Latest / Abide Meditation App / Why Fictional Magic Systems Feel So Fake

Transcript

Why Fictional Magic Systems Feel So Fake · Abide Meditation App

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Magic systems in pop culture fantasy rely on a few
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: overused tropes, So consider Harry Potter and the Harry Potter Universe.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Magic is a rare, innate gift. You're either born with
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: it or you're not ordinary people. The Muggles live in
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a completely separate, non magical world. Those lucky enough to
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: possess the gift are wisked off to a boarding school
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: where magic is taught like a science. There are textbooks, exams,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: research departments, and laws governing proper magical conduct, and spells
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: themselves operate like precise chemical reactions. Say the right words,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: move your wand in the correct motion, and the universe complies.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: It's neat and satisfyingly rule bound, and the result is
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: a world that feels internally consistent and easy to imagine,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: But it also feels strangely sterile compared to what magical
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: practice actually looks like. Throughout the history of religion, when
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: you look at magic around the world, magic was not
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a separate system or a mysterious gift. It was part
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: of everyday life, tangled up with religion, healing, craft, and artistry.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So what can fantasy writers, show runners, and game designers
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: learn from the anthropology and archaeology of magic. To explore
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: what's lost in translation. I'll be focusing mostly on the
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: ancient Mediterranean and Near East, the worlds of Greek, Roman, Jewish,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and early Christian magic. That's just because this is my
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: own subfield of expertise. But the patterns will be talking
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: about are not unique to these regions. So in this video,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I want to unpack four features of real world magic
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: that most fictional magic systems get wrong. First, magic is mundane.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: In a lot of pop culture stories, magic is almost
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: always exceptional. It's a birthright, a genetic lottery, or a
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: charismatic gift possessed by a special few. As I already
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: mentioned in Harry Potter, you're either born a wizard or
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: you're not. In the Lord of the Rings, Gandolf is
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: not just a particularly diligent scholar who learned his magic.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: He's a lesser god in mortal form. Even in more
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: scientific worlds like Star Wars, the force still runs through
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the veins of the elect few, whoever has the most
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Medichlorians in their bloodstream. The message is consistent. Magic is rare,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and it marks you as special, and when it appears,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: it breaks the ordinary world wide, open and spectacular and
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: exceptional ways, fireballs, lightning, portals, transformations, It's a rupture in
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the every day. In these stories, the universe is a
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: mostly rational place that occasionally bends for the extraordinary. But
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: magical practice throughout history is mundane. And by that I
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: don't mean trivial or boring. I got a whod PhD
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: in this stuff. I obviously find it interesting. I mean
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: magic is mundane in the sense of the Latin word mundus,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: meaning the world. So in this sense, the mundane is
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the sphere of everyday life, grounded down to earth, and
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: all throughout history and all across cultures, magical practice occurred
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in that everyday sphere kitchens, workshops, marketplaces, not generally in
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: academic ivory towers or secret brotherhoods. Some of my favorite
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: examples come from ancient Greco Roman curse tablets. These were
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: thin sheets of lead inscribed with a person's name in
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: a short spell, usually meant to bind someone's body, speech,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: or fortune. After writing the curse, the practitioner would fold
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the tablet, drive a nail through it, and deposit it
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: in a grave or well or some other dark place,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: so that the restless spirits or cathonic gods like Hermes,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: could carry out the command. They were a kind of
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: everyday ritual technology for managing conflict, having trouble, dealing with
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a lawsuit, curse tablet. One to sabotage a rival chariot
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: team cursed tablet. Want to win back your ex girlfriend,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: curse tablet. A great example comes from Greece dating to
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: the fourth century BCE. I bind Colios, the shopkeeper, who
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: is one of my neighbors, and the shop of the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: bald man, and the shop of Anthemione, and Phelon, the
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: shopkeeper of all these, I bind the soul, the work,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the hands, and the feet, and their shops. I bind
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Sosimons and his brother, and Carpos, his servant, who is
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the fabric seller of all these. I bind the soul,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the work, the life, the hands, and the feet. Basically,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: this was a business competition curse. So picture an Athenian
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: neighborhood in the three hundreds. The linen cellar is over there,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: the pottery guy is over there. The same neighbors you
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: see every day arguing over prices, competing for customers, and
