Cold Open Last year I came across one of
the most interesting and bizarre interpretations of "magic" I've ever seen in a work of fiction.
The book Perdido Street Station by China Mieville is... weird. Exceptionally weird.
Cities built around the corpses of impossibly-large monsters, beetle-headed
women in deep romantic relationships with humans, god-like trans-dimensional spider-artistes that go
around playing with the "weave" of reality... that kind of weird. And the magic is no exception.
Just... not for the reasons you might expect. Instead of the traditional "wizardry" or "sorcery"
or "witchcraft", what they practice in the world of Bas-Lag is "thaumaturgy." It's a term I've seen
crop up in tons of other fantasy stories as well, but Perdido Street Station was the first one that
really gave me pause. Is thaumaturgy a different thing? Is there a reason we should call it that
and not just "magic"? Turns out, there is.
And this book makes a really good case for it. It's not the most important part of the tale,
but it is one of more interesting bits. Ad Card
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Topic #1: What is Thaumaturgy? In its original context,
thaumaturgy really did just mean "magic". It comes from a Greek word which means "wonder working",
which was once applicable to the performance of any feat that couldn't be explained by what was,
at the time, known of natural science. So... that's a very wide blanket. From here, the word
just seems to be a synonym for wizardry or... basically any other kind of magic. In his book
Authentic Thaumaturgy, the author Isaac Bonewits distinguishes it from what he calls theurgy,
which has more to do with divinity and the soul. So that means... thaumaturgy is any magic that
doesn't come from a supernatural source? I guess that's sort of serviceable, but it doesn't seem
to be what the majority of authors mean when they use the term. To them, whether they realized it or
not, it seems to have something to do with the strange intersection of magic... and science.
For example, in Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the basic unit of magic is called a "thaum",
which is defined as the amount of magic needed to create a white pigeon or three billiard balls. Not
what I would call overtly rational, but still very systematic! In the game the Elder Scrolls
2: Daggerfall, thaumaturgy is a character skill defined as a "focus on manipulating known forces
and objects within their natural laws." A little more precise, and I think this definition cuts
a little closer to the quick, as well. But as I said, it wasn't until I read Perdido Street
Station that I really started to notice this. One of the story's protagonists, Isaac,
is a scientist who used to study at the University of New Crobuzon, where thaumaturgy is not only a
practice, but a field of scientific research with practical application. The thaumaturges who learn
these skills are put to work in every part of society from engineering all the way down to
corporal punishment. Isaac himself is a dilettante genius, who wanders from theory to theory,
trying to understand parts of thaumaturgy people haven't yet bothered to explore-the things that
still look somewhat magical. His ramblings about theories and philosophies feel so much more like
the musings of a modern essayist than a mage in a high fantasy story. And it's this feeling that
I'm trying to understand. Magic... made oddly rational. Systematized, but still enchanting.
So, I dug a little deeper into the history of thaumaturgy, and what I found...
makes a lot of sense. Topic #2: History of "The Art"
Around the turn of the 16th century in Western Europe, science as a common practice was entering
into the social consciousness. No longer was it strictly the realm of latin-speakers and
the extremely wealthy. Anyone who was able to get their hands on printed or written
materials about developing scientific ideals would be able to, in some capacity, engage!
Well... I say "science", but it was still quite a bit rougher than that.
They usually just called what they were doing "mathematicks", or, more poetically
"the art." Don't forget, alchemy was still alive and well during this period, and many
if not most of these early scientists engaged in it side by side with more... practical studies.
And this is where we come to what may be the first anglicized form of the word "thaumaturgy". In his
book Mathematicall Praeface to Euclid's Elements, the famous polymath John Dee discusses "an art
mathematical" called "thaumaturgy" which, in his words "giveth certain order to make strange works,
of the sense to be perceived and of men greatly to be wondered at." Essentially, thaumaturgy was,
to him, the science that makes really weird stuff happen. Wonder-working, after a fashion.
And this sentiment wasn't unique to Dee. Around this time, you see phrases like mathematicall
magicks and mechanical wizardry used to describe the fabled works of Archimedes and Daedelus.
