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A syntax of spellcasting
Dorothy clicking her heels, the waving of magic wands, a sorcerer casting a spell with his hands, Bewitched’s Samantha twitching her nose, the wizard Howl snapping his fingers, Aladdin’s Genie willing things into existence. These are all expressions of magic.
What are the most fundamental components of magic? In other words, what elements appear consistently across virtually all depictions of magic? What few components represent the minimum requirement for an action to be interpreted as magic?
Magic consists of the establishment of an intention followed by a simple action which triggers the realisation of that intention. Typically, these come in the form of incantations, single gestures or sequences thereof.
This simple action then translates to one of a set of possible effects in the world. The magician is the one who decides which of these effects it will materialisw. The effect itself can be anything as long as the ‘type of magic’ invoked permits it: moving an object at a distance, producing fire, causing reactions in someone’s body, metamorphosis, manipulating the weather, opening portals, healing wounds, fixing things, flying, animating objects, and so on.
Thus, a formula that distills the essence of what makes something an act of magic -a syntax of spellcasting– could be:
[ the establishment of an intention
+ simple action with a single implement (the implement can be an inanimate object such as a wand, a gesture through the caster’s body, or an incantation)
= one effect from an array of effects → 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, depending on the intention, and usually in the form of action at a distance]
One might look at this formula and observe that one could very well apply it to certain technologies, as technologies can also perform action at a distance.
The ‘establishment of an intention’ comprises choosing from the interface what the machine will do.
The ‘simple action with an implement’ translates to interacting with an interface (which can just as well involve sending instructions through voice or through neurotechnologies such as implantable brain-computer interfaces).
The effects are whatever functions the machine is capable of carrying out. Instructions sent from interface to machine through wireless technologies constitute the technical equivalent of an effect performed through action at a distance (e.g., in magic, the caster selects an objective at a distance and the magical effect takes place upon it without any physical element connecting them both).
Differences between technology and magic
There are three essential differences between magic and technology.
The first is that the implement and the effect are not necessarily related. While the implement generates the effect, nothing in its physical characteristics hints at a particular function; Dorothy’s heels can trigger the effect of teleportation, but the shoes are regular shoes with no material difference from any other pair of shoe. They somehow generate that effect without any perceivable triggering component: there are no inner circuits, no chemicals, no rare materials. If we were to break them apart, there would be nothing suggesting anything that produces teleportation. This phenomenon can be called a causal discontinuity.
The second difference concerns the source from which the effect materialises. In the case of magic, it materialises either out of thin air or from the implement itself. With technology, it will always be produced by a machine’s components. We might be able to fly at the push of a button, but it will be a drone that carries us. If it were magic, it would suffice to carry the remote control with us and we would fly without the drone. Thus, this difference concerns the effect itself, which in the case of technology requires an additional element, the concrete mechanism —the effecting machine—, that must be present to materialise the effect. In magic that element is not necessary. I will call this non-reliance on effecting machines effect autonomy.
The third difference is simple resource singularity. In contrast with action at a distance through technology, where multiple rare components such as metals, minerals, synthetic elements and energy sources need to be coordinated, only one type of resource is necessary to fuel the conjuring of magic. Depictions of magic typically characterise this resource as ‘mana’, which is a way of naming mysterious spiritual or cosmic forces. These forces provide the energy responsible for catalysing magical effects. I call mana a single resource because a practitioner of magic can transmute its energy into a profoundly diverse assortment of unrelated effects; these effect share little in common apart from having been produced with the help of mana.
It is thereby a simple resource singularity: a single type of resource is all that is required as energy for triggering anything involving ‘magic’, and this energy reaches its destination —the triggering of an effect— without the need for any mediation. It arrives unmediated, unfiltered, in a pure state: through simple means.
A situation in the realm of technology parallel to simple resource singularity would consist of summoning any of a smartphone’s functionalities solely through the use of electricity. There would be no need for circuits, batteries, antennas nor sensors. At most, one single rare element might be needed apart from electricity, just as, for example, a ‘magical’ stone is required for some magical implements to work. When it comes to the real world, a smartphone needs multiple resources channeled through complex means.
Essentially, magic is the engendering of an effect that is seemingly1 unrelated to the physical characteristics of the tool wielded to trigger it; it dispenses with the need for a technical object that can materialise this effect through its inner mechanisms; and, typically, it requires only a single resource, channeled through simple means (raw energy streaming through without the mediation of complex mechanisms such as circuit boards) to be summoned. Magic is almost artefact-independent. It does not require any infrastructure nor technological devices to be performed. A practitioner can be lost deep in the jungle, far from any trace of civilisation, and still perform their magic without any hindrances beyond needing to recharge their mana, which replenishes naturally without the intervention of any force external to the magician’s body.
Another point where technology and magic are converging.
