The History of Magic

The Four Ages

Magic in Altearth is traditionally divided into four Ages: Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron. This traditional division has of course been much criticized over the centuries, but the fact remains that modern historians have consistently failed to present an alternative model that has compelled the attention of the general public. This controversy has been quite heated at times and the present author does not intend to re-hash the debate here. Instead, I will present the traditional view unalloyed, if the reader will pardon the pun, but will cite some key sources for further reading for those who are inclined to delve into the controversy.

The Golden Age

From the Battle of Hadrianopolis to the Reign of Charles the Hammer (1131 to 1485 AUC, Battle of Poitiers, aka the Battle of the Towers)

Also known as the Heroic Age.[1]

While there are scraps of evidence for magic prior to 1131, the traditional date still serves well as a starting point, for the efflorescence of magic at this time is sudden and dramatic. The hallmark of Golden Age magic is chaos: there is very little pattern to what sort of magic appeared, who wielded it, and how effective it was. Much of this perception is no doubt due to the uneven and highly literary nature of our sources. Were the great figures of the Golden Age really so powerful, or did their chroniclers exaggerate? There is no way to tell for certain, and strong arguments have been made in every direction.

Even in the Golden Age we can see the split between East and West, for in the former—and especially in Constantinople—we can already trace the rise of scholae and collegia, dating right back to Theodosius I. In the latter, there is no such evidence; on the contrary, all signs point to chaotic development in which individuals played the most important role but without any sort of continuity from one generation to the next, until the rise of the House of Norcia.

While indirect evidence suggests that Dwarves and even Elves appeared in Europa some time during the Golden Age, we don't have any clear evidence of their use of magic during these centuries. This further distinguishes the Golden from the Silver Age. As for monsters, the various Goblin tribes dominate, with the arrival of Kobolds in the 1300s, but except for Goblinfire, we know of no Wild magic during this era.

Characteristics of Golden Age Magic

Individualism is the hallmark of this era. At first, the use of magic was naturally little understood. From the histories of Hegesippus and others it is clear that magic was seen as intrinsic to the individual, a characteristic of theirs, like strength or courage. Each mage was unique, even when they commanded similar Powers. There was no point in trying to teach another how to do it, any more than there was a way to teach someone how to be more courageous. You could try, but you could not predict results. If a person had a power, there was no reason to be instructed by someone else; and if a person had no power, no amount of instruction would give them power.

The heroes of this era wielded magic in its rawest form. Having no training, this yielded an erratic sort of magic. The many mistakes and misfortunes caused magic to be regarded with fear and suspicion by ordinary folk, something volatile at best and dangerous or outright evil at worst. Some postulate that the development of theocentric magic was a way of laying claim to some sort of legitimacy in the face of social ostracism. [2] However that may be, it is certain that the rituals of the theocentric model helped contain and channel magical forces for its practicioners.

How did magic develop? This question has long been the subject of lively debates. This author subscribes to a theory of multiple causes, formulated by Colin Wood and others. Specifically, some innovations were born in the heat of battle or the needs of war generally. Some were deliberate inventions, while others were accidental discoveries. Still others were more like the creation of a work of art, singular creations that could be imitated but not duplicated. Finally, some were clearly the result of secular trends, of long-term changes as yet poorly understood by scholars. All these played a role in the overall development of magic. The Great Wizard school of interpretation has been largely discredited.

It seems clear now that multiple approaches were in use from the earliest days. Schools, guilds, houses, cults, all were in existence by the time of the Second Empire, and probably before. In each we can find numinous, objective, empathic, and other forms.

All this tended to domesticate magic. In the early years, magicians were like wild beasts; like, as a much later saying would have it, hitching your plow to a dragon: you might plow whole fields in a day, but you were just as likely to be eaten. Two trends changed this and made a place in society for the mage. One, within a generation, magicians were pulling back from society at large, retreating into an eremitic existence that kept society and themselves safer. People called upon a mage, but they did not live near one.

These eremites soon gained followers, and cenobitic communities began to form. These were governed by a Rule (regula), hence the term "regular magic." Others founded cults dedicated to this or that god, and this we call "theotic" or "theocentric" magic, also often called "divine magic." Every school child assumes the latter was more powerful than the former, but this was not at all the case. The terms have more to do with how the communities of mages were organized than what sort of magic they wielded.

In both cases the services of the mages grew more and more expensive as well as increasingly important. They were called upon by dukes and governors, even kings and emperors. Over time, princes realized that it was in their interest to subsidize and even to found Houses (they tended to prefer houses over cults), and so the Houses began their slow evolution into royal appendages.

Not everyone was contained within a formal organization. Hedge wizards abounded. They were mostly charlatans, but there were enough with genuine power that the common folk believed in them. For the most part they performed very modest services: healing, crop care, protection of animals, minor charms, removal of curses, and so on. They were nearly useless against Wild Folk. Sometimes the term "sympathetic magic" is applied to them, or "village magic" or "shepherd magic," though these are rather old-fashioned now.

