The Realm of Magic

Magic is a fascinating topic, yet I often find a mismatch between the system and those using it: mages using witchcraft, wizards practicing sorcery, sorcerers pondering the mage’s orb, and witches casting fireball. Put bluntly, it seems rather obvious, yet that can get buried in plot and prose. Readers may struggle to articulate it; they do feel it when a magic system doesn’t match the titles being used. I believe this has less to do with how ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ the magic truly is but rather one of how the magic looks and how that aesthetic affects the world.

To highlight this, take the four casters I mentioned: Mage, Wizard, Sorcerer, and Witch; jot down a few notes about each one. Focus on what makes them different, and what they all share; bonus points if you complete the four-circle Venn diagram. There’s a lot more to find in it.

My breakdown of these terms collectively is that they all have access to magic power, get stronger with experience, and can generally ‘do it all’ if in different ways. In different ways being the key part of that.

The wizard I see as the magical scientist, taking very detailed and deep notes, running experiments to see if that is how the magic works. This means the wizard is the poster child for ‘hard’ magic systems. So is the witch, yet the witch doesn’t have a laboratory. No; the witch has a kitchen, a garden, quite possibly a forest. For the witch also works with ‘hard’ magic but with a more backwoods ecologist aesthetic. Using plants, animals, and the like to make the magic work, without them it won’t. Mages on the other hand fall into the ‘soft’ magic camp. Often having their work misattributed to wizards due to the ever famous, “A wizard did it!” No that was a mage. Sorcerers are mages with better presentation and a focus. No sorcerer would be caught doing general magic after all. No, they are the apex of their chosen aspect.

How do those descriptions align with yours? I suspect they aren’t too far off. The biggest difference I expect to see would be the flipping of wizard and mage. If you have something uniquely different let me know in the comments I’d be interested in seeing it. Now that I’ve baited the comments section; how would a world of only one of those casters feel if they were called one of the others? Say the scientific magic of the wizards being attributed to sorcerers, or a more nature based magic connected to wizards?

It wouldn’t quite fit; even in the words of fiction aesthetics carry weight. I’ve seen it floating around that Art Deco is the style of Dwarves and Art Nouveau is the style of Elves. I think it works, despite these two near antiquity styles having nothing to do with fictional races, especially in the modern context. Why would worldbuilders and fantasy thinkers care about that kind of connection for races yet ignore magic as a whole? Especially when magic often shapes the world and those who live in it.

Pulling from my own worldbuilding; I have two magics within Slonminma: Davlagia, and Flisamiga. Davlagia fictionally translates to “the power left to us by the divine” while Flisamiga would translate to “power from the corruptor”. The corruptor in this case being the source of all evil. That alone gives a sense of the flavor, and how the two systems shape the world. There is more to it. Flisamiga is a ‘useful evil’ as it is easy to use, easy to store and move sources of power, and thus the lifeblood of industry and trade the world over. It isn’t that Davlagia can’t power factories or trains, it is that the required draw from the land and nature makes it often impractical. Hopefully, this small example can highlight how the cultures think, adapt, how the cities function, and how it all meshes together.

Thus I will close with the assertion, the realm of magic isn’t how hard or soft it is. Nor how one decides to use it in a story. Rather it is the aesthetic, cultural language, and tool used by those in the world to form and shape it and the stories that come from it. Or more simply, Magic isn’t just a set of rules, it’s atmosphere, language and a lens. It deserves to match the world that it powers.

If “The Realm of Magic” sparked ideas for your worlds, ponder sharing it with fellow creators. Your support fuels the Gazette’s mission to spark communities like the one that shaped it. As this is the first of a series give it a like if you want it to stick round.