more tougher by its resistance. We call this resistance weave tension. Indeed, powerful mages are able to keep the weave integrity quite low, resulting in a lot of weave tension, which requires a lot of skill, practice and mental effort to maintain.

We should also talk about a change in integrity over time. This is sometimes referred to as weave flux. I suggest you take a course in Natural philosophy if you are unfamiliar with the following, but feel free to ignore this part, it will not be on the next exam paper. Flux is first derivative of weave integrity change w.r.t. time. Weave is highly sensitive to flux. Weave tension also depends on flux, though the exact relation between flux, tension and integrity is not yet fully understood. We believe tension is proportional to flux squared integrated over time. This has some pros and cons. The main con is that when you subject weave to a great flux, you can create a weave tear, which is a fairly dangerous phenomenon and its exact effects and containment are beyond the scope of this lecture.

On the other hand, you can cast more powerful spells and draw more weave energy before weave tension becomes an issue given you keep flux relatively low (as you will see in next section).

Speaking of weave tearing, I should remind you that doing that (even unintentionally) can severely impact you (as in kill you), those around you, and even the local area for quite some time. As if that was not enough, thanks to Elves this is illegal and they are QUITE keen on people not doing that... so don't do that, please!

There is way more to weave theory but for sake of brevity and time, let us move on.

Examples

• Ritual casting - You may have noticed, that casting rituals is significantly easier. Or rather it does not drain your mental resources that much. This is because when casting a ritual, you keep flux to minimum, and thus not a lot of weave tension is acting against your magics. In addition, some spells do require flux to be cast properly, thus not all spells can be ritual-cast (in fact most of them can't be).

• Arcanic magic capacity - Generally speaking, you find that mages practicing arcanic magic, colloquially known as wizards or mages, tend to have greater capacity for casting spells than those practicing source-based magic. I.e. wizards can cast (on average) more spells than sorcerers. Because arcanic magic relies heavily on efficiency it minimizes flux and other side-effects, thus using up fewer resources than their source-based counter-parts.

• Wild magic - Or academically known as spatially localized, temporally localized, contained minute weave tear - which is a really round-about way of saying it is really tiny weave tear. You may have come across wild magic, but to those who did not, wild magic is what happens when your fireball-happy sorcerer casts too many spells. The reason is that source-based magics tend to be sudden and spontaneous - resulting in a lot of flux. As we now know, when weave is subjected to enough flux over short time it tears. Generally this is pretty difficult to do in controlled environment and is quite dangerous (even this tiny tear can endanger the caster and people around them). Do NOT try this at home. Or anywhere, really.

• Weave thin/thick areas - In some areas, certain magics are cast significantly less efficiently (or casting is down-right impossible). In different areas, on the other hand, the opposite is true. This is because weave integrity is localized and specific to the area you are casting the spell (fun fact, if you run while casting you cast spells negligibly more efficiently!). Thus areas that have high (resp. low) weave integrity allow you to cast spells that consume (or produce) weave integrity. In fact, for those who dabbled into abjuration magic, it is exactly this principle that is being used to create anti-magic fields.

Speculations & predictions

• Divine magics - this is beyond the scope, but essentially, weave theory can explain how sufficiently potent caster can lend some of their power to other casters (or even non-casters). This is pretty terrifying if true as it involves (kind of) tearing the weave.

• Overly efficient artifacts - Under weave theory, there are a couple of problems that are known to be unsolvable by magics (see class on Weave limitation theory). E.g. knowing whether enchantment will eventually equalize to neutral weave or stay knotted indefinitely is a fairly famous one. Either way, every once in a while, someone finds an artifact or magic wand or what-not that solves these problems (or solves them more efficiently than any other known enchantment). If weave theory is correct, this suggests there is a space of some sort beyond the one we know today. This would go neatly with explanation of divine magic - and hints at existence of other Realms.

Caveats

Biggest unanswered question is True-naming magic. Knowing true names should have little to no effect according to weave theory. But there are counter-examples.

Second unsolved mystery is material components. While it is known that certain materials can influence the weave integrity in certain ways, this is not fully understood. But unlike True naming, this does not strictly disprove weave theory.

