This blog post is different. Since I’ve releasing Book 6 of The Kingdom’s Disdain today, I decided to let one of the characters write an essay. If this is the kind of thing you like, enjoy!
–Edreimlecheth Lystoriant Chung Zeichliumef, better known as “Worm” the druidic, half-elf assassin.
Nature of Magic/Magic of Nature
Today I endeavor to write in trade-speech, even though it is a blunt instrument when compared to elvish. I will do my best not to make it sound like grunts and guttural growls.
The elves invented magic. This is a contested topic, but anyone who has lived among the elves knows it to be true. As such, it is a part of my heritage, though I also take blood from those who use it profanely. I suppose duality is part of nature too, or at least my nature.
The first thing to note about magic is that it is nothing. There is no line between regular action and magical action that exists in the eyes of The World. Magic is a category of action we have invented for our own understanding.
Magic is not miracle. The two are different. I begin my discussion with miracles not out of some fondness for religious dogma, but because miracles mirror the way most laymen perceive magic. A miracle is a violation of the natural order. Do not consider this terminology derogatory, even the human saint Turin said in his manuscript My Wandering, “In the miraculous, we see the divine drawing attention to itself. A miracle asserts the spiritual realm’s supremacy over the realm of nature, granting mortals a peek at the mystery of The Beyond.” I might take issue with his assertion that the miraculous is superior to the natural, but was he human, so all of his thoughts stemmed from a rudimentary fixation on hierarchy. The elves are wiser in knowing the cosmos as a wheel, rather than a tower, but I’m getting off track.
Magic is not an exercise of chaos, that is, it is not a method by which control is seized. Magic is orderly, and it is part of nature. Magic is not a demand for control, it is a humble query, it is a question; “May I move with you?”
When a spell is cast to channel fire, for instance, the heat in the air will gather together and form friction, but nothing new is created, simply re-allocated. The attuned magician moves with the aims and designs of nature itself. Just as all living things are formed from material, live by consuming, and die, becoming material once again, so too our channeling is in our nature.
For most, magic takes study. It requires that one learns a new language, a language complete with gestures, regents and incantations. In studying this lexicon, we are submitting ourselves humbly to the tutelage of nature. We are allowing ourselves to be seen. Cruder scholars have referred to this observation as “The Universal Eye” but this is man’s term, and his language is always designed to subjugate and oppress. I, and many elves have simply called this master tutor “The World”.
To cast a magic spell is to swim with the tide, to become like the tide, even, and often most especially, in that tide’s acts of turbulent destruction.
Never forget, young worm, you are magic, you are made of magic, and everything you do is a spell.
Hey. My new book is out. Read it.
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