This is just you asking an armorer to make you a gun. It’s not magic and it’s not science, it’s you making a deal with the spirit. It’s BUSINESS. You hand the kami (or whatever) something it wants, and it gives you something you want (and sometimes you fuck up, actually insult the kami, and then the kami gives you something you most definitely do not want; also business).
It is magic for the shamans that ascend the spiritual ladder in order to interact with the spirits and the deities. It is magical for the assistant that pins the shaman down while he is rolling in the floor. It is magical for the people of his tribe, keeping the fire up so evil spirits can’t intervene during the process.
Look, for most ancient cultures magic is not defined by its effects. Magic is not like in Dungeons and Dragons, nor like rpg videogames. That a person knows how to make said interactions happen and derive knowledge from them already makes them a “magician”
2 Likes
@moderators shouldn’t we directly make a new topic about magic at this point?
2 Likes
And in this instance “magician” is just a subtype of “scientist”, just like “physicist”.
When you need the Moderators, don’t do that. It call ALL of them lol and they are busy napping…in unison 
Just pick one. Like say Eiwynn or someone else.
1 Like
And a person of these cultures would answer that it is in fact the contrary: the scientist and the physicist are just sub-disciplines of the magician, knowledge he adquires of the natural world from his highly unreliable magical journeys and the demons that descend to speak with him.
You are arbitrarily giving more weight to the material when in the cultures described is the unreliable, mysterious spirit the one that actually governs reality.
I actually agree completely with this, and I would place Gene Wolfe as a good example of how to make such a story too. Would love to see more sci-fantasy in the future, specially in CoGs
1 Like
Except now you’re just agreeing with the point I’ve been making: you’re not arguing for “soft” magic. If the shaman or whatever know that doing X gets them a Y result (“I drink this specific concoction, and the spirits come to have a chat”), that’s hard magic. It’s basically a telephone, and the fact that only Mystic Graham Bell knows how to make one doesn’t change that.
For the practice, it doesn’t matter if science is a sub-branch of magic or the other way around. It just matters that doing X reliably gets you Y, and if it doesn’t either you did X wrong or something’s afoot. It makes magic and science the same thing (or one is a subtype of another or whatever).
1 Like
Wait, let me get something out of the way here dude: You think “soft” magic argues in favor of utterly non-sensical, absolutely arbitrary events devoid of the most basic law of causation, purpose or even poetic sense?
If so then I am not sure what kind of “soft” magic stories have you read, because even in people like Dunsany the placement of arbitrary rules in order to get specific effects is everywhere in the narrative. In old fairy stories the idea of magical potions in order to produce love, curses that only become active after the breaking of specific taboos and omens and prophecies that can’t be avoided unless going throught a very specific ritual are also endemic.
Do you think that’s “hard” magic? Then why are we having this discussion in the first place, and why Sanderson (and authors like him) need to make lengthy posts in which he excuses his own lack of prose with unnecesary explanations about rules in fantasy? Everything is hard magic!.
3 Likes
Which, incidentally, means wizards must be knowledgeable, because that’s how Nordic magic works. (It is, in fact, pretty much science.)
Seconded. Water is marvelous substance.
Now I kinda wish I was a physicist enough to be capable of writing a book where the core idea revolves around how light is weird.
6 Likes
Yes. That’s definitely hard magic, and it’s indistinguishable from science, or a branch of it. Sanderson’s posts aren’t really about “my magic isn’t hard magic”, they’re “my magic is hard magic, but I’m not explaining the ways in which it is so.” In the past, nobody knew the reason for lightning, but those reasons still existed. Those posts of Sanderson are, metaphorically, “lightning happens for a reason, but I’m not spending time and page space explaining the why.”
Pretty much so, because actually soft magic makes for crap stories. Let’s go back to the “shaman drinks specific concoction, has a chat with spirits” example. That concoction is a specific concoction: it requires specific components, prepared in a specific way. Maybe even the shaman doesn’t know why it works, and he just got told by their predecessor. I was in 5th grade by the time I found out WHY flipping a light switch makes the light come on, but I knew it did because my parents told me so (and because, well, it does). But it does have to that specific concoction; he can’t just grab the nearest tuft of grass, boil it for five minutes, and it works just the same. And then, bam, spirit chat.
Or maybe no spirit chat. But if the shaman gets no spirit chat, then their options are “I fucked up the concoction somehow” or “something is mucking up the connection”; it’s generally the latter, because, let’s face it, “the shaman used five blades of grass instead of six” is not really going to get you anywhere near a compelling story.* At which point there’s generally a plucky hero that goes on a journey to wherever the spirits live to see what’s going on, but I digress. But these things only work because it’s hard magic and it has rules, even if we don’t know them. Otherwise, the concoction not resulting in spirit talk doesn’t get you in the characters going “I wonder what’s wrong” it results in “throw the dice again, maybe it’ll roll right this time.”
You mentioned DnD, but what you’ve been describing is EXACTLY how DnD works: heavens know the books don’t actually teach you how to cast magic missile, only that gestures are made and words are spoken and, bam, magic missile. That’s the same process as the shaman boils some herbs, drinks the result, chants something, and, bam, spirit chat (except some times it actually tells you what herbs they’re boiling and what they’re chanting, so that’s, like, twice the rules of magic than those you’re given for DnD’s fireball).
