Thaumaturgy

Thaumaturgy Is a style of magicplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigMagic

In common terms, magic is the art of producing a desired outcome through occult means. Various arts are described as magical, from common street illusionists, village herbalists, and rituals for the intercession of deities. However, true magic is the art and science of elemental mastery, harnessing elemental creatures and instructing them to perform simple or complex tasks., codified and practiced by the Rasian Academy. Thaumaturgy and magic are terms often used interchangeably.

Thaumaturgy means “work using thaumic energy”, also called Elemental Mastery, Elementalism or Magistryplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigMagister

Magister is a term in the Anrel Isles for a thaumaturges, or full practitioners of magic. More specifically, magisters are thaumaturges of the Rasian Academy with the ability to summon, bind and instruct elementals on their own, with no assistance from others. Sorcerors are practitioners with the skill and knowledge to instruct elementals, but without the ability to summon and bind them.magic, is the art of harnessing the power of elementals to carry out tasks, particularly those it would be difficult or impossible to achieve by conventional means.

Although the term can be used to describe any formal style of magicplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigMagic styles

Throughout history there have been a number of styles of magic, including spoken and gestural languages used to communicate with silfs, and magic scripts used to record those languages, often surrounded by the paraphernalia of costume and ritual with which some societies dressed up otherwise simple thaumaturgy.magicmagicmagicmagicMiyarris, today it specifically refers to magic as practiced by the Rasian Academy.

In ancient Miyarris it was called e'ahko-e'ahpf, “the working of wonders”.

Put simply, magic requires four steps: summoning an elemental, persuading it to accept instructions, telling it a set of instructions, and ordering the elemental to carry the instructions out.

Elementals have a simple method of communicating with each other using tones and frequencies, forming a primitive languageplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigLanguages

List of human languages and dialects, contemporary and extinct.

Language

language

This is in a series of articles about Languages and Communication.

topics sidebar cult1 called Erida. It is possible to emulate these frequencies using human speech, usually by repeating specific phases, or sometimes chanting or singing.

Capturing the attention of an elemental and persuading it to accept commands is called imprinting. This ability relies on not just skills and knowledge, but also the willpower and presence of the practioner. Some people are naturally gifted at imprinting, while others may study for years and fail to be able to imprint a wild elemental.

Those with the ability to imprint elementals are called magisters. Those without the ability to imprint can still perform magic, but they need a magister to bind an elemental to them first. Magicians without imprinting ability are called sorcerors.

Once the elemental is under control, the thaumaturge gives the elemental a set of verbal instructions. Instructions need to be precise, concise and specific, using the language and logic of the elemental.

Sets of instructions can be incredibly lengthy and complex, so they are usually written in advance. Few magicians can invent instructions on the fly. Most rely either on written notes, or on books written by others.

Elementals are not sentient and do not naturally live in the physical world, so even basic concepts need to be described. For example, to pick up a cup from a table, the elemental must first be told to form the equivalent of a physical hand and ground it either on the floor or table. Next the elemental must locate and identify the required object, move the hand towards it, close the hand around the cup hard enough to grip but not shatter the object, move the cup upwards, etc.

Instruction sets almost always began with a trigger, saying “when this happens, execute the following instructions”.

A common trigger was the magician uttering a key word. This meant that instructions could be prepared in advance, and triggered on demand by the magician. For example, the magician could prepare a magical shield, which protects them from harm when the magician says the trigger aloud.

Or it could be a physical event, such as “unleash fire when an intruder crosses this threshold”.

In ancient times such instructions had to be given every single time the practitioner wanted to do something with magic. Consequently, ancient magic styles involved groups of magicians who would take hours to recite lines of instruction, and magic was only used for the most complex and serious tasks.

Throughout history, a variety of shortcuts have been developed which make magic more practical. In Taigan magicplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigTaigan Magic

Taigan Magic was a highly ritualised style of elemental magic in the High Iskean culture of Traste during the Jade Epoch. Little is known of its formal practice, but its masters were highly praised and awarded rich gifts of cloth and treasures for their services.

