Religion vs. Magic

[Mason]

Trying to tackle an aspect of world creation here...Religion (traditionally) is based on faith, which is belief (as I understand it) without proof. I suppose it's a bit different in a fictional world-especially a fantasy world, where miracles are witnessed and documented, but let's assume that some real world tendencies carry over into our world creations.

 Religion is faith based, and magic is generally (using the stereotypical D&D studious wizard model) a studied power. How do clerics get along with wizards? Or am I digging to deep? This has never come up at a game table..I don't really think it is appropriate for that sort of thing..but perhaps in developing a world for a novel..or some other media it might be relevant. Can religions in fantastical worlds coexist with magic users ? Or would the cleric of the party forever be damning the wizard?

 Just a thought.. Strange morning.
   

[LordVreeg]

No, this came up heavily in the GS system and Celtricia cosmology.

I think the presence of divine magic, supplied by deities directly or powered by faith, is a good issue to raise.

In GS, priest access the same void-borne sources of magic as everyone, there are just some they tend to be better at.  For example, last night on the IRC, LC was creating a character and he looked at the Church of Solid Earth (Madrak), and found they have good spirit, earth, and resotrative spell skills.

[Endless_Helix]

I've always kinda seen them as competing world views, much like how scientists and priests often snipe at each other. Science (and wizardly magic for the most part) is about performing experiments and then using that information about the natural laws to your advantage. Faith (and by extension divine magic) is a gift, granted by the grace of your god/gods. Given that dichotomy, it becomes obvious how tensions can arise. I mean, could you really imagine a priest using his deity's power for the purpose of something so mundane as lighting a candle? Yet wizards do that all the time.

On the flip side, depending on exactly how your religions view the delving into  of secrets not meant to be known by man, it might get along quite well with magicians in generally. Of course is magic is viewed as a gift from the Prime Evil or whatever, then your priests will generally follow that belief.

[Cheomesh]

It depends on how you execute things.  With my last setting, Wizards and Clerics were actually quite similar, with the only real distinction being the kinds of power they have written access to and what they chose to manifest their powers as, as well as what "team" they're working for.

For your world, assuming the Studious Wizard from DnD-like games:

If I'm a cleric, do I have to study ancient and worn tomes of spells handed down by long-gone prophets of godly powers?  Or to gain my magic spells, do I simply have to endure a long time of kneeling and praying and ritual-ing?  Or do I have to have innate magical powers to become a casting priest?  If the first one, I'm functionally a wizard.  If the second, I'm the usual "cleric", and if the third I'm just a sorcerer with a fancy symbol around my neck.

Do all religious servants have magic?  If I join "the church", will I inevitably become a spell caster, or will most of us (and likely me) spend most of our lives with no real magic?  Or is it a leveled thing (kind of like Hogwarts), where I have to be "promoted" to learn or undergo ritual for the weak magic like "heal cut"?  Would I then always be promoted to learn powerful stuff like "save soul" or would I have to prove myself worthy (and thus risk never having such power)?  What if I join the church and I have innate (and typically wizardly) powers like fireball?  

Are there any 'legit' magic people who find secular origins of their power?  Do "wizards" just approach their godly powers different?  The whole origin of Cleric Vs Wizard smacks of science vs religion -- one side sees a "reasoned" or "educated" source while the other thinks it's because of divine influence.  This doesn't always have to exist.  You can have god-less spiritual people who study magic from books but believe they're from a form of spirit energy either internal or external.  You can also have the same kind of people who just learn by example or simply by meditation -- their magic would, to them, be a form of self expression.

I know leveling (which makes it complicated) has influence on it; you could theoretically have a level 2 Cleric who's a high INT, WIS or even CHA guy that managed to become the "Pope", calling shots to level 15 "mid rank guys", who manifest more "holy power" than he does.  I guess you could claim that he'd be leveling by undergoing "challenges" within the leadership of his church, or perhaps he has to earn it by merit by killing the enemies of the faith, but this isn't always so.

