I am not a High Fantasy fan.

When I do read books where magic is a central theme to the story, I enjoy worlds where magic is something other than wands and spells.

I loved the magic of necromancy using bells from the Abhrosen trilogy by Garth Nix.  I also enjoyed the portrayal of magic in The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo and The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman.

I’m also a (mostly) observant Jew.  One of the difficulties I have with magic in books is how they make it impossible to square the circle of magic existing in a world with organized religions.  I.e., what separates magic from miracles?  For instance, in Harry Potter, they celebrate Christmas, but if you know magic to be real, why would the miracle of the death and resurrection of Christ be the cornerstone of your religion?  I’m sort of surprised that nobody said “Jesus was a wizard, Harry.”

But I digress…

So I have been fucking around with an idea for a world in which magic exists that takes a non-traditional approach to magic and ties it in with certain ideas from monotheistic religion.  I currently have no plot for a story in this world but I thought the world would be interesting.

In the beginning, there was nothing.  Then God created the heavens and the earth and all the things between and within.

This is, in the strictest sense, magic.  Magic is the creative power of God.  The power to will something into existence and create something from nothing.

We as people were made in the image of God,   we possess a soul.  That soul is the tiniest spark of divinity within us.  It is what elevates us above the animals, and one of the things that separates us from the animals is the ability to be creative, a power that derives from our soul.

If you have ever listened to a great piece of music or seen a great work of art and felt as though your soul has been moved, that is the faintest bit of magic.  It is the intangible quality in a piece of sublime creativity, channeled from the spark of divinity within a person that transcends the elements and invokes the power of God.

Among the greatest examples is Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.  Whenever it is played, virtually every person within earshot will stop and listen.  They will want to participate in the music.  The desire to sing or hum along or wave their arms like a composer is undeniable.

Why?

That is the magic, the divine creativity in such a beautiful piece of music, reaching out and drawing power from the souls of all who hear it to become something more powerful than just the compression and rarefaction of air molecules in a sound wave.

Consider the Pieta or the Veiled Christ (Giuseppe Sanmartino), statues carved from marble so perfectly that you swear that if you were to reach out and touch the folds of the Virgin Mother’s robe Christ’s veil, they would be soft and move like cloth.

In the Jewish tradition, we have the story of the Golem.  A wise and ancient Rabbi who creates a man from mud and whispers into its ear the name of God causing the mud man to come to life.  That is an act of creativity that draws directly from the power of God.

So how do we get from that concept of magic to practicing magicians?

A magician is someone who studies and hones the skill of sublime creativity.

The power of magic in the magician’s ability to borrow the power of God and will something into existence.

A sculptor who creates a sculpture of a man that is so perfect he comes to life.

A painter that can manifest the subject of a painting into reality.

A musician who can play a piece of music so deep that it doesn’t just stir the soul like the 9th Symphony, but actually dominates the listener’s free will and manipulates them.

Being more of a technical person myself, I thought of having magical technopaths that can create clockwork machines so complex that they manipulate the universe.  I wanted to tie this one into the Antikythera Mechanism.  Rather than a machine that predicts the movement of the stars and the tides, a clockwork that actually controlled the motion of the moon in its elliptical and ebb and flow of the sea.

I also had an idea for an ancient order of of magical lissiers or tapissiers who slowly manipulate events and human civilization by weaving an unending tapestry of life on earth.

Magic in this world would be more subtle and deeply impactful.

Also, anyone can make the effort to become a magician, people are not born into it, but it is a closely guarded secret and not well known outside of the practitioners.

It would be lots of master and apprentice-type education, perhaps with some small schools led by guilds in specific magical arts.  Masters would seek out people who display extraordinary talents and then show them what the true unlocking of their talent can do.

Of course, since people are literally playing with the power of God, problems are bound to happen, which is where I can start to stick in the plot.

It’s an idea in the raw that needs a lot of fleshing out.  I just wanted to come up with a novel form of a magical universe that has a vaguely plausible magic origin story.

