How could mages regard fast magic as a form of evil? [closed]

Question

There are 2 forms of magic in this world, the first of which is performed through a series of steps. A mage sits in the center of a drawn invocation circle, surrounded by the various ingredients needed to perform the spell. The mage then utters the incantation, which can take anywhere from minutes to hours depending on the spell. The gods, being universally worshipped in the world, are morally ambiguous when it comes to magic. There are spells which require harmless ingredients like eye of newt, and there are other spells that require the body parts of recently killed children. Either way, the gods are indifferent to concepts such as good and bad. The second form disregards invocation circles and the use of ingredients, simply depending on incantations to perform spells. It is therefore a quicker and more effective use of magic, saving time, resources, and expenses.

I want this second form of magic to be universally viewed as evil around the world. "Because religion" doesn't work because as stated, the gods are indifferent about how magic is used. And as economists would tell you, anything that can be done quicker, cheaper, and easier would become adopted by society. Even in repressive regimes, it would still be coopted by the elites or higher ups in positions of power. What would make mages come to view this magic as evil?

Answer 1

The Dark Sun role-playing setting had a magic system of this type.

All magic required tapping into the lifeforce of nearby living things.

The "Preservers" were careful about the amounts they drew when casting their spells.

The "Defilers" would leave swaths of dead vegetation (and even animals for higher power spells).

The entire desert world setting of Athas was the result of centuries of Defilers steadily destroying the life on the world by their reckless use of magic.

Answer 2

Good and evil are societal norms

All you have to do is define something associated with your target form of magic that could be considered evil by the society. Picking a simple example, doing magic consumes something. When you use ingredients they are consumed, when you use no ingredients something else must be consumed, perhaps that's your soul, perhaps it damages the souls of those around you.

Our society says that children are precious. A slave owning society may consider the lives of children to be low value, the lives of slaves to be worthless, the lives of the children of slaves to be no better than slaughtering animals, so they have no problem harvesting parts for spells. That's why you have fertile slaves isn't it?

Hence a society that's protective of their own souls, but doesn't value some people would consider damaging the soul to be evil, but harvesting body parts to be reasonable.

Answer 3

Its like carrying a concealed weapon.

"Good" magic takes time and preparations. Even the bodyparts of children could be donated by the parents (or the church, whichever has the most say). So this magic is viewed as controlled, intelligent work.

Magic without ingredients and preparation is much more dangerous. In most societies guns and ammo need to be stored seperately so that firing one is never an accident and you have time to think about what you are about to do. But this type of magic is like always carrying a loaded gun in your hand that no one can see. Get angry or scared and you might use it in a quick unthinking moment. This is dangerous for anyone in contact with the mage and domestic magical violence is much higher for mages who use this type of magic than others.

Answer 4

Your easier casting method is riskier.

Surely all of these inscriptions and ingredients have been rigourously studied and checked before put into use. Somebody didn't just start drawing weird circles and suddenly, bam! They cast Thunderclap. It requires thought, precision and study.

However, just saying a few words to channel the magical power is way too unstable! Just a slight change in tone, or rhythm, or pronunciation, and your Thunderclap is so powerful that it brings a mountain down upon you!

Ok, maybe this is a bit extreme, but it conveys what I mean. If your spell is to summon a demon, all of your runes and circles and ingredients are going to help stabilise the process. Maybe if you just say the incantation, the demon is summoned but after a minute or so you get a nosebleed and fall into a coma. Now there's nobody holding the demon's leash - and it goes on a rampage, killing five people. Which is way more damaging than the 3 pints of virgin blood that you would have needed for the proper spell!

Answer 5

Give both magics a reality-disrupting side effect or a left-over waste product which undermines the stability and life-friendly aspects of your world. The stricter ritualized method of casting includes steps which clean up these left-overs, returning any excess magical energies to where it came from. The simpler method ignores the clean up steps, leaving the excess magic to cause random and potentially dangerous effects.

In this way your magic system can become a metaphor for our modern technology; potentially good if we manage our natural resources carefully and clean up the waste products which its creation produces. Unavoidably evil if we do not.

Answer 6

...But Religion!

"Because Religion" is still a valid reason, it's just not a single blanket reason that might span all religions.

