Do wizards think of what they do as magic?

[osimur_wil]

Magic is generally used as a descriptor from someone outside of the realm of understanding of a thing or phenomena, in my mind at least. Since wizards, sorcerers, and the like know what they're doing, would they consider what they're doing as magic? What would they even call it if they didn't call it magic? Is there a technical term in history that might be used?
For context: I have been building a science fantasy setting for a novella series that's heavily inspired by the likes of Robert Jordan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Christopher Ruocchio: a world where high technology, Da Vinci's inventions, and of course swords and sorcery all live together. I haven't totally decided on whether or not the magic/power system would be connected to the technology, but I am embracing the idea of a sort of "intellectual revolution" applied to the magical practices. I wanted to come up with a term for this emergent mode of thinking as applied to magic, like how chemists came from alchemists, who came from the hermetics.

 

[Queshire]

I don't know about you, but if a guy with a beard & a funny hat can set me on fire with his mind then I reckon he's free to call it whatever he wants. =0

*ahem*

More seriously, I view that they would call it magic, but wouldn't define magic as something outside the realm of understanding. That definition is something that only comes from modern day. To them magic is just part of how the world works.

 

[Insolent Lad]

There is thaumaturgy, which pretty much implies a scientific approach to the application of natural magical forces.

 

[CupofJoe]

It might not be magical to those using it, but it could still be called magic.

 

[pmmg]

Electricity seems like magic to many, but to electricians, they get the whole electrons vibrating thing. They still call it electricity.

If I was looking to change the name, and I am not sure why that would happen, I might base the name on what the Thaumaturgists know of as the fuel. If it was mana, a wizard my be in the brotherhood of manaists.

But....I mean wizard already covers that base.

 

[barrowyarrow]

I like to treat it as the difference between an expert and a layman. Wizards should have this deeper understanding that your average guy doesn't like how a scientist would identify the difference between physics and biology. A regular person would see a guy throw a fire ball and call it magic. A wizard would see a guy throw a fire ball and say, "Ah yes, one handed short range immolation."

 

[osimur_wil]

I like to treat it as the difference between an expert and a layman. Wizards should have this deeper understanding that your average guy doesn't like how a scientist would identify the difference between physics and biology. A regular person would see a guy throw a fire ball and call it magic. A wizard would see a guy throw a fire ball and say, "Ah yes, one handed short range immolation."

Speaking for myself when I went to school for a trade, there were still things that I think are pretty out there and magical. Rectifiers, a little component that can turn alternating current into direct current and vice versa being one of those things that's basically sorcery in my head. But, I do see your point.

 

[Queshire]

You also need to consider what you're signaling to the reader with this sort of stuff. When you call someone a wizard the readers are going to have certain expectations.

 

[osimur_wil]

You also need to consider what you're signaling to the reader with this sort of stuff. When you call someone a wizard the readers are going to have certain expectations.

Come to think of it, that would explain why a lot of books (that I've read at least) tend to use terms other than wizard in their texts to denote their magic-users. Surgebinder and Drafter conjure different images than wizard, after all. Perhaps the mistake is using wizard as a catchall term for those who use magic, which creates a narrower perception from the outset?

 

[Prince of Spires]

I like Galadriel's comment on it she makes in Lord of the Rings (when she talks to Sam and Frodo about magic). It's something like "this is what non-elves call magic, but I don't fully understand what they mean by that, because they use the same words for the magic of Sauron."

And I think that gets to the heart of it. Magic users would be very specific in their terms, in the same way that all professionals are when they talk about their craft. My wife is a medical doctor, and she has very specific, scientific words for A or B. I would might use a single term for them, because to me they are the same. But to an MD they differ. It's like when people are feeling a bit ill they say have the flu. That's fine for everyday use, but it's not if you actually have to treat it. Then influenza is a specific group of virusses, different from covid type virusses for instance.

Same with magicians. To me it might just be another fireball, but a magician might see a Type B radial blast with lingering after effect.

