Christian Magic

[fusangite]

Well an Arcane/Divine split in the DnD sense would be silly, but in the medieval imagination I don't really detect a sense that the miraculous ends or even begins with the church. The church is a huge part of it, but the miraculous really seems to be just one more thing in the grand scheme of things.

Hmm, aspects of it I would put in...

Superb post, doctor! Thanks so much. This is exactly the sort of thing I needed. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm trying to represent the magic of the time, not justify the appearance of D&D magic at the time. Also, as I'm using BRP, there is no level progression; skills improve but there is no such thing as levels.

Anyway, thanks so much for taking the time over this post and breaking Christian magic down so effectively.

As for those who recommended books, are they available in downloadable PDFs? There wasn't a single copy of any of them that I could find in the city of Toronto (population 2,000,000) yesterday.

 

[fusangite]

To keep track of this thread, I'm now posting a longer response:

First of all, here are the books recommended so far:

Testament (Green Ronin), Mythic Europe (Green Ronin), Medieval Players Manual (Green Ronin), Ars Magic 4th Edition, Maleficium (Ars Magica), Pax Dei (Ars Magica), Pendragon (Chaosium), Arthurian Legends (Relics & Rituals/White Wolf), Black Monks of Glastonbury (Atlas Games), Fading Suns (?), Dark Legacies (?)

If you wanted to make magic really "authentic" in the context of medieval christian world-views on the topic, you'd have to scrap the entire D&D spell system, there's nothing there that would work correctly (from a historical perspective).

I wouldn't actually have priests cast spells.

Yep. That's the point from which I'm proceeding. There is no way to adapt either the D&D spell mechanics or the spells themselves to the setting.

You would have to have three basic "magic classes": the educated upper-class "high magician" (the alchemists and astrologers), the clerics with christian miracles derived from acts of high moral virtue, and the peasant "wise folk" practicing folk-magic based on old pagan surivalisms.

Maybe replace it with a primitive alchemy\chemistry system?

You're largely right here. I'm currently designing the mechanic for intermediated magic that comes from God/angels/demons. But, as you point out, there was also natural magic at this time. In fact, the charms used in folk magic were an ugly incoherent mix of natural magic and the invocation of spiritual beings. Alchemy was, for the most part, natural magic. So, I might as well ask for thoughts on the natural magic of the time (although it probably won't be much used in the campaign).

What are people's views of how to handle natural magic as opposed to supernatural magic?

The next step would depend on whether or not you choose the setting to presume the correctness of the christian medieval world view;

Assume yes. Although this is not 100% true, it is generally true for the purposes of the game.

if you do, then there are certain rites of magic that were goetic, or damnable; performing these acts would lead to the damnation of your soul (the summoning and binding of demons, or spells to cause love). Whereas other acts were not in themselves damnable, such as astrology. Any magic based on non-christian worship (be it jewish or muslim magic or the pagan survivalisms) would be damnable by default. The effects of practicing damnable magic (other than your soul eventually ending up in hell) is that you would be unable to receive aid from divine sources, no divine healing, no miracles, no intervention from angelic beings.

I'm not aware that at this point in history there were sins for which forgiveness was impossible. I thought everyone could be forgiven before death, even if they still had to be executed.

Well, keep in mind that priests can bless you before battles, and that will count. Saying a prayer to an appropriate saint will have effects. A true king can cure certain diseases by touch. There are many holy places - springs that heal the sick or infirm, for example.

Regarding the holy places, there is a big debate in the field today over whether the places had properties or if those properties emanated exclusively from the relic associated with the place. Aside from the angel caverns of Monte Gargano, I'm not much aware of places with inherent healing properties until after the Reformation.

I agree very much about the need to pick the correct saint. There are three factors I'm building into the mechanic for this: proximity to the relic, "portfolio" of the saint, merits of the saint (ie. distance from God's right hand).

True kings were typically understood to cure scrofula.

Everyone is Roman Catholic, so the wine really, definitely, without question is turned into blood during the Eucharist.

Yes. But this is transsubstantiation not transqualiation -- so none of that iron-rich flavour.

Don't forget that the Christians thought that other faiths' magic worked too - it was just Eeeevil and came from the devil.

Understood and agreed. Otherwise heretics' and pagans' magic would need their own mechanics.

Well you probably already have thought of this, while a good deal of Europe was in the process of being converted to Christianity,

Not the case. By the 13th century, you just have Lithuania and the Slavic revival that hits Eastern Germany.

most of the less well educated people kept up with a portion of the previous beliefs as well.

Agreed. This is why we get the ugly mix of angelic magic and natural magic in folk charms.

A great example of this is the fear of the "wee folk" (faries, changelings, etc...). To further complicate matters, the Roman Catholic church also adapted the customs of different faiths to convert members of those faiths.