The gods might not care about how mortals use magic, but the mortals administrating their deity's will do. And since the gods are morally ambiguous on the matter, it is up to the mortals that interpret their deity's will based on other aspects or items that their deity does (appear to) care about in order to give context to the matter in the absence of their deity literally coming down to lay down Divine Law.

Thus, the mythologies and tales surrounding the religion paint it as an evil act, because it violates some other core tenet of the religion. To put it another way, casting this way goes against a deity's portfolio/philosophy, or at least the human's interpretation of it.

Casting an impromptu spell in haste may be heretical to a deity whose core tenets include preparation and diligence. The tales will frame it as evil due to not following that tenet of the deity's teachings than a failure in the magics.

Likewise, a deity that rewards sacrifice might see the lack of material components as anathema and might have a mythology of punishing mortals who sought magical might without apparent sacrifice.

Do NOT Try This at Home!

An alterative is that as magic developed, the components and circles and other paraphernalia created enough buffers and safety valves for spellcasting that failure did not outright kill anyone, though bad things still did happen. Then some aspiring archmage a long time ago decided to try doing his magic without these safety components.

Saying that "It did not end well" is a understatement. A large one … almost as large as the crater they left behind. Nobody ever did know what spell failed (or succeeded) to get that crater. All they know was that it was massive, there was great loss of life, and the next year or two suffered lower harvests.

Ever since that day apprentices were taught that casting without components is a Thing You Do Not Do. Unless learning the magical arts are centralized in one place, each apprentice may be told a different yet equally gruesome reason why you never omit components for casting.

Even if someone figures out the secrets, they will be treated as a ticking time bomb -- a person that will imminently turn themselves and a large area around them into a crater. They will be shunned, and possibly even hunted and put down in order to prevent what everyone believes will be the inevitable result -- catastrophe.

Control

Overall, the grand reason why casting without components is "evil" is to control magic through controlling the substances needed to perform it and to help identify possibilities by what components are being used to cast it. It is a societal construct that ensures the status quo remains for as long as possible.

Yes, this does mean that the elite and those that think themselves above this system would try to exploit this, but that itself a balancing act for the elites. If they get caught doing evil magic, they will be branded as irredeemably evil with all the fallout that will entail. It will almost assuredly end bad for them outside of applying overwhelming corrective force to it -- be it physical, social, or magical.

It also entirely means that at some point there might be a magical revolution, as this evil way is discovered and analyzed enough to be not an immediate physical problem. It is also plausible that the world has already had one of these and there were delayed consequences that altered the world as it is/was known, such as this being where the monsters/demons/angels of the world come from.

And above, the gods are uncaring -- so long as their interests in the material realms are being advanced. If they're even paying attention to the world this century.

The world's past might offer insight as to why this is the case

Answer 7

The price of magic/Nothing comes for free.

Depending on where your magic comes from, there is typically some source of power for magic and multiple explanations why spells without material components are viewed as evil.

1. Magic comes from the divine: Although the gods don't care about good or evil and they don't care what people use magic for, they are still the ones providing the power for the spell and don't like to give things away for free. People who cast the spells without "sacrifice" in the form of consumable material components are seen to be stealing from the gods/incurring a divine debt. This divine debt, real or imagined, acts as a social curse. Nobody wants to be near the guy who owes god X seventeen lightning bolts. Who knows when X might decide to collect

2. Magic is somehow linked to life-force. Casting a spell with material components substitutes this. When casting without components, the spellcaster's own life-force is drawn to fuel the spell. Practically, this means a reduction in the spellcaster's lifespan or health. Magic users who frequently cast without components therefore require a lot of life-force which they have to harvest from people. Killing random people for selfish purposes (when material components would do the job just as well) is seen as evil by most people.

3. Magic incurs a debt of fate when the material price isn't paid. In your world, the amount of fortune or luck someone has is predefined and over the long term must remain static. A magic user can for example temporarily increase their luck high enough to make a lightning bolt fall just right, a guard not to notice them, or to appear very charismatic however they've then incurred a luck debt. This debt of fortune or fate automatically gets repaid in the form of bad luck, eg: the magic user frequently gets injured stupidly, pianos fall from buildings near them, their mail is lost, etc... Nobody wants to be near someone who's incurred a large debt of fate and be crushed by the falling piano. Therefore society stigmatizes these people

Answer 8

Although the gods themselves are indifferent towards morality, their followers may not be. Good and evil are human designs. Gods are uncaring, immortal entities who place value on different things since their perception of life is so alien to mortals.