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: gossiping about one another's families. One of them well his
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: business is not doing particularly great, and he's fed up
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: with the constant rivalries, so he decides to even the odds. Supernaturally,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: he takes a sheet of lead, and, maybe following a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: template he bought from a professional scribe, he begins to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: inscribe a list of names, the shopkeeper and his wife,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: the bald man, the hemp worker next door. He even
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: curses the shops themselves. It's not the act of some
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: grand sorcerer, but the act of a neighbor with a grudge,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a spell born out of crowded streets, economic pressure, and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the everyday friction of urban life. Another example, this cursed
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: tablet was discovered at a sanctuary to the Goddess Sulus
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Minerva in Roman Britain. Do Kilianus, son of Bruckers, to
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the most holy Goddess Sulus, I curse him who has
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: stolen my hooded cloak, whether man or woman, whether slave
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: or free, that the Goddess Sulis inflict death upon and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: not allow him sleep or children now and in the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: future until he has brought my hooded cloak to the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: temple of her divinity. So our hero Docilianus is missing
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: his hooded cloak. What do you do. There's no small
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: claims court, no police force. The emperor is far away
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: in Rome, and here you are in a small Roman
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: provincial town. And you might not even be a Roman
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: citizen who enjoys special legal privileges. So you turn to
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a cursed tablet in the justice of Sulis Minerva to
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: enact justice for you. So what we call magic in
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: the ancient world most often involved small scale rituals like
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: these to resolve everyday crises. People turn to spells and
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: amulets to fix problems that felt unsolvable through ordinary means.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: A rival threatening your business, a lover who wouldn't return affection,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: a child who kept falling ill, the hoodie gone missing.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Magic offered that extra dose of agency, a way to
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: act when other options are failing. Another example, this one
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: comes from Roman era Corinth, where archaeologists found a lead
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: cursed tablet buried in the sanctuary of the goddess Demeter.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: The inscription targets a woman named carfe Ma Babia, a
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: weaver of garlands and hermes, the fates and the spirits
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of the earth to completely destroy her soul and heart
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and her mind and her wits. It ends with a
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: plea for fertility, make me fertile, and destroy Carpu Mae
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: from her head to her footsteps with monthly destruction. So again,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: magic is very grounded here, very personal, and not particularly spectacular,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: as in, this is not a battle between cosmic forces
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: or a duel between rival chosen ones. It's one woman,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: probably living in the same neighborhood or guild as Carpu Mae,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: struggling with jealousy, rivalry, or infertility. She turns to magic
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: to augment her agency in a world that is constraining her.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: And the curse is a means to express anger, to
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: appeal to justice, or to restore balance in a small
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: but meaningful world. Just a desperate person using the cultural
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: tools available to her to address a social crisis. Magical
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: acts like these are part of the daily religious landscape.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Now that's not to say every pop culture's story treats
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: magic as rare or exceptional. Some worlds imagine it as
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: part of the social fabric or even a household skill.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery service weaves magic seamlessly into work, hospitality,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and cleaning. Still, even in these more grounded depictions, magic
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: often belongs to the special few. It's also not to
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: say that examples of real world magic were never spectacular.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Some rituals were elaborate, highly intellectual, and even transcendent in
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: their aspirations. A great example is the so called mythrist
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Liturgy from the Greek magical Papyri. It's a long ritual
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: text from Roman Egypt that guides the practitioner through a
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: visionary ascent up to the cosmos. Whoever composed this spell
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: was not a village charm maker, but some sort of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: learned ritual specialist, someone trained in scribal Greek and steeped
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: in late Roman cosmology. But generally speaking, across history and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: across cultures, magical practice involves ordinary people doing rituals to
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: solve ordinary problems, small embodied ways of grabbing back some
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: agency in a world full of uncertainty. If fictional world
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: gives us hogwarts, the ancient world gives us the neighborhood marketplace,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: a world of mundane magic where everyone knew someone who
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: knew a spell. An enchantment was not a rupture in
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: ordinary life, but rather one of the most familiar expressions
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: of ordinary life. So if you're designing a fictional world,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: resist the urge to make magic rare or transcendent. Instead,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: build magic into the everyday machinery of social life. In