Examples from what I've done are below in the spoiler.  Let me know if it's clearly written, or if it's unclear and you would like me to clarify.
[spoiler]
In my last setting, there were no living gods.  They were distinct bodies of energy that were created by mankind's belief in the concept of their god.  The more who believed, the greater that power became, and vice versa.  When you joined the Church as a powerless human, you underwent the usual study regarding your Scriptures and the like.  Essentially, you spent no time gaining any real power but greater faith in your own religion.  These guys are functionally equivalent to a real-life Christian monk or whatever you call a non-confirmed priest.  They're knowledgeable in their faith, but they're not particularly "holy".  I do learn useful things, though.  If I study at the healing temple, I do -learn- "medical" knowledge (in my setting roughly equal to humorism and Hippocratic anatomy), and people who study in the temple of the god of war are trained in weapon use, the philosophy of war, and tactics.  It would, however, generally suck to be at this level in the "elemental gods" temple, as the only useful thing you'll really learn relates to the gods of nature, where you learn the secrets of animal husbandry, agriculture and gardening to a high degree.

To get magic from your gods, you had to be selected as intelligent enough and prove indirectly that you weren't going to go rogue with it.  Then you underwent training to utilize the weakly magical force already present on your world.  From their POV, they're being granted initiate types of power directly from their real god.  From a reality POV, they're just learning how to use the stereotypical energy already present on their planet.  You gain these powers from classroom instruction, practice and book learning (written works that are more "personal experience" than "how does magix").  

Exactly what kind of powers you learn are based on what god you worship.  Just like in real life, if I'm studying to become a doctor, I'm certainly not going to learn the mysteries of engineering.  If I've been studying in the temple of the Healing God(ess), then I'm going to learn some kind of healing oriented magic because that's what they're teaching me.  I'll learn weak magic like "seal cut" and "slow poison", but I am not physically capable of say, "unbreak neck" and "regrow limb".  

To get real divine power capable of big things, I need to be tapped into the cosmic psychic thing that is my god.  At this point, "cure 1HP" or "cure 1d4" hp (at an extreme) is the pinnacle of my magical knowledge, which is supplemented by my medical knowledge.  I could well bring back someone from the brink of death, but not everyone...

So, after completing my training and learning how to magically medic someone and seal their boo-boos, I've proven myself to be worthy (read:  Not go psycho with) higher power.  I then get more training in mind and body to survive a ritual which links me in mind and body to this "higher power".  I essentially lose my ability to interact with the planetary ether-stuff that is magic for my old self, and can now potentially fuel greater powered spells.  I use this new power to fuel my old stuff like "cure 1HP", and it doesn't become any more powerful (the concept being the same), but it does open me to things (eventually) like "cure serious wounds".

Exactly when in your life you get the right to undergo this was a little vague, as it could really be anywhere from 15 years old (trained from 10 - 15 in the basic magics) to 50 years old (spent much of your life as a lesser clerical guy).  Level wise...eh.  Originally I intended to kind of redo how classes functioned to make them a tad more generic, so that your "spell levels" are not a direct function of your characters level so much as there being a requirement both physical and philosophical -- no more gaining magic from no where in the middle of an adventure!

Wizarding and Clerical powers were split up into different gods and schools as par usual, but with greater restrictions to kind of prevent the 3.5 wizarding syndrome from kicking in.  That's where the wizard is better than you because his spells do -everything-.  The way I was working on it, the Cleric, Wizard and Sorcerer couldn't be capable of being a one man army -- the "confounding" wizards couldn't be all that great at killing, the killing ones couldn't really disable or negate obsticles, etc.  For the above Clerics, this is based on your temple.  Not every temple teaches a whole lot of magic, as the temple to the god of Law has not a whole lot of magic that fits their theme.

