Naturally, if you fail to correctly perform any ritual at any point, the object being given power will probably be destroyed. The more perfect the ritual, and the more persistently it is applied, the greater the power of the object. Rings can make their wearer invisible, carpets can fly, glass spheres can give light, and so on. By repeatedly performing rituals of great complexity, common objects can be imbued with properties they can confer to their user. Hardy's Magic is used to create magical objects. and the more complex the changes, the more steps are required (and the lower the chance of success on each step). So you have to start with a much larger quantity of initial substances than you wind up with. The only problem is that each step of the blending process has a chance of failure - for example, four out of ten times a particular step in a process might produce lightning or an explosion instead of the intermediate product you actually want. And thaumaturgy, while rule-based, is not an exact science - sometimes changes don't stop when they should.ДЄlchemy is mostly as you expect it: by properly blending items with the appropriate attributes you can obtain a final product with superior virtues, such as oils of heat resistance or gold from lead. (These principles were used to great effect by de Camp and Pratt in their very funny ' Compleat Enchanter' novels, as when their hero shortens a jailer's nose by forming a model of it in wax and melting it.) However, a strong spell requires a great deal of energy, such a from a fire or a flywheel. Using the principles of sympathy and contagion, it's possible to move things, to transform things into other things, and otherwise manipulate one's environment.

Hardy's Thaumaturgy is what we usually think of as magic. Law of Dichotomy: dominance or submission.

The Rule of Three: thrice spoken, once fulfilled.

The Maxim of Persistence: perfection is eternal.

The Doctrine of Signatures: the attributes without mirror the powers within.

The Principle of Contagion: once together, always together.

The Principle of Sympathy: like produces like.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, the five systems used by Hardy and their governing laws are: There were two semi-sequels, but MOTFM nailed the premise of magic as a scientific undertaking.Д«ecause it took a somewhat more mechanistic approach to magic (as opposed to LeGuin's naturalistic interpretation), I'm a little surprised not to have seen the concepts of magic as expressed in Hardy's book show up in some MMORPG already. LeGuin's original Earthsea trilogy (definitely not including the brutish fourth book tacked on years later) was in large part so wonderful because it evoked some aspect of what we find so fascinating about 'magic.' The Earthsea trilogy expressed the ' magic as art' position superbly.ДЇor the other approach, I can't think of a better example than Lyndon Hardy's novel Master of the Five Magics. I didn't come to a conclusion, other than that both forms can be fun to experience.ДЇor example, Ursula K. IвЂ™ve addressed elsewhere the question of whether magic in books and games should be presented as a science or as an art.

Master of the 5 magics