What Is Magic?

[SA]

Short and sweet

What is its definition?  what is its shape and substance?  Whence did it come, and how is it harnessed?

I am not asking for its form in your setting, nor will I, in some thinly veiled act of hubris, flaunt my own.  Rather, what could magic be, in ways we haven't conceived?

[Nomadic]

Magic is anything that defies ordinary convention and the standard rules of reality. Generally in relation to what we know of reality here in the real world.

[Superfluous Crow]

Building on Nomadic's convention, anything that doesn't in fact break with any laws of nature but appears to do so would be considered magic.
Of course, you could define magic more stringently as a force that directly breaks the laws of nature. If that is the definition, magic will have to be of an otherworldly nature as everything in this world will invariably follow some kind of rule-set keyed to this world (be it known or unknown).
We could imagine our material world as as a lattice of rules that holds the worlds in its known shape. Magic would be when select bars of the lattice are weakened, and the act of performing magic would involve the weakening of this lattice.
But this kind of depends on what type of magic we're talking about. If we are talking fire magic and the like, we could imagine a type of Free Energy, that hasn't yet taken form. Maybe this Free Energy reacts to certain brainwaves or something such, and can be converted into actual energy (like thermal energy for heat or kinetic energy for force).
Telepathy and the like could exist in all humans as a underdeveloped brain center that allows us to pick up on specific brain waves and interpret them. Select individuals, or trained individuals, develop this brain center to act as both a transmitter and receiver of these undiscovered brain waves.
Hope it was something like this you were looking for?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

My thinking of what magic is begins with: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  Now I know the original really means "it looks like what we think of as magic, but actually it's still following the laws of physics", but it caused me to ask a question: "Well if you can't distinguish something from magic how do you know it isn't magic?"

That to me suggests the possibility that at some level the physical laws of the universe themselves act essentially like what we think of as magic: matter and energy and spacetime are connected on some level, such that if someone could manipulate that fundamental level they could do pretty much anything that we think magic could do.  How you do this manipulation is the tricky part.

Thing is that I've never liked the "magic comes from 'outside'" idea, or rather I don't really buy into the "outside = other" concept.  I think of something "other" as simply being something different, that doesn't present an immediate answer but can be understood if you give it a try.  And if nothing is really "other" then it can never really come from "outside", just somewhere else in the Infinite.

[SA]

Hope it was something like this you were looking for?

forms and functions[/i] of magic.

[Superfluous Crow]

Does it have to be "viable" in the real world (as in it could work that way. perhaps. maybe.), or just in some imaginary world?

[Superfluous Crow]

Btw, just an idea taken from the series The Lost Room.
The show is about a mysterious motel room that suddenly fell out of reality or something like that, and where all the objects in the room were given supernatural abilities (like a comb that stops time, a motel key that can open up to any door, and a pair of glasses that inhibit combustion).
This is a somewhat alternative idea, and the series also involves a series of Cabals who seek and gather these Objects for different purposes and with various means.

EDIT:
Another idea i considered at a point was the direct manipulation of physical laws, not through spells, but through increasing and decreasing individual laws. So to fly, you would either decrease gravity on yourself, or reverse it, and by enhancing the mass of your hand you could punch through solid steel, and to create fire you would change the temperature at which nitrogen in the air combusts. A slightly alternative, and more flexible, way of casting magic. Of course, conjurations and stuff like that would be incredibly hard, and magic would probably be slightly more difficult to control as you can only change the laws that cause the effects, and not directly cause the effects yourself.

[SA]

Does it have to be "viable" in the real world (as in it could work that way. perhaps. maybe.), or just in some imaginary world?

...like a comb that stops time... and a pair of glasses that inhibit combustion[/quote]...you can only change the laws that cause the effects, and not directly cause the effects yourself.[/quote]And this even more so.

[Pellanor]

I think my favourite description of what magic is, which I've mentioned here before, comes from Raymond E Feists's Riftwar Saga. One of the characters is explaining it to another using juggling as an example. Juggling is just a trick. Juggling with one hand is just a harder trick. Juggling with no hands is the same, just a new kind of trick. Just because it's harder to do, people call it magic.

I like the idea that magic is what makes the world go round. Everything is magical, from gravity to photosynthesis to running the four minute mile. Performing magic is simply making use of what's already there in a new and inventive way.

[Ninja D!]

I think what is magic can be different depending on who views it.  Magic is basically anything that can not be logically explained.

[Lmns Crn]

Magic is when you chance to remember the crazy, unsound little superstitions and idle imagination-games you devised when you were a small child. As children, we were the most innately creative little terrors!

I used to lie awake in bed and imagine that my bedroom was taking itself to pieces, atom by atom, particles dissolving away one at a time. I was absolutely convinved that when the ceiling and walls and floor were gone, their absence would reveal yawning black void beyond, and I would find myself falling endlessly into an accursed pit! Hah hah, how cute is that! (No, really, when you are ten years old this is terrifying.)

Hell, I used to think it was "better" if I stepped on the linoleum tiles in a particular pattern while I walked across the kitchen floor. I used to think it was "better" if I stirred the pitcher in a particular direction when I made my kool-ade. I used to think it was "better" if I had my pencils aligned in a particular way on my desk at school. Maybe it was better.

I think the conflation of magic and technology is one of the more disturbing symptoms of our collective oversaturation with fantasy literature, fantasy film, and fantasy games. We're running everything as new iterations of tired old formulae, and there's nothing magical about that anymore! The imaginative process of pioneering a new path is lost. I don't want somebody to pillage a sci-fi novel, hand me a mega-fusion-flamethrower, and tell me it's "magic" because they've replaced all the uranium with unicorn farts-- that's nothing but a let-down.

[JackOfTales]

I always figured magic was some sort of external power than anything internal. Something that required a method by which to activate or access. That method varies depending on what sort of magic user you find. Words, songs, gestures, symbols, runes, dancing are all different ways to gain access to that insubstantial, external source.

Once you have the magic though...I always envisioned it as granting the ability to alter reality. The words and gestures are only as necessary as the individual make them when it comes to crafting the essence to break or change reality.

[LordVreeg]

Magic raises the hackles on the back of one's neck.  It is strange and inexplicable, secretive, fed by moonbeams and magnified by celestial winds.  

Magic is the tinkle of chimes heard softly behind a person, in an empty room.  Magic is the sudden screaming face in the fire, that imprints itself on the soul of the watcher for all the nightmares yet to come.

Magic comes in threes and is warded by circles and items that number seven.  Magic is the stigmatic bloodstain and the tears of sainted statues, the sound of the bell tolling after the dome is found broken.

Wielding this is knowingly dealing with the unknown, willingly reaching for the out-of-reach, and a minute-by-minute admission of one's absurdly tiny place in an infinte canvas.  Wielding magic is an abacination in an attempt to see more clearly.

[Pellanor]

Very nice LV.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I don't get it: what's so great about something being inexplicable, unknowable, mysterious, and/or etc.?

And why does magic have to be unknowable (or whatever) to be magic?