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the ancient world, spells and ambulance function like social infrastructure.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: They filled in the gaps between law and medicine. It's
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: how people made things happen when other forms of power
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: were out of reach. Once magic becomes part of ordinary labor, economy,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: and social life, your magical world will start to feel
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: more grounded. Next, and somewhat related to the first point,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I want to turn to the question of expertise, who
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: actually does magic and cultures throughout history. In fiction, magical
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: knowledge is not only something that is special. It is
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: often the purview of a discrete profession or social identity,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: like a wizard or magician. Sometimes this profession is institutionalized,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and you can learn magic by attending a wizarding school
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: or joining a special order. But magic across all cultures
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: is more often a distributed, overlapping field of practice, a
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: flexible set of techniques and knowledge that circulated among scribes, healers, craftsmen,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and clergy. A scribe who copied biblical psalms might also
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: inscribe a protective amulet with one of those psalms inscribed
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: around the edges. A midwife might chant a healing formula
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: while delivering a child. A stone mason might carve a
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: protective formula into a foundation stone of an ancient theater
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: to protect the city. A gem cutter could carve an
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: image of a god that doubled as an amulet. Notice
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: that none of these people had the job title magician.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And that's because what we tend to call magic is
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: not the domain of a distinct profession. It's an open
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: field of ritual expertise that bleeds across social and occupational boundaries.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Consider that Carpi may bobby a spell. Again, that tablet
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: was not found in some hidden corner of the city.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: It was buried right beside an altar inside an active
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: religious precinct. Whoever commissioned this curse likely sought help from
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: someone connect to the sanctuary. And who would that be
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: will probably a priest connected to the temple and familiar
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: with its rituals. The same people who presided oh the
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: sacrifices to Demeter were likely helping clients compose and deposit
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: cursed tablets meant to reach the cathotic powers below. Magical
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: ritual specialists often operated through official religious organizations, borrowing its spaces,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: its symbols, and its personnel. I've referenced this a few
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: times now, but we see the same dynamic in ancient Christianity.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Christian monks, priests, and bishops often performed rituals that we
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: could label magical, even as they condemned such practices in others.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: One example comes from the Egyptian abbot Shanuta of Atrope.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: In one of his sermons, he laments that Christians run
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: after enchanters and diviners instead of trusting in God. But
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: the story he tells makes the problem more complicated because
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: apparently some of these enchanters and diviners were Christian monks.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Shnuta says he saw people wearing charms, a snake's head
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: tied on someone's hand, a crocodile's tooth tied to another's arm,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and fox claws tied to someone's legs. When he demanded
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to know who had told them this would help, the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: man replied, it was a great monk who gave them
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to me, saying, tie them on you and you will
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: find relief. What I like about this story is how
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: it collapses the categories we often imagine between religion and magic,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: orthodoxy and superstition. Shenuta wants to draw a sharp line.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Monks should heal through prayer, calling upon Christ, not through
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: amulets and animal body parts, but his own community clearly
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: didn't see things that way. People went to monks precisely
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: because they believed these holy men had special access to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: divine power. The fox claw was thought to work not
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: despite coming from a monk, but because it came from
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a monk, and Shanuta wasn't the only one frustrated by
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: this overlap. The Council of Leadicia issued an explicit prohibition
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: against clergy performing such practices. They who are of the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: priesthood or of the clergy, shall not be magicians and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: enchanters or astrologers, nor shall they make what are called amulets.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And those who wear such we command to be cast
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: out of the church. That kind of regulation tells us
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just how widespread these rituals were. If bishops had to
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: warn priests and deacons not to make amulets and not
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to act as enchanters or astrologers, it's because a lot
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of them were already doing this, And we have archaeological
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: evidence for this. Dozens of papyrus amulets from Egypt preserve
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: magical formulas written by people who clearly knew their Bible
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: and Christian liturgy. Many of these amulets contain excerpts from
