Magic Theory
By Peter Brink (All Rights Reserved)
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Magic is knowledge and knowledge is power. To understand how a magician does magic we must seek to understand they way in which they believe the world around us work. As most other intellectuals in the world, magicians think of the universe as made up of several layers, zones, levels, planes, or worlds. These planes can be visualized as a series of spheres being related to each other in the same way as are the layers of an onion.
Most scholars of the arcane and the supernatu-ral, as well as religious officials agree that there are seven planes all in all. The sphere in which man-kind lives is called the material sphere or even more commonly - the material world, some also use the terms “middle world”, “middle earth”, and “mun-dane world”. This is the only sphere a mortal being can be aware of and perceive without the aid of magic or supernatural beings.
Beyond the material world lies the underworld, this is the realm of dark powers, evil fairies and goblins, but also the realm of the dwarves. Even further beyond lays the realm of the dead where the spirits of the dead wait to be reborn.
Outside the material world lies “the land on the other side”, the otherworld or the fairy realm. In these realms the primal powers vision of the crea-tion lingers, every being and object here are closer to its true nature than the beings and objects of the material world are. Here roam fairies, heroes of old and spirits of various kinds.
If one travels even further outside from the oth-erworld one reaches the true world, where every-thing is true to itself. Here is found all true knowl-edge, all primal energies and powers. This is the soul of the universe, the essence of its idea. In the true world a beings or objects true nature is plain for all to see, there can be no doubt about some-thing’s purpose or nature. Theists believe that the gods live here, each in his or hers own realm, and because of this the true world is also commonly called “the 333 heavens”.
Outside the true world lies the Finiteness, the Skin of the Universe, the membrane which sepa-rates chaos from order. The Finiteness keeps the universe together and separates it from the other universes in the multiverse. Outside the Finiteness lies the infinity where the Creator dwells. While the Finiteness protects creation from being burst asun-der by the infinity it also prevents creation from growing infinitely.
In the middle of the universe lies the Innermost World, here is nothing, whatever comes here be-comes one with nothing, and cease to be. The num-ber zero is strongly connected with the Innermost World. In the Innermost World lies much power but the magician who tries to use this power must tread very carefully, because of Nothing is let loose everything will be void. Without nothingness the sum of the creation could not be kept constant. Finiteness and nothingness must exist less the uni-verse cease to be.
A magician can learn to manipulate the beings and objects in the other worlds, most commonly magicians learn to create a link to a object in the true world and by using the powers of that object they can manipulate real objects in the material world.
All entities in the universe are made up of several tightly integrated components. The overwhelming majority of all magicians believe, as do most other people in the world, that all entities are made up of three parts: body, spirit and soul. They also believe that there are many different kinds of entities and that the primary difference between these entities is just how big a part of their essence that is made up by the body, the spirit and the soul. The magic power of an entity depends on its mix of body, spirit and soul. Entities who are made up almost exclusively by a body, such as stones, have very little magic power, while beings who’s soul makes up the major part of their being are very powerful indeed.
Some of the more esoteric magic schools have re-fined the theory about the three parts of the being and developed the theory about the Seven Guises of the Essence. These seven guises of the essence cor-respond to the seven worlds of the universe.
According to this theory the body corresponds to the material world. The spirit lives in the fifth guise, corresponding to the otherworld, here dwell dreams, love, goodness and positive thinking.
Within the soul lies the secrets of life and the soul is the sixth guise. Probing the soul of an entity reveals the truth about its nature and gives the ma-gician the power to control the being. As the body needs its skin, so does the entity need a skin to hold all its parts together, this skin is the seventh guise - the finiteness.
The feelings and emotions of an entity reside in the third guise, the one which corresponds with the underworld. All the secrets of a being, all memories from previous lives are hidden in the second guise. Finally, at the very heart of a being lie nothingness, emptiness and the non-being.
Most major schools or traditions of magic as well as most cults have theories, practises or tenets who are more or less similar to the Seven Guises of the Essence. Shamans visualise the ritual of discorpora-tion as a process in which one travels outward to-ward ones own spirit. Death magicians (necromancers) know that all humans carry fragments of their previous lives with them, etc.
Magic is thus created when a magician opens a link to the true object which corresponds to the entity the magician desires to control or affect. Magic can also be done by probing the secrets of an entity and using those to control it. But the magician does not have complete control over the magic he has brought fort, sometimes spells work in unexpected ways - why is this?
There is a philosophical “law” or perhaps more properly a postulate which states that a creator has power and control over his creation, but also that only the Creator has infinite knowledge and be-cause of this only the Creator has complete control and power over his creations. All other beings in the universe are incomplete and lack infinite knowledge. Only by learning the true nature of a thing can an entity gain more knowledge and more power. Thus a magician can never completely con-trol his own magics, not even divine magic always work.
Some magicians believe that the body shrouds their ability to perceive the true nature of things, by living ascetic lives and forsaking the body its influ-ence on the spirit can be reduced and the being can see the true nature of things more clearly.
Since man, because of his body, can only see a shadow of the true nature of things his power over his magical creations will never become more than a shadow of the power a god has over his creations. Fairies which due to their nature have less body and more spirit can see things more clearly and as a result fairies have greater magical powers than men.
A magician must struggle all his life to achieve and maintain an intuitive feeling for the flow of energies that pours from the true sphere, passing thru the magician, into the material world. It is when an magician fails to adapt to the variations that exists in this flow that the most dramatic magi-cal accidents occur.
Priests and other theists give names and person-ality to the forces of the true world and call them gods. It is true that the true objects can have a will of their own, but it is also true that a sorcerer can communicate with these entities and learn more about their true nature. A sorcerer can, as opposed to a priest, learn to control and manipulate these entities so that they will lend him some of their power so that the sorcerer can have power in the material world. From viewpoint of the priesthoods the sorcerer is a parasite who steals some of the power of the gods to use as they see fit.