The application for the Clerics in the world at large is based on their power level and what temple they are.  Some temples don't even have "linked" people as they have no need and others only have a handful at a time.  It's something that not everyone enjoys playing, though, as you can become functionally quite weak in the grand scheme of things because you'll never have access to potent magic.  It fit with my world (generally) as the level cap was 6 and the challenges you faced never world-shatteringly powerful like high level DnD stuff.

For the Wizards, they have to undergo a planar linking similar to but not exactly like the Clerical one (they access an indistinct plain that doesn't "color" their magic; a Cleric who studies healing at the high level and is linked can't use his "god's power" to cast a fireball like the Clerics of the Temple of Fire because the mental concepts are different.  For the Wizards, you can use the same power source to learn different magics, but they have legal schools that prevent them from becoming too powerful in their eyes.  The initiates learn magic using the low level stuff just like the clerics, and also lose connection to this when they undergo their ritual.  The line between the initiate (most common) wizard and the initiate (most common casting) cleric is rather fuzzy when it comes to magic ability; it comes mostly from type of education and their philosophy of application/origin.

Sorcerer and sorcerer like classes only ever deal with natural magics, but their innate physical make up builds them to be something like a powerful lens, enabling them to focus the weak natural stuff into quantitatively powerful masses of energy, rivaling that of "off world" sources.  How they learn to apply it is between natural study (figuring it out on their own or "feeling" intuition) and book study, like that of Clerics and Wizards.  Sometimes you will see Sorcerers within Clerical and Wizarding schools -- they're people who can wield powerful magic without "linking" (which is potentially deadly).  Wizards are suspicious of these types because they're not often seen as having any kind of "sacrifice" for the art, and don't have a history of seeing why wizarding power is "distributed".  The Clerical types tend to be suspicious because they can wield all kinds of spells from multiple temples (as they're not linked to a particular kind of magic) at a much higher power level than those who are not linked (but theoretically lower than those who are).  If snapped up young, these sorcerers just turn out to be powerful unlinked people, something of a prophet or messiah-like figure (or someone to be tightly controlled for the good of all mankind).  If found later in life with considerable magical knowledge behind them, they're often thought of as an abomination -- they're not properly "checked".
[/spoiler]

I hope I said something with my above ramblings.  I am not too sure if I'm very good at expressing what it is I want to say.  If you need me to sort it out, either ask me to or ignore it and wait for someone better-written to come along.

M.

EDIT:  It took me ages to write this reply as I kept getting interrupted by people (started at around 8:45), so I think I may have said much the same as the above two.

EDIT2:  Left out an important bit:  In the setting above, Wizard/Cleric relations have not be ironed out as they shouldn't be existing in the same nation as legit magic users.  I think my real intention was to do away with the "studious wizard" in his tower-school and make all the legal (socially acceptable) magic users some kind of Cleric, with the non-faithful who peruse magic akin to covens.  Wizards need not a scientific understanding of things to do magic; they might not even have a recognizable approach like generic fantasy wizards do.  It's a complex question, I think.

[Ghostman]

I think the whole division of magic into divine and non-divine is a bad idea that should be avoided. Magic is magic; it's the making use of occult phenomena that exist in the context of the setting. Whether or not divinities (confirmed or uncertain) are supposed to have anything to do with these phenomena is really irrelevant. You do the magic ritual -> stuff happens.

Now, a magical ritual/"spell" could very well include some appeals (or commands) to some supposed divinities. This certainly does not presuppose that the magic-user is any kind of priest, nor even have any faith. Neither does it necessitate that the magic should be (in nature) any different from another ritual/spell that doesn't involve the invocation of supposed divinities.

On the other hand, one has to wonder where to draw the line between magic and other interaction with divinities. Anyone can pray and offer sacrifice. So here's a question: If you chop off the head of a chicken and declare it an offering to the goddess of luck, then go on to win the lottery, does that make you a magic user?

[Cheomesh]

So here's a question: If you chop off the head of a chicken and declare it an offering to the goddess of luck, then go on to win the lottery, does that make you a magic user?

