A Clear View of this Most Confusing of Arts
By Lidellia
The inventor of illusion magic doubtless thought they had created the perfect system of magic. Since everything we call ‘reality’ results directly from our senses, a magic which could dictate what we sense would therefore be able to completely control reality, and thus comprise the ultimate magical system, capable of anything.
This reasoning, sadly, is heavily flawed, and has left us with one of the most interesting and confusing of magical systems. And one of the most debated.
To understand illusion magic is to delve deeply into the most hidden recesses of our psychic makeup – sages have said that to understand this system of magic is to understand ourselves. To illustrate, let’s have a look at a beginning practitioner.
"Make an apple."
For an illusionist who has mastered the casting of visual, tactile, auditory, and taste/scent illusions, this seems an easy task. And indeed, such a student will readily make an apple that crunches when you eat it. But their teacher will then take up the apple and point out its flaws. Or more precisely, especially in the case of a beginning student, its lack of flaws.
"It’s as if we have thought-forms in our minds," I was told by Magus Aridor, a retired illusion teacher from Lysandra. "When a student manifests an apple, it will, more often than not, look perfect – of a uniform color, smooth and unblemished. A real apple, if you look at it closely, is composed of many colors, and no natural apple is perfectly formed. The student must learn to add such elements to their illusions if they hope to fool others’ senses."
It has been suggested that we view the world through a mind which thinks in perfection of form, and that is why we react so dramatically to ‘normal’ things which take on unusual aspects. Consider a woman with very ample breasts, or a man with bulging muscles. The sight of diseased flesh, or a wound. Such things surprise our senses because they do not fit with the ideas of ‘perfection’ we hold in our minds.
The web becomes more tangled as we see that a single illusion can be more or less effective for different individuals, based on a principle known to illusionists as ‘victim self-delusion’. This simply means that an individual’s mind will support an illusion by adding relevant details. In other words, an inexperienced illusionist may make a ‘perfect’ apple, and if it is seen by a receptive observer, the apple might actually appear to have imperfections! (And thus look more "real".) It seems that some people are especially responsive to illusions, while others are not. To illustrate with an extreme example, imagine an illusionary apple which has only visual properties – that is, the illusionist has given the illusion only the ability to fool the eye. The average person would come up to the apple, try to pick it up, and react with surprise as their hand passed right through it! An especially receptive person, however, might actually pick the apple up, be able to touch it, and even eat it! Again, such a person would be rare, but examples have definitely been observed. And to some extent, at least, we all practice a certain amount of self-delusion where illusions are concerned.
What happens, you may ask, when a receptive and a non-receptive person are in the same room, and the receptive person ‘picks up’ the visual apple? Common sense tells us that the non-receptive person would see the receptive person pick up nothing, and an argument would then ensue about whether the apple was in the person’s hand or still on the table. But this is not the case. And this leads us to one of the most intriguing aspects of illusion magic.
"In all of us is a mage or a majae," Magus Aridor said. "In most of us, it is simply buried very, very deeply."
Indeed, most origin theories of the human race suggest that we have faerie blood in our lineage – a suggestion that would imply that we might have some residual amount of ‘Glamour’ left in us.
"Glamour is, in essence, illusion magic, of a highly refined character. If we all have that in us, it comes as no surprise that we can manipulate magic on an unconscious level."
What happens in the previously mentioned example, surprisingly enough, is that the non-receptive person will see the visual apple being picked up by the receptive person. In fact, if the receptive person hands the apple over, the non-receptive will be able to feel the apple! How is it that an illusion with only visual characteristics could now have tactile characteristics, when it hasn’t been manipulated by a mage or majae?
"The mind-state of blind belief is surprisingly similar to the mind-state the mage or majae enters into when they are at the crux of casting a spell. As surprising as it is, a receptive observer of an illusion can actually enhance or manipulate the magic of the illusion itself, sometimes beyond the capacity of the mage or majae who originally cast the spell! In their state of blindly believing the reality of an object, the receptive individual can unconsciously shape the magic to give the illusion further aspects of reality – aspects which can be observed by anyone! Of course, if they tried to do this consciously, they would fail miserably."
In the state of blind belief, the receptive individual, then, is tapping into the same power available only to the mystical Magic Shapers, who had no need for spells. They are utilizing the deepest and most primal aspects of their unconscious to actually shape the magic of another person’s spell. Indeed, when carried to its logical extreme, this suggests that all of us, when engaged in any sort of self-delusion regarding an illusion, are actually doing magic ourselves!
That said, it should be remembered that the definition of a mage or majae is that they can control their manipulation of magic consciously. Nevertheless, it is intriguing that a perfectly untrained human mind is capable of manipulating magical energies at a deep level.