And finally, some classes of spells (mostly divination based spells) are much more neatly explained by other systems (and were even deemed impossible to model in this one), suggesting there is some missing link or underlying mechanism which we do not understand.

Law of equivalent exchange

Once upon a time, we did not know much... for a long time understanding magic (outside of Elvaria) was pretty much impossible, and we only had Source and Divine types of casters. Exceptions did exist, but that is beside the point. The point is, that we came up with a simplification of the weave theory. In fact, Law of equivalent exchange is almost a proper subset of weave theory. In short, all of this theory relies on a two laws:

Energy or value cannot be created nor destroyed — Law of equivalent exchange

Any action will have equal but opposite reaction — Law of equivalent effect

Those of you who studied Natural philosophy may recognize the second law, and indeed, first attempts believed that force is magic.

Either way, you may have noticed that this is essentially saying that weave integrity must be constant. While we know that these two laws can be broken, if we assume constant weave integrity (and assume weave theory as model), we can prove that these two invariants hold. Hence, Law of equivalent exchange models a special case of weave theory.

Upside is that it is way more simple - as you do not deal with flux and other phenomena the calculations become way simpler and cleaner. However, you sacrifice generality.

Speculations & predictions

I mentioned before that this is ALMOST a proper subset of weave theory. Well, there is one single thing that this theory can model that weave theory cannot, and that is Truenaming.

If you consider information as a form of energy, then the maths checks out and you could explain some spells related to true-naming. Also, this neatly explains some divination and scrying magics.

It should be mentioned, that this is matter of ongoing research and we are still trying to find out whether this is just a neat coincidence, or information really is some manner of energy.

Caveats

• Non-constant integrity - It is possible to borrow energy and then sort of give it back over time (and vice-versa) but this should be impossible under this model (as some energy has just been created from nothing).

• Perfect zero problem - Under this model, we assume effects and values are perfectly balanced and sum up to zero. And I mean perfectly. The probability of doing that is zero in the limit, and we known that spells have some wiggle room albeit not much.

Divine theory

This is yet another simplification of the weave theory, but in this case, we are not really trying to find a general model, but rather to simplify complicated reasoning.

Specifically, we are trying to model Divine magic (by Goron's classification of magical styles ). We assume existence of certain entity we designate as deity. We then try to define characteristics of a deity and its agenda (if there is any). Once we know to which stimuli the deity responds positively, we can perform those action in (hopefully) exchange for magical energy. While this energy is ours to manipulate (and thus we could potentially use it against the deity's will), it comes in certain shape and form. We usually associate different forms with different orders, oaths and domains.

Speculations & predictions

This hints that deities are actually real, though here is the fun part. You may have noticed that some concepts or orders, are surprisingly similar to each other. In fact, according to this theory, they might be provably indistinguishably similar. That is, if I give you some power for your actions, there is no way for you to tell, with certainty, that it was me who gave you that power. This leads to some meta-theories such as combining multiple deities into one. Example theologians tend to give is various versions of god of courage - though what is interesting that the way this courage is defined is different for most cultures.

There is also somewhat dual issue - sometimes orders for the same deity contradict each other. In such case it is more plausible that we are actually talking about two distinct entities, which humans just mangled into one for cultural or historical reasons.

Indeed these theories are somewhat intriguing and I invite you to take Theology class if you find it interesting.

Caveats

I think it is unfair to criticize this model for not modelling thing outside the divine magic. It was never meant to model such things!

However, which is way more serious is the number one theology question: Why do humans have so many gods? Elves only have one. Dwarves only have one. Even Orcs only have one! It is not clear what happened and this is the Philosopher's stone for theologians. So if you find the answer, be sure to share!

Another slightly related problem (although I suppose it is more of a theological matter) is that Elven god is positive in tone (think of this as good guys of most pantheons). However, both Dwarven and Orcish gods are more pessimistic in tone (similarly to Lynxian Pantheon).

Master source theory

This model is completely orthogonal to weave theory. The core idea is that magic always comes from some source. This source can be an item, or simply be a part of you - as is the case with sorcerers.

Effectively, there are different flavours of source, each is applicable to different spells. Most things do have some source potential, even the most mundane items, though they do usually have pretty limited flavours.

