Involution
Magical Toolbox
This morning, I am questioning why anyone needs sigils, or places, or materials to work magic. It is, I think, a little like needing paper to write poetry. You can come up with, invent, compose poetry in your own head, but it isn’t until you have paper and pen (or, I suppose, a screen and keyboard) that you are writing poetry. It is entirely possible that I am missing the import of millenia of unwritten poetry before writing it down became a thing, but it is worth noting that both stories and songs made the transition from oral to written knowledge, while poetry seems to be an artefact of the written word.
So maybe I should be thinking of stories instead. One can compose a story in one’s head, tell it, have it arrive in other people’s heads. One can develop skills as a storyteller without ever writing down the story, so why would you do so? Why use the tool when the tool is not needed?
Or is magic an artefact of materials, etc? That depends on what magic is, and that’s not a question I’m equipped to answer. But I feel like it’s not. I feel like you can work magic with a sufficient imposition of will on something, without saying, moving, or outwardly doing anything. But it’s a hell of a lot easier if you have materials, place, sensoria, words, diagrams, sigils or forms (or whatever other tools) to help focus. If you routinely use Tool A when you are working toward Effect X, then even if Tool A actually (for whatever value of “actually”) has no connection to X, your brain will learn to associate the two, and perform better toward X when A is present.
So some of the composition of the toolbox is inventing stuff from scratch, declaring that orange candles are to do with wealth and good harvests, or whatever, and some is picking up on existing associations, like oak for longevity and permanence. And the toolbox isn’t necessary, many of the tools being in one’s own head, but is useful, much like having a plumbing wrench when you need it rather than making do with a vicegrips.