History of the Houses

The history of houses is one of the most difficult in the entire discipline. Records are sketchy, for most were destroyed during the Second Dark Age. During the Third and Fourth Empires, many Houses more lor less invented their own histories to fill in the gap. These accounts were based on traditions, but were intended to uphold the claims of one House against another and so are an untrustworthy guide to the distant past. Unfortunately, these hagiographic accounts were widely accepted as true until modern academic methods, and they have become embedded in popular culture, especially in the Romantic novels.

Without trying to address the much-debated matter of what was discovered or developed by whom, we can here at least give a general chronology. The first House to develop was arguably also the most important: the Norcian. The traditional foundation date is 1253 AUC, when Subiaco the Well-Spoken left his home to pursue magic in the Simbruini Mountains of central Italica. Followers soon gathered around him and matters of discipline soon arose. In response, Subiaco wrote the first Rule, called the Norcian Rule. It governed how mages were to behave, established a capitus to oversee them, and established the work ethic that so characterizes this House.

The Norcians were responsible for the spread of regular magic across Gaul, Hispania, Italica, and Belgica. We know now that this was no monolithic network of powerful wizards but was a rather haphazard collection of independent houses with some important regional variations. Chief among these were the Gallician, the Celtic, and the Frisian variations.

The Silver Age

From Charles the Hammer to the Interregnum

Also known as the Second Dark Age

These centuries saw dramatic changes, or perhaps they seem more dramatic because they are better documented. In any case, the advent of the Carolingian kings brought an element of order to the Silver Age that even the terrible Dragon invasions could not permanently disrupt. Indeed, many historians place the creation of Europa in this Age, with its characteristic combination of feudal magic within Antique socio-political structures.

Scholae come to the West in the Silver Age, coming to their first maturity under Charlemagne, who promoted them vigorously. Collegia appear as well, as do mageknights. All these had their antecedents in the East, but all underwent significant changes when they appeared in the West. How much was borrowed and how much was simply re-invented is not at all clear.

The Silver Age saw the arrival of Dwarves and Elves, with profound consequences for Human society, but it also had a powerful impact on Human magic. Elven and Dwarven magic were fundamentally different in origin, philosophy, and practice; much, indeed, remained beyond the comprehension of Human mages. Nevertheless, especially in the scholae, Human scholars studied the new magics intently and profitably.

Silver Age magic is much more disciplined and ordered than Golden Age magic. Humans organized its practice and began writing about magic in treatises. These efforts were still only occasional, though, and no one yet was able to formulate general principles. Magic was generally regarded as opus rather than labor, an art that was fundamentally a product of an individual. Many writers still spoke of the role of the genius in the creation of magic.

Even so, in the collegia there were attempts to gather mages of similar temperment or discipline into communities. Some of these even tried to teach the next generation. But their main activity was the preservation of spell books, which were meticulously copied and exquisitely decorated.

Development of Knighthood

Knights were not those who rode armored, they were those who fought with "sword and sceptre" as the phrase went; that is, they could fight with magic as well as with weapons. "By mance and lance" is another phrase.

Magical items tended to wind up in aristocratic families. They might buy, steal or otherwise acquire them. Commoners who possessed them might thereby ennoble themselves (it was only much later that the use of magic was forbidden to commoners). Once a magical object came into noble hands it tended not to leave again, except to pass into another noble family. Over centuries, not only did most imbued objects fall to the nobility, but the nobles came to regard such objects as theirs by right.

Warrior-mages (henceforward called knights) typically rode on horseback but did not typically fight from horseback, notwithstanding modern novelists. They dismounted and fought on foot, using magic first, then with sword or other weapon at close range. Knights might also ride to pursue a fleeing (or flying!) enemy.

The young knight usually studied at the House of a relative from the traditional ages of seven to sixteen. Those nine years were crucial. The "Hausvatter" shaped the young man's character, but he also had to judge his character, to find where his young charge's talents lay and to cultivate them. Some Vattern did this better than others. Some hardly did more than use their charges as house slaves, then giving them an enchanted sword or helmet or some other stock item, just prior to their majority. Plenty of legends were shaped around the figure of The Runaway Knight.

Toward the end of the Silver Age, Human magic underwent a further transformation with the rediscovery of the Codex Justinianus, the single greatest magical compilation of the Golden Age. This coincided more or less with the development of universities, at which the new (old) ideas were extensively debated.

The Bronze Age

From the End of the Interregnum to Maria Theresa

Bronze Age magic was powerful but mercurical. This was the era of the dramatic changes of the Renaissance and the so-called Reformation of the Empire. On the one hand, the traditional collegia were more powerful than they'd ever been; while on the other hand, secret societies were forming that were approaching magic in radically new ways.

This was also the age that saw the terrible ravages of the Drow and their Black Death, along with the chaos of the Century War. This introduced powerful changes in the practice of magic, especially among the Elves, but also among all the races, Free or Wild.

The Iron Age

From Maria Theresa to the Present

The Scientific Revolution transformed the practice of magic from an art to a science. We learned to harness magical powers in specific and reproducible ways, then we put those powers to work in our great machines. Anything more complex that a clock is now powered by various forms of magic.

This change caused massive changes in society, and it's what marks Humans apart from Dwarves and Elves, neither of which race ever learned to use magic to power machines.