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It's been a while since I've been theorizing! It's time to change that. This treatise--and it is a treatise; it is way too long--has a long history in my mind, and now it is finally time for me to actually put it down in writing. (The graph also took forever to figure out how to do, but I finally got it to work. Yes, there's a graph in this theory.) Introduction There is a wide variance in magic in the cosmere, but it has never been clear why some magics might be more related to one than another. Considering Words of Radiance, we know that Stormlight and Breath are similar in many ways. In this exhaustive classification scheme, we will rigorously describe how cosmere magics differ, using Realmatic reasoning, and also provide a high level view on how these magics came into being, and why they act as they do. (Look, I know I should be calling them Investitures or manifestations of Investiture, but I'm going to go with magic systems for now because it is just less clunky than "manifestations of Investiture," okay?) These ideas began, as many things with me do, with a conversation with Windrunner. When we read Words of Radiance, we had many thoughts, and we started comparing magic systems. What makes one stronger than another? The Spiritual fuel is important, but what of spren? In this scheme, I said that Allomancy and Surgebinding was probably the most "powerful" of the magics, but for different reasons. Allomancy was very restrictive, but because it was so restrictive, its effects could be much more impressive. AonDor was also very powerful in its own way, but while flexible, it required a great deal of preparation. So I supposed that maybe there's a "Power" axis and a "Preparation" axis. BioChroma would be of more middling power, but require less preparation. This seemed like a sensible way of organizing the magics together from a high level. But, I had never been satisfied with these terms, as they had no relation with any other cosmere terms. And more importantly, something seemed… missing, somehow. It turned out there were more precise axes to use: Realmatics. We throw terms around like Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual, but we don't know what they mean as much. But with Emperor's Soul, we know more, and now I'm going to relate these in classifying cosmere magics. Two axes seemed too few, so let's go with three, the typical Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual. In fact, there are good reasons to use these as attributes. In Words of Radiance, the writer of the Ars Arcanum uses it to describe Lightweaving: Of course, this by itself, is not a new idea. A long-espoused idea is that All Magics have Three Parts. But that theory didn't go far enough. Why? Magics are not equally rooted all three Realms. Time for a short digression on my philosophy on magic: every magic is essentially a Realmatic exchange. Power--Investiture--is moved or transformed from one Realm, say the Spiritual, to a different Realm, like the Physical. Not all magics have the same Realmatic exchange between Realms, but there's always some sort of interaction between all three Realms. For this to happen, a magic system has to be partially embedded in each Realm. Think of it like a chemical reaction: you have three different pots and with the right conditions, you cause a reaction between these three pots, causing various effects. This is not entirely relevant to this theory, but to me it seems to be an interesting way of thinking about magic. It's more fundamental, and to me explains the reasoning why magics need to have roots in all three Realms. It seems obvious that magics will be rooted in each Realm differently. Awakening has a strong Cognitive component that Allomancy does not. Surgebinding requires a Spiritual connection, and is totally different from Awakening and Allomancy. Three different magics, three different distributions in which Realms the magics are rooted. I think the idea of a "focus" can also be fit into this classification scheme. Originally, without Roshar, the focus of a magic system seemed pretty self-evident: Aons/symbols, metals, Commands--with Commands being the least immediately obvious, but in retrospect, Commands do all the "action" of this Realmatic interaction, if you think about it. But Surgebinding just doesn't have an obvious equivalent, and that's totally okay. Brandon has more recently said that the idea of a focus is something that peoples came up with to describe magic, which implies to me that the notion of a focus is not a core, fundamental attribute to cosmere magics. But again, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's classify magics. The Model You guys know I have a math degree, right? (Now a Master's degree in fact.) So, this part may be slightly… unnecessarily numerical. Don't worry about it; you can skip the numbers. Mathematical models, at their simplest, start with a few core principles and then use that to construct equations or numbers which hopefully illuminate things. We obviously have little to no true numerical information, so I'll be doing some estimations. But first, let's make our assumptions very clear before insanity begins. 