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the Psalms, the Lord's Prayer, or passages from the Gospels,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: written not as scripture for reading, but as scripture for wearing.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: One remarkable example is this amulet I mentioned before. It's
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: inscribed the verses from the Gospel of Matthew, introduced by
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: the title the Gospel of Healing according to Matthew. The
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: text is carefully arranged in five narrow columns, shaped like
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: a row of crosses, with a small person sketched in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the center. The text has been folded multiple times, presumably
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: for wearing, maybe in a pocket or in a pouch
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: worn as a necklace. It's scripture but transformed into a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: physical talisman, and whoever made it probably didn't have the
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: job title magician. It's much more likely they were some
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: sort of literate specialist trained in the Christian tradition, like
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: one of those monks that Shanuta was complaining about. So
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: if pop culture gives us magical academies and magical chosen
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: ones history gives us a whole ecosystem of ritual expertise.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: There were no departments of magic, no formal guilds regulating spellcraft,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: no single class of people called wizards. There were just
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: communities of practice, scribes, artisans, healers, monks, midwives, stonecutters, each
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: drawing on reservoirs of ritual knowledge to meet the needs
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: of their clients and their neighbors. So when you design
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: your magical world, consider imagining magic not as a specific profession.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: A world where no one calls himself a magician and
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: there are no magical schools or guilds. Think instead of
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: a distributed ecology of magical expertise, a world where magical
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: knowledge circulates through overlapping trades, workshops, and social roles. Picture
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: a midwife who, alongside her knowledge and childbirth, also knows
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: a few birthing spells. Picture a lawyer who knows how
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: to speak better in public spell You could almost envision
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: magic as a service, commissions, fees, client disputes, maybe even
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: intellectual property rights. You stole my formula again, with none
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: of these people calling themselves a magician as a specific profession. Okay,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: so far we've looked at who practices magic and how
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: it operates in everyday life. But now I want to
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: turn to what magic actually is, or rather how fiction
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: tends to imagine it. Magic as energy. Nearly every major
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: fantasy franchise today treats magic as a kind of physics
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: or impersonal energy, something that is measurable, rule bound, and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: something you can manipulate. RPG and fighting games use various
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: forms of magical resource management, like manipoints. Franchises like The
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Witcher and Dragon Age describe magic as a volatile energy field,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: something you can harness or overdraw if you're not careful.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: In the Wheel of Time, the Cosmos runs on the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: one power flowing through male and female channels that can
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: be tapped and exhausted. In Star Wars, the Force is
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: what gives a Jedi their power. It's an energy field
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: created by all living things. It surrounds us and penet
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: traits us. It binds the galaxy together. Notice its energy,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and in video games and movies, the metaphor of magic
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: as energy becomes literal. Magic looks like energy, its glowing plasma,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: lightning or fire, arcs of light bursting from wands and
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Harry Potter geometric energy in the Marvel movies. In these worlds,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: magic is tantamount to energy manipulation, and magic systems are
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: often forms of resource management, complete with resource costs, cool downs,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: and recharging mechanics, and this idea has a history. The
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: modern picture of magic as an impersonal energy draws on
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: a mix of influences. Early twentieth century physics loose borrowings
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: from concepts like chi and Chinese religion, or older spiritual
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: ideas like vitalism, the notion that living beings share some
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: vital energy that flows through everything. But one of the
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: most important roots comes from the colonial Pacific, where European
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: missionaries and anthropologists first describe the Polynesian word manna as
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: a kind of invisible transferable power. In eighteen ninety one,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the Anglican missionary R. H. Coadrington published The melie Anesians,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: in which he describes a mysterious force called mana, a
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: kind of invisible power that could be possessed, transmitted, or stored.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: He writes, there's a belief in a force altogether distinct
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: for good and evil, in which it is of the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: greatest advantage to possess or control. This is mana. It
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: is a power or influence, not physical, and in a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: way supernatural, but it shows itself in physical force, or
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: It essentially belongs to personal beings to originate it, though
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: it may act through the medium of water or a