–

Update:

Based on a comment, I wanted to explain just a little more on what separates a magician from a great master.  I don’t think I was clear enough.

Like the Rabbi of the Golem story, a magician is someone who knows the secret of how to deliberately channel the spark of divinity for creation.

A great artist will do it by accident but the difference between a great artist and a magician is the knowledge and purposeful skill of engaging in an act of sublime creativity.

That said, in this world, a lot of great masters would be magicians.  Leonardo Di Vinci would be a perfect example.  So would Michelangelo and Beethoven.

Clearly, people with the skills of being great masters would be people capable of learning to control of the spark of sublime diving creation.  But they would also engage in lesser great works of art.

So the closely guarded secret from above that is kept within the magic community is the transcendent knowledge that separates great skill from sublime creativity.

As I noted before, Kanye West has been saying some antisemitic bullshit about the Jews running this and that and profiting off the death of black people.

Then he went to Twitter with this bullshit quote:

https://twitter.com/HiPics90/status/1585208989440016384?s=20&t=InAQmRBBa0SHJHSi-CVf-A

See, you’re not allowed to criticize the Jews because they are in charge.

The justification for antisemitic statements is antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Circular logic is circular.

Of course, this puts Jews in a position where we can’t prove the negative.

“What Kanye said was antisemitic.  Abortion is not a conspiracy by Jewish doctors to kill black babies.”

“If you’re saying you can’t criticize the Jews that means the Jews are in charge and are crushing criticism of them.”

The more the Jews push back the more the conspiracy theory is reinforced in its believers.

Thats the problem with conspiracy theories, and antisemitic conspiracy theories in particular, the attempt to disprove them is taken as evidence that reinforces them.

We have already been the targeted by the Woke Left for their antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews as oppressive interlopers, now we have Kanye leading some weird pro-life alt-right against us too.

A man child decides he is going to stand up to the man and join his comrades in fighting the fascist.  He picks up a soy latte at the last Starbucks in the area and parks his mothers Prius at the meeting point.  When he gets there he high fives his friends and they all pull on their black block costumes.

One of the organizers is going around passing out “press” cards to anybody that says they are willing to film with their cameras.  A number of people have big red cross patches on their bags.

Everybody quiets down when Big Bill starts talking.  He explains that they are going to go and protest outside the courthouse again.  People laugh.  He points to the shield wall people and the people that are suppose to throw things.  He explains that it is everybody’s job to make sure that if they need to run, these guys can just disappear into the block.

In high spirits people move into the vans for the short ride to the courthouse.  It is going to be great!

Four hours later the man child heads back to mom’s house.  He managed to egg a couple of cop cars.  They had almost gotten the fence down in one section.  If they didn’t have a guest lecturer in his women’s study class he’d be there still.

The fat old man walked down the street.  He had a walking stick that he leaned on.  He’d take a have dozen steps and pause to catch his breath.  Every once in a while he’d place his old fashion camera on top of the walking stick and take a picture or two.  As he slowly made his way down the street a couple of cops standing guard watched.

Nobody approached him. Nobody said a thing to him.

Three days later the cops came out to find a van parked across the street.  They go and check and decide to have it towed.

The tow truck hooks up and starts the lift.  There is a large BOOM.  Both sides of the van blow out.  The one on the street side throwing a blast of water.  The otherside is a buzz saw.  Tens of thousands of hardened half inch ball bearings flew towards the courthouse.  The cops standing station in front of the main door turn into a splash of red mist.  The front walls of the courthouse are pocked with holes and every window is blown out.

People start streaming out of the building, the sounds of emergency response vehicles start to echo through the streets.

10 minutes later the first EMS units are on site.  People are standing around, dazed.

15 minutes after the initial blast the first shot rings out.  In the course of less than a minute 30 shots ring out.  20 people drop, dead or wounded.

The cops take cover behind their cars, looking for the shooter.  The citizens are busy looking for cover.