1. Every magic is rooted in each of the three Realms (pretty widely accepted) 2. Depending on magic system, this distribution is not equal. So let's get onto classifying just how much each magic system is rooted in each Realm. It seems sensible that perhaps we rate magics on a scale of 100 points, and we'll have three values, for Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual. These values need to sum up to 100, so you could say these are the rough estimates for how much a magic is rooted in each Realm. (If you've had probability, you can just scale these to be from 0 to 1 rather than 0 to 100, but big numbers seemed nicer for this). So we might say a magic is 50 in Physical, 30 Cognitive, and 20 Spiritual, for an example. Now, that might seem like a pretty safe assumption, but what I'm effectively doing is saying that I'm normalizing every magic to have the same power level. There's 100 "power" to distribute between Realms. That's a pretty big assumption! We will see minor Shardworlds where Splinters power magics rather than Shards, and those magics will definitely not be as powerful as the Shardic magics. So, our final assumption: 3. Generally all Shardic magics have the same amount of pure "strength"; it is just distributed differently (this may be totally false, but right now we don't have tools to properly measure if one magic is purely stronger than another). With our assumptions in hand, we can begin thinking about magics. But maybe I ought to say what I mean by Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual. Physical: How much a magic is aligned with things in the Physical Realm. The Physical generally results in more restrictive abilities. Cognitive: How much a magic is aligned with Cognitive things, such as thought, preparation required in manifesting magic Spiritual: How much a magic is aligned to ideals, Identity, and other Spiritual traits. Depending on which Realmatic attribute is dominant will determine how a magic's focus is. Physical magics require a very rigid focus. Cognitive magics have more fluid foci. Spiritual magics may purely not require a focus because of a person's direct connection. We'll talk a lot more about this in a bit. Finally, let's get to business. Scadrian magics are interesting in that they are specially hardwired into a person's Spiritweb (and Hemalurgy revolves on rewiring these, essentially). It's the only cosmere magic like this, with very rigid abilities encoded into you. Many other magics can be accessed more easily, but not the Metallic Arts. You either have it or you don't, or you're a horrible person and like spiking people. I would thus classify all Scadrian magics as Physical. Whereas other magics require significant work to get going, like AonDor, Forgery, or Awakening, all the "work" of the Realmatic interaction is contained in the correct metal. Nothing else is required. Allomancy - Heavily Physical, minor Spiritual (due to its connection with Preservation), very little Cognitive Feruchemy - Physical, about equal Cognitive and Spiritual Hemalurgy - Physical, Spiritual, and Cognitive, but there's more Cognitive to Hemalurgy (since it heavily depends on knowledge of where to put the spikes), and it steals a lot of Spiritual attributes, hence its Spiritual designation. One could argue, perhaps, it is more Cognitive than Spiritual. Nalthian magics are most obviously embedded in the three Realms: color, Commands, and Breath are its Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual components, respectively. But where does the work lie? It's primarily Cognitive. The visualization and the Command is the most key element to the magic, Awakening - Cognitive, Spiritual, then Physical Selish magics are also highly Cognitive. It requires a lot of work to create just the right Aon or soulstamp. AonDor - Cognitive, Spiritual, very little Physical Forgery - Cognitive, Spiritual, more Physical I'm not including the ChayShan or Dakhor, as we know so little about them, but if we had more data I'm sure we could fit them into this scheme. At the moment, ChayShan seems more Physical, and Dakhor has a more strong Physical component too. AonDor really has the least Physical of all the Selish magics, yet a very strong Spiritual component. Finally, Roshar. This is a Spiritual magic if I've