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: stone or a bone. All Melanesian religion, in fact, consists
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: in getting this mana for oneself. Later, anthropologists like Emil
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Durkhim and Marcel Mouse took up the term as a
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: key to so called primitive religion. Drkhim called mana the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: tootemic principle. For him, totemism was the religion of an
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: anonymous and impersonal force, and mana was one name for
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: this force. Later in the twentieth century, the fantasy writer
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Larry Niven popularized mana after publishing his nineteen sixty nine
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: short story not long before the End. In Niven's literary world,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: sorcerers draw their power from a natural energy source called mana.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: But just like fossil fuels, mana is a finite resource.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: If magicians spend too much time in one land, they
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: exhaust in the lands mana and their magical spells stop working.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: What's striking is that nearly all of these theories, from
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Dirkhim to Niven were building on the same source. They
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: all trace back to Codrington's initial definition. In other words,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the entire Western idea of mana as a free, floating
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: impersonal power that you can possess comes from one missionary's
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: attempt to describe what he heard from his parishioners in
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the Solomon Islands. But his idea of mana flattened an
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: intricate landscape of meanings across Polynesian cultures. Even in his
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: own lifetime, other anthropologists were already criticizing him for making
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: his own superficial generalization of the concept, and nearly a
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: century later, in the nineteen eighties, the linguist and anthropologist
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Roger Keysing published a huge takedown of Codrington's definition, arguing
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: that in Austronesian languge manna was not a thing or
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: a substance at all. It was more like a verb
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: meaning to be effective, or to succeed or to work,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and when used as a noun, it was more abstract,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: like efficacy, success or potency. Later linguistic studies argue that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: across dozens of Oceanic languages, mana means something like thunder
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: or wind, which it still does in some modern Polynesian languages.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: This sense of natural power was gradually applied to human beings,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: especially ritual specialists or chiefs believed to possess extraordinary efficacy.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: In other words, mana originally referred to the awe inspiring
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: power of the natural environment, which was later reinterpreted as
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the kind of potency or authority that humans could embody,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: sometimes understood supernaturally, and sometimes understood in a more down
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: to earth sense, almost like charisma. So one reason the
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: energy model of magic became so dominant is to see
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: it as the product of this intellectual lineage. Codrington's version
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: of mana gave Western thinkers a language for imagining unseen
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: power as something impersonal and transferable, and that idea proved
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: incredibly influential and shaped how later scholars, novelists, and game
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: designers imagined magic systems. But it's only one way of
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: conceiving magical power. Many cultures, including some of the same
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Polynesian cultures Kadrington was writing about, understand supernatural power not
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: as an energy you store or control, but as something relational.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Power moves through correct relationships between humans, ancestors, deities, and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: other spirits. So returning to the ancient Mediterranean, we find
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: a similar pattern. Whether invoking a god, a spirit, or
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: an angel, ancient magic users rarely claim to command power directly.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: They negotiated with it, petitioning, flattering, and even threatening the
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: beings who govern that power. Consider this spell from the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Greek magical Papyri, which illustrates this relational logic of power.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: The speaker addresses a cosmic being called the Bear, a
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: name probably connected with the constellation ursa major, or an
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: astral deity linked with the cosmic axis. Bear Bear, you
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: who rule the heaven, the stars, and the whole world,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: You who make the act turn and control the whole
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: cosmic system by force and compulsion. I appeal to you,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: imploring and supplicating that you may do the thing, because
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I call upon you with your holy names at which
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: your deity rejoices, names which you are unable to ignore.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Notice the user doesn't channel power like an energy source.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: They appeal to a being who wields it. Every line
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: of this invocation is rhetorical praise, flattery, and pressure. It's
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: more like a negotiation than energy manipulation. You're working a
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: relationship in which the human speaker seeks to bind a
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: divine being through praise, invocation, and obligation. Also consider this
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: remarkable inscription found in my Leadas in Western Turkey, Carved
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: on the northwest corner of the city's theater. The text
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: calls upon the seven archangels to protect the City of