Magic

magicmagic, lengthy instructions were impressed on metal discs or wheels. The thaumaturge merely needed to summon the elemental, recite a short set of instructions telling it how to read and convert symbols into instructions it could understand, and then show it a wheel. This made magical instructions relatively quick and simple to repeat.

In traditional magic, once a summoned elemental has completed its task, it is dispelled and released back to the ether. In modern Rasian-style thaumaturgy, practitioners early in their career summon a single silf, and use a lengthy imprinting process to permanently bind it to themselves. They teach it the text of all their required spells, and give it the ability to summon other elementals and pass them instructions. These bound elementals are called their prime source, primus or familiar. This innovation means thaumaturges only need to do the lengthy instruction process once, and their primus will remember it for ever. There is a physical limit to the amount of instructions a prime source can hold, but bound elementals can grow larger over time than their natural size limits, meaning the number of spells a thaumaturge can hold in their arsenal grows with time.

According to the famed magister Belikast, “it is not possible to raise the dead, turn water to wine nor change the human heart”. Thaumaturgy is a subtle art with infinite applications, but it is still limited by what is physically possible.

• Knowledge - the greatest limitation is the knowledge and experience of the thaumaturge, who must be well versed both in thaumaturgical practice and the natural sciences, and understand precisely how an affect can be achieved. An example of this is weatherworking, which requires a sophisticated knowledge of how weather physically works to divert winds or make it rain. To some extent this is mitigated by sequents, sets of predefined instruction used as tools to achieve a specific outcome, which practitioners can use with minimal understanding of how they actually work.
• Ability - no matter how much learning a person has, not everyone has the strength of will necessary to imprint and bind an elemental. Some also lose this ability following injury or with advancing age. Thaumaturges also have limits on the number of elementals they can harness at any one time, which limits their magical ability.
• Physical limits - it is not possible to use magic to change the size of things, or transmute objects from one to another, other than what could be achievable by chemical or physical processes. However, magic does allow practicioners to form physical transformations which would otherwise be extremely difficult or hazardous given the limitations of available technology.
• Energy limits - individual elementals have a limited amount of energy in their physical body. A thaumaturge may summon numerous elementals, but there is a limit to the number they can reliably control at once.
• Mental Manipulation - it is not normally possible to read thoughts, manipulate dreams, induce love, tamper with memory or change the innate nature of a human's character. In history some thaumaturges used forbidden arts to stimulate areas of the brain, inducing states of euphoria, fear or pain, but this is crude, dangerous and unreliable, and is considered malefaction, the criminal misuse of magic.
• Line of sight - thaumaturges must be able to clearly see the target or object being effected, so line of sight is often a limitation. This can be extended by using farsight, which allows thaumaturges to view remote places. It can also be helped by the thaumaturge previously associating keywords with a particular place, person or object.
• Time - it is not possible to travel in time or change time. Theoreticians proposed the possibility of slowing time within a small space, though it is uncertain whether this have ever been achieved.
• Death - although it is sometimes possible to revive the near-dead, it is not possible to bring back the truly deceased. Dreikmen, often cited as an exception to this, are merely corpses animated by kinesis.
• Malefaction - It is forbidden to use magic to violate a human body, such as pinching arteries to cause unconsciousness and death, to introduce toxins, or cause other bodily trauma. In warfare or self defence it is permitted to use external physical assault, using heat, remotely controlled weapons or blunt force assault.

Thaumaturges have always been subject to the law, and the Rasian Academy deals harshly with those who abuse their gifts by using it to steal, cheat, manipulate or harm others. The Initiant Oath contains a solemn vow to uphold the principles of the Academy, and the law of the land. During the time of the Magisteriate, many disciplines were effectively banned, because the skills they provided were considered open to abuse. Latterly, the Magisteriate “collared” the primus of all magisters, with cantrips preventing them from harming other human beings.