ever seen one. It requires a deep bond with your spren to make the magic work. If you don't have that bond, you need an Honorblade, which I would call a "focus" in this case. It grants that ability for you, giving you that connection to Honor necessary to suck in Stormlight. But in most usual Surgebinding, its dominant attribute--the reason for the power--is your Spiritual Identity. Who you truly are. Surgebinding - Spiritual, Physical, Cognitive (the last two depending on Surge) Of course, in this, I'm generalizing all magics under one umbrella. Certain Feruchemical abilities are in one Realm entirely, and while Windrunning doesn't involve much Cognitive, Lightweaving does. So take these as rough averages at best. Putting it all together: Allomancy - Heavily Physical, minor Spiritual,very little Cognitive Feruchemy - Physical, about equal Cognitive and Spiritual Hemalurgy - Physical, Spiritual, and Cognitive Awakening - Cognitive, Spiritual, then Physical AonDor - Cognitive, Spiritual, very little Physical Forgery - Cognitive, Spiritual, more Physical Surgebinding - Spiritual, Physical, Cognitive And heck, let's put some numbers to it, because I feel that will show a magic's attribute and its distribution more effectively than me blathering: Allomancy: 60 Physical, 30 Spiritual, 10 Cognitive Feruchemy: 50 Physical, 25 Cognitive, 25 Spiritual Hemalurgy: 50 Physical, 30 Spiritual, 20 Cognitive Awakening: 60 Cognitive, 30 Spiritual, 10 Physical AonDor: 50 Cognitive, 45 Spiritual, 5 Physical Forgery: 50 Cognitive, 40 Spiritual, 10 Physical Surgebinding: 60 Spiritual, 20 Physical, 20 Cognitive That seems to sum things up pretty nicely. The only one I'm not really sold on is Forgery, since it throws around much less power than AonDor, but yet still deals with Identity (a very Spiritual attribute) heavily. Perhaps if we consider that AonDor only seems so powerful with the help of Elantris, this power disparity doesn't seem nearly as extreme. So of course, here's a pretty graph displaying this info: Each color corresponds to a particular world: Red - Scadrian Purple - Nalthian Blue - Selish Green - Rosharan But what is a 3D graph from just one angle? That's why I made a fully interactive version for your viewing pleasure! Now that I think is pretty slick. Power levels and Cognitive Intermediaries And with that model in place, we can get back to the discussion Windy and I originally had, about relative powers of a magic. Tied up in this question also will be spren and foci. Remember, in my conception of magic, manifestations of Investiture occur because Investiture is being shifted between the Realms. This effects don't happen in a vacuum; they require a user, and almost always, they require activation of some sorts, a will for magic to occur (the only time it doesn't is when Allomancers unconsciously burn metals). But more importantly, there needs to be a catalyst for this Realmatic interaction to occur. If we think about Surgebinding and Shallan Soulcasting, Pattern acts as her intermediary in Shadesmar. Given Syl talks about magic being an "agreement with friends," it seems reasonable to say that your spren is the thing that, in the Cognitive Realm, makes this interaction work. It all comes back to the Cognitive Realm, really, because Shadesmar connects the Physical and Spiritual. It's where change happens. (Is it any wonder that Shadesmar is predominantly water? Liquids are a transitionary state of matter between solids and gases) I'll call spren a Cognitive Intermediary, or an Intermediary more simply. These are the catalysts that make magic all work. So, that immediately asks the question, do other magics have a similar Intermediary? Of course! They are focuses. I originally defined a focus as something that shapes power into a specific effect. Realmatically, that focus facilitates the Realmatic interaction. This explains why AonDor is incredibly unforgiving. Without a sentient Cognitive Intermediary acting on your behalf, you have to do all the action yourself, and persuading the "spren" of other things to do what you wish is… well, as we know from Shallan, it is nontrivial. Aons allow Investiture to be shaped very specifically, but you have to get it precise, or else the whole thing is for nothing. Awakening's Commands are also that Intermediary, and similarly, you have to be pretty darn specific in your Command (and your Cognitive visualization, which is really what you want; the words just help to visualize the Command). You are willing that Breath to take this very specific shape and form, for the "spren" of the object to do as you wish. You have to be a pretty persuasive. What of the Metallic Arts? In the case of Allomancy, the consuming of the metal unlocks the Investiture directly from