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: the Milesians and all its inhabitants. It concludes with a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: collective invocation, Holy Ones guard the City of the Milesians
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: and all who dwell in it. These ovals resemble the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: protective amulets that people wore on their bodies and hear.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: The same logic of protection was expanded to civic scale.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: The city itself was effectively given a mega amulet, a
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: monumental invocation, binding the archangels into a protective relationship with
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the city. So if you're building a fictional world, try
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: reimagining your magic not as physics or energy, but as diplomacy.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Instead of characters manipulating impersonal energies, let them navigate social
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: relationships with God's spirits, ancestors, or even sentient forces of nature.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Every spell could be a conversation, a bargain or a gamble.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: A curse might depend on whether the sum in spirit
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: feels insulted. A healing might fail because a household god
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: was previously neglected. Imagine apprentices learning the right tone of
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: voice and not just the right words, studying the etiquette
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: for demons, or hymns that could double as legal contracts.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of exorcisms actually draw from the
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: language of lawsuits. A magician's power level could hinge on
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: who owes them favors in the spirit world, and not
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: just their level of manna. If you design your rituals
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: this way, magic becomes less about resource management and more
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: about relationship management, a network of obligations, rivalries, and alliances
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: with supernatural beings. All right, The next trope I'd love
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: to see challenge is the idea of moral polarity, and
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of fantasy worlds magic and magic users are
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: morally polarized. The Force has its light and dark sides,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: the Jedi and the Sith Wizards and Harry Potter have
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the dark arts with the Death Eaters versus the Order
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of the Phoenix. And I know this is not a
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: particularly unique observation. To be fair. In the last few decades,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: writers and showrunners have worked hard to complicate this old
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: evil versus good binary. Morally gray storylines and morally gray
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: characters are kind of a hallmark of twenty first century storytelling,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: But stories built on clear moral dualism, like The Lord
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: of the Rings or Star Wars and their many descendants
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: still cast a very long shadow over how fantasy and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: sci fi imagine magic. But in the real world, magic
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: has almost never been so neatly moralized. It's more often ambiguous.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: And by that I don't mean we don't know if
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: it's good or bad. I mean that the moral value
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: of a ritual doesn't live in the act itself. It's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: assigned by the people interpreting it. A perfect example comes
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: from the sermons of John Chrisistom, the fiery fourth century
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Bishop of Antioch and later Constantinople, and his writings reveal
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: just how unstable these boundaries between good and bad ritual
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: could be. In one sermon, chrisystem scolds his congregation for
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: wearing amulets, charms, and even coins of Alexander the Great
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to ward off illness or misfortune. And what is one
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to say about them who use charms and amulets and
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: encircle their heads and feet with golden coins of Alexander
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: of Macedon. Are these are hopes that, after the cross
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: and death of our master, we should place our hopes
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: of salvation on an image of a Greek king. You
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: not only have amulets always with you, but incantations bringing
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: drunken and half witted old women into your house. To him,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: these practices were heathen abominations, the product of drunken old witches,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and evidence that his flock still trusted in idols rather
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: than Christ. And yet in other sermons he praises the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: protective power of scripture in almost identical terms. He says,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: for if the devil will not dare to approach a
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: house where a gospel is lying, much less will any
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: evil spirit or any sinful nature. The scriptures are divine charms.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Let us then apply to ourselves and to the passions
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: of our souls, the remedies to be derived from them.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Christistom here seems to imply that a gospel codex, the
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: actual physical object, might be able to ward away Satanic power,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: and elsewhere he seems ambivalent about people wearing gospel amulets,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: perhaps similar to the one we saw earlier, and Christistom
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: doesn't stop there. In another sermon, he urges his congregation
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: to keep a small box for donations to the poor
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: beside their bed. He says that by depositing charity into
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the box before praying, their house will not be troubled
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: with demonic dreams or attacks. He explains, but if you
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: have this little box, you have a defense against the devil.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: You give wings to your prayer. And in another sermon,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Chrisystem asks his listeners why they would ever trust an