Again, I think you're thinking of the period about 300 years earlier with respect to the adaptation of pagan customs like Rood Trees. But you're quite right about faeries et al; in fact, the 13th century is when they get the name "fairy" imported from Persian "peri" legends. This is where our fairies become more hierarchical as they harmonize with Muslim stories.

I would suggest looking at some medieval Saints lives for ideas of what miracles and prayers were supposed to be able to do. Most of it is curative or calming, though there is also the ability to smite evil doers (essentially anyone non-Christian, including heretics). Another power commonly found was finding lost items or discovering who stole items. Food shows up a lot.

Done. Here is an incomplete list so far of priestly magic effects:
1. Reversing barrenness/aid in conception
2. Prophetic dreaming
3. Forcing people to tell the truth
4. Physical signs of evil/good
5. Invisible signs of evil/good
6. Blessing objects
7. Calling/stopping storms
8. Curing diseases/injuries
9. Calming/exciting emotions
10. Immunity to weather
11. Exorcism
12. Excommunication
13. Cancellation/reversal of demonic magic
14. Making money/materials undepletable
15. Detecting metals
16. Magnifying authority (intimidation/persuasion)
17. Transqualiation/transsubstantiation of substances

Some magic used only by pagans/heretics:
1. Love magic
2. Augury
3. Divining

Stigmata (...not of the eye...) commonly manifest as a way of showing holiness, as does the notion that, when you die, your corpse smells of flowers or of apples.

Angels guide, give wisdom, comfort, smite, and all the rest, but they cannot be commanded. Instead they aid an individual at the behest of God (or Christ or Mary or an equivalent force).

Agreed. This is being incorporated.

Demons would have the ability to get you to do things you might otherwise not wish to, but also have you stand by your decision after the fact. A demon might convince that, since you are mad at your sister over something minor, you must strike her in church, or drive her out of her house. In other words, demons don't force you to do things utterly outside your desires, but cause you to overreact. After the act they will make you feel foolish and leave you in a position of feeling confused, angry, and yet determined to take credit for your action (maybe with some form of justification).

This is really well-described. The problem is that I can't think of a mechanical way to do this. Direct take-overs I can do but this is tough to think through on a mechanical level so any thoughts you have would be appreciated.

Magic, conversely, is EVIL. Well, mostly. Usually. Unless it is done for a really, really good cause and doesn't hurt anyone and the person can't be defined as a witch, which itself is a highly variable term, mumble, mumble, equivocate... Basically, you're not going to find anyone Lobbing Fireballs For God. Magic in the 13th century was a lot of calling up the dead to find buried treasure, having forests appear suddenly, losing someone on a path, and creating wondrous items such as cloaks covered in poison or that would burts into flame when worn. The essential definitions are, if you are calling up the dead or causing someone to die, your magic is evil. If it is anything else, see your priest first and, if he approves, Handle With Care, don't use more often than directed, and go to confession immediately afterwards.

Absolutely correct here. But I love some of the examples you give. Can you direct me to the specific saints' lives here? My knowledge of Saints' lives is all pre-900 and I have to furiously catch up.

Explicitly Christian magic would fall into the following categories:
Counter-magic/protection - very very reliable at actually countering, not always totally great at detecting or preventing secondary effects. The witches curse doesn't affect you, but you also can't find the enemy magic user and it might take a small child instead.

Apparently this is called apotropaic magic and it thought to account for about 80% of all pre-Renaissance magic.

Healing - very effective but unpredictable in that it often carries with it unintended effects like revealing past crimes of the healed or granting unusual powers. "Wow! I have new leg that looks and acts utterly unlike my old leg or the other leg I've always had!"

Any thoughts on how to deal with this mechanically? I am using BRP from Runequest so there are hit locations.

Conversion - see above, but not actually so much limited by what you can do with it - there are a surprising number of stories where St.s do things like convert dragons only to find that God doesn't want them around - as that there are a limited number of circumstances in which to convert, conversion doesn't always solve your problems - check out the record on inter-church poisonings, and the process is very very very arduous. To my mind this would be the coolest part of Christian magic, more or less like coincedental magic in Mage where you have to carefully construct subtle but very very very far reaching effects. This covers both the evil noble who becomes repentant scenario, and the evil place that is suddenly redeemed into something really cool.

I have a bit of a problem here. Doesn't magic just make a creature receptive to conversion by removing demonic influences, cleansing its soul, calming it, etc.? Isn't the actual conversion still an act of free will?

Authority - might be the most effective of the various forms of magic in this domain, with the unusual limitation that the use of this authority would be limited to Christian means under many circumstances. Sure you can rebuke the demon and stop him from doing just about anything, but unless you have the seal of Solomon there's not a whole lot else you can do with it. Further, you might survive the raid by the scourge of God, but he's called that for a reason.
Wonder - the Christian version of illusion, where you don't actually create comprehensible images of false things so much as incomprehensible visions of true things. Rather than creating an image of a fearsome troll you instill an image of your opponents' fear itself into their heads. This is likely to be a lot of the magic as well.