A society that values life or reveres the ability to cast long spells as an act of mental fortitude will be at odds with a different society that values life as a resource to cast spells quickly. The two different societies could come about naturally as the faster spell casting causes a rift between those that are willing to do it and those that aren't.

An aristocrat needing to cast a spell quickly to get out of a pickle may take a body part from an unwilling person as a catalyst (such as a prostitute or a laborer), which in turn causes common people to turn against the aristocracy who support the act. The mages guild or a church then gets involved and denounces the use of human body parts as a catalyst, which would create a schism between those that think its fine and those that don't

Answer 9

• How can a communications service provider view Skype (and other voice-over-IP applications) as evil?

• How can an automobile manufacturer view mass transit systems as evil?

• How can a television network view video-on-demand services (such as YouTube) as evil?

• How can a cable TV operator view streaming services (such as Netflix) as evil?

• How can the state view secure citizen-to-citizen communication applications as evil?

At all times and in all places, highly skilled artisans and their guilds were very much upset by any alternative which made them redundant. It's human nature.

Answer 10

How can it not be evil?

Magic is a really powerful tool. Maybe even too powerful for the common folk. If you just need to chant an incantation to kill/mutilate/transform/restrict/... someone else, every utterance becomes a potential lethal weapon.

And that is scary, especially to those unfamiliar with the incantations.

So unless everyone in the society is schooled enough in the magical arts to recognize (and maybe even cast) magical incantations, just one utterance incomprehensible enough is everything needed to cause a widespread panic.

It's like if you see someone throwing his bag and yelling "Allahu akbar!": You run for cover first, and ask questions later. It might just be a joke, or the bomb might not go off, or literally anything else, but: Are you willing to bet your life on it not exploding?

And this is just a society reacting to something it doesn't know well. But there might be more to it than just a fear of the unknown: What happens if an incantation isn't performed absolutely correct? What if the mage needs to cough, or swallows a fruit fly, or stumbles over his toes?

In a good case, maybe nothing happens or just some minor annoyance takes effect (e.g. splashing the mage with a bit of water, or ripping his pants).

But what can happen in a bad case? The mage that wanted to summon rain in order to grant a good harvest now summoned the worst thunderstorm of the century, or released the plague, or sacrificed the surrounding village to (insert big bad evil god of eternal torment). Literally anything might happen.

Incantations can literally be like gambling with death (of the chanter and all people around him).

And there is no way in such a world that incantations will be wide spread (or viewed positively): If the intended effect of the incantation can kill you, or the effect of an inadvertently botched incantation can kill you (or cause any other amount of damage), then such incantation just cannot be accepted for general use by the society.

There might be some exceptions (e.g. the king/high priest/... might be allowed in some ceremonial setting, or a healer might try an incantation in a dire emergency).

The more traditional magic, using invocation circles and ingredients has some advantages over the verbal alternative: The ingredients have to be assembled (some of them really hard to get), the circle needs to be setup (takes even more time, and might require access to the location) and has less spurious failures (it doesn't explode just because the caster has to sneeze).

Answer 11

Corruption

One possible explanation is that the quicker form of casting spells inevitably alters the personality of those who use; if they weren't evil before, they will be after channeling enough arcane energy. There could be any number of reasons why... Quick casting could leave the caster vulnerable to possession by malevolent spirits. It might cause damage the brain in a way that makes the caster psychotic or a sociopath. Maybe quick casting just proves so effective that few have the moral fortitude to resist the temptation to abuse the power it grants.

Whatever the case, if there is a clear connection between the second form of magic casting and anti-social behaviors, it won't take long for it to be shunned. This is especially true if the mages can give a plausible explanation as to why the quick casting is so corrupting.

Tradition versus Innovation

Another possibility is that the quick form of casting magic isn't actually evil, but most people view it as such.

The mages who rely on the slower form of spell casting are part of a long established school of magic. Their traditional techniques were developed through a lot of trial and error before civilization had any systematic understanding of how magic actually worked. Once ancient mages stumbled on a solution that worked reasonable well, the motivation to continue experimenting dwindled. Instead, they formalized their teachings and provide rationalizations as to why the material components were necessary. These rationalizations slowly spread to the general process and the slow casting because accept as just the way magic is supposed to be done.

