On Magic Systems In Fantasy Fiction

This week I read an interesting article that suggested asking yourself several questions about the magic system you want when writing a fantasy. It included who could do magic? Who was allowed to do magic? How it was used? What were the limitations? 

I thought it interesting enough to post about the magic systems of some universes I’ve encountered.

In Lord Of The Rings, pretty much the only characters who do magic are the wizards and the villains. They are lesser gods, so magic is part of what they are - and even Gandalf doesn’t do a lot. He is basically a fire spirit anyway, so he does things like make a blue light to see by and create amazing fireworks. At one point he is pleased enough with an innkeeper to put a spell of excellence on his beer. The Elves don’t chant spells, but there is a magic about what they do. Their food tastes wonderful, however simple it is, and their way bread, lembas, and miruvor, their drink, can be lived on when there is nothing else. Because they’re basically the sacrament - Tolkien was a devout Catholic - they sustain Frodo and Sam, but taste like ashes to Gollum. When  the Fellowship are leaving Lothlorien they are given wonderful rope. Sam expresses interest in this, as he is descended from a line of rope makers. This is where it gets interesting - the Elves say that if they had known he was interested they would have shown him how to make it. We never hear of this again, but the rope is definitely magical. The implication is interesting, but we just don’t hear of it again. Later, he uses dust from Lothlorien to revive the Shire. Magic again. 

So, despite the rope, I think magic in this universe is not something anyone can create or use unless they are gods or Elvish(except maybe using the magical rope you were given by the Elves or dust from Lothlorien). 

In most universes I have read, magic is something you’re born with. In the Harry Potter series, you have to be born a wizard. Muggles like you and me could say, “Expelliarmus!” over and over and nothing would happen. The spells and the wands are basically to focus the magic. A wizard child needs to learn or the magic could destroy them and those around them. So it’s very much a matter of birth. 

Gillian Polack’s novel The Wizardry Of Jewish Women features mother to daughter magic, and one character has an ability to predict, but only in public, ie on the Internet - and has to! The mother and daughter do have to work out the spells, which are based on Jewish magic. Jewish magic requires scholarship. If you want to, say, create a golem, you have to do a lot of reading and research first. The woman who uses magic to make her nasty ex husband uncomfortable has a great grandmother who practised magic but her grandmother rejected magic for science, so she has to learn all over again. So, a mixture, but it is in the family. 

Her novel The Time Of The Ghosts is about three older women who are ghost busters. As it’s modern Canberra they stick to European spirits, never interfering with indigenous spirits. Most of the magic belongs to one of them who is, in fact, the mediaeval French water fae Melusine, still alive and having to make herself look older to be able to settle in one place for a while. There are flashbacks to her younger years when, among other things, she participated in the story of Bisclavret and converted to Judaism. She is magical, but born so. The others also have some magic, but are mortal. 

Justine Larbalestier’s trilogy, Magic Or Madness, is about exactly what it says on the box. Her heroine, Reason, is born with magic, but her mother has refused to use hers, called her daughter  

Reason and encouraged her to do rational things like maths. Unfortunately, magical folk have two choices, neither of them pleasant. They can practise magic and die young or they can refuse to do it and go insane, which is what has happened to Reason’s mother, now in a mental hospital, while Reason goes to live with her quite young grandmother in Sydney and have magical adventures between Sydney and New York. Magical people have their children young, because they know they won’t live long. Not my favourite type of magic, but interesting - the author sneered at a conference I attended that too many novels had people getting headaches as a payment for their magic: “I get worse than that with a hangover!”

Michael Pryor’s Laws Of Magic series is steampunk, set in the 1900s, only in a different universe, where England, for example is Albion. Magic has laws like the laws of physics, as in “Ye canna change the laws of...” You can study magic at school and it involves, among other things, learning various ancient languages which can be used in your spells. It is, in fact, a science. So no, you don’t have to be born to it. This is the most interesting magic I’ve come across. The hero, Aubrey Fitzwilliam, is a magical genius, which is precisely why he is technically dead at the start of the series - he had been confident enough in his skills to be experimenting with death magic, and stuffed up. Magic is a part of everyday life, and it has rules; if you ignore them, it can kill you. In one scene Aubrey is considering going to a sleight-of-hand show, but isn’t interested because he’s sure it’s just ordinary magic! 

In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, you are definitely born to magic, either as a witch or a wizard. The boys go to Unseen University to study wizardry, where mostly they learn to eat huge meals and be avoided by the lecturers. They are usually eighth sons of eighth sons, though in Equal Rites they have to deal with a girl who has wizard ability and wants to study. Wizards are not encouraged to marry because if you have eight sons and your youngest also has eight sons, there will be a sourcerer, a very powerful wizard who could potentially destroy the world. But nobody will stop you if you drop out and get married.  

Girls learn witchcraft from a village witch. It’s really mostly wise-woman stuff and “headology”, though they can and do use magic in their work - and they fly on broomsticks made by the Dwarfs. In Maskerade we meet Agnes Nitt, who has run away to the big city to become an opera singer rather than join the witches, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. It is suggested that her singing is her way of expressing magic she isn’t using. In Witches Abroad, we find out what might happen when a witch uses her magic to give her power, and it isn’t good. (And the witch concerned is Granny Weatherwax’s sister!)

Witches don’t have to stay unmarried - in fact, Nanny Ogg has married and been widowed three times and has a huge tribe of descendants who do all her housework. She loves to make dirty jokes. 

This is the only series I’ve read where you don’t have to use your magic, as in nothing will seep out and cause destruction if you don’t. 

In Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers Of London series, magic is something you can learn, like playing the guitar. However, it’s dangerous stuff and if you overdo it, it turns your brain to Swiss cheese. This is why wizards build staffs, which can act as batteries to store magic so you can avoid overdoing it - as good a reason for a wizard’s staff as any other I’ve heard, and better than some others. Magic also wrecks electronic devices, including digital watches, so everything has to be moved or switched off before doing it.  

The series also features river gods and goddesses, some of whom started off as ordinary mortals. Mama Thames is an African woman who arrived in England in the 1950s and was turned into a river goddess while attempting to drown herself. Father Thames - no relation - began as a Roman soldier. So, they presumably didn’t start off magical. Both of them have children who are not human, though they look it. They might be magical by birth.  

My mediaeval fantasy novel Wolfborn is mostly about werewolves, both born and those who choose it. However, there are different types of magic, earth magic and animal magic. You are born to it, though there are plenty of people with a bit of earth magic, which, if you are, say, a lady of the manor, helps with the household management. Most wise-women have much more earth magic than that and use it in their work. My young heroine is learning from her mother. Both are born werewolves and have both earth and animal magic. 

My villain, a man who chose to be a werewolf because you can get better jobs in the army as a scout, has animal magic - actually, very powerful magic that, among other things, enables him to move himself and others between this world and the Otherworld. A small spell enables him to hide his clothes by making them appear to be a rock. I got that one from Petronius’s Satyricon, in which a party guest tells about a soldier he knew who turned into a wolf after hiding his clothes in this manner. The spell involved urinating in a circle around them. I used this - I did offer to rewrite that, but my editor loved it! 

So, in my world, mostly born to magic, though needing training - I never said how the villain became a werewolf let alone acquired his magic, but I would imagine that he had animal magic in the first place that made his change easier. One of these days I will do a short story to answer that question. 

Meanwhile, do you have a favourite magic system?