Origin of magic

[mbartelsm]

Hello!
I have the following problem:
In my setting, magic has been around forever, it is one of the elemental forces of nature, but people didn't really knew how to properly use it until a certain event occurred 2385 years ago that enlightened people on it's use. This event is also the year 0 in the standard calendar. What event could have made this happen?

I was thinking maybe the discovery of some ancient scripts from a long lost civilization, but that's a bit of a cliché

 

[Mindfire]

I would say an event of that magnitude with such far reaching consequences could only be divine intervention. Have you tried that as a solution?

 

[shangrila]

Maybe it was always around but people couldn't actually use it until that year? Or maybe someone was researching it, something went wrong, their city was wiped away and the resulting tear allowed people to use magic?

 

[Graylorne]

Well, probably it's like the Manhattan project: the result of painstaking research by a lot of people over a long time, with setbacks, budget cuts, espionage, major disappointments, until suddenly a weary professor managed to change a white mouse into a roaring dragon.
After that, you'd probably get Shangrila's suggestion.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

The birth of a figurehead that had a natural affinity for the magic? During their lifespan they were able to teach others how to connect to it and use it for varying purposes. The original magic user could be someone still revered to this day, or maybe the believe in that individual has been relegated to myth. Loads of directions you could go....

 

[Queshire]

aliens or the fantasy equivilent crashing to the world and letting the people discover how to use magic by reverse engineering their magic technology?

 

[mbartelsm]

I think I'm going for a mix of T.Allen.Smith and Mindfire. A naturally gifted person who learned magic directly from the gods (in this setting, gods aren't actually that powerful, they are like the deities in Princess Mononoke for those who've seen it).

 

[Mindfire]

I think I'm going for a mix of T.Allen.Smith and Mindfire. A naturally gifted person who learned magic directly from the gods (in this setting, gods aren't actually that powerful, they are like the deities in Princess Mononoke for those who've seen it).

Sounds like a good place to start. Now you just have to answer: why did the gods suddenly decide to teach men magic? Or maybe you don't have to answer it, depending on how "mysterious" the ways of your gods are.

 

[Saigonnus]

Perhaps exposure to the "energies" in a given place (maybe a single village); somewhere with highly focused magical presence, caused it to change the DNA of the people, like radiation does to the human body and what's more it was genetic. With that change, it gave people the power to use magic. As they bred and moved to other places, more and more became able to use magic.

 

[Aosto]

Possibly making it a form of focus magic, where a talisman of sorts is needed to channel the magical energies? A group or village long ago discovered, while mining ore, a special type of crystal/rock/gen. Being primitive, they idolized this item as so many primitive civilizations did. Thinking it was an object of the Gods, and they prayed to it. Over time they realized that what they prayed for would begin to materialize eventually learning that with much concentration they could create 'magic'

 

[It's a Squirrel...Moose?]

If magic is a essential element of your world, then it goes to follow that humanity has had experience of it in some manner. Maybe a purely scientific approach to magic? One where the magical system was 'discovered' in a similar vein to how Newton 'discovered' gravity?

 

[mbartelsm]

Sounds like a good place to start. Now you just have to answer: why did the gods suddenly decide to teach men magic? Or maybe you don't have to answer it, depending on how "mysterious" the ways of your gods are.

Gods aren't really that mysterious, they are imperfect in many ways, stubborn, unstable, treacherous, some are even plain evil, it all varies from god to god.
I was thinking that the human may have been raised by a clan (or family which is the way most gods are grouped) and because of that he learned magic, one day he saw how men waged war on a defenseless village so he intervened to stop the bloodshed, without knowing the consequences, he decided to teach magic to the village inhabitants so that they could defend themselves.

 

[ALB2012]

I am vague about the source of magic in my world but it does sound like you need a reason. Could even be magic is an illness or something. Or a bacteria.

Or caused by a catastrophe, the survivors developed it.
All sorts of options

 

[Anders Ämting]

If magic is a essential element of your world, then it goes to follow that humanity has had experience of it in some manner. Maybe a purely scientific approach to magic? One where the magical system was 'discovered' in a similar vein to how Newton 'discovered' gravity?

I was thinking something similar. If magic is a fundamental force, it should have a constant measurable effect on the universe, except people didn't notice it because it seemed too obvious. Same way you don't think about gravity because of course things fall down, right?

Like, maybe supersticion actually works: knocking on wood does lower the probability of an unfortunate event somewhat, etc. But then some sort of anomaly occurs that makes people realize it's something you can exploit if you just figure out how it works.

Of course, this depends a lot on what magic in this setting actually does.

 

[CupofJoe]

Is the "why" of the creation [year 0] of useable magic intrinsic to your story?
If not, I'd be tempted to leave it out. Leave magic as a "Because!"
Somethings don't make sense or only make it in retrospect.
For example the start of Christianity was only codified 3-400 years after it happened. The exact date and time, even some of the events were confused and sometimes contradictory. Your Year 0 might have been declared 5 or 500 years after the event.
And thinking about this a bit more... The sudden "arrival" of magic would create huge upheaval. it could take decades just to stop the riots and get a new world order settled...

 

[mbartelsm]

Judging from the comments I see I didn't explain myself as I wanted.
The world was not created on the year 0, just like the earth wasn't created 2012 years ago, it's just a calendar
Magic has always been around and readily available to humans, but it was not until the year 0 that it was discovered how to properly use it.
No it is not important for the story because there is no story yet, I want to create a world and see what kind of stories would develop in that setting (instead of creating the story and then a world around it)

 

[Zero Angel]

I know you already said you were going to go with a mixture of some suggestions you had here, but another option could be that magick was around for a while before this, but it was restrained to a select few and not publicized.

This happens with one race in my novels, called Galateans. The subspecies known as Galatean Magi or Zeus Models were able to use their race's magicks in pretty powerful fashion, but they were incredibly rare (actually less than 20 over the course of a few thousand years). The entire race, magi included, had been working on unlocking the secrets of magicks for mass consumption (or at least to elevate some more to the magi subspecies) for quite a while. This all comes to a head when the allied races of the entire world lay siege to the Galatean capital Prometheus.

The Galateans unlock the secrets of their magicks, but inadvertently rip open the fabric of the cosmos and allow demons to enter our Realm in their full force, while simultaneously obliterating half the continent.

...but at least after this point Galatean magi became more common and normal galts could aspire to utilize magicks.

 

[FatCat]

Perhaps you shouldn't look at year zero as the sudden realization of magic and its uses, however make it a political date, i.e. when magic was formalized into society, instead of vague superstition it overtime became employed in a scientific method as others have said, and thus began the new period of mankind.

 

[ahhhitswells]

In my story, a comet joined the orbit of the planets that has activated "magik" in certain individuals. Don't copy but hope that helps!

Other ideas:
A disease is being spread that activates magik... at a great cost....
An ancient language was rediscovered, left by an extinct race, that completes the puzzle of magik.
A mysterious stranger from another world enters to teach magik.

 

[Ankari]

In my story, a comet joined the orbit of the planets that has activated "magik" in certain individuals. Don't copy but hope that helps!

Pretty original. Is the gravitational pull of the comet the cause, or is it composed of materials that give off radiation?

Don't worry, my magic systems is already established