An Introduction to Magic
Do you know what they get wrong every time? The fallibility of magic. (From my Urban Fantasy Series the Gray Grimoire)
From the Brothers Grimm to Stephen King, everyone who pens a tale about magic feels the need to create some palatable metaphor which explains how the mystical arts are some kind of dodge or cheat that only seems powerful. These stories explain how spells and conjuring will never really give you what you want, that there are no tricks or shortcuts to success, and how hard work, honesty, and faith are the only ways to true happiness.
What the unenlightened don’t understand is that magic takes an enormous amount of work, plenty of painful honesty, and more faith than most can imagine.
The other truth they miss is that magic actually works, and it usually works without caveats. A death spell kills completely and a resurrection spell brings someone back to life; not as a zombie (unless that was the intention) but just as they were. If you give someone a love potion, they will fall in love. Not some fanatical love that will eventually turn on you, not some imitation of love where they will follow your every command until they stop eating because you didn’t tell them to or something. It will create true love, and that is a very difficult pill for the mortal world to swallow.
The love potion is a wonderful place to start to explain the modern complications of magic. It’s easy to summon the emotions and thought processes of love; anyone with a little training and the proper materials can make a love draught. The trouble is that most people fall in love all the time and ignore it. The modern mortal doesn’t trust themselves, nor do they trust their own feelings. They second-guess their instincts and feelings to the point that most simple love potions are useless. That’s what magic has taught me: You can trust magic, but you can’t trust people.
Magic is a way of influencing the world around you, and if it is done correctly, it works perfectly. People, on the other hand, are unpredictable, complicated, and flawed.
Magic is the art and science of controlling the invisible forces that bind the universe together. Magic encompasses the skills of elemental control, spiritual manipulation, the amplification of one’s senses and abilities, and the tapping of the primordial and otherworldly energies beyond the perception of mortals.
Don’t get me wrong, though, magic is no panacea. Every spell, potion, and evocation has a cost. It’s a cost not everyone will understand and ironically only those who won’t miss that thing that fuels magic can never really use magic properly. It costs energy and heart and most certainly a massive amount of time. I’ve seen it cost people’s sanity, their lives, even their very souls.
Still, like the mathematician who spends his life figuring out the riddle of numbers, the painter who drives away lovers and friends to get her emotions out on the canvas, or the strategist who plays match after match of chess until he realizes his life has been spent pushing around pawns, most wizards know the costs, and we are willing, if not glad, to pay it.
For magic is the greatest of all arts, of all sciences, of all worldly or other-worldly pursuits. As you open this book, you step forth into the great gauntlet and attempt to take your place among the great magic users of the world. As you read the words ahead you will attempt to wrestle the very powers that gods and demons channel.
Make no doubt, in embarking on this study you put yourself in the greatest peril. I tell you the final truth, that there are no amateur wizards. You will learn to control the powers foretold in the coming pages, or you will die, painfully, trying.
- Introduction to The New World Grimoire, Henry Dufraisne