Preservation. I interpret this as, the powers are very specifically ingrained into you, and when the metal--the Intermediary--is used, Investiture is forced down the very specific paths that are ingrained into you. It's like a very narrow conduit that suddenly opens with the metal present. Other magics that aren't as firm in abilities either need a very precise Cognitive focus to shape the power how you want it, or it requires a deep Spiritual connection, with something doing the action for you. Those are the three ways you get magic. And of course, the way the Investiture is accessed also needs to be in line with the Shard's intent, but this goes a step further in identifying what components a magic will require need, Realmatically. (Tangent: Nightblood is a spren, really. He's his own Cognitive Intermediary in Shadesmar, like a spren. I imagine in Shadesmar, he's violently using the power of his Breath and the Breaths he consumes to actively fulfill his specific intent. Other spren get vaguer intents and have a bit more freedom in what they do.) So Allomancy is hardwired in, and it is powerful primarily because its power is very focused in specific ways. In AonDor and Awakening, you construct your Cognitive Intermediary yourself. Differences between these two magics come from the way you get the magic in the first place (differences in Shard intent), but also, AonDor has a lot more Spiritual power to throw around. Awakening is interesting in that it is the only magic (well, other than Hemalurgy) where Innate Investiture--Breath in this case--is the fuel, and in the scale of Shards, Innate Investiture is really small. Powerful magics require a connection with something more Spiritual. In Allomancy and Feruchemy, the encoding grants that connection to the Shards, and your Identity and who you are is what triggers the Shaod, allowing a direct connection with the Dor. Thus, AonDor has a lot more to work with. So power, ultimately, is vested in the Spiritual. The stronger a magic's spiritual aspect, the more power it gets to throw around. As such, Elantrians, Knights Radiant, and Allomancers have a great deal of pure "strength". However, Elantrians and Radiants are more closely related in this spiritual way. Radiants and Allomancers are more related in ease of use, because things are less Cognitive, but that comes with limitations: the magics that are fast to use are limited and not flexible. The more a magic is Cognitive, though, the more flexibility it has. Awakening and AonDor have almost innumerable abilities. Practically unlimited! Physicality means that things are the least flexible. But rigidness means you get dramatic effect at minimal costs. I predict that there will be very few Physical magics in the cosmere, as building a physical magic with these specific Spiritweb encodings seems like a very deliberate act on a Shard's part, and I'm not sure a Shard would make such an intense effort. Which brings us up to a more mythological analysis on maybe, just maybe, why these magics are vested in each Realm the way they are. A historical perspective (Source, and emphasis is mine, of course) This is an incredibly important quote. Focuses are not a function of the Shards themselves, but also the Shardworld. This could be taken to mean many things about a Shardworld, but what if this means foci occur because Shards and the actual events that happen on that planet? So let's take a historical look at magics. Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy have much more active Shardic connections, and their Spiritweb encodings represent a specific design. It's as if the magics were created with that purpose (If you buy that the Metallic Arts are designed, this can explain how Harmony can alter the way Snapping works and Preservation could switch out metals--the magic itself is Physical. Constructed. Designed.) That does make sense given Scadrial's origin. Things on this planet were born of an agreement between two Shards. They had to carefully craft what they built. Preservation let people access his power more, forging Allomancy in the process. The metal, being an artifact of agreement, became its focus. Ruin countered Preservation by using the metals for his purpose instead. He of course wouldn't let people access his own power. Their agreement was hardly a pleasant one. They were enemies and every action they did had to subtly give them an advantage over the other. As such they could have agreed upon a focus which let them be very careful in how their Investitures were used; hence the reason abilities are so rigid here. (Another tangent: It is important to note that they did not Invest the metal on Scadrial. Rather, they made a more interesting construct: Investing people in very particular, specific