Fantasy gets startlingly complex at times, doesn't it?
These worlds with their rich histories and weird natural laws, the magic systems with
their codexes of rules and applications... don't get me wrong, that level of depth is
an wonderous thing, and really, more often than not, I am a glutton for it.
But sometimes I just want something easy, natural, intrinsic.
Sometimes, I just want magic to feel as uncomplicated as breathing.
And recently, I read a story where that was very literally the case.
In the book Imajica by Clive Barker, there is a magic called Pneuma, which in Greek means
"breath".
With it, the fabric of reality can be altered by something as simple as an exhalation.
When the book first introduced it, something about it felt so familiar and so right, I
had to look into it.
And what I found... took my breath away.
It may not be the most important part of the tale, but it is one of the more interesting
bits.
As a story, Imajica is not terribly simple.
It's got realities parallel to ours, an eldritch void separating them, megalomaniacs on both
sides trying either to close or barricade the gap, echoes of selves in different worlds,
predestined paths, genocide against the gods... the list goes on.
But there are two key forms of magic in the setting that are... interesting to compare.
One is performed by savants called maestros, who through meticulous and artful rituals
are able to travel the Imajica-the spaces between worlds-and work all manner of miracles.
The second kind... a character blows into his hand, and things happen.
Literally.
It is no more complicated than that.
In this world, breath from the right breast, for the right reason, can transport you across
dimensions, split glaciers open, obliterate people where they stand, collapse an entire
city block and threaten the rest of the skyline surrounding it... and then, be drawn back
into the lungs from which it came; taken back in as easily as it was released.
Pneuma.
More magic contained in a sigh than in any number of rituals or incantations.
It's an important thread in the story, and something fairly unique to one of the protagonists,
but still blessedly simple.
A sort of intrinsic magic that comes from within.
No need for gods or complex mechanics; it is what it is, it works how it works.
At one point, when the protagonist uses it accidentally to kill something and starts
to wonder how it had happened, a more knowledgeable character says, in the plainest possible terms:
"How else would you have done it?
You had the will, and you had the power.
You've always had it."
This is far from the first story I've read with magic of this nature.
Harry Potter, X-men, Avatar: the Last Airbender-the examples of this intrinsic power thing are
countless.
But I think what I'm noticing about this particular case is that it's not something fundamentally
special about the protagonist.
I mean, it is, not everyone produces pneuma when they breathe, but also... as long as
they're alive, breath is something every human being possesses.
This magic isn't based in something supernatural or pseudoscientific; it's based in something
human.
I love that.
It feels like a reversal of what so much magic in fantasy is.
Rather than something grand and numinous made small and quantifiable, it's something small
and simple elevated to the status of magic.
I'm sure there are other aspects of humanity authors have done this with, but breath is
a particularly interesting choice, because it comes loaded with significance.
Breath is ethereal.
You can't see it, but when you bring it into your lungs, it somehow translates into life,
forming a bridge between the unseen world and the physical.
It brings calm, and control, and self-mastery.
Obviously we know the science behind this now, but it doesn't take a lot of imagination
to understand how that metaphor emerged.
It's even in the language that we use.
Inspiration, aspiration, the word spirit itself-all of them come from the Latin word spiritum,
which means breath.
To be inspired is like taking in a breath of air.
An aspiration is like an anticipatory breath, caught in your chest.
Like breath, spirits are the life that fill the enfolding flesh.
Mankind has been thinking of it in these terms for a long, long time.
Long enough to develop culture and philosophy surrounding it.
Look to the Chinese and you find Qi, a form of vital essence not only comparable to breath,
but in some measure controlled by it.
In India, you find prana, another form of life energy, called the "inner breath" by
some, which permeates all things and is a key stepping stone to higher meditative states.
I find this so beautiful, because in these philosophies breath almost becomes a conscious
tool.
Using it in this way gives you the means to interact willingly with the incorporeal.
Honestly, this is about as close to magic as we get in the real world, so is it a surprise
to see that some fantasy has already keyed into it?
I mentioned Avatar: the Last Airbender earlier?
Well, we have someone here to help explain just how perfect an example of this Avatar
is: our good friend Tim from the youtube channel Hello Future Me.
Tim?
Magic
controlled through breath; breath as a symbol of self-mastery.
To control the self is to touch the ineffable.
Beautiful.
But Pneuma is different from that.
Pneuma is... strange.
For early Greek philosophers and anatomists, it was a missing link; the key to understanding
the connection between body and soul, divinity and flesh.