I rolled these two together because it seems like they could be done using the same mechanic. Does this make sense?

Cursing - probably pretty good, but, in general, when Christian's curse they do so in the context of tremendous sacrafice or actually loosing. There should be some great counter-attack mechanics here.

Knowledge - Christian magic should not do divination at all save for granted visions, but it should be very good at letting you figure out or deduce things, particularly in defensive situations. Christian adventure mystics are incredibly good at intuition and knowing things. Hermits who have knowledge that has otherwise passed beyond reckoning on the one hand and the Bishop who shows people the way out on the other.

Blessings - Pretty good, though a lot of the benefit should depend on the people being blessed. Both the army that suddenly has Saint's fighting for them and the mystic who ends up having to reprimand those who took the mission with impure motive.

Transformation/Creation - this is likely to be the meat and drink, literally, of highly proficient Christian wonder workers. The issue is that it's going to be really indirect and mostly very altruistic. The, "Oh Thank-you Father, we would never have found that pot of gold under the chimney without your wisdom" scenario.

This all makes sense and will be adopted.

Spiritual duels: One system for this would cover authority and counter-magic, but I could also see it doing almost everything else as well. What it needs to do, however, is give Christian mystics an exciting way of dealing out the peaceful damage. A huge part of the Christian mystic genre are people who end combat through exciting but non-combatitive means. Right now I'm thinking of a bishop who visited England and got the Saxons to turn back by getting a village together to sing verses.

I will be using a variant of Chaosium's one on one spirit combats. But the example you offer is more like a calming effect created by a lot of people assisting the primary petitioner.

Power Points: I like the idea of a system like Conan's where you have a limited pool of constant power and the ability to beef up that power for a limited period of time through other actions, see Sacrafice above but also through long term and difficult performance, good actions one's own part, and the quality/timing of the spell's use.

I agree that this seems like the logical way to run magic and place limits on the use of abilities but the idea seems so phenomenally anti-Christian, I'm still searching for an alternative.

Mystical Association: For all that Christian mystics spend much of their time fighting the supernatural, one of their big appeals is that they bring the supernatural out of the woodwork in everyway not just as antagonists. I might do something like allow an Elf in the party, but only on condition that he obey, or appear to obey, the CM's code of honor while present. Or maybe even a weird summoning mechanic.

I see what you mean here: I would be inclined to go with the elf model and simply have passive use of perception skills if they reach a very high level. A skill might be useable passively only at -10 or -15; thus, one would need +11 or +16 in the skill in order for it to go off passively and notice the lurking demons.

Congregations: Need very elegant rules for congregations and how they work to expand the scope and effectiveness of simple effects. This could easily work with a power point system.

Or just the "assist" mechanic with a high threshold like 20; this is especially sensible when one deals with the phenomenon of rulers assigning masses of clergy to all pray for the same important thing.

Behavior: Natch, but also the magic itself should follow a code of behaviour independent of the user. Not the normal DnD 'the deity doesn't want you to have that spell' catch but something more immutable and on a spell by spell/miracle by miracle basis. So that the catch comes on the level of effect not decision. You target the wrong thing mistakenly and rather than simply not go off the power does something totally different and telling like throwing roses rather than pure smiting.

Like so many of your suggestions, this is superb and is being stolen immediately!

 

[Starman]

You might want to look at Dark Ages: Mage and Dark Ages: Inquistor. Both had great ideas for Catholic magic users.

Starman

 

[The_Universe]

Didn't he start out as a sun god? If so, you might add Sun to those. Also maybe War, to keep crusaders in his portfolio. I'd say Death too, if it were less about making undead and more about the hereafter.

If you want a more gnostic or mystic christian god, give him all the domains.

The Judeo-Christian God, in D&D thematical terms, actually started out as more of a water god - what with the creating land out of the firmament, the floods, and using sea creatures (leviathons, etc.) as extensions of His will. Since the Hebrews (His chosen people) were nomadic desert folk at first, his ability to give water was a great deal more revered than was his ability to bake them in their own skin.

On the other hand, the Romanization of the Christian faith does add a lot of "sun" imagery to the Christ-figure - a great many christian holidays (including our just-passed Christmas) is celebrated not on the likely date of the birth of Christ, but on a pagan feast-day to a sun god.

The bible, despite what you may have heard, is good-readin'!

 

[The_Universe]

On a more general note, I'd advise you to read up on gnosticism - it's an ostensibly christian mysticism that borrows a lot from zoroastrianism and the jewish kabbalah. In D&D terms, gnosticism is definitely magic of the divine, but not arcane sort.

