My cached thoughts start with a somewhat different question—not “what role does magic play in fantasy fiction?” (e.g. what fantasies does it fulfill), but rather… insofar as magic is a natural category, what does it denote? So I’m less interested in the relatively-expansive notion of “magic” sometimes seen in fiction (which includes e.g. alternate physics), and more interested in the pattern called “magic” which recurs among tons of real-world ancient cultures.
Claim (weakly held): the main natural category here is symbols changing the territory. Normally symbols represent the world, and changing the symbols just makes them not match the world anymore—it doesn’t make the world do something different. But if the symbols are “magic”, then changing the symbols changes the things they represent in the world. Canonical examples:
Wizard/shaman/etc draws magic symbols, speaks magic words, performs magic ritual, or even thinks magic thoughts, thereby causing something to happen in the world.
Messing with a voodoo doll messes with the person it represents.
“Sympathetic” magic, which explicitly uses symbols of things to influence those things.
Magic which turns emotional states into reality.
I would guess that most historical “magic” was of this type.
So I saw the Taxonomy Of What Magic Is Doing In Fantasy Books and Eliezer’s commentary on ASC’s latest linkpost, and I have cached thoughts on the matter.
My cached thoughts start with a somewhat different question—not “what role does magic play in fantasy fiction?” (e.g. what fantasies does it fulfill), but rather… insofar as magic is a natural category, what does it denote? So I’m less interested in the relatively-expansive notion of “magic” sometimes seen in fiction (which includes e.g. alternate physics), and more interested in the pattern called “magic” which recurs among tons of real-world ancient cultures.
Claim (weakly held): the main natural category here is symbols changing the territory. Normally symbols represent the world, and changing the symbols just makes them not match the world anymore—it doesn’t make the world do something different. But if the symbols are “magic”, then changing the symbols changes the things they represent in the world. Canonical examples:
Wizard/shaman/etc draws magic symbols, speaks magic words, performs magic ritual, or even thinks magic thoughts, thereby causing something to happen in the world.
Messing with a voodoo doll messes with the person it represents.
“Sympathetic” magic, which explicitly uses symbols of things to influence those things.
Magic which turns emotional states into reality.
I would guess that most historical “magic” was of this type.