This is a very good question, and one which I have put before my various groups on multiple occasions.  There are people TODAY, some of I am friends with, who think they do magic by performing some kind of offering or ritual, and then go on to see some kind of effect from it and call it magic.  It should not be strange for every character to think he's performing functional magic by sacrificing something, be it a sword into a lake or a ram into a fire.  In fact, if magic and religion are heavily featured in your setting, it should be the norm!

In history, "magic" was performed by all kinds of people in a vast variety of ways -- "magic" never exists in a void.  Hell, there are recipes in Renaissance fencing manuals that are considered "magic potions" and magical means of figuring out when to fight duels based on the letters of your name.  The former might not have had any noticeable effect, but the latter DID, as your opponent was aware (and believed in) the magic behind the day he was fighting you on -- lowering his morale and boosting your own.

M.

EDIT:  Blacksmiths in many cultures (and bronze workers before them) were considered functional magicians by most people for a long time.  Even into the Renaissance we had "how to" manuscripts on making superior (magical) swords using materials that, from a metallurgical point of view, have little to no effect on the final product.  These include things like hair and water taken from a particular source or with a particular additive.

[Lmns Crn]

I think that in forming your question, you are taking for granted some assumptions that don't need to be made. For example, the assumption that in most game worlds, miracles exist, religion is based on faith without proof, magic is based on deep study or scientific-style research, and that said research would create conflict by contradicting said faith.

There are probably worlds where all of the above are true. There are myriad worlds where none, or at least not all, of the above are true.

Here's my poorly-researched theory:

Conflict in fantasy worlds between science and faith, or between "arcane magic" and "divine magic" (which are really just science and faith in disguise) are a logically inconsistent carryover from real-world tension between science and faith.

People with scientific mindsets reject assertions that contradict empirical evidence (i.e., young-earth creationism, or the notion that the world is flat). Many (but not all) take a stricter route, rejecting assertions that don't contradict accepted evidence, but which aren't supported by any accepted evidence, either (i.e., God exists). Since religions, by and large, are known for making both types of statements in varying numbers and to varying degree of emphasis, we have a real-world conflict, and this conflict is translated over to fantasy worlds by writers in search of heavy-handed allegory (or, often, writers who are kind of lazy!)

Here is the interesting part (I promise that there is one):

If you are considering a fantasy world where, for example, miracles occur and are witnessed, that counts as empirical evidence that could support any number of theories re: gods, faith, afterlives. With sufficient evidence, faith's no longer unscientific because it's no longer making (as many) unsupported claims. (It's arguable that, at least by your own stated definition, it's also no longer faith. But that's another topic.)

If your in-world scientists or scientist-stand-ins (magic-using or otherwise) have a problem with faith because it's unscientific, it's likely that they're doing their science wrong-- as a scientist, I couldn't just decide to ignore gravity or electromagnetic radiation or inertia without being intellectually dishonest; if overwhelming evidence within my fantasy world supported the existence of one or more gods, I couldn't dismiss that, either.

Likewise, if science doesn't have a problem with faith, faith probably doesn't have a problem with science, because science probably isn't making heretical claims like "You know, they're really no logical reason to believe this God fellow actually exists."

I think that in most games (and particularly in your typical D&D world), there's no good reason even for an arcane/divine distinction, much less a framework of grudges and conflicts. Especially not if the root cause of it all is that one is essentially rational and the other is essentially irrational (because unless divine magic only functions when nobody is watching, it's hard to make that case).

Of course, it's possible to create that kind of conflict by providing a reason for it that still holds up. For example, maybe when wizards use their arcane heathen magic, they siphon off a little portion of the gods' power with each expenditure, gradually weakening the gods (and pissing off the clergy). At some point, though, I'd ask myself whether or not I'm just enshrining an essentially nonsensical distinction and scrounging for arbitrary ways to support it.

