Right now I very much dislike the focus on magic systems in current fantasy in general, and particularly despise how those "systems" are just blatant, unashamed game mechanics in Japanese fantasy. There's a modern manga tendency to even go so far as to make game menus pop up in front of the protagonist's faces reading off their stats and spell lists…
Magics should feel as though they have their own personality, not just their own rules. What makes magic transgressive, what made magic such a menace to public safety that pagan Rome would hang those who practiced it, is that it is intentionally calling upon the gods to curse and damn and condemn. The crime the poet Apuleius was almost convicted of, which carried a sentence of death, was the use of sorcery to concoct of a love potion. When so much of the public life of Rome was built around propitiating the gods the witchmen and poisoners would intentionally piss them off to call down curses and mishaps while under the impression that they, like Sisyphus, could simply outwit and evade the wrath that they themselves had summoned against society, leaving only their targets struck. A love potion is a manufacturing of Aphrodite's curse, the mania of love, fully destructive and volatile; a deliriant the madness of drunkenness from Dionysus, distilled beyond the moderating limitations of wine; foretelling, the madness of prophesy from Apollo, snatched like a thief without paying the price of devotion worked by the Pythia; a poison, the power of Ares called through murder without requirement of physical courage, angering the lord of battles in such a way that the whole city will pay as war will surely follow. Each act, each curse, each grimoire is filled with the personalities of the beings and spirits that the practitioner is in communion with, no less than the ritual sacrifices and secret rites of devotion for the gods. Forbidden magic is not just asking for the wrath of the gods to strike someone; that might as well be a public prayer for justice. Forbidden magic is intentional sin committed in such a way that the gods will strike, but the transgressor steps away from their strike; disguising themselves from the god of darkness they offend through wearing candles and mirrors, leaving only the hair, skin or blood of their victim as evidence of who the god shall smite; hiding their deceit from the goddess of love by raising cacophany, foul odors and offensive signs until the love potion is br
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