So yes, they'd probably still call it magic, except if there's a reason to split it and use different terms for different parts. But they would be more specific in their language than non magic users.

 

[Berenike]

Come to think of it, that would explain why a lot of books (that I've read at least) tend to use terms other than wizard in their texts to denote their magic-users. Surgebinder and Drafter conjure different images than wizard, after all. Perhaps the mistake is using wizard as a catchall term for those who use magic, which creates a narrower perception from the outset?

I’d say it’s also because of the over saturation of the word “wizard”. It feels old school or self-aware to call them that unless the word itself plays a specific role. Kind of like how so many zombie stories use different words for zombies (walkers, infected, freakers, ridden, etc.). Wizard is a catch-all, and also too generic. It conjures up images of old-school fantasy art and games that are seen as more primitive compared to magic users like in Brandon Sanderson’s books.

 

[Berenike]

Magic is generally used as a descriptor from someone outside of the realm of understanding of a thing or phenomena, in my mind at least. Since wizards, sorcerers, and the like know what they're doing, would they consider what they're doing as magic? What would they even call it if they didn't call it magic? Is there a technical term in history that might be used?
For context: I have been building a science fantasy setting for a novella series that's heavily inspired by the likes of Robert Jordan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Christopher Ruocchio: a world where high technology, Da Vinci's inventions, and of course swords and sorcery all live together. I haven't totally decided on whether or not the magic/power system would be connected to the technology, but I am embracing the idea of a sort of "intellectual revolution" applied to the magical practices. I wanted to come up with a term for this emergent mode of thinking as applied to magic, like how chemists came from alchemists, who came from the hermetics.

Speaking as a historian, the historical term usually translates just as “magic”. It’s a catch-all, and usually means forces beyond our world that can be harnessed through specific ritual, spells, inscriptions, etc. So it would simultaneously be something you know about and something you don’t. Most cultures saw magic as a give-and-take system, too. If you wanted magic, you had to give or sacrifice something. Most times this was intrinsically tied to religion, like in the ancient Mediterranean (Greece, Egypt, etc.). It wasn’t so much a para-causal force as it was religious practice, coming from deity.

 

[osimur_wil]

I’d say it’s also because of the over saturation of the word “wizard”. It feels old school or self-aware to call them that unless the word itself plays a specific role. Kind of like how so many zombie stories use different words for zombies (walkers, infected, freakers, ridden, etc.). Wizard is a catch-all, and also too generic. It conjures up images of old-school fantasy art and games that are seen as more primitive compared to magic users like in Brandon Sanderson’s books.

As a start, I'd like to say welcome to the forums. I hope you enjoy your time here
Addressing your point, perhaps the proper starting point would be to come up with some kind of term to separate "my" wizards from the generic wizard archetype and work from there, since it seems that the semantics and the preconceptions attached to them might be what's tripping me up

 

[MudDobber]

I'm reading Sorrow, Thorn, and something or other by Tad Williams. The Osten Ard world, and one of the characters does not think of his work as magic. Tad Williams initially describes it in terms of science, and I'm curious to see how that develops later in the story.

 

[osimur_wil]

I'm reading Sorrow, Thorn, and something or other by Tad Williams. The Osten Ard world, and one of the characters does not think of his work as magic. Tad Williams initially describes it in terms of science, and I'm curious to see how that develops later in the story.

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is what you're thinking of

 

[Marscaleb]

I personally see it as something that can go either way; it's a matter of terms and definitions, not a matter of "what is normal."

You can think of it in terms of how language evolves. The concept of magic has been around longer than English, and it could very well be the same is true for the language spoken in your fantasy world. With that in mind, people would have developed words to express the concepts they need to express.

The real question is: do the people in your world still need a word to describe magic like we do, as an unknown, mystical, presumably fictional power? Do they need a word that describes ineffable things, like the "magic" of love, or the "magic" of beauty, or when things seem to come together and work out "like magic?"
Because if magic were understood as if it were a science, then you would need another word to describe these mystical and unknown things. Because people need words.

