D&D General When did we first hear of "The Weave" in FR, or elsewhere?

[jgsugden]

I don't know if this the earliest, but from the Prologue of the novel Shadowdale (first printed in April of 1989):
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Edit - that's not just the only use, a quick scan forward to later chapters shows it gets used a lot in Chapters 6 and 7, as the heroes attempt to help Mystra return to the Planes. It's not The Weave (with a capital "W"), but just the "weave of magic". It must have picked up that capital "W" at some point later...

That is likely where I pulled it from originally! Thank you.

This is an interesting thread, but I think it would be also interesting (maybe a separate thread?) to see where the first antecedent in literature is for the idea of "The Weave."
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As I have my answer, I've adjusted the title to target what you're looking to find.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

It is definitely originally only a Forgotten Realms thing, until the recent stuff of 5th Ed started trying to sort of homogenize / galvanize elements from all the settings to sort of unify them a bit. As a long time Dragonlance fan who did not even read many FR books until recently I wasn't even aware of the Weave being a thing until I started brushing up on FR. Frankly I'm not even sure I like it as a concept as it kind of makes different spellcasters feel kind of "samey" to me. Like there is very little distinction between a cleric, wizard, and sorcerer. I can't say for certain when it was first introduced though, but I am under the impression that until very recently every setting had completely different magical sources and frameworks.

 

[Echohawk]

I don't know if this the earliest, but from the Prologue of the novel Shadowdale (first printed in April of 1989):

I also think this is the earliest reference. I searched my PDFs of everything published before then and couldn't find anything predating Shadowdale.