A Course of Magical Study, Volume Three –
The Philosophy of Mana
By Lidellia
Because of the esoteric nature of the subject material, it is highly recommended that the reader absorb Volume One and Two before attempting to understand Volume Three.
By now the magician has learned to feel the presence of magic, and has embraced, as fully as their mind can comprehend, the simplicity and multiplicity of Maya. Next they must reach an understanding of Mana.
"It is in similarities that the wizard deals, not in differences."
Magus Tarlin, High Mage of Masalla
What does he mean? He’s hinting at what the magician learns to feel behind the façade of reality – the basic energy of the world, also known as mana.
Everything – every object, person, thought, emotion, or action, is composed of mana. It is the undifferentiated stuff, the ‘clay’, if you will, out of which reality is formed. Indeed, comparing mana to clay is the method most often used to describe the nature of magic in ordinary conversation.
The world is composed of mana, a clay that is the same in all things. But in each aspect of the world the clay takes a different shape. On the outside, the clay may take many forms – a bowl, a statue, a vase. But if broken open, all are unveiled, for we see that all are composed of the same gray matter. The magician becomes a potter of mana, learning to mold and shape the clay on the wheel of her mind, until all forms become malleable to her will.
As you might have already guessed, however, such a description is not fitting for the magician. Indeed, this simplistic manner of viewing mana, though sufficient for the logical understanding most people will need, would actually prevent a magician from casting a spell. For mana cannot be thought of as a substance at all, and to think of ‘molding’ it is to fix in one’s head a mindset totally unproductive for manipulating the energy of the world.
To clarify matters, let’s take a look at what the magician is learning to ‘feel’ by this point. Through various exercises and demonstrations, the magician has learned to feel the ‘signature’ of different aspects of the world. Each ‘thing’, be it object, thought, emotion, or person, is ‘felt’ magically. At first, the magician feels very distinct ‘flavours’ in each different thing, and if sufficiently attuned to the subtle vibrations, can sense, even in the dark, the difference between a person who is sad and one who is happy. This, of course, accounts for the almost uncanny intuitions of gifted magicians – they can sense the presence of people and the energies that surround them, even to the point of telling truth from lie or becoming aware of hidden emotions.
At this point, the magician is urged to feel ‘behind’ the flavours, to attempt to sense the similarities between all things. As they become more and more attuned to magic, they begin to feel that all things, no matter how divergent in the world of maya, share a similar heart, an identical energy that lurks behind the façade of every aspect of ‘reality’.
Many magicians will never feel mana that deeply, but those that do will begin to sense that all about them dwells unformed mana, subtle but deep – mana that moves into and out of the objects of the world, giving them life and reality.
I must interject at this point and say that as we get this deep into the nature of reality, words begin to fail us. For though I say that mana moves into and out of objects, it is wrong to differentiate mana from itself. Here is where it becomes quite different than clay, for with clay we can conceive of one handful of it becoming a cup, and another handful a plate. Mana cannot be pulled from itself, for it is all of one stuff, one continuous lump, more like an ocean from which waves arise. Each wave can be seen, watched, and even touched, but it never is separate from the ocean itself – to pull it from the ocean would be to destroy the wave. And mana, being the substance of the world itself, can never be pulled from itself in any case!
Whether the magician can feel the undifferentiated mana behind each aspect of maya is not so important as the simple realization that such is the truth of the matter. For in that realization, the magician, even if they cannot feel it, can reach blindly into the emptiness and pull forth raw mana with which to forge spells.
The magician must further understand that mana cannot be ‘shaped’ in the sense that we consciously shape wood or clay or glass into a useful object. Mana reacts only weakly to the force of will, which is why the average person, no matter how much they will it to happen, cannot make a sheep float in the air.
Mana does, however, respond quite readily to another force of our mind – a deeper layer beneath conscious thought. To the average person it is explained that mana reacts to our emotions instead of our will, but even this description is not fully true, for mana reacts most readily to deep, nameless emotions, primordial emotive states-of-mind that dwell far within the lost pathways of our minds. These are emotions that no language has given names, for they are so basic to our being that they form the entire foundation of our perceptions during different periods of our lives.
If you translate a spell, you’ll see it in the incantation – the part of the spell that most deeply affects the mana translates most often into ghostly images or evocative words that conjure up raw feelings.
For instance, a lightning spell draws forth raw mana and charges it into a bright flash of energy. But the emotions necessary to affect that change are not as you might imagine. Here’s an excerpt from the spell. It loses something in translation from the magical tongue to our own, but perhaps you can get a feel for it from the words –
Grass coated with ice, stiff and bright against the evening sky – the coming of the high wind, and the first one crackles softly. Later, the moon rises upon the field, dancing on shattered remains, light so bright and pure on the edges of the ice.
With such descriptions the spell encourages the magician to find within herself these emotions which have no name. By releasing into them, she achieves the mindset necessary to shape the mana into form. Again, it must be remembered that the magician is not ‘pulling out’ magic and ‘shaping’ it to their need, but something more akin to brushing their hand through the energy of the world and forming a wave, a temporary wave, that becomes a ‘thing’ of the world.
Temporary, because the lesson of mana is that behind the illusion of maya there is a single substance, a substance that for a time might take the form of one thing or another, but will, before long, return to simple, unformed mana. Indeed, the most astute magicians can feel that even ‘solid’ things, like a rock, are not composed of an isolated bit of mana, but are, instead, merely patterns of energy through which the mana moves, like a slow current, and as the mana moves through the object it brings subtle hints of other energies, so that over time, even a stone breaks down and changes. Nothing in the world is static – not person, mountain, stone, or deity. All things grow, die, evolve, and change, for the mana never lies still, but always moves through all things (is all things), and carries with it the echoes of the rest of existence.
Thus the magician finds that no thing is isolated, that behind all things lies a similar energy, and it is in this similarity that the magician finds it possible to change one ‘thing’ into another.
What the magician is changing is not mana, then, but the aspect of the mana that differentiates it from a neighboring ‘bit’ of mana. The mana is the same through all, but though any handful of ocean water is only a handful of water, still that water can become many things, from waves to mist to waterspouts. In the same way, mana ‘vibrates’ or resonates at different levels, and it is in the resonation of mana that ‘things’ are formed. This resonation, the ‘sound’ or ‘feel’ of the mana, is called Numen. And it is to numen that the magician must next turn their attentions. We’ll talk about it in Volume Four.