ways, and allowing the metal to be the key to unlocking the Investiture. So a Scadrian could burn Rosharan tin and find it chemically identical, unlocking the power exactly the same as elsewhere.) That was how Scadrial's conflict manifested in its magic. On Roshar, things emerged quite a bit differently. Honor and Cultivation, romantically involved, went to the Rosharan system. It is possible they Invested some of their power onto Ashyn or Braize--we don't know yet. But either way, Honor and Cultivation made it to Roshar first. Then Odium came and caused some issues. (Understatement of the millennium) Odium would not have agreed, as Ruin did, to an easy accord. Odium didn't even want to construct--he wanted to eliminate his opponents. Honor and Cultivation disagreed rather strenuously. Honor, at the very least (it is not clear how Cultivation fits in), began opposing Odium with everything he has. Honor threw around a ton of his power in opposing him--perhaps creating the storms in what seemed at the time to be an effort to blow Odium's forces off the whole planet. Odium threw a lot of his power around too. As such, Rosharan magics have a high ceiling of power because the Shards there threw a lot around. Conflict is Roshar. Or, rather, "Man's life on Roshar is conflict," says The Arguments (Way of Kings, Chapter 24). Spren, appearing through… well, the origin of spren is not clear, but possibly Honor and Cultivation wanted them prior to Odium's arrival. Either way, spren began imitating the Heralds' abilities and granting them to humans. The Heralds bound these Surgebinders to them, and perhaps due to the Heralds' connection to the Almighty, Honor Invested his power into these Surgebinders, so if they followed Ideals, they would become ludicrously strong. They became the Knights Radiant. There's another mystery with Roshar; why did Hoid say that its Shards are very strict? Well, in this epic conflict, Honor and Odium were battling with powers that were hard to comprehend for us. But Shards have limitations. Whether there were efficiency restrictions in this battle (Honor would not have wanted to use his power in such a way to be much weaker than Odium), Honor made it so you got two Surges, not all ten, for whatever reason. This is still a bit mysterious to me why this would be, but the strictness of the Shards came from high level restrictions and rules to how this war happened, maybe through the Oathpact. On Nalthis, Endowment Invested people and began Returning. Magic arose naturally (though I'm sure we could debate this a long time). Endowment allowed humans to do with the power what they will, not restricting the power. They could do basically anything with the power, if they knew the right Commands. Is it any surprise that the Scholars discovered essentially how to make a Shardblade (which Nightblood essentially is)? BioChroma is incredibly versatile. On Sel, the current day magics are really different manifestations of the same magic (this was proposed in Kerry's Selish theory, and I am absolutely certain Brandon said that's essentially what's happening, but I can't remember where that confirmation was posted. If someone finds it, I'll update this) It seems entirely rational that prior to Devotion and Dominion's Splintering, there was in fact a single magic system on Sel. Devotion and Dominion worked together, I think. Complementary. But whatever magic looked like on Sel, the Splintering created this unformed mass of power that couldn't be released effectively. The Dor formed. And because the Selish magic wasn't as restrictive, when the Shards were Splintered, The question you might ask is, why would Selish magics break whereas Honor's did not? Two reasons: first, Honor's Splintering power had places and people to Invest in, so his power didn't cause this cataclysmic Dor. Second, Honor was probably much more precise in how people could access his power than Devotion and Dominion. If you agree with how I've sorted magic systems as above, it seems as though Devotion and Dominion took a more hands off approach to how their magic initially was. There's not evidence of grand conflict between the two initially, so that could make sense. When Devotion and Dominion Splintered, that lack of "definition" meant that the method that mortals usually accessed the power also was disrupted, and so you needed a different sort of connection (and Identity) to the power to use magic. Comparing magics and replicating effects Let's talk about Nightblood more. Come on, you know you want to. It seems intuitive that Stormlight and Breath are similar. Both are gaseous metaphors. You Invest the two similarly. However, Breath is of life. It is the Innate Investiture on that world. Stormlight is not the power of