[Kindling]

This has always been one of my big issues with "core D&D" type game systems, which is why I've almost always stripped my games down to one casting class, or at least one type of casting class. That way magic is either all divine/spiritual in nature, or magic has nothing to do with religion (except perhaps as examples of "unholy devilry" and so on... witch-trial type scenarios can make for interesting adventures).

However, I think my favourite set-up is the one my current campaign uses; magic and the supernatural exist, but they're the domain of NPCs. This way, to the players, magic isn't arcane or divine but simply WEIRD. As a GM, I find this arrangement suits me a lot better, as there doesn't need to be any kind or airtight "system" about how the magic all works or where/who/what it comes from, as the players are (most likely) not going to get a good enough knowledge of spellcraft and suchlike for it to matter, which leaves me free to use magic as more of a plot device than a game mechanic, which leaves me with a powerful storytelling tool in my hands - as well as building a more "wondrous" flavour for the magical people and beings, as there is a very real mystery surrounding their powers.

That said, even in this nebulous system miracles, divine intervention and the like could occur, which could fit nicely with the tone of strangeness and otherness about the magic... so there could well be some sot of religious or at least deific connection to magic... I dunno. I seem to have rambled for a while, and now realised I haven't made much by way of a point. Oh well :)

[Polycarp]

Faith (and by extension divine magic) is a gift, granted by the grace of your god/gods. Given that dichotomy, it becomes obvious how tensions can arise. I mean, could you really imagine a priest using his deity's power for the purpose of something so mundane as lighting a candle? Yet wizards do that all the time.

transmute water into wine[/i] really worth God's time?).  Yes, there are clearly situations in which a priest might balk at using his power, but I think it's telling that the problems, needs, and afflictions of "ordinary people" are often the ones most directly addressed by religion.  People have prayed, given sacrifices, and so on for mundane personal things like a good harvest, personal fertility, favorable weather, and other such mundane things since the days of the ancient Egyptians (and probably long before that).  The fact that something is commonplace or mundane doesn't make it unworthy of divine help; on the contrary, the mundane may well be more the domain of the average priest than calling down pillars of flame or raising people from the dead.

Otherwise (and unrelated to the previous), I'd echo what LC said - there is often no very good reason for an arcane-divine distinction.  D&D has it because D&D aims to appeal to as many mainstream fantasy tropes as possible - both the stereotypical bearded, scholarly wizard in a pointy hat, and the faithful priest that brings the wrath of god(s) down on his foes.  These classes were made because these were common fantasy stereotypes that people enjoy playing, not necessarily because it made the most internal consistency to divine magic in that way.  Like LC, if I saw such a distinction in a homebrew setting that aspired to be internally consistent, I would be interested in reading about the reason for its existence and the relationship between these two sources of magic.

[Xeviat]

I haven't read all the responces yet. I want to post my reply to the OP before I read the rest.

Trying to tackle an aspect of world creation here...Religion (traditionally) is based on faith, which is belief (as I understand it) without proof. I suppose it's a bit different in a fictional world-especially a fantasy world, where miracles are witnessed and documented, but let's assume that some real world tendencies carry over into our world creations.

I am a literature major, with a focus on Mythology and Relgion. I forget the name of the author, but he broke down this sort of thing into a quick little table:

[th]Sacred[/th][th]Secular[/th][th]Provable[/th][th]Non-provable*[/th]

Holy-History	History
Mythology	Fable

I didn't want to make the table huge, but "non-provable" is supposed to be "cannot be emperically proven". It is a very fine line between dismissing and accepting. Just to set my viewpoints on the record here.

As you say, "faith" is not required so much in many fantasy worlds because miracles can be proven. You can walk into most temples and say "Prove to me the power of Pelor" and a cleric can heal your illness or make light in his hand or any number of things. But, faith might still be involved when dealing with issues of the afterlife. In 4E D&D, for instance, no one knows where the dead go after they pass through the Raven Queen's realm. If one religion says that you get to go live in your god's domain, accepting that is faith.

