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All magic has been arranged, or I should say fractured, into seven fields of study, or "spheres". No matter how knowledgeable a person may become in any one sphere, so long as he knows only that sphere, he will have only a paltry conception of magic as a whole. Sadly, it is in exactly such a manner as this that most practitioners stumble through their magical training. It is for the purpose of correcting this pedagogical error that I am writing this.
I first grew into my magical ability through the study of Cabala. My teachers were myopic and their knowledge meager. I learnt much of my sphere, but little, if anything, of magic. It is not until I studied under the great Zosimus Hearthstone, master of all spheres, that I began to have any conception of exactly what art I was practising; he gave me my first glimpse of what magic really is. I would like to here share this knowledge, and hopefully assist some whose knowledge is still, as mine once was, bounded by a single sphere.
I will start with a description of each individual sphere, since it is an undeniable fact there are some spheres of which practitioners of magic lack even the most basic of knowledge. I'll then proceed to an description of how the spheres inter-relate, and how knowledge of any one sphere only is really no knowledge of magic at all.
All things have Spirit, or Essence, which governs their actions and determines their being. An Animist-Mage is able to harness that spirit, to control it and manipulate it to his advantage. It is proper to speak of living things, from the amoeba to the tree to the man, as having spirits, and inanimate things of any variety, as having Essence. It is unknown, though a topic of much debate, whether immaterial things, forces, for example, have spirits; it seems unlikely, or at least, the path leading to these spirits is unknown to even the most powerful Mages of this sphere.
An Animist-Mage respects all life (there are, of course, exceptions to every rule), because all spirits are equal (in their own spiritual way). Spirits are alive, Essence is not. Spirits are composed of Essence, in much the same way as living beings are composed of un-living atoms and molecules. A quick distinction: Spirit (majuscule 'S', no article) refers to the Essence of living things, it is, in a word, the animating force, while a spirit (miniscule 's', article) refers to the actual living Spiritual creature which resides in and governs each material creature; so, we could say, spirits are composed of Spirit. Animism deals almost entirely with Spirit and spirits, rather than Essence; indeed, there is disagreement on the nature, and even the very existence, of Essence.
In real world jargon, the Kabbal is specifically a Jewish sect which practices mysticism; more loosely, a cabal is any group which practices mysticism; and more loosely still, any tightly knit, clandestine group. In this game, Cabbala is set apart from the other spheres by its emphasis on ritual and proper form. Cabbala magic seems to be regarded by its devotees, not as miraculous, but as the natural consequence of the ritual or process which conjures it. Cabbalists are the only mages who ever claim that magic could be caused by physical, rather than spiritual, reactions, and that Spirit could well possess a tactile reality.
Many agree that Cabbala has decidedly non-human origins; most point to demons and the like as its probable originators. Certainly, Cabbala is the sphere which has the most direct interaction with the infernal. The summoning and warding of demons, while restricted to the higher levels, is one of Cabbala's more direct applications. Aside from that, Cabbalists tends to favour subtle, non-combative magic. This works well with the lengthy, drawn-out processes required by most of its spells. Cabbalists themselves have very little understanding of how their spells actually manage to have affect on the world. Many systems to show what reactions are actually occurring have been devised, but few even among their creators lend them any sort of real credence. The most common explanation is that it is not the Cabbalists themselves who effect the magic, but rather, that by their actions and rituals they are arousing, or invoking, some outside force (learned Cabbalists tend to call this the primum mobile force; most others just label it demonic intervention, and give the Cabbalists a wide berth).
Few have the patience, or skill, necessary to become proficient at Cabbala. It is the most taxing of all the spheres, emphasizing discipline over genius; it is the most esoteric of all the spheres, and it is very difficult to make inroads in it without some formal schooling. It is also the least philosophically inclined; Cabbala is seen by its adherents as a means to an end, and as such the system itself espouses no particular set of beliefs, though many of its sects, or Cabbals, will often wed their own spiritual and philosophical beliefs to the practices of Cabbala.
