Magic

USER: Horatio | POSTED: 1-6-1990 22:52:09

SUBJECT: Magic Lore Bulletin

Magic sits at the root of why we are all here. Whether we think it is supernatural forces, extraterrestrial technology, or something divine, we all have encountered things that conventional science cannot explain. For our purposes, all of that falls under the large and imprecise bucket of "Magic". And this seems like a good time to quote Arthur C. Clarke:

*********************** * Clarke's Three Laws * ***********************

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

***********************

Now, I know some of you are wondering why I'm talking about technology in a lore bulletin on magic. Well, these laws apply pretty well to our situation as well. We're observing the boundary between the possible and the impossible, and finding that it isn't where we thought it was; maybe it used to be there, but it isn't any more. And we don't really know if this is something that could be classed as a technology or not - if it can be, we are still living in the world of the third law - we don't understand it well enough to call it anything other than Magic.

**************** * What We Know * ****************

Magic exists. It's unreliable, hard to prove, and poorly understood, but it is there. Magical creatures are out there. Some rituals work - not all the time, and not under all conditions - but they do work. Except when they don't.

And that's the infuriating part about magic; it is governed by conditions we don't really understand, and can fail to function based on those conditions. I'll cover what we do know about the circumstances when magic does and doesn't work below, but it is important to keep in mind that it can and does fail unpredictably. You shouldn't bet your life on magic; it can fail you at any time.

********************** * What We Don't Know * **********************

Pretty much everything else. We have a lot of conjectures and anecdotes, but anything from this point on should be treated as a guess - an educated guess, but it could be misleading, incomplete, or flat-out wrong. Treat everything from this point onward in this light. If you find something that's incorrect, share that with me and I'll update the bulletin.

DO NOT RELY ON THE ACCURACY OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION

OK, I think I've said that often and loud enough - anything you do from here on is on your own head.

****************** * What is Magic? * ******************

Magic is what we call it when cause and effect don't follow the rules science dictates (as least as far as we understand them). It makes the impossible merely improbable, and the improbable certain. With the right ritual, you can make a pair of dice roll nothing but sevens a thousand times in a row, know exactly who is outside your front door, or light a candle with a finger-snap. It allows for things like vampires and werewolves to exist. And it can open paths between our world and other places, where the rules of reality may be very different than our own. As I said above, this may all be really advanced science, beyond what we currently understand - but at our current level of knowledge, it is all Magic.

That doesn't mean we are completely in the dark. Some patterns have emerged over the centuries that people have experimented with magic, and they give us a toehold that we can use to figure out what is actually going on. And here's the first pattern that we have: Magic Doesn't Always Work.

Unlike the laws of physics, magic only works under certain conditions. And for most of human history, those conditions have not been present. Some scholars (like our own Goth Librarian, Raven) think there was once an "Atlantean Age" before recorded history when magic was highly reliable, and that great civilizations flourished based on it, only to collapse when conditions shifted. If so, that happened so long ago and the collapse was so complete that only fragments exist from then, embedded in oral traditions and folk practices all over the world.

So what are the conditions that allow magic to work? We don't know for sure. But they appear to be tied to natural cycles, at least in part.

************************ * Wheels Within Wheels * ************************

Nature is full of cycles. The Earth turns, giving us day and night; the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth goes around the sun. Larger, longer cycles are there too, from the precession of Earth's axis, the ages of the Zodiac, and even the two-hundred-million year cycle of the galactic year. As we progress through these cycles, the availability of magic seems to fluctuate. Some parapsychologists (like FringeDr, who contributed heavily to our knowledge here), have theorized a particle called a thaum which enables magic to happen, and have even built devices to measure them - the thaumometer. What they tell us (when they are working) is that the thaumic density (as they call it) is constantly in flux, and isn't very high to begin with. Most of the time, a thaumometer registers nothing at all. Only when the density rises above a certain point can it pick up a trace. And when that happens, they can see the effects of the various cycles.

