- Munroe wrote:
- For whatever reason, I've had magic on my mind a lot, because I'm really bugged by my inability (and seemingly everyone else's inability) to define what magic actually is. Oh, sure, there's this thread, which some of this is based on, but even that stops short of a clear answer (or maybe I just skimmed over it). Anyways, here's what I wrote, I hope it gets you all thinking.
Aeria is a world of people and animals, words and actions, matter and light. But there is also the curious phenomenon of magic.
Its observable effects are quite clear. Magic manifests as tangible effects from an intangible source. In short, thought shaping reality. Is magic a physical phenomenon, or can it be free of causality?
Perhaps, perhaps not.
Let us start with the world itself, from a purely empirical perspective. It exists as a physical system wherein, according to physical laws, interactions take place. Every object within it is the product of a chain of cause and effect. For example, a cart might roll along a road without anyone pushing it. Yet it is assumed that something must have pushed it, a gust of wind perhaps, or gravity pulling it down an imperceptible incline. When magic is introduced, however, things become muddled.
Suppose the cart were pushed by a spell. A force is manifested in the direction of the cart's apparent motion, without anything behind it except the magic itself. So the question then becomes, if magic is producing a force, how does it do this? There is seemingly no physical explanation, no measurable effects other than the cart's motion. But because the magic is affecting a physical object, it must be a physical phenomenon. This can be extended to a wide variety of spells, which revolve around producing physical effects (fire, ice, lightning, and so forth), moving objects (teleportation, telekinesis, force barriers), and tampering with complex systems (weather control, hydrokinesis, and perhaps even mind control).
If magic is a physical phenomenon, then where does it fit into the physical world? To go back to the cart example, let us follow the chain of cause and effect. The effect is the cart's movement. The cause is the magic spell. The spell is caused by a mage. The mage is a physical person. Therefore, all the spell is is one physical object interacting with another. Without the mage, the magic can do nothing. Right?
It is more complicated than that. Magic can spontaneously appear, producing any number of bizarre effects. It does not always answer to a mage, and when it does, not always as the mage intends. Furthermore, moving the cart with magic is not the same as a mage pushing it himself. The latter requires strenuous physical effort, the former, only a brief mental exercise. Even so, there are upper limits to what every mage can do. All of these properties suggest the energy is coming from somewhere, but that somewhere is not immediately recognizable.
In comes the Weave, a world-spanning network of connections transporting energy in complex yet theoretically predictable patterns. It is said to be the soul of the God Mystryl. It begins to make sense that the Weave has the energy for spellcasting - it taps into the energy reserves of a massive and powerful entity. But how is it Mystryl never grows tired as a man might pulling a cart? What does it mean, to have an immortal soul?
Understanding the infinite is not something mortal men are equipped with, but a familiar story comes to mind. There is a stone, solid granite, a mile high and three miles wide. Every thousand years, a small bird sharpens its beak on this rock, and this is the only wear it ever receives. When it is worn away completely, one day of eternity will have passed.
Even this story can not convey the depth of infinity. Because, once more, we are not equipped to understand it. Infinity is perhaps more like a single moment in which everything happens at once. It transcends time, and therefore cause and effect. To tie this into magic and souls, an infinite quantity of energy would mean the end of need and the beginning of eternal life, or an endlessly reliable means of performing silly tricks once in a while.
There is another explanation for magic, one perhaps less... exotic. It is said that the mind's eye sees all. Everything that is real, and everything that is, for lack of a better phrase, not. But what does it mean, if something is real? That you can see it? Touch it? Measure it?
Suppose you see a cart moving along a road for no apparent reason other than someone nearby waved his hands whilst muttering some incantation. You feel the cart, finding it to be solid and heavy. You measure that its position has changed, and rule out any possible physical phenomenon. These observations would force you to acknowledge that magic, a supernatural force, has acted on the cart. But they are based on your senses, your mind's only link to the outside world.
It is easy to imagine the impossible. Flying through the air with no wings, fantastical creatures that never did and never could live, and mystical forces which can not be explained empirically. These forces might even follow rules, much like any physical system, and have constraints. Perhaps they do not.
Now, translate this to a world such as Aeria, wherein such things are not only possible, but commonplace. If Aeria were viewed through the mind's eye, any confusion over the nature of these occurrences disappear. For each of these scenarios would not be real in the strictest sense, but the imaginings of someone's mind. Of your own mind, of my mind, of a God's mind. And the imagination is the gateway to the impossible.
That this might be true, and there is no way to know for certain, is no doubt a troubling thought. But perhaps it troubles us because our view of reality is so narrow. What distinction can there be made between a world that is every bit like our own, except in the mind of a deity, and a world that exists on its own? It is simpler to ignore the godly mind as an extraneous detail, even though it can never truly be ruled out - in many respects, our world, indeed our very existence, is tautological. The cart moving on its own.
- Munroe wrote:
- Going by what I gleaned from this, it does make sense that Aeria is an entirely imagined realm, each "will" being a unit of an idea, and the "muddled grey" representing all possibility, all wills, all ideas and all of these imagined realities. And, from a meta point of view, technically Aeria is one of these possible imagined realities which exists in our brains, pulled from the "muddled grey" of nonbeing into a defined shape. And if you really want your head to explode, combine this idea with the many worlds theorem, and each universe becomes a possible imagined reality inside of an unfathomably large mind, a mind which contains all possible ideas.
Is such a thing even possible?
...Yes it is