life: it is directly the power of chaos, of the storm raging inside you. That is similar across all Radiant orders. This is to say, I'm suggesting that Spiritual power actually sees itself differently, depending on how the Shard's power was distributed (and the Shard itself, surely). Endowment made Breath Innate. Breath was of life. When you have more Breath, your life sense is increased, and at the fifth heightening, you're immune to disease and are freaking immortal. (Makes sense that you could use Breath to influence the mind--it is a Cognitive magic, and it is affecting life, right in line with Breath.) Then there are other abilities granted with that much Spiritual power, too, and other abilities related to tones and color (other Nalthian attributes). It perfects, as Spiritual power does. Stormlight is the power of storms and chaos. It perfects, but does so entirely differently. And actually, Stormlight is probably a much more potent source of energy than Breath. Breath being Innate means it is a weaker investiture than these gigantic storms and the power they radiate. Also, it seems as though Stormlight is more Physical than Breath is. Stormlight Invested things glow; Breath does not. But you can hold a lot more Breath than Stormlight at a time. Breath also requires color to move (an extra physical impetus for that spiritual transfer to a new physical host), whereas Stormlight requires a Spiritual link to Honor to move it in the first place. The idea that Stormlight is more Physical than Breath may explain why Stormlight dissipates while Breath does not. It's more Physical, so that power diffuses into the Physical Realm, while Breath is located more elsewhere. This idea--that these fuels are subtly different in intent--could mean a lot to Vasher and Nightblood. Shardblades are ludicrously destructive, and cause spiritual damage.(cite) Nightblood is, in many ways, a Shardblade. Would not the type of fuel matter for Nightblood? As I said, Breath is the power of life, and that's very different from what Nightblood's intent is. Stormlight though. That seems like the perfect fuel. Chaos. Destruction. So when it comes to some magics, if you want to get the most bang for your buck, you want the right Spiritual fuel for the job. I'm not sure if this makes Nightblood more or less destructive. Maybe he wouldn't be so vicious at consuming Stormlight as he was with Breath because the storms are a better fuel for him. Stormlight might make Vasher quite a bit different. Remember, any Investiture, no matter how small, will change you over time(cite), and Vasher has lived a long time. Make no mistake, Vasher is there because he can live off Stormlight(cite) easier than acquiring a new Breath frequently… but I'm thinking that because he's consuming the power of storms and chaos, he would be quite a bit different. It seems to me that if you wanted the right magic for a given task, you would want to consider the effect you want to have, and pick the Investiture colored by a Shard's intent that would be most in line with what you wanted to accomplish. Then, depending on what Investiture you selected, you'd have to work to shape the power in exactly the form you wanted. Illusion magics are replicated frequently. Yolen has it. Sel has it with AonDor, but that variant is different as there's no Spiritual requirement; it is all Cognitive. It is possible that Yolish magic has a key Spiritual component, if Lightweaving is similar. If Preservation and Ruin actually altered themselves to allow metal to be the key to their power, as I suggest, it makes sense that iron and steel influence metals. That might actually be the hardest basic Allomantic effect to replicate on another world because of those Shards relationship with metal. The other effects of Allomancy could definitely be replicated, especially the mental metals. Conclusion (the tl;dr version) The Realmatic description of magics help define magic systems much more precisely. How much a magic is rooted in each Realm determines a number of effects of a given magic. It can determine how you access it, and what sort of "focus" it requires. Physical magics cost the least to do, Cognitive magics are the most flexible, and Spiritual magics throw the most "power" or Investiture around. I realize this was far too long, but I hope I minimized the amount of crazy in the theory and made it as elegant to describe as possible. The numbers weren't important (since they are just guesses), really, but the moment I realized there were three axes, I had to show an awesome graph. At the very least, I hope I gave you a new way of thinking about cosmere magics, with the Realmatic interactions, Cognitive Intermediaries, and the nuts and bolts of how these Realmatic interactions happen.