At the risk of getting myself bogged down in a philosophical morass, I’ll attempt to make some sense of the last major aspect of illusion magic.
There are two common tests to tell whether an object is real or illusion. The first is the Inner Rainbow observation.
You will notice if you look carefully at an object, that what we think of as solid colors (say the green of a cucumber’s skin) is actually formed of a vast array of tiny flecks of rainbow. The phenomenon is best observed in direct sunlight, and can be more clearly seen in smooth objects of unprocessed origin. For instance, your flesh will show it, but your fingernail will show it better. Cloth or leather will not show it well at all, since it is so rough of texture. Wood will show it if you look closely enough, as will metals. The sparkle can only be seen if you ‘loosen’ your gaze, look from the proper angle, and try to see deeply into the surface of the substance. Your fingernail is a simple and easy place to observe the phenomenon, so start there.
The Inner Rainbow is remarkably difficult for the mind to place into an illusion, so it is seen only in the most advanced illusions of extremely experienced practitioners. Thus most illusions can be seen for an illusion by checking for the Inner Rainbow.
The Inner Rainbow observation, however, is surmountable, if the practitioner is of sufficient potency and skill. An illusion’s inability to influence inanimate objects, however, has never been known to be overcome.
The test is simple. Take an illusionary stick. Note that this illusionary stick is of full sensory quality – that is, you can see it, feel it, hear it (if you snapped it in half), and even taste and smell it. With your finger, push the illusionary stick across the table. As expected, it will slide across the table as you push it, precisely as if it were a real stick. However, if you pick up that illusionary stick and try to use it to push a coin across the table, the illusion will betray itself, for it will be unable to move the coin. Indeed, the stick will pass right through the coin. To the coin, the illusion is transparent.
The easiest way to think of it is thus – to living senses, an illusion can appear real. But to the senses of inanimate objects, an illusion is obviously an illusion. We haven’t learned to ‘fool the senses’ of inanimate things by means of our illusion magics.
It isn’t that such a task isn’t theoretically possible. In fact, scattered reports detailing Glamour, the illusion magic used by various Fae races, suggests that some of them may possess illusion magic that can fool stones and streams. The theory is that the Fae are attuned to the ‘living spirits’ of things we consider to be dead or inanimate. Unfortunately, no exhaustive studies have been done upon the deeper workings of Glamour, and it is difficult to ascertain whether an illusion-based magic is affecting the outside world, or if the Fae are using some complimentary element-affecting magic. Our sole evidence comes from mages and majae who are able to feel the ‘flavours’ of magic, and who give testimony that the magic being used during Glamour feels like illusion-based magic working.
It is here that illusion magic faces its very real limitations – it can’t affect the inanimate world. Of course, a sufficiently sophisticated illusion can make its viewers think that it is affecting the inanimate world, but careful observation and testing can almost always see through such spells.
A vivid example is often seen when someone goes down to Masquerade, the illusion shoppe in the Dock District of Aranor. A spring fashion was to cut the hair short. As you can imagine, the fashion was short-lived, and many men and women are going down to Masquerade to get their long hair back again. And the illusionists there will give you hair as long and glossy as you can desire. But then the problem arises. For when a man wants to bind his hair back in a ponytail, and he takes a leather strap and ties it back, he finds to his dismay that the strap falls right to the ground. If a lady tries to put her hair up with a hairpin, the same problem occurs. Their illusionary hair is programmed to respond to such actions by staying in the desired position, but it has no ability to hold decorations. Any ornaments, straps, or hairpins end up right on the ground! You can imagine the problems that can occur with other illusionary body parts, such as larger breasts or hips.
The only solution is to purchase illusionary ornaments and clothes which work with the illusionary body parts. Again, let’s use hair as an example. An illusionary leather strap or hairpin will magically (literally) stick in the illusionary hair. Thus the folks down at Masquerade have quite a lucrative business, for they not only customize your hair, but they can then sell you any number of illusionary articles to accompany your new tresses.
In the end, illusion magic presents numerous philosophical questions, and more than any other magical art, requires immense creativity and attention to detail from its practitioners. To create satisfying illusions, the mage or majae requires not only magical potency, but a keen and observant mind capable of balancing an immense combination of factors. Even if you don’t practice illusion magic, sitting down with a practitioner can lead to long and interesting discussions on what makes something ‘real’. For if we consider a highly advanced illusion, perhaps an entire home made only of illusion magic – if we didn’t leave the house, would there be any way to tell if we were in a ‘real’ house or not? In this sense, illusion magic does, indeed, have the potential to be the most powerful of magical arts.
The art, in theory at least, is limited only by the scope of individual illusions. For if an illusionary world could be created, it would be as real as our own.
In fact, what is to say that the one we are living in now might not be such a one?