It wasn't a magical tool one might use to engage with the incorporeal; it was simply
the substance that bridged the gap.
A far more anatomical-and far less spiritual-application of the breath metaphor.
The first reference to this I could find was in the writings of Alcmaeon in 500BCE.
He was studying cadavers at the time, trying to trace the sensory organs back to their
apparatus within the body to see where the senses came from, how they worked.
Somewhere along the lines, he made the determination that inhaled breaths enter and circulate through
the arteries in the form of what he called "pneuma"-a blood-borne breath.
If you think about it, it's actually pretty accurate.
Weird how things like this come full circle sometimes....
But things got far more interesting when Plato picked up the idea.
There's a lot more... we'll called it "philosophy" in his approach.
He had a dualistic view of the soul, thinking of it as something separate and distinct from
the physical body.
This perspective has been called the "ghost in the machine", which-as much as it reminds
me of a certain anime-I really do love as a title.
But the question is, how would it operate the body?
How can something intangible flick the levers to operate the machine, so to speak?
This is where Pneuma comes in.
He saw the interaction of body and soul as the result of a metabolic process.
Inhaled air was a kind of spiritual energy which emanated from God (that is, Zeus), and
was transformed in by the organs into a sort of intermediate material called pneuma, which
eventually reached the brain and became the soul.
Like many thinkers of his time, he believed the nerves were hollow, and saw them as a
means by which a purer, more rarified form of pneuma might be diffused into the body,
thereby animating it.
So incorporeal substance goes in, is transformed by the body into an intermediate material,
which goes on to deliver instructions for what the corporeal body does.
Pneuma.
Breath literally becomes the soul.
Aristotle on the other hand had a far more materialistic view of things.
He saw no meaningful distinction between body and soul, calling it the mere "activity of
life", just as sight is the "activity of the eye".
To him, the whole was the sum of the parts-having a soul was what made an organism an organism.
Without that, it literally could not be.
He called this unity the "psyche"-the essential form of every living thing.
If something could at the very least reproduce and consume nutrients, you could tell it possessed
one.
On the other end of the scale of life, there were beings like humans and gods who in addition
to a psyche, also possessed "phantasia"-the ability to imagine and rationalize.
And again, between both, he described pneuma.
Different from Plato, he saw it not as the material of the spirit, but rather as a form
animating energy, something which he called "vital heat", which imparted the ability to
move and experience sensations.
Thus, he reasoned, anywhere life existed, there must have been some presence of this
heat.
They still believed that life just appeared out of nowhere back then, so when worms randomly
turned up in mud, or fish in the sea, or maggots on a carcass, there must have been pneuma
around.
Even for humans, he blamed conception on what he called "connate pneuma", carried in the
male seed.
Hm...
This is the second video in three months where I've mentioned "the male seed", isn't it Not
really a record I wanted to set.
Thanks, old-timey male philosophers...
The last and perhaps most mystical of the Greek pneuma theories came from the stoics.
Just like Aristotle, they too thought of it as a sort of animating energy.
But they also thought of it as something far bigger.
To them, pneuma was the shared breath of the cosmos.
They viewed the universe as a single living organism coursing with it, in turn giving
life and sense to all that resides within.
Pneuma was the physical material of "logos", which is a term that means logic, order, reason.
It was the wind which carried that "vital heat" to all things.
But because of the disparity of life forms on Earth, they also thought that there must
be a variety of different pneuma, which do different things.
A pneuma of state or tension, which gives things form-probably an early surrogate for
gravity.
A pneuma of life force, which provides the ability to reproduce and grow.
A pneuma of soul, which brings movement and the ability the powers of perception.
And then finally, a pneuma of rational spirit, which makes intelligent life capable of judgement.
This is one of the most inspiring (pun fully intended) takes on the topic to me, because
it implies that the soul is an external influence.
It's out there, mingled with the rest of the universe, and you're simply taking it in.
Your breath becomes you.
The breath metaphor is beautiful wherever it shows up, but this... breath not just as
a tool, not even really just as a metaphor, but as the actual anatomic bridge between
body and soul?
I feel like there is so much room to dream, here.
And that's what Clive Barker did with Imajica.
He simply answered the question: if a pneuma creates you on the way in, what does it do
on the way out?
There, he found magic.
And you could too.
A good place to start might with the book itself, which you listen to for free with
Audible!
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The audible original for this book is one of the best I've ever heard.
Simon Vance's performance adds so much tonality and depth that you just wouldn't get reading
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And when you're done with Imajica, that's not the end!
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Audible Premium will also give you access to audible plus-an absolutely massive collection
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