The Chaos, or Natural, magician believes that all things are inherently magical. Magic, to him, is dynamism, potential, and possibility. All things, even those which are completely inexplicable in logical terms, are possible. What is required is making that which is merely possible probable.
Chaos magic is a sort of magical understanding of what we now refer to as chaos mechanics. In a complex system, a small, even unidentifiable, change can produce unforeseeable and spectacular consequences. The Chaos magician can control this apparent instability and bend reality to his will. In a sense, a Chaos magician finds the loose threads of reality, and simply pulls.
It is important to realize that the actual causative magic the Chaos magician employs is very minor. Most of his work goes into understanding the system which is to be manipulated. Aside from the small triggering magic, everything which ensues from the magician's spell is completely explicable in mundane, scientific terms. It's often therefore seen as the most unmagical of spheres, and its magicians are often disparagingly referred to as "statisticians".
Sometimes Chaos magic has no direct effect; its only purpose is to manipulate the probability of certain outcomes. While it is the most "reality-bound" of all the spheres, it is also because of that the most subtle.
Metempsychosis is likely the most difficult sphere to understand. It is, by definition, the most abstract and least concrete, for it is the sphere of abstraction. It deals with the creations of our own minds; our thoughts, archetypes, mentalities, and dreams.
Metempsychosis is, without a doubt, the most recently harnessed of all the spheres; but despite that, there has been more written about it than about all the other spheres combined. This is because it is the most scholarly sphere, the sphere which most lends itself to classification and study. Since the time of the Lycaeum, at the very latest, Metempsychosis has been formally studied and catalogued, by students and masters calling themselves "dormitatores vigiles", or Waking Dreamers (though they are more commonly, and more disparagingly, simply called "Scholastics" by those students of the less formalized spheres). The Dreamers have developed most of the vocabulary and concepts used for understanding Metempsychosis, and it is their work on which I will elaborate; but this does not nearly mean that theirs is the conclusive view of the subject.
There is a place to which all men's thoughts eventually go. It is called the "mondus umbrarum notionum", or the world of the shadows of thoughts (commonly called simply "the Mondus", and so I will do here). Every dream, every idea, every concept, is mirrored in the Mondus. Usually, it goes no further than this; mundane mankind is not aware of nor affected by this universe his imagination has created. The flow is only downstream. The art of the Dreamer, of course, is to reverse this.
The Dreamer does this through a process called "opening", or "forming".
A single, cohesive thought, idea, archetype, etc., existing in the Mondus, is technically termed an "umbra mentis", but more commonly referred to (by the less strict Scholastics, at least) as a Mondal being, or more succinctly, simply a Mondal.
Opening is the process by which a Mondal is brought into contact with an earthly, human mind. In a word, the Mondal's and the human's reality, their "mind-space", as the Dreamers call it, is conflated into one. They overlap, and the human mind begins to map itself to the Mondal's patterns, thereby taking on some of its characteristics.
This is a simplification, of course; the process is very complex. Simply locating a Mondal which meets one's specifications in the vast Mondus is profoundly difficult. Still, the gains of a sound knowledge of Metempsychosis are amazing, for it gives one the ability to manipulate the very thoughts of others. To understand Metempsychosis more fully, I highly recommend a more detailed look at the processes whereby its individual spells are enacted.
Finally, it is important to mention the existence of free-floating, or volitive, Mondals. These are Mondals which seem to possess a will and a consciousness of their own. Very, very little is known about them. A sub-set of these volitive Mondals are personal Mondals; these are Mondals whose mental faculties would seem to mirror precisely people who have actually existed in the physical world. Dreamers categorically deny that these are "ghosts" in the colloquial sense, saying rather that they are only the sum collection of all the perceptions of all men about a given person.
It is very rare, but volitive Mondals have been known to effect an opening themselves, and even to directly interact with the corporeal world.
