What would a magic system based on medieval Christianity be like...

>Implying that Rosicrucians are not lawful good.

I'm not sure if you're being a fedora or actually being helpful and pointing out how magic is viewed from a Christian viewpoint. If the latter, I meant more how to incorporate the idea of miracles, charisms, saintly relics and that sort of thing.
If the latter, then
>M'reddit

*if the former, then reddit.

Stop playing Pathfinder, it's making your brain rot.

>Can't speak for WotC, but when TSR owned D&D the Cleric spell list was half hammer horror films and half sunday bible school.
Yup. Here's a breakdown of the sources for each "spell".
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/11/osr-clerics-and-sunday-school-miracles.html

>What would a magic system based on medieval Christianity be like?
"Medieval Christianity" is a really broad topic. Is there a specific area you'd like to draw on for your magic system?

Ars Magica is great for starters. You could use relics instead. throneofsalt.blogspot.ca/2017/12/clerical-relics.html

Don't listen to him in either case. Much of the Western Systems of Occultism are strongly based in a Christian worldview. Most Westerns mystics were up until relatively recently some breed of non orthodox Christians.

Literally just look up all the miracles/magic spells that happen in the bible.
That or focus on exorcism/forgiving sins (which are like guilt curses that eventually produce inner-demons).

I don't think there'd be "magic" at all. Remember that in Charlemagne's realm accusing(!) someone of witchcraft got you burned at the stake (not being accused of witchcraft itself mind you). I think the idea was that magic was associated with the satanic, and acknowledging magic meant acknowledging Satan as having equal influence in the world as God or something, which was heretical as fuck. Medieval "magic" would mostly be miracles. Their source would be God, as it would be deemed the only source of supernatural shit, and a lot of it would be based on how V I R T U O U S you were. I imagine this would change a lot of how society works, as how strong your miracles are would be a very objective measure of how virtuous you are as a person, and if you felt your miracles wane in power you'd know that you were being corrupted (and so would everyone around you). Actual 'magic' would more likely be associated with pagan tribes who may or may not be devil worshipers (or with Islam, if you want to have fun with controversial topics). Maybe in those instances more mastery of magic means more corruption? Now that I think about it, it would be a lot like the Light and Dark sides of the Force in Star Wars. The Light is stronger, but it's more arduous and grueling road that requires a lot of hard work, contemplation and inner peace. Vows of celibacy and other forms of self-deprivation/distancing of desire can even be used as a more sensible equivalent to the prequels' "You're not allowed to feel emotions. At all. Ever" schtick. The Dark Side/devil worship is all about getting results fast, giving in to your inner urges and just fucking shit up for your own game.

Yeah... basically medieval Star Wars now that I think about it. Holy Wars?

>fascists
I don't think it means what you think it means.

Go play Darklands.

Magic in Darklands is tied to saints. There is a list of hundreds of saints to choose from, each one of them giving a certain number of miracles. You pray to saints to ask for a miracle, but you don't choose what you get, only that it will be useful to your situation - or not at all, if you pray to the patron Saint of dance in a jousting contest.

It works surprisingly well.

>if you pray to the patron Saint of dance in a jousting contest
Confucius says: "Never give a sword to a man who can't dance"

Don’t get too autistic about it

Medieval ideas of magic were very fanciful and fae

It was only starting at the Renaissance that people took it seriously

Medieval Christianity was extremely hostile to any practice of magic and Catholicism still is, all magic is considered to come from demons.
youtube.com/watch?v=uzIDI34dI-o&t=4242s
This is a good video showing how Catholics look at it. It was only in the 15th century that magic became a thing exactly because the Church was losing influence. Witchcraft and witches were considered to be fictional for most clergy as shown in the legislature of st. Stephen, the Hungarian king where he explicity banned punnishing for it and the witch burnings were happening in the countries where the Church had little or no influence (mostly protestant ones) as the rise of esotericism came with the recovery of the stranger platonic texts.
Anyway I am a Catholic with extensive knowledge of theology, could answer some questions if you are interested.

Miracles and miracle makers/saints

Beings infused with magic=Paladins/Clerics

unsanctioned magic users are of course witches and heretics while those who draw upon unsanctioned faith for powers are heathens and or heretics

Adding to this I could imagine wha is considered good to be more of a Order vs chaos thing rather than a particular faith being good or evil

People who are interested in reading about Charlemagne are not deus vult memers. Those are the people who unironically want a global holy war and to genocide muslims IRL. It's the millennial version of "we oughtta turn tha whole dang middle east into glass!"

That's a Celtic proverb. Don't go misattributing quotes.

>and to genocide muslims IRL
>"we oughtta turn tha whole dang middle east into glass!"
>implying these are bad ideas

You do know that Christian traditions of exorcisms and miracles are in fact using magic, right? That magic is just manipulating supernatural forces for a real world effect?

>miracles and psalms
>magic
Heresy, REEEEEE

>It doesn't matter what words mean, the priest told me so!

While Islam accepts the existence of magic as fact, it's strictly forbidden to use it.

Maybe do a dark souls and magic is holy text in an angelic language. More like a chant or prayer than a weaving of spells.

...

If you consider miracles to be the same as