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: amuletce when they could instead inscribe the cross on the forehead,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: which affords invincible security. Do you forego this and cast
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: yourself into the madness of Satan Elsewhere? He warns that
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: failing to do the sign of the cross on your
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: forehead renders you vulnerable to demonic attack. If you fail
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: to sign your forehead, you have immediately thrown away your
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: weapon at the doors. Then the devil will lay hold
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: of you, naked and unarmed as you are, and he
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: will overwhelm you with ten thousand terrible wounds. Here, the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: sign of the Cross functions exactly like an amulet, an
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: embodied protective sign that shields the believer from misfortune, but
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: because it's sanctioned by church teaching, it becomes a defensive
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: weapon of faith rather than a demonic superstition. What mattered
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't simply using ritual power for protection, but using the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: right kind of ritual power. In effect, Chris System has
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: replaced the amulet with the Gospel codex, the charity box,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: and the Sign of the Cross. The same logic or
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: mechanics of protective magical power remains the idea that a
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: consecrated object or a gesture can ward off harm, but
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: he christianizes the idea a Gospel codex in your house
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: or a Gospel amulet folded up in your pocket. Both
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: are ritual technologies meant to repel evil. The difference is
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: in the method, but in the authority behind it. So
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Chris System's double standard shows how the moral value of
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a particular ritual is socially contingent. It's not about what
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: the ritual did, but about who performed it in under
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: whose sanction. What counted as illicit or illicit magic depended
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: on who performed it, for whom and against whom. The
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: scholar of early Christianity, David Frankfurter, calls this the ambiguous
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: sphere of ritual. A lot of rituals are ambiguous, and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the boundaries between blessing and sorcery priest and sorcerer are
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: constantly being negotiated. So if you're a world builder, consider
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: highlighting the moral ambiguity and social contingency of magic rather
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: than having moral dualism baked into the universe. Now, of course,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: not every spell in your world needs to be morally gray.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Some acts should feel cruel and abhorrent. Avatar, the Last Airbender,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: and the Legend of Korra actually handle this with nuance
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: with blood bending, a subskill of water bending that lets
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a person control another's body by manipulating the water in
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: their blood. It's horrifying, its invasive, and the show treats
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: it that way. But even then, think about who gets
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: to say so. The point is not that all magic
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: is neutral, it's that its morality is socially contingent. Let
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: accusations of black magic or forbidden arts say more about
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the power of the institution making that accusation. Imagine a
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: kingdom where the same healing spell recited by a temple
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: priest is called divine, but if a midwife chants that
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: out in the countryside, it's called sorcery. Or imagine a
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: city where cursed tablets are perfectly legal, so long as
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: you pay the temple scribe and dedicate them to the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: right god. Maybe your protagonist is a royal magic user
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: whose protective spells become evidence for their demonic collusion when
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the regime changes. Basically show how institutions claim moral authority
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: over ritual power, and that accusations of sorcery often tell
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: us more about the accuser than the ritual itself. Okay,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: what I've given you here is not meant to be
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: a grand, unified theory of magic. It's a set of
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: observations from the history of magical practice that you can
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: use to make your worlds feel closer to the textures
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: of magic in the ancient world. Of course, there are
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: always going to be counter examples and diverse If we
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: shifted our attention to West African divination or Islamic talismanic
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: traditions or Buddhist amulets, we'd have to adjust some of
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the details. Again, you can always find counterexamples. Chi manipulation
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and Daoism, for example, does look a lot like energy
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: resource management. My point isn't so much that fantasy is wrong.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: It's that fantasy tends to reuse the same assumptions about magic.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Magic is a rare gift, wizarding is a profession. Magic
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: is energy and light versus dark. But history gives you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: way more options than that. So if your world building,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: consider asking, can my magic be mundane? Let shopkeepers, jealous lovers,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and anxious parents use magic too. Can expertise be distributed?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Let monks, midwives, scribes, gem cutters, and temple staff all
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: know a bit of magical practice, and not just graduates
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: from a genetically special prep school. Can power be relational?
