Let's see... Rules Magic with side orders of Theurgy, Device Magic and Music Magic; used for Necromancy, Mentalism, Black Magic, Blood Magic and Summon Magic?
Rules Magic because it's based on higher mathematics. Theurgy because you can summon inter dimensional entities from minor animators to powerful godlike beings. Device Magic because a computer will do Math. Music Magic because Eric Zahn's violin (music as a form of math?)
Necromancy because zombies everywhere. Blood Magic in that pain and death can be used to power magic. Summon Magic because you can summon beings. Black because of the nature of those beings and the means used to summon them.
Besides the book Charlie's working on now, are there any other examples of Mentalism?
In Charles Stross' The Laundry Files applied thaumaturgy is a branch of higher mathematics, and thus is Rule Magic. Alternate universes can be accessed by generating a complex geometrical curve either by mind alone or through the use of computers (Device Magic) which can be anything from cryptological supercomputer nets to smart phones to more esoteric implementations such as games of fairy chess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_chess). Some of those universes are utterly different to our own, and the beings that live in them can be communicated with or summoned (Summon Magic and Theurgy). The series contains examples of:
Divination: The Predictive Branch of the Laundry uses a mixture of traditional (crystal balls, entrail reading) and modern (web-cams pointing at crystal balls, stochastic mapping of Tarot card readings) to get a roughly 50% hit rate.
Mentalism: Geases of various sorts, most prominant of which is the Laundry warrant card which at one level works like psychic paper, and at another can be invoked to bind the mouths of witnesses to occult phenomena.
Necromancy: Extra-dimensional entities are summoned to animate the bodies of the dead. More powerful ones can also possess the living, displacing the original inhabitant or consuming them.
Blood Magic: If one is not mathematically inclined, the entropic decay caused by suffering and death can be used to power magic.
Music Magic: The series contains one specially-constructed musical instrument, the Eric Zahn violin, that is used to exorcise possessing entities, through the representation of mathematics in musical form (and a little blood magic).
Black Magic: Arguably. While the Laundryverse contains god-like entities, they are inimical to lesser beings such as ourselves, seeing our suffering as fuel for their continued existence or resuscitation. The morality of magic is purely human imposed.
Shockingly, there isn't a page for psychic paper, so I linked to Psychic Powers instead.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-12-06 07:08 am (UTC)Rules Magic because it's based on higher mathematics. Theurgy because you can summon inter dimensional entities from minor animators to powerful godlike beings. Device Magic because a computer will do Math. Music Magic because Eric Zahn's violin (music as a form of math?)
Necromancy because zombies everywhere. Blood Magic in that pain and death can be used to power magic. Summon Magic because you can summon beings. Black because of the nature of those beings and the means used to summon them.
Besides the book Charlie's working on now, are there any other examples of Mentalism?
no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 08:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 11:13 am (UTC)Shockingly, there isn't a page for psychic paper, so I linked to Psychic Powers instead.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 03:30 pm (UTC)