For me, as a writer, spells can be daunting. My brain likes to skip straight to spells are poetry and poetry writing is not something that meshes well with my brain. Here’s the thing, though: spells are all about words, but they don’t have to rhyme.
Sometimes, the magic just needs something more – whether it’s to help the actual act of storytelling, to spark your imagination as you create, or to give weight to the seriousness of the magic within the story.
Even in a world where everyone has the ability to do magic it may not be a good idea for everyone to actually do magic. This will intertwine with laws for magic use a bit, but qualifications are a little different. While laws may govern the use of magic, especially in public arenas, qualifications are more about who is capable of doing magic.
In fantasy, potions are a very handy way for magic to be administered to someone without expending a lot of energy, and potentially without them knowing magic was performed at all, and without revealing who did it.
The term occult is defined as the search for secret knowledge, usually in reference to trying to seek out the secrets of the universe.
Nature magic has the wonderful ability to be beautifully simplistic in its execution while being stunningly vast and complex in its scope. The magic might be tied to plant life, to the seasons and changes of season, to the weather, or to all of these things together.
The effects of celestial bodies are so subtle that we often don’t realize them in our daily lives, and yet they are there. If you live on or near a coast, you are probably more aware of them because of the daily ebb and flow of the tides, which are caused by the pull of the moon’s gravity on the earth.
For the most part, in fantasy worlds, the legality of magic is a given. It’s fantasy, so there is magic, and with many people using magic regularly, it must be normal and good, right? Well… it doesn’t have to be that easy.
In fantasy worlds, kitchen witchery is some of the simplest magic. It’s more magic of desire vs. intent. It’s magic that can be accomplished with anything one might have in their kitchen, by people who have no formal training.
What does a magically-aided journey look like? In many fantasy stories, it looks like a portal from one world into another, such as the wardrobe in CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.