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Make spells work because spirits were properly addressed, not because
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: your man of bar was full? And can morality be
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: social not baked into the cosmos? Let rival factions brand
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: each other's rituals as forbidden while doing basically the same thing.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: If you do even one or two of these things,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: you'll end up with a magic system that looks a
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: lot more like the ones we actually see in the
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: archaeological record. Messi creative, locally, improvised, and always ambiguous. The
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: archaeology of ancient magic reveals that magical practice was all
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: about what can I do right now? With what I
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: have a little bit of ritual technology for when the
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: world felt too big and the levers of power were
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: out of reach. And that's how I sometimes feel about
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the environmental crisis. It's enormous, it's structural, and it's way
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: bigger than anyone person can fix alone. Fixing it means
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: working at the human scale, small actions in the face
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: of vast systems. And that's how I think about Planet
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Wild and why I'm a member. Planet Wild is like
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: crowdfunding for nature. It's a community based organization of twenty
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: thousand members coming together to fund a whole bunch of
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: carefully selected conservation missions, and there's also built in accountability.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: In less than a month after joining, Planet wild releases
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: a video report on YouTube documenting what our memberships helped fund.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Their app also includes written reports if you want the
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: deeper dive. They funded missions like building wildlife crossings in
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: the Canadian Rockies so animals aren't killed trying to cross highways,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: restoring habitat from monarch butterflies in Mexico so their migration
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: can continue, and installing nesting boxes to help endangered little
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: owls rebound in Europe. And Yeah, the official name is
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: really the little owl, very descriptive. One mission that jumped
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: out at me funded Indigenous protection of the Amazon. The
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Planet Wild community invested over three hundred and seventy thousand
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: euros to support sixteen indigenous communities across one hundred and
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: fifty villages in brazil Shingoo region. That funding secured three
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: years of organized forest patrols, including salaries, transport, and field
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: equipment to prevent illegal logging. It also strengthened community led
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: fire teams with tools and satellite internet to stop fires
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: before they spread, and supported the legal effort to have
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: the region recognized as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Heritage Site. Now, as I mentioned, I'm a planet Wild
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: member myself, and this mission jumped out at me because
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of my recent videos have touched on indigenous
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: sacred landscapes, and it's one thing to explain indigenous traditions
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: in a video, and it's another thing entirely to secure
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: land rights, fundation, anti logging patrols, and support the legal
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: autonomy that allows these communities to keep doing what they've
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: been doing for generations. For me, Planet Wild is a
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: way to stand behind the people whose sacred landscapes and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: ritual traditions depend on actual protected territory, So if you
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: want to join a growing community that's actually funding practical
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: conservation work around the world, consider becoming a Planet Wild
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: member yourself. The first one hundred people who sign up
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: using my code Religion Too will get their first month
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: paid by me. Just scan the QR code on screen
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: or click the link in the description below. You'll have
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: an immediate impact. You'll see a video update in under
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: thirty days showing what the community has accomplished, and you
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: can cancel any time, no questions asked. And if you
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: want to see planet Wild in action, check out their
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: mission supporting the indigenous communities of Brazil here