For my money, I would say that if magic was discovered relatively recently, it would likely get called "magic" because people don't know what else to call it. (Kind of like how the turkey got called a turkey; the word used to refer to any wild bird, but when they found this particular wild bird, with nothing else to call it, the name "turkey" stuck to it and now "turkey" is a specific kind of bird, not just a word for a wild bird.)

But on the other hand, if magic were known an practiced for as long (or longer) than their language has existed, then I would expect "magic" refers to unknown and fantasy powers, and wizards would be perhaps even offended that people would call their art "magic" (although some would love the connotation and embrace it.) But then they would have a different word that describes what they do. I'm keen to the idea of using "-mancy" names like "allomancy" or "pyromancy" or the like. Try to break down how these things work and determine what kind of term would apply to such sorcery and wizardry. Maybe they might be psionics or just using "elder tech."

It's also worth asking how wild and unknowable your magic is, versus being studied and scientific. In the Mistborn novels, magic is very precisely defined and has explicitly known limits, patterns, and abilities, even if the full extent of these are not known. In the Xanth novels magic literally "can do anything" and there is no comprehendible limits to what magic can do and how it becomes limited.
If the former example, "magic" is never used to describe what magic does. In the latter example, the word "magic" is used all the time to differentiate what happens because of the natural world and what happens because of Xanth.

 

[Rexenm]

Magic can be useful in precarious settings. It can also mean the difference between life and death. Merit and all that. It can also act as the signifier, leading into real reason in the plot.

(walkers, infected, freakers, ridden, etc.).

You could always call it crabs.

 

[Ianto]

[I'm not a historian, the following is just self-indulgent pontification! Some relevance to the world in which my work is set, but it's just opinion.] I'm not sure people in the past made such a differentiation between "magic" and "science" that we do. Why we look on as ritual magic might pop its head up into chemistry, forming "alchemy", 'Learned Doctors' might perform rituals to find lost objects or hidden treasure, whilst being amongst the first to accuse women of witchcraft for performing magic curses. It was more where stuff "came from". They didn't know how the world actually worked, so what did actually go against natural science - what was supernatural, what was "magical", was similarly unknown to them. It was more if someone was dealing with the devil - or demons, or devils - that was a defining factor in how they looked at things.

 

[Mordred Lung Silver]

Magic is generally used as a descriptor from someone outside of the realm of understanding of a thing or phenomena, in my mind at least. Since wizards, sorcerers, and the like know what they're doing, would they consider what they're doing as magic? What would they even call it if they didn't call it magic? Is there a technical term in history that might be used?
For context: I have been building a science fantasy setting for a novella series that's heavily inspired by the likes of Robert Jordan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Christopher Ruocchio: a world where high technology, Da Vinci's inventions, and of course swords and sorcery all live together. I haven't totally decided on whether or not the magic/power system would be connected to the technology, but I am embracing the idea of a sort of "intellectual revolution" applied to the magical practices. I wanted to come up with a term for this emergent mode of thinking as applied to magic, like how chemists came from alchemists, who came from the hermetics.

I think that "magic" generally means either something perceived externally as mysterious, and effective, OR, something now recognized as ineffective. For example, astrology, alchemy, thaumaturgy, and phrenology, were all thought of as part of "natural philosophy" until some of the rituals or beliefs in these fields gave them a bad name, and any useful components were recycled into new fields. If you want to go for a "magic as science" type world, were characters proclaims the logic of magic, they would probably use one of the above terms, except, these rituals, or something inspired by them, works in your work.

Personally, for me, what makes magic "magic" is the emotional, moral, or spiritual component. Even in Avatar the Last Airbender, with a relatively rigid hard magic system, Zuko's loses his fire bending when he loses his rage. If it becomes so much of a tool that it no longer reflects the character, it ceases to really feel like magic to me, just science with a different set of rules.