The Rest of All Possible Worlds: Spell Schools

Another 'problem post' detailing debates and questions confronting the community of magic-users in TRoAPW. 

The spells quoted below are from The 52 Pages. 

Premise

That spells do different things is so obvious as to be not worth mentioning. That different spells sometimes work in very similar fashions is less readily apparent. Fire Dart and Flame Sphere have an obvious affinity, as do Detect Auras and Detect Magic. But despite the similarity between Create Rock and Conjure Wind, the precise nature and underlying logic of these spells is disputed. And given that different mages create and use different spells with very similar effects (Restimar's Instant Boulder against Belisar's Manifestation of Granite), the disputation gets even more troublesome. 

The categories spells are placed into are referred to schools. This conveys both that these spells are of a kind or group, that they are of a custom - a school of thought or use of magic - and that to manifest the features of this school, spell formulae and use must be taught.  

The State of the Art

Aside from the most obvious examples - as Fire Dart and Flame Sphere above - there has always been dispute over how to categorise spells. Wizard disputes with wizard, academy with academy, tradition with tradition. The growth of magical colleges that merge wizards of different traditions has made this ever more apparent. Where one stands on a theoretical position becomes ever more important and may dictate a course of study, the growth of magical talent or entry into a particular circle of mages. 

Pragmatic picking and choosing is still prevalent outside the (sometimes literal) ivory tower - but is now influenced by the ever-wider theoretical grounding given by masters to apprentices. Indeed, many wizards may not consciously identify with any given classification system at all. 

The disruption of older methods (by the Tabulators, or the Anti-Grimoireans) has created new ground for a grand division - not just between whether Dancing Lights is Illusion or Evocation, but if one should categorise on what a spell effects or uses or on what process a spell brings about. 

Thus, once the majority of spell catalogues in Calliste categorised their spells in the first fashion referring to 'The Lore of Shadows' or a 'Master of Gates'. Newer catalogues refer instead to 'the School of Illusion' or a 'Conjurer'. Those who adopt the newer method of categorising are known as Teleotaxists. 

Opponents of the Teleotaxists

Teleotaxists are most obviously opposed by Ontotaxists. By definition, these are a dedicated group of wizards with adequate free time and theoretical knowledge - rather than a hodge-podge coalition. The easiest way to tell a Teleotaxist from an Ontotaxist is to look at the titles they sport: does this wizard refer to herself as a 'Master of Winds' or a 'Ventilating Thaumaturge'?

An Ontotaxist model of the argument refers to Ontotaxists as 'Masons' and Teleotaxists as 'Millers'. The former is working with a medium, can perform both functional or artistic purposes - and more respected than a Miller. Whatever the relative wealth of a miller, they are far more commonly encountered and lack the cachet of a mason. Teleotaxists, for their part have more or less taken on the term Miller happily, employing bucolic imagery (maliciously whistling from morn till night), and gleefully referring to Ontotaxists as 'grist'. ("Your stony obduracy, oh mason, will be ground to the finest of powders by our ever-turning mill!")

The Teleotaxists Divided

Of the Teleotaxists, there are those that recognise that the division between Ontotaxists and Teleotaxists is less than useful. Noting the employment of nouns by one side and verbs by the other, they have attempted to to bridge the divide using gerunds. This has made them very unpopular and the Gerundists are very rarely heard from. 

The Polytaxists attempt to use both the Ontotaxist and Teleotaxist systems at once. This results in spells being referred to by long code strings, as 'BC/𝝭𝝘/7' or 'Leb - 2314 - p - 2477 - pf' or ever-growing combinations of arbitrary syllables as 'DivBanMiCha' - or strange blocky characters from constructed languages that are basically illegible  even to wizards, and troublesome to produce in freehand in one's grimoire. Polytaxists are derided as making a language fit only for golems, and thus speaking a language fit for golems - and thus jests abound that they are, in fact, golems. 

More successful than both are the Cryptotaxists. Such mages attempt to classify spells by using additional descriptors to hint at a mysterious source that cannot yet be detected or adequately defined. Some refer to a set of strange colours: 'This is a Blue spell'; 'This enchantment draws from the pool of Green magic'. Other modifiers are sometimes used : 'Of the Celestial School', 'A Perfumed incantation'. Still more Cryptotaxists refer to adjectives deriving from proper nouns, however derived: 'a glyph Telmarine'; 'an incantation Archenlandoise'.  Cryptotaxists are regarded as being somewhat pretentious, but they are still better received than the Polytaxists. 

Implications

Spell classification, of course, doesn't change the nature of the spells being cast. What the division between Ontotaxists and Teleotaxists does is change what spells are taught and by whom. The pyromancer is only subtlety different from the evoker, but if mages professes an expertise in both Transmutation and Divination rather than Change-Spells and Knowledge-Spells, there will be even less overlap. 

And the root structures of spells begin to change as well. As noted above, spell formulae have always differed. Therefore, a spell formulated with the firm belief that it is of one school rather than another will differ as well - if you have been used to one classification, moving to another may be difficult. Not impossible, but with that added layer of re-learning involved. 

Perhaps in time this might literally wall off Ontotaxists from Teleotaxists. All known spells (written or otherwise) have both 'noun elements and effects' - and 'verb elements and effects'. It would be near impossible for a spell to not do so. But as nounal Ontotaxists split from verbal Teleotaxists, so might spell formulation techniques. In time, even if all parties involved are using the same magical language, the same scripts for their grimoires - an Ontotaxist might be completely unable to parse a Teleotaxist-written spell, even a simple one. 

Does anything stand in the way of a great divide in Callistan magecraft? Well, non-magical patrons tend to look on the spell school debate as a wizard's pastime. Not terribly useful, but part of the cost of having spellcasters around. Of course, if an academy of wizards is in the service of the King for a particular purpose and the debate is preventing them from achieving that purpose, then there will be an intervention.

Less prominently, the mass of working journeyman mages who must and will use whatever spells they can get their hands on are a safeguard of sorts against divergence. Ad-hoc techniques to parse and align spells will be drafted every day by those at the coalface. But with growing interest in the uses of magic to address broad problems across society, and with growing efforts to promote magical understanding, starting with the academies, who knows if the one phenomenon will keep pace with the other?

Comments, nitpicks, &c welcome - I'd rather work out the problems now than later.

An obligatory reference to this part of Magical Industrial Revolution.