There is a world religion that is very useful for study when considering fantasy worlds. Confucianism, from my understanding, is more of a philosophy than a religion when compared with the other religions of the world. A very base and simple definition of religion is "a belief in spirit beings". Being able to prove their existance doesn't change that. I think the definition should be expanded to also include doctrine; whether that doctrine is just how to keep the spirits of nature and your ancestors happy (as doctine is in animistic cultures) or is the rules given by a god (as it is in deific religions), guidelines and rules on how to act are a big part of religion.

I'm rambling a little, but that is something to consider. Athiests cannot exist in traditional fantasy worlds, but people can still choose to not live by the doctrine of faiths. Sure, if I was living in 4E D&D world, I would acknowledge that Pelor and Bahamut and Moradin and all the other gods exist, but that doesn't mean I have to follow their doctrine (though I'd probably like Moradin, I like being good, productive, and building stuff).

Religion is faith based, and magic is generally (using the stereotypical D&D studious wizard model) a studied power. How do clerics get along with wizards? Or am I digging to deep? This has never come up at a game table..I don't really think it is appropriate for that sort of thing..but perhaps in developing a world for a novel..or some other media it might be relevant. Can religions in fantastical worlds coexist with magic users ? Or would the cleric of the party forever be damning the wizard?

This is going to definitely be on a setting-by-setting case-by-case basis. In the traditional D&D viewpoint, clerics and wizards get along just fine. Both study their magic, it is just that one gets their magic from ambient arcane energy and the other is given it by their god. In 4E D&D, clerics aren't even given it by their god, they access it from the same sacred energy that gods get their power from.

In my world, all magic is drawn from the spirits of nature. Everything has a spirit, even innatimate objects (technically things can lack a spirit, but they are deader than dead; if you killed the spirit of a rock, the rock would decay and crumble to nothingness, not even dust). Not all of these spirits are sentient. Priests forge relationships with the spirits or with a single powerful spirit (a deity), and this relationship translates over to many other spirits; when a cleric casts a spell, the spirits around them aid them and perform the magic. Wizards, on the other hand, learn how to tap into this energy through rituals and formulas; they do not have to make deals with the spirits in question.

Some look down upon Wizards. They find the way the Wizards gain their power to be disrespectful of the spirits. But the amount of energy one would have to draw from even a weak spirit to kill it is so large that Wizards typically do not cause any harm to the spirits around them, so there is little real reason to hate them for it. Some faiths hate wizards for their lack of required piety, and other faiths wish to see wizards more regulated since they do not need the spirits permision to use their power. But these viewpoints are not held by all priests.

But this is for my world.

It isn't a silly or strange thing to think of. I believe the opinions of one character class for another are important parts of a world, especially when a class is actually something fundamentally different from another (it is hard to see the fundamental differences between a fighter and a rogue, since that can simply be training, but the differences between wizards and clerics can be big parts of the world). Definitely consider how you want these relationships to play out in your setting.

[Elemental_Elf]

One of the big problems with the Arcane v. Divine magic debate is that, now-a-days there isn't a huge difference between the two fields. When D&D first came out, Magic-User was the class to use if you wanted to be a Gandalf/Dumbledore/Elminster type - long beard, pointy hat, old, very smart, wise and possessed the ability to cast mind blowing spells. Cleric, on the other hand, was the class for those who wanted to be a Warrior but also have a bit magic (that was typically focused on healing and buffing himself and allies).

Over the years the Cleric was realized to be the linchpin class of the game, a class so necessary it was a requirement to have in any and ALL groups. This mentality lead to a lot of people being shoved into the role of Cleric because 'we need one and you drew the shortest straw.' These unwilling clerics often looked to morph the cleric into the class they actually wanted to play, such as a Warrior or a Mage. Once 3rd edition was released this unwilling mentality was addressed by, functionally, giving the Cleric the ability to be a pure warrior, a pure mage or something in between. Heck with multi-classing and the right domain, you could even be a Lockpicking Priest! This, more or less, diluted the design of the Cleric into a cesspool of haphazard and ill-thought-out ideas.