Suddenly rounds start impacting into the backs of the cops from behind.  Not small caliber rounds.  These are 30-06 with full metal jackets.  The body armor the cops wear to protect them from pistol rounds do nothing to stop the bullets that impact.  8 shots, 8 dead cops.

Silence but for the screaming of the wounded and the yelling of the cops as they organize to rush the shooters.

20 minutes after the blast the cops rush forward in both directions.  Moving from cover to cover they finally make it.  They start shooting into the men laying there behind the rifles.

Nothing.  A quick kick to the “men” shows that it is just a dummy behind an airsoft rifle.

The search begins.  All that is found is a anarchists symbol.

Two days later the regional director of the FBI stands in front of the courthouse talking to a gaggle of reporters.

“We will find the people responsible for this and bring them to justice!  These right-wing extremists will be caught!”

The fat old man slowly pressed the trigger of his Remington 700, the optic mounted on it allowed him to see the director clearly from 300 meters.

One shot rang out.

…

The reason the left and the people in power fear the right is that our fiction is scarier than their reality.  People on the right consistently show planning.  They anticipate.

It is never just one thing, it is a sequence of events.  Every action designed to elicit a response.

Those response are known because they have read the same documents.  They have studied logistics.  They have studied 4th generation guerrilla warfare.

They have practiced and practiced.  They know how to blend in.  They know how to choose their hides.  They know that the egress is just as important as the ingress.

They know when to leave.

They understand that the goals is to destroy the will of their enemy.  They understand that the goal is to bring the terror and violence to the leaders, not just the troops in the street.  They understand that taking out the leader isn’t nearly as useful as taking out the people that surround the leader.

They understand what it means to promise their live, honor and fortune to the country they love and to fight for the right to be free.

I’ve had a story bouncing around in my head for a while.

It’s not sci-fi but a sort of crime thriller detective story.

I’ve been wanting to turn it into a book for some time.

I’ve been listening to Larry Correa’s Writer Dojo podcast and reading writer’s help guides.

There are lots of articles and posts on how to accept criticism and be open minded about what other people say about your work.

What I want to know is how do you get past that point where you write several pages, look at it, say to yourself “this is utter dog shit, who the fuck wants to read this garbage,” delete it all, then tell yourself that it’s not worth wasting any more effort because nobody will ever want to publish this and if you self publish it you can throw all that money straight into the trash?

I have no desire or illusions if grandeur to be a professional writer.  In fact, the more I read of Larry’s blog about what being a professional writer entails, the less I want that.

It also helps that I really like my day job and am very good at it.

I just want to tell my story and if I make enough money to pay off a loan on a used car will consider that a victory.

But I hate every word I put down with such vehemence that I can even get that far.

I almost envy the writers who are so egotistical that they can’t take criticism because at least they believe in themselves.

A professional lifetime spent in calculated risk aversion is the worst thing you can do to yourself if you want to be creative.

Then again, we suspected that eventually they would do this:

There were countless others following suit. In fact, Google searches for “delete PayPal” spiked to 1,392% after the announcement, according to Google Trends. And as the situation continued to unfold, the company’s stock price continued to plummet.

By the following day, PayPal’s PR team was in full crisis mode and trying to spin the story as a “simple mistake” that was never meant to be included in the terms of service. But most people saw through this because any rational person knows it had to pass through multiple phases of review by multiple teams before being finally inserted into the terms of service and published online. No one bought the story they tried to push

The bigger story, though, is that despite it’s PR team publicly claiming it was just a simple mistake that that was never intended to be published, shortly after the criticism on social media died down, it was added back into the terms of service with equally ambiguous language. Apparently, they believed that everyone would just accept their claim and immediately forget about the incident.

Following PR Crisis, PayPal Again Updates TOS Hoping You Won’t Notice – Grit Daily News

Eff them. I can always pay Ebay with a credit card.

Meanwhile in NYC pic.twitter.com/uwk7kH2HKI

— Joel Fischer ?? (@realJoelFischer) October 23, 2022

And you can keep it.