*except when that’s actually the point, and the moral of the story is that you can’t cut corners and expect the end product to be the same, or that one of people that was gathering the ingredients is a lazy bum and they’re fucking it up for the entire population and the moral of the story is don’t be a lazy bum, do your part for the group
EDIT:
Water is ABSOLUTELY BONKERS STUFF, and if it didn’t exist and someone described something like it in a sci-fi story you’d call bullshit.
4 Likes
This is where I think I disagree, though. We define, say, biology, by its limitations and biological processes as forces to be studied, but that doesn’t mean it lacks utility, or that people can’t find it wondrous - even if they understand exactly how and why it works the way it does. And I think this is at least equally true for magic. A character speaking to the dead or seeing into the future is useful and wondrous even if I as the reader have been given an explanation of how mediumship or precognition works.
8 Likes
Option C, “I guess the spirits are using Olympian gods as their role models this week”, could also be an interesting story.
2 Likes
The soft-magic you are rallying against literally doesn’t exist. Dude what you are describing or implying as “soft” magic corresponds to no example in either traditional folklore, actual, cultural magic practices or even early works of fantasy. It is, and I am sorry if it seems offensive, an strawman of what we actually mean by “soft” magic.
Furthermore, your explanation of the actions of the shaman forgets completely that in his traditional worldview the lack of results is tied not only to specific mistakes in the execution of a magical formula, not only to his posession (or lack of) special firewood that the evil, tiny spirits like so much and keep them apart from his ill patient, but also related to the individual, actual whim of the spirits, the gods, and the thousands upon thousands of free, spiritual, unknown agents that act upon the spirit world, including other magicians. His interaction is not a one-way street of processes and formulas but a conversation, an exchange between intelligent principles that rule reality and can be, quite a lot of times, whimsy and outright malicious.
And that’s somewhat the point I am also trying to make: the magician in many traditional societies deals and keeps his powers throught the actions of agents spiritual but as real as he is, and patterns of reality that are also intelligent, posses purpose, and will mess him up sooner or later. The reduction of this borderline animistic worldview to “is just science and matter and motion and formulas” seems a bit short-sighted.
2 Likes
So, they’re going around having sex with people?
But that’s because his magic isn’t actually “heal people” (or whatever). His magic is “spirit talk”, which works exactly like
This is literally how DnD magic works if you’re a cleric of a deity. Your spells are just “I ask the deity (or one of its agents, because deities have better things to do) to do X, and, presuming I didn’t royally fuck up somewhere, the deity (or its agent) does X”. It really is just like petitioning a kami (minus, generally, the geographical limitation).
3 Likes
And bickering, and being jerks, and ignoring their calls. Or maybe they could have switched to being fae instead, that would cause some unpredictable results.
3 Likes
But that’s because his magic isn’t actually “heal people” (or whatever). His magic is “spirit talk”, which works exactly like
In this case you are applying differentiations and categories that make no sense in the kind of worldviews and cultures we are describing. Healing people on itself is a process of spiritual interactions for these tribes, and as a matter of fact, everything in the “natural” world is magical in the sense that is sustained and caused by intelligent spiritual agents. They don’t see “magic” as a force that can be channeled, nor as superpowers.
This is literally how DnD magic works if you’re a cleric of a deity. Your spells are just “I ask the deity (or one of its agents, because deities have better things to do) to do X, and, presuming I didn’t royally fuck up somewhere, the deity (or its agent) does X”. It really is just like petitioning a kami (minus, generally, the geographical limitation).
Description of “not like Dungeons and Dragons” meant that the power of the magician is not defined by his capacity to conjure fireballs, but by much more subtle interactions with an invisible world. This may be a subtype of magic in ttrpgs, but for many cultures this is literally how the entire world works.
2 Likes
If it’s fae, it causes extremely predictable results, namely getting screwed, and not in a good way.
I mean, it does, in the sense that if no healing happens, that’s not “the shaman didn’t do the healing”, it’s “the shaman failed to convince the spirit to do the healing.” If it were the former, it’d always be the shaman’s fault. If the latter, it might not be.
1 Like
I was under the impression that the exact results could be decidedly less predictable, especially if you don’t know which exact entity you’re dealing with, even though the general statement of course applies. But fae aren’t my forte, so I could be wrong, of course.
In any event, this hypothetical situation wasn’t about actual fae making people miserable, it was about spirits who are not fae suddenly acting like they think they’re fae, which… would cause less predictable results, I think, especially if you’re not expecting it.
2 Likes
DnD magic is a poor example of personal/spiritual magic, though – it’s way too predictable, divinity-as-tech, insert prayer A in slot B to achieve effect C. You were closer above: magic that relies on convincing personal or quasi-personal cosmic forces to do something for you is at its core not science, it’s business or politics, a contest of wills or the art of wheedling something out of someone. The science-ish bit, e.g. how many mushrooms you pop to meet a spirit, is incidental, a necessary but not remotely sufficient part of the art.
I’m writing a magic-as-tech series myself – and I agree that science and wonder are 100% compatible – but I love mythopoeic fiction too, and definitely don’t think that the only way to write magic is as a system of rules allowing predictable technological effects. Magic (personal or impersonal) can be imagined as a point where we’re immersed in and/or grapple with the unmeasurable, unpredictable, and incalculable aspects of existence – with things inherently beyond our power to quantify or control. Trying to boil a magic system like this down to a science is like trying to do the same to aesthetics, or ethics, or mysticism; with all respect to those who’ve tried, the result is a failed reductionism.
To immerse oneself in the glorious, incomprehensible marrow of the universe is not an experience to be abandoned because it’s unsafe.
19 Likes