From time to time, there are innovators who challenges the established orthodoxy. They discover that with proper training, neither drawing circles or expending materials is necessary. However, these innovators tend to be either overly ambitious people with no scruples or outcasts who live on the fringe of society. (Anyone else with any skill would have presumably been accepted into the mage school.) Either way, society as a whole, and the mages in particular, treat these individuals as deviants. Quick casting is deemed evil primarily because of who uses it and the fact it challenges established norms.

Answer 12

Because using Magic damages the fabric of space-time

• and bad things happen when the fabric of space-time tears open

Casting magic without invocation circles tears up a portion of the space-time fabric around the caster. These tears causes abnormalities, or perhaps opens up portals that allows magical/evil creatures from unknown dimension realm to slip through. That could explain some supernatural stuff in the world (if there is). Take your pick on the negative impact it causes. The gods may be aware of this, but does not care as these 'negative' impact does not affect them.

Invocation circles and ingredients are used to minimise/negate the damage it causes, and it's the responsible thing to do. These additional preparation, are in fact, for the benefit of society. In the past much damage may have been caused by these rogue magic users who casts spells freely.

Nobody knows how these fabric tears fully turn to opened portals... it could take days or months or decades, and it's a mystery.

Casting 'quick magic' also leaves some kind of mark on the caster that could be identified visually. Perhaps some scar patterns on the skin, or changing their hair or eye colours (hence causing these 'dark' wizards to wear hoods and work in shadows).

Society has deemed this as an evil act and punishes those who cast quick magic.

As for the damages on the space time fabric, there could also be visible visual indication that a crack is happening. Maybe some kind of glowing lines or darkness globe in the air. It would be cool to introduce some kind of "clean-up team", an organisation that goes around to "repair" these cracks. Paladins of some religious organisation seems fitting.

(some of these stuff are inspired from forgotten realms)

Answer 13

The gods fear those who can cast magic without their help

There's a series by Trudi Canavan where there are gods and the gods chosen representatives. And there are also extremely strong magic users who are not associated with the gods and are actively hunted. These are known as the Wilds. These wilds also have their own special and unique abilities. The main character learns to defy gravity through magic alone where no other person can do this. Another wild has the ability to enter a trance-like state and revert the ageing process. One is an extremely gifted healer.

Later in the story we find out that

All of the gods were in fact the same as these Wilds. The people strong enough to have their own special manifestations of magic are also powerful enough to undergo the final step in the transformation process to become a being made only of magic. A god.

This might not work for your purposes 100% as this implies that

because the gods were all once people they'd have the same motivations and personalities as people and might not be completely neutral as to how magic was being used.

But you can still borrow something from this. Perhaps the power of the 'fast magic users' doesn't come from the gods at all. And while the gods might not govern how their power is being used they can add limits onto what can be done with it.

But someone who doesn't have those limits could be using something else as the source of their power. Something malicious like the souls of the innocent or some other demonic influence. Perhaps they're made a deal with a devil that could cause havoc and people are generally opposed to this. Or perhaps the gods know that people who can use magic without the gods approval

can become gods just like them.

Answer 14

Imagine for a moment that any person off the street could chant a phrase and launch a nuke.

Terrifying. The reason that not using the ingredients and rituals is evil is because the only reason you want the ability to cast as such speeds with such little preparation is simply because you are up to no good.

It is also for this reason that it is not taught. If the average cutthroat learned of this work around by seeing it done, the usually inaccessible arcane becomes very real and very profitable and very destructive.

That is why if you are unwilling to go to such lengths to use magic you are not only lazy. you are evil.

Answer 15

Maybe there's the kind of magic that a devoted scholar can learn after years of devotion, difficult study, requiring enormous self-discipline, etc.

And then maybe there's the kind of magic that a shiftless lazy person can easily "acquire" by promising something of value (e.g., their soul) to an evil spirit. Or, maybe all the lazy/shiftless person has to do is steal some charmed object...

Answer 16

Look at your question from the other direction and it becomes easier to answer. Don't try to explain why "easy" magic is evil. Explain why "hard" magic is not evil.

All magic in your world is inherently evil. The rituals, incantations, and sacrifices made while performing the "hard" version of magic are a form of atonement, cleansing the caster of the evil taint that the spell would normally bestow upon them.