There was certainly a general understanding that they were tapping into something quite powerful
and quite wondrous... they just... didn't really know how to talk about it. Some segment of the
lay-population has always been wary of new technologies and sciences. The employment of
mathematics to create complex contraptions like automata and simulacra had long drawn suspicion
before this point in history, uneducated audiences unable to see how else they could be fabricated
but with the help of devils or demons. So practitioners of the so-called "art" were
very often derided as "conjurers" and suffered a lot of infamy as a result. In 1583, a mob
broke into and destroyed John Dee's fine library, including much of his "thaumaturgic" apparatus.
We even see the sentiment borne out in Goethe's Faustus, where, upon making a deal with the devil,
the protagonist doesn't don a black robe and start weaving evil enchantments; rather,
he becomes "the most famous mathematician that lived in his time." How sinister.
You'd think the fact that early scientific resources were becoming more accessible would
help the situation. People would be able to see that it's not devils and demons behind all of
this and, hopefully, calm down a bit. But... the opposite sort of happened.
Part of the reason people were so upset was because practitioners like John Dee spoke in such
high terms about their "thaumaturgical art". Even simple things like levers and mirrors were made to
sound like magic wands and crystal balls. Here, listen to what Dee says about Numbers. They are,
according to him, the means by which on might "arise, clime, ascend,
and mount up (with Speculative winges) in spirit, to behold in the Glas of Creation,
the Forme of Formes, the Exemplar Number of all things Numerable: both visible and invisible:
mortall and immortall, Corporall and Spirituall." So... yeah. I can understand why
people were a little confused. It also doesn't help that John Dee was very much
a mystic and believed he was constantly surrounded by invisible spirits, but that's neither here nor
there. The point is that the "thaumaturgy" all these people were engaging was...
really just misunderstood science. In the words of Arthur C. Clarke,
"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
We usually hear this maxim in the context of sci-fi, but I think all of this proves that it
can work just as well in fantasy. Topic #3: Perception and Potential
Some magic systems depend on theurgy, and the divine is usually, by nature, impossible
to fully comprehend; supernatural. Other systems treat their magic as numinous and unquantifiable,
impossible to source-the thing that defines it is that it's an elusive part of nature
that can never be rationalized. But thaumaturgy is different. This is magic that has nuts and bolts.
You might not be able to see it at first glance, but when you boil it down, it's just science.
Perhaps science different from what we have in the real world-the setting may have different natural
laws-but within in that context? Yes, science. If the history of thaumaturgy proves anything,
it's that magic can abide in a world where, in the end, everything is subject to natural laws.
It just requires that some people don't quite understand how things work, or believe that
some things are possible. Where that's the case, no matter how scientifically sound,
you have yourself magic. Or at least something indistinguishable from it.
This is the thing I love so much about the magic of Perdido Street Station:
it just isn't magic. At least not to the denizens of that world. And even if it is,
the protagonist is hell-bent on rendering it rational and scientific in some capacity,
which he genuinely seems able to do. Everything can be demystified. It's an interesting
precedent to set for your world, one which really changes the tone of the stories you tell in it.
If you find yourself writing a lot of vague magic-o-mancy in your work,
this could certainly be worth a try. You don't actually have to invent an entire secondary-world
science for people to wonder confusedly at for it to work; you just have to suggest that,
behind the arcs of actinic lightning, there's a thaum or two of rationality at
work. Ad Spot
Segue When I
come across a method or an idea like this, I like to find some way to try it out if I can.
But there's a lot that goes into a good story beyond the writing and the method.
A lot of planning. It can be a drag if you're just trying to get to the execution...
but World Anvil can help lighten the load. Copy
You might know Cyberpunk as the genre of neon lights and leather coats. A world where
physically-augmented half-human, half-machine rogues move through claustrophobic mega-cities in
the rain; where once-hopeful technologies have become the tools of oppression;
where bands of misfits wage futile wars against the tyrannical engines of greed.
All of this is very cyberpunk, and very fun, and very interesting.
But the part of the genre that has always held my attention is the... liminal natural of it. The
world of cyberpunk isn't just a digital dystopia full of groundbreaking technology. It's also
a world of change. The technology in these stories brings us to the brink of what is human... and
what may no longer be. Patreon Spot
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Those are actually the names of our Patreon maintenance crew,
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Outro And... that's it for this video!
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Until then, thanks for watching, and keep making stuff up!
I'll see you... next time. Bye!