Kabbalah, which could certainly be encountered even in the mostly-christian 13th century, on the other hand, could be considered arcane magic. Although the source is considered to be the divine entity, it's based more on figuring out the the "calculus" of the universe - equations based on the name of God, things like that.

Demonology (summoning and divination) should of course be among the more common sources of magic.

Also, don't forget to research some of the more mystical traditions of Islam - your players might be crusaders (or Knights) but magic can move as well as trade goods, and who knows what they might find in the shadowed streets of Constantinople...

 

[Nisarg]

1st- not everyone was Roman Catholic even then...you still had strong enclaves of pagan religion out there.

It depends what you mean by "then" and "there".

In 999ce there were still pagan kingdoms in eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, and strong pagan survivalisms in the countries of central and northern Europe who had just (relatively) recently been converted.

There were also, what you might call highly-degenerated pagan survivalisms in places like Spain, France and Italy. The people who practiced this "folk magic" there would NOT have thought of themselves as Pagans, and would have been grossly shocked and offended if you told them that the protection charms or healing rite that they made was based on non-christian origins.

Now, by 1200ce, there weren't any pagans anywhere in Europe outside of extreme Eastern Europe. And while there were still some pagan survivalisms, the actual religions were dead.

Nisarg

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

Fusangite, after reading through your long post, I would definitely suggest you get the Medieval Player's Manual, as you'll be able to ransack parts of it to deal with some of the situations described. Though it is level-based, being d20, the ideas on how to deal in-game with magic (G-d-based or theurgic), saints (easily adaptable to non-Christian traditions as well), scholars and artists (pssibly my favorite part of the book), as well as the church, and universities, with all their fun political associations.

Also, to throw this out there, I would suggest using the Piety system found in Testament. Alignment is too cut-n-dried for our real world, or any game based in it, but Piety reflects well the ebb and flow of faith found in most people. It also allows for a variety of grays in the moral spectrum, also fitting to a game based in our world.

Have fun!

 

[Pramas]

While Medieval Player's Manual and Testament are indeed by GR, Mythic Europe is not. That is an old Ars Magica supplement, which while potential useful is not d20 (and indeed, IIRC, doesn't have any game stats in it at all).

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The bible, despite what you may have heard, is good-readin'!

Yes, and if you can locate some of the ancient Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, as well as other mythologies of the near east and India which predate the Hebrew mythology, you can locate many of the central aspects and stories of the judeo-christian mythos, which is really nifty. You can even see echoes of it in other traditions, like Greek mythology. In that case, it's mostly in the creation myths, which were handed down to the Greeks from the same Babylonian-descended tradition, just through different channels so they were adapted differently.

The study of the development of the mythologies of the Fertile Crescent and its development into more recent mythologies is pretty darn interesting. Since Western culture is ultimately universally descended from this mythology, it's impressive to see how deeply ingrained many of the metaphors and stories are in our collective imagination.

I recommend the epic of Gilgamesh, which, like many mythologies, is almost entirely composed of metaphor that illustrates how people of the time felt about things.

 

[fusangite]

On a more general note, I'd advise you to read up on gnosticism - it's an ostensibly christian mysticism that borrows a lot from zoroastrianism and the jewish kabbalah. In D&D terms, gnosticism is definitely magic of the divine, but not arcane sort.

Kabbalah, which could certainly be encountered even in the mostly-christian 13th century, on the other hand, could be considered arcane magic. Although the source is considered to be the divine entity, it's based more on figuring out the the "calculus" of the universe - equations based on the name of God, things like that.

With the exception of Lull, magic inspired by the pseudepigrapha and other repositories of Gnosticism didn't really become European magic until the discovery of the hermetic texts in the 15th century. This is my big beef with Ars Magica: Renaissance Hermetic magic was a real departure from past traditions of magic and not continuous with European magic in the way that people suppose. Similarly, cabalistic magic really only crossed out of Jewish European into Christian Europe in the 15th century.

But prior to the Renaissance, it is really just Lull who makes use of this stuff.

Demonology (summoning and divination) should of course be among the more common sources of magic.

Well, this is the main way I'm expressing magic in the system right now. It gets along very well with the Prayer mechanic I'm designing.

Also, don't forget to research some of the more mystical traditions of Islam - your players might be crusaders (or Knights) but magic can move as well as trade goods, and who knows what they might find in the shadowed streets of Constantinople...

Certainly, there was considerable influence of Sufism on 12th and 13th century Europe. For instance, credible arguments have been made that the Canterbury Tales is essentially a Sufic text.

Thanks HalWhitewyrm for letting me in on what is worth grabbing out of the Green Ronin stuff.

As for the stuff about Biblical magic, while some magic, as described in Scripture does show up on medieval Europe, some does not. Therefore, I'm inclined to handle Biblical magic with care and not employ it without specific instances of it in the medieval world.