All life is motion; at least, that is the Necromancer's definition of it. Our consciousnesses, our minds, are motion; and the vitality of our bodies, that is motion as well. When either of these motions cease, the other can no longer function and ceases as well, and this is death. The point of Necromancy, then, is to restore motion.
The initiating motion, the spark, must always come from the mind; the body is merely a conductor. Still, without that conductor, the spark will be wasted. The first step, then, is to repair the body.
The Necromancy section is not finished.
All things, no matter how disparate, are connected. You change everything with which you come into contact, just as it changes you. Invisible threads of circumstance and similarity connect you to every other thing in the universe. The Sympathetic Mage can see these connections, and exploit them.
Sympathetic Mages emphasize the unity of all things. Because all things are one, because everything is connected, all things can be affected by an action on any one thing.
According to the Sympathetic Mage, each object in the universe is bound to each other object by three ties: the tie of relationship, the tie of similarity, and the tie of experience.
The tie of relationship binds together a whole with its parts, as well as binding the parts to each other. When you join a group, the tie of relationship between you and other members of that group strengthens; you hand and your foot are bound by this tie, for they are both yours.
The tie of similarity binds together things which are similar in form, purpose, provenance, or what-have-you. This tie binds each blade of grass to each other, as well as binding the person to his image in a mirror or a portrait.
The tie of experience is a tie created by the experiences, ideas, and emotions of sentient beings. It binds a person to his lover, a man to his gold, and a family to its living-room. It is the most complex and ill-understood of all the ties, and the one most needed for the more powerful Sympathetic spells.
To affect an object, a Sympathetic Mage finds another, more accessible object, to which it is bound, and then modifies that object in a prescribed way. Every object is bound to every other by the three ties, entwined like a rope. The strength of that rope determines the strength of the magic the Mage can work. A single dry leaf thrown in the fire can set a whole forest ablaze, and a single pin in a doll can hobble a man for life, if the connection, and the Mage, is strong enough.
Many types of what may be considered magic are not covered above. Indeed, many believe that the entire idea of spheres is defunct; they argue that it is merely an unnecessary system of classification rather than representative of any sort of tangible lines along which the realms of magic may be drawn. Whether spheres are the essence of magic, or merely a system for classifying it, is, however, a question which it is not the purpose of this writing to answer. Still, a brief note on what is by some called magic, but does not fit into any of the above categories, may be useful.
Telekinesis, telepathy, pyrokinesis, and the like are not generally considered to fall under any sphere. There are spells which mimic their effects, but these powers themselves are more properly innate mental faculties than learned magical abilities. Still, some argue that the exclusion of the term 'magic' to those capacities which can be studied is false.
Faith is considered by some a type of magic; some even argue that it should be considered the eighth sphere, though both of these viewpoints would, of course, often be considered blasphemous by those who possess that Faith. Unfortunately, Faith is difficult to study because its practitioners are often, even more than jealous of its secrets, unaware of its existence; generally, they see its effects as the work of God or of gods, not of themselves (which may be valid). Still, Faith can allow for some amazing things, often things far beyond the scope of the traditional spheres. It is unknown what affect the practitioner's particular religion can have on the effect, degree, and nature of Faith magic, but thus far there does not seem to be any prevalence of Faith magic in any particular religion.
The Oriental philosophies have their own brand of magic which does not seem to submit well to the traditional organization of Occidental magic, as the Oriental has an holistic approach centred not around the individual magician and his knowledge of spells but rather on his position relative to other, exterior powers. Mages have tried, with varying degrees of success, to qualify these Oriental magicks in the Occidental sphere system, but such fits ultimately seem forced and unnatural. This leads some to speculate that the organization and realization of magic is based on regional or cultural variables, or even that it is merely a practical convention and has no parallel whatsoever in the true world of magic. While evidence to support this view is growing, it is far from accepted among most magicians, and I'll speak no more of it now.
Related Links:
Magic Mechanics § Spells § Animism § Cabbala § Chaos Magic § Metempsychosis § Necromancy § Sympathetic Magic
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