Analyzing Magic

[Brickwall]

A thesis on magic, by Brickwall.

(It should be noted that I have no authority on the subject. This is all guesswork.)

Any being has no trouble understanding the three basic building blocks of the universe that make the major classes distinct: Life, Motion, and Matter. If you do not know what those are, please check up your dictionary, it is sufficient for this.

Any combination of these fundamental principles infused with the will of a magic-using unit will create a spell in one of the known classes of magic (see below). Note that having none of these principles still leaves pure will, which has its own class of magic.

The alignments of magic are a bit less simple than the principles that classify magic. They are Erf, Fate, and Numbers.
Erf is a fairly complicated subject among philosophers, but as far as magic goes, it should simply be regarded as the fundamental energy which pervades the universe. Practitioners of any magic found in the Erf alignment can often be found claiming that such magic is more pure magic, more true to the ideals of a sorcerer. Even with the neutral standpoint I have, I personally consider that to be bloop, but there is the truth behind it that this alignment can be looked to most reliably to see the philosophy behind any class of magic.
Fate is not quite so philosophically debated as Erf. It is not terribly simple, but more so than the nature of the universe itself. At the very least, it's in more dictionaries. Simply, Fate magic looks into and/or changes the fate along its fundamental principles. Again, alignment can only dictate so much, but this clarification is nevessary for some specialties of magic that are harder to determine the use of by looking at their name.
Number-aligned magic is the easiest concept to understand. It fiddles directly with numbers, whatever numbers they may be. It needn't be looked into much, and only very bored philosophers really spend time thinking about it. I can admit to spending long nights on it, unfortunately.

In the next part I will cover the classes of magic, and possibly the specialties, depending on how much time I have to sit down and write it.