Speculations & predictions

• Source friendly biology - Elves are darn good at magic, generally speaking. It is arguable whether this is just due to their culture, or is whether biology has something to do with it. This model provides means (and suggests it is more probable) that the later is true.

• Material components - Some spells require some ingredients to be cast properly. Sometimes source model predicts that some spells cannot be cast without some ingredient (when it can be!), or sometimes just adds an ingredient out of the blue. Usually we would consider it as error, but when you actually try doing the spell with the predicted ingredient, it is way easier - in weave theory terms less flux is generated. While weave theory can (borderline) explain this behaviour, it definitely is not so fine-grained to predict which ingredients can cause this.

• Arcane foci and material interchangeability - Some mages prefer to swap some ingredients with arcane focus. Clerics do the same thing with Holy symbol. Essentially, if you get something that has enough (and correct) source in it, you can use it place of anything else with similar kind of source (but less of it). This also means you can swap some materials around if you are careful (see the infamous pea vs bean talks).

• Master source - also known as Philosopher's stone. This model allows for an existence of an object, whose source can be used in place of any other object. This would be hugely useful as so many experiments and spells are predicted to be doable but just do not have the components for them. The down-side is that this master source will likely be consumed on usage, so we only will have one-shot. If you happen to be the one to use it - chose wisely, please (you really do not want to use as ID pearl!)

• Finite source - In this model, spells consume the source. You can see that when spell just consumes the material, but when it does not, it usually means that the object just has more of that kind of source than needed. However, here is way more grim idea. You see, there is only finite amount of stuff in this world (probably). And all magic must come from some source. And that source is consumed on usage... So... eventually, we might run out of magic... which is not cool, so kids, learn to cast spells efficiently and save the planet (or delay its inevitable end)!

Caveats

• Magics and usage - while source magic is super useful when doing component based stuff, it is next to useless (or downright wrong) when predicting how to cast those spells, how to make them more efficient, or even whether a new spell is possible or not.

• Divine magic - It is not clear where does divine magic comes from in this model, so the usual scapegoat is the Holy symbol. This clearly breaks down when you see a cleric casting spells without a Holy Symbol, which happens, it is just rare.

• Unsound and incomplete - There are formal properties of a model, which are beyond the scope of this lecture. In short, not everything can be predicted and sometimes when you predict something, it is wrong.

Natural law theory

In this model, we think of magic as a law of the universe, similarly to force or heat.

It is more of a meta-theory rather than actual theory, as it just describe what the model should be, rather than providing one. Thus, this model does not contradict with any other models in its explanations.

Codex conjecture

Somewhat tangent to this idea are codices. Historical records sometimes mention so-called codices. We have no primary sources on this, only ternary at best, so many historians believe its just a myth.

However, these codices are supposed to be all-powerful books, and they bind the laws of universe within themselves. They govern how magic behaves, how life can be given and taken, or some talk even talk about how time passes. You can see that having a book that just flat tells you whether you are right is quite cool. In addition, they are supposed to be packed with powers, so ... that is also a neat bonus.

Extended true-naming hypothesis

Provision for true-naming as no other method does a decent job for it. It neatly explains why verbal components are needed for nearly every spell.

Effectively, it suggests you are invoking true names of forces, objects or entities and universe obeys.

It is pretty accurate for verbal components, true-naming and divination magics, but suffers greatly in other departments. It is a quasi-complement to weave theory. In practice, we only use it when weave theory fails.

Tasha’s bargain conjecture

Somewhat wild paper published by Senior Dragonlight researcher Cornellius (even by her standards). While no one truly believes this model (not even Tasha herself), it serves as more of a challenge for the rest of us to disprove it.

Bargain theory assumes that magic is an entity. While this may sound way more weird to you now, consider that Elves believe that weave is just manifestation of their god Lau, so the idea itself is not novel.

What is novel though, is that magic is cast by bargaining with this entity - either by chanting its songs (e.g. verbal components), providing sacrifices to it (e.g. material components), or using multiple people to plea together (e.g. elven rituals) ... the list goes on. What is fascinating that it neatly predicts the inconsistencies, which we (at the moment) believe are just measurement errors.

While this model does not have much predicting capabilities, but once you have enough variables, you can sort of check your workings backwards.

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Thank you very much for you attention, and see you on my next lecture. Good bye!