It’s hard to imagine how a technology with these three characteristics —causal discontinuity, effect autonomy, and simple resource singularity— would work with our current scientific knowledge and technological capacity. The only place where fulfilling them seems possible is in the digital world, where ‘magic’ in this sense can happen, because we can manipulate the digital with almost godlike omnipotence. Yet, these are effects that belong to the domain of illusion rather than true magic; they are simulations where omnipotence can be achieved similar to how it works in our imagination.
However, there is a point where technology and magic—as considered from these three characteristics—are converging. This point is the growing multiplicity of actions that one can execute through a single interface, along with increasing simplicity and speed in navigating these options. A stark example is a vocal prompt interface which translates a conversational type of interaction into instructions for an artificial intelligence application. In this case, our only implement would be a portable computer (such as a smartphone) with a microphone, capable of running the AI software that processes our voices. In terms of the formula outlined at the beginning of this text, the distance between the establishment of an intention and the effect is shortening. Meanwhile, the triggering action is becoming simpler (a string of text, a voice command) while the array of possible effects from a single implement is expanding.
The implication of this convergence is that ‘superhuman’ or enhanced human actions can be performed in increasingly simple and intuitive ways. We can consult ‘oracles’ by a mere voice command, we can control indoor illumination, talk at a distance, meet in virtual reality spaces, instruct machines to perform actions, control robotic limbs, and so on.
Will human progress eventually lead to the possibility of magic?
Maybe magic will someday become possible. At this point in time, the closest we might come to magic is in the elegance of our use of technologies: low resource use, a single interface for a multiplicity of actions, and simplicity yet precision (a more accurate and instant interpretation of our intentions). However, as far as I am concerned, effect autonomy does not look anywhere close to becoming a reality—how can we create an effect at a distance and out of thin air?
What I am most optimistic about is the existence of portable, versatile machines that can materialise a wide range of effects while being instructed and controlled remotely through a simple interface. The pinnacle of this interface simplicity would be communication through subtle bodily gestures, customisable to highly personal preferences, mere thought, or vocal commands as quiet as whispers. The range of effects that these machines could materialise would certainly be limited due to the physical limitations of a portable machine, but it would be highly customisable, just like in some lores magicians can only carry a limited selection of spells that they choose from their repertoire before beginning the day.
And if we were to imagine further ahead into the future, nanotechnologies might be the closest approximation to ‘magical action’ fulfilling these three conditions to a certain extent. While they might not technically do so, nano-components could become so effective, energy-efficient, and imperceptible that they would persuade us at the level of raw human perception that something akin to magic is happening
The advent of biotechnologies is also an event that brings us closer to the possibility of more ‘magical seeming’ capabilities. Magic is intimately connected with nature because it does not depend on any artefact, machine nor infrastructure created by human civilisation. Visually speaking, magic does not involve the participation of any human-made object: there is no intermediary between the magician’s action and the effect it produces. At most, this intermediary is a simple, causally discontinuous object, such as Dorothy’s shoes or Gandalf’s staff.
Magic inhabits an overlap between human body/spirit, nature and cosmic forces, rather than relying on deliberately engineered systems and infrastructures needed to support its functioning.
In any case, it is almost redundant to say that our unknown unknowns are likely limitless: there are pieces of the puzzle of possibilities in this world—or perhaps extensions, new dimensions to the puzzle, or even wholly different puzzles—that we might discover in the future that we just do not even know we don’t understand, because we remain unaware of them. For now, as we have always done thanks to our human ability to fantasise, we can imagine how some yet inexistent things could look like.
Maybe magic is a retroactive prophecy that describes a particular state of technological progress, where what we previously thought was magic becomes indistinguishable from technology in every regard —except that the former has always worn the colours of the supernatural, while the latter is man-made. Alternatively, it may be an unattainable ideal that orders our priorities regarding what technological progress looks like, just as the idea of God represents a perpetually distant, unattainable ideal of absolute cosmic power and agency.
After-thought: other angles to explore
As an after-thought, the topic of accessibility to technology versus accessibility to magic—the difference in who and under which conditions and criteria gets to access them—is a natural follow-up to this speculative comparison. The fact that magical capabilities can be acquired through genetics, intellectual teaching of secret knowledge, the manifestation of untapped magical capabilities, the possession of a magical object, the favour of a magical being, an initiation ritual, and so on, is non-trivial: how does this compare to the means by which people gain access to technologically afforded capabilities? And how does a notion of magic relate to individualism? Technology is built upon human collaboration at a vast scale, while the magician seems to enjoy absolute independence in their practice of magic.
Another related topic that I might explore in the future is its semiotic or linguistic side: a comparison of Kaos magick with AI prompting and Ursula K. Le Guin’s idea of magic being controlled by a primordial language which gives things their ‘true names’.
- I say ‘seemingly’ because even with the kind of magic described in fantasy and other kinds of fiction there could always be other frequencies or currently unknown forces that explain them; they do not necessarily materialise out of nothing) ↩︎
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