Magic in Fiction and Reality

Anairos

For me, as a person studying the history of religion and occultism, the way "magic" is described in fantasy and similar genres of fiction literature sounds totally implausible. The authors of such books have no idea of what magic used to mean for Pagan peoples of ancient times.

In fiction, "magic" exists mostly for creating a specific atmosphere, just to show: you aren't in Kansas anymore. It does not matter much if the plot takes place in another world or just something from another world has come to ours; anyway, the things are totally different now.

However, in reality magic was a part of people's everyday life, and they used it even for their most ordinary issues. Take the Ancient Greek tablets of curses for example. When you bet on chariot races, you curse the opposing team, including all its horses. If a girl doesn't reciprocate your feelings, you write a love spell on her. If somebody has stolen your mantle, you curse him and call all the wrath of Hades on him. And so on.

All the examples above are real, excavated by archaeologists.

Yes, more advanced and complicated occult practices existed as well. There were rites for spiritual travel to heavens and listening to the gods in order to learn their wisdom or to influence your afterlife. Such practices aimed to turn you into something more than an ordinary human. But they were quite rare; in most cases, magic was used for everyday tasks, as said before.

Also, in fiction, mage is a profession in itself. Different sorcerers can specialize in, for example, healing, or battle magic, etc., but they are doing only magic and nothing else.

In reality, it was almost never so. Specialized magic was a skill of the respective non-magical profession. Those who were doing it identified themselves as smiths, medics, scribes, jewellers and so on, not as mages. Scribes, besides their usual business, wrote those tablets of curses. Jewellers made also talismans. Temple priests performed special rituals just for you for some extra price. Medicine separated from magic finally only in the 18th century; before that time, doctors cured with spells and prayers in addition to drugs.

Seemingly, among really existing professions, priests were the one that was the closest to those fantasy mages. People viewed them as having a special connection to the gods and were ready to pay for private rituals. Even Christian priests were perceived this way. The council of Laodicea in the 4th century specially prohibited for church priests to make spells and talismans; this is the evidence of how common it was then.

And, the last but not the least: what is actually magic, what is its nature?

The fantasy writers often describe mages as masters of a single aspect of reality: there can be water or fire mages, or mages of animals and birds. Another version treats magic as a special force or energy that the mages can steer. This can also lead to magical specializations: battle mages, healers, and so on.

Such description of magic as a special force of nature has some traditional roots. But the things are more complicated than the fiction authors see them.

The Polynesian word "mana" is actually a verb with the meaning "to act", or "to be effective". It can be applied to, for example, impressive natural phenomena, such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, etc.. But it also attributes to mighty people: not only mages, but also chieftains, warriors, or just rich men. In the modern Maori language the word "mana" means also "state sovereignty". So, even for a mage, mana is not a force that he uses, but his personal qualities that make him a mage.

The Chinese have a similar concept of "qi"; they describe magic as a product of qi actions. However, they apply the same concept to medicine, martial arts, and even to state leadership. For the Chinese philosophy it's just a language to describe everything, like mathematics is for natural sciences. The idea of qi does not explain what you need to do practically.

In practice, success of magical actions depends on your relationships with the Other Side of reality. Only those there, who know you and like you, will listen to your desires. The art of magic is therefore something in between local knowledge and etiquette: the understanding of where to go, and whom and how to address there.

A mage does not try to feel any kind of energies. He just goes to the place where the force, whose help he needs, resides and does his best to become welcomed there.

Gods are present in their temples, depictions and sacred places. Chthonic forces are better addressed from somewhere underground. Heavenly forces will hear you better if you climb a mountain or a tree. At night, crossroads and cemeteries become the places where forces of the void reign, which are dangerous for people but sometimes useful.

A human too can become such a source of force by making appropriate relationships with that force. A shaman and an obsessed one stand at the border of the ordinary reality. A common person needs much effort to get heard on the Other Side, while they need just to turn their look to there. Sometimes they get visitors from there, and those visitors aren't always the ones they would welcome.

This does not mean that they can do their magical job without the magic proper. Their special relationships with the force just simplify their work, but also set higher requirements for the knowledge and etiquette. A wrong move of a common person can just go ignored, but your special relationships with the force draw also a special attention to you...

Notice that the fantasy and other fiction writers rarely can even imagine the magic that looks any similar to this.

Translated by Milchar