All right: who wants to explain magic?

[wolven7]

Seriously. This is my little corner of the world: Meta-Magical Theory. When I talk about it, what do you hear?

If you were asked to explain magic to someone, what would you say?

All answers acceptable, as long as they're honest.

Comments

D&D

[karishi.livejournal.com]

Most fictions, in my experience, give a false impression of magic. D&D, with its separation of the psionic, divine, and arcane energy types, is a good example. When it works, the magic is from within me, formed of discipline and an understanding of the world's oneness and the godhood within it. In D&D terms, my method of leveling up should have made me a Psion, but if you look at my casting I'm a Cleric and all the spells on my list are Wizard spells.
The larger way in which fictions give a false impression is that they show, "This is how it is, in this story." That method of presenting the material (through no fault of the writer; it is usually born of a need to present the magic well and clearly) leads the reader to understand that in the writer's vision this is how magic is everywhere. My experiences with magic have not given me the impression that there is a system small enough to be written. It's like a giant atom, and our method of observation is thought; Every time we think on it, it changes.
So yes, theoretically, there is a system. But attempts to understand the system change it. Most of the time when I do something truly impressive (to me, anyway) I feel magic like dejavu. I am not trying to comprehend or work something. I am just walking, and I might be thinking of something, and then I think, "this is the part where I am about to do magic," and then I step across a busy street without touching it. And I don't know whether I flew, or erased the time I spent walking, or teleported, but I know none of those cars slowed and that my foot left the steps on one side of the road and my next foot landed on the sidewalk.

As long as I'm talking, I'll go ahead and let one of the less-heard voices in my head speak: I do actually have a good number of druid spells, cleric spells, and psionic talents in my head. But by and large this voice is only impressed with the wizard spells. I can alter the weather. I can close wounds, and unmake cysts, and turn or rebuke the undead. I can hear the voice of your thoughts, and feel colors, and release an EMP from my head now and again. But only those things that are hardest to me, the creation of fire and the summoning of powers and teleportation and the power of flight, only these things impress that voice, that part of me. I often call it the kid voice, because it sees impossible things and complains because there weren't enough special effects.

[nytehiker1.livejournal.com]

Magic is the ability to entertain by doing a routine of illusions.

Magick on the other hand, is the ability to manipulate energy and matter into what we desire it to be. The ability to bring our thoughts and dreams into this realm and turn them into realities. The ability to transform the world around us and mold it and to sculpt it. Magick is an art form in a sense. It uses the resources of nature and our surroundings. It draws from the energy which makes up everything that we know of....the heart of the universe.