In turn this cesspool, when looked at from a new player's perspective, looks like a Wizard (who is also a cesspool of magical abilities) and the only real conclusion one can come to is - Magic is Magic no matter the source. There's nothing unique or cool about a Cleric, no way no how.

In reality the original purpose of the two fields of magic was to separate two different roles - pure caster and warrior-healer. When these distinctions were lost there really is no reason to maintain the split between arcane and divine. I remember reading and interview with Monte Cook once and he said, flat out, that the thing he most regrets in designing D&D 3.0 is allowing the Arcane-Divine split to remain.

[sparkletwist]

Even if you decide that "magic is magic," and there is no formal, cosmological distinction between "arcane" and "divine" magic, that doesn't mean that the people of the setting won't create their own artificial distinctions between them-- I mean, if you want to preserve the flavor of D&D while try to make it harmonize with some of the views presented here, you could always say that's what's going on anyway.

In a previous, more traditional setting (not Crystalstar), I had an artificially created distinction like this. Magic in the cosmology was just magic, but magic as it applied to the setting was also rather tightly regulated by a few institutions. The general category of wizards was governed by the Mages' Guild, whereas the general category of clerics was governed by the Church. Magic-users (in this context, anyone who uses magic, not excluding clerics/priests/whatever) had to be sanctioned by either the Guild or the Church, and there was something of a rivalry between them. The Guild was more or less an arm of the state, where the Church (inspired by medieval Catholicism) was seen as something both vital to the fabric of society but also as a foreign influence whose loyalties are not entirely certain. This meant that the two different types of magic users might not get along, but their reasons were political, not cosmological.

 

[O Senhor Leetz]

I think the whole division of magic into divine and non-divine is a bad idea that should be avoided. Magic is magic; it's the making use of occult phenomena that exist in the context of the setting. Whether or not divinities (confirmed or uncertain) are supposed to have anything to do with these phenomena is really irrelevant. You do the magic ritual -> stuff happens.

Now, a magical ritual/"spell" could very well include some appeals (or commands) to some supposed divinities. This certainly does not presuppose that the magic-user is any kind of priest, nor even have any faith. Neither does it necessitate that the magic should be (in nature) any different from another ritual/spell that doesn't involve the invocation of supposed divinities.

On the other hand, one has to wonder where to draw the line between magic and other interaction with divinities. Anyone can pray and offer sacrifice. So here's a question: If you chop off the head of a chicken and declare it an offering to the goddess of luck, then go on to win the lottery, does that make you a magic user?

Late to the party I know, but I wholeheartedly agree with Ghostman about the unnecessary division of magic and how that has unfortunately become almost "standard" in fantasy and RPGs. RPGs in general seem to have an unavoidable tendency to categorize, define, and explain everything - races, classes, alignments, etc - that magic/supernatural/divine has also fallen victim to.

[Lmns Crn]

I love reading this thread. It is fascinating.

RPGs in general seem to have an unavoidable tendency to categorize, define, and explain everything - races, classes, alignments, etc - that magic/supernatural/divine has also fallen victim to.

This is a very good point! Suddenly I am finding myself curious about how much of our hobby-wide trend toward (sometimes arguably detrimental) overcategorization can be traced back to the same root.

[O Senhor Leetz]

Suddenly I am finding myself curious about how much of our hobby-wide trend toward (sometimes arguably detrimental) overcategorization can be traced back to the same root.

i would say it's more detrimental than it is not. I'm sure some of it comes from trying to "balance" various RPG systems. In my opinion, balance and categorization should NOT be a key factor in pen and paper RPG and that it takes alot of the magic (no pun intended) and literary quality out of a setting through forcing definition and explanation of everything in concrete terms, such as magic and religion.