Implementation details: Your gods are indifferent to good and evil, but the evil-ness of magic is not supernatural in nature. It's an unavoidable side-effect of the way that magic interacts with the basic physics of your world. The people label it "evil" because it represents a caster with a complete disregard for how their magic could ruin everybody else's life. "Hard" magic seeks the intervention of the gods to block these negative effects and protect the caster. The gods don't care about "evil", but they do care about the mortal world. They spent a long time building it after all, and the last thing they want is some hot-shot to come traipsing through and blow a hole in the fabric of reality.

Answer 17

Limited resources

Fresh body parts of dead children are harder to collect than eyes of newts. Your evil mages are in so much of a rush that they'll run themselves out of components while good mages can theoretically keep going forever.

Answer 18

Seemingly you're asking about magic, not good vs evil:

As the first form of magic is pretty slow, it is very inconvenient when going up against a fast wizard. The latter would wipe the floor with them in a confrontation. Therefore, fast magic will always defeat slow. What advantage can slow magic have over fast magic that would give them a chance of winning?

My own roleplay system has this exact question. We use magic points to cast spells usually 5pts per level, but components can be used to replace the pts. Circles, candles, eyes of newt, etc.

Every mage has innate personal magical pool, they can tap into it to cast spells. Yet its limited, and replenishes slowly. So using external components means keeping your personal pool.

Blood is an alternative, the fresher the better, so some mages have determined that this approach is a great way to access vast ammounts of magic (Trudi Canavan stories involve such magic)

Souls, very powerful, bodies very useful material components, the younger the better.

These 'more powerful' components mean less prep time required (time is also a component) for faster spells.. but it still uses up magic.

Every single spell still requires 1mp spent per 'grade/difficulty' regardless of the components used.

I say all this just to set the example as comparative to yours.

The Problem these fast mages have, is, time to study is limited, you can study the slow, methodical magic, which means they can take almost any component and cast spells from it. Vs studying the fast magic, related to personal magic & quicker/powerful/limited elements at hand. Live humanoids. The quicker magic will require entourages of slaves, its very nature is short, sharp, powerful, and done, exhausted quickly.

*Its a 100m sprint vs 4km marathon. *

The slow mages, can wear down the faster mages over time. they'll need to throw themselves at the enemy in continuous waves, once the evil mage is exhausted, the good mages now have their opportunity, they start a ritual that destroys the evil, as their companions battle his last resources.. completing it as the evil is done, and unable to defend against it.

Answer 19

The fast magic consumes a currently abundant but finite resource, or adds incrementally but irreversibly to environmental degradation, and only a few of the most skilled magic users understand this.

I'm cribbing liberally from Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" Warlock setting which itself was written as a 1970s allegory for oil shortages that decade.

Like fossil fuels, there is abundant but finite mana aura or astral plane eldrich energy that gets burned up by the fast magic, but the novice user doesn't understand that this is a part of the spell; or it contributes a tiny bit to climate change or a drought as an externality. Those who know deem the practice evil to discourage it.

Answer 20

Discrimination of minorities and racism

In my worlds similar types of magic exist. There are basically three types of spell casting. Rituals, which involves a lot of preparation like drawing a complex circle; Hand Magic, which is performed by mind and waving your hands (or tail or Wand etc.); and Mind Magic, which is basically just thinking about a spell and it happens. Modern Wizards in my world would use a combination of all three, usually to bootstrap low level mind spells into more powerful rituals (imagine a spell preparing a spell preparing a spell preparing a spell ...). The thing is, not everyone can do Mind Magic or even Hand Magic (which is just an in-between of rituals and mind magic). You must be particularly gifted to perform mind or hand magic. Gifted in the way that you have to have the biologic features (like bigger brain or an extra organ) to perform them. After all you have to putt all the stuff from the ritual into you mind. Because of that only a few people in a specific group can even perform it.

I'm not going into the details of discrimination because we see real life examples all the time but you could make it so that the fast magic is not inherently evil, just perceived as such because it is only accessible to a minority (people of another race, or maybe the elite aristocrats). And since ordinary people and Mages already distrust them for other reasons they also distrust the magic. So basically, fast magic is evil because these people are evil, and they are evil because they are not like the others.

Side Note: In some of my Worlds (they all share the same magic system) it is actually the opposite. Mind and hand magic users would discriminate against ritual users because it's seen as archaic and unnecessary complicated although rituals are actually more powerful and have more reliable results. You see, it could be the other way around too.