Thaumometricians (ie, the people who study this, all three of them) have identified cycles as short as four minutes, and other cycles that range all the way up to years in length. As each cycle progresses, the thaumometer registers a rise, and then a fall - if you remember your trigonometry classes, you'd recognize it as a sine wave. The amount it rises and falls is proportional to how long the wave is - that four minute cycle is tiny, while the monthly cycle has a much bigger impact, and yearly and longer cycles are more powerful than that. And all of these cycles are going all the time - and they interact with each other. The technical description is that they are "constructive" and "destructive" interactions. A constructive interaction happens when two cycles are in sync and amplify their effects, while the destructive interaction is when two cycles are not synchronized and cancel each other out. If a bunch of cycles are all interacting constructively, they can push the overall thaum levels in one direction, either positive or negative. A big positive boost means magic is possible. A negative one means it isn't. And we have no idea how many cycles are actually going on, or how long they all take.

This part gave me a headache to write. I hope it was easier to read. But it brings us to the next big idea here: the Threshold.

***************** * The Threshold * *****************

The point where magic becomes possible is the Threshold. I've heard it described as a phase transition, like ice and water. Below a certain temperature, H2O is a solid. You can't pour it out, or drink it. It's a rock. But above a certain temperature, it becomes a liquid, and its properties change completely. Magic is like that, we think. Below a certain thaumic level (which Dr. Fringe calls 'The Zero-Point') magic is frozen solid, inert, and non-functional. Above the threshold, it begins to thaw out, and its properties change. Things that were impossible before begin to happen. Magic begins to happen.

For as long as we've been measuring this, the thaum level has fluctuated around the threshold. It thaws out, and then freezes again, based on the cycles I talked about above. It might be viable for a few minutes, or an hour, and then gone again. And even when it isn't completely frozen, the amount it thaws matters. Some magical effects only happen when the thaum level reaches above a certain point, while others work as soon as the thaumometer starts registering anything. Theoretically, if there was a big increase, there might be magical effects that manifest spontaneously on a huge scale. We don't know. But we might, someday. Because the measurements over the last few years have revealed one major trend. THE LEVELS OF MAGIC ARE RISING.

While it is still fluctuating around the Threshold, it is spending more and more time above it. The peaks are getting higher when they happen. Earlier this year, FringeDr's measurements suggested it was over the Threshold more than half the time. And while it is slow, it is still rising. And we have no idea when it will stop. FringeDr has hypothesized that some massive cycle or cycles are on the upswing, and are bringing the minimum thaumic density up; the smaller cycles are interacting with these big changes constructively and destructively, causing the fluctuation around the Threshold. This may have been happening for a long time; when we look back in history, we see periods like the Spiritualist era where Magic may have been more available for a while, before some medium-term cycle pulled the thaumic density down again. We might be in another one of these, and have a few decades coming where a small amount of magic can happen. Or maybe we are the beginning of a new Atlantean Age. There's no way to know.

************* * What Now? * *************

So here is the situation. Magic is becoming more available, and the magic that is available is becoming stronger. Old rituals and spells might work - or they might be nothing but nonsense. Monsters are definitely popping up - we have reports of vampires, werewolves, and other things. Most people don't believe in magic, but that won't last if things keep going in this direction. As far as we know, governments haven't noticed the changes yet - but that won't last either. The pressure is building, and I don't know what to expect. We should try and be ready for anything.

We're going over the threshold, one way or another. Let's do it together, for all of our sakes.

*********************************** * "There are more things in * * heaven and earth, Horatio, * * than are dreamt of in your * * philosophy." * * * * - Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5 * * ------------------------------- * * Horatio, System Administrator, * * Threshold BBS * ***********************************

USER: Raven | POSTED: 2-6-1990 1:02:39

SUBJECT: RE: Magic Lore Bulletin (Horatio)

One point of clarification - that older era is called the "Atlantean Age" in the literature, but that's just a label - it has nothing to do with the Atlantis described by Plato, who was just making shit up to illustrate a point. Don't try to make too much out of the name.

.d88b. 88 88 8bd8' 88' g8_RAVEN_88g 88 88 88 d88b d8888b

USER: FringeDr | POSTED: 2-6-1990 6:07:13

SUBJECT: RE: Magic Lore Bulletin (Horatio)

Don't you two ever sleep? Great Bulletin Horatio; I just want to add that thaumic levels are not consistent across space - various locations can have differing levels for reasons we are still investigating. For example Stonehenge (or as close as they let me get to Stonehenge) consistently shows elevated levels, while a car factory near Detroit has the lowest readings I've ever found. This might be connected to ley lines, or they might be associated with some other localized phenomena. I'll let everyone know when I have more data.

)><><><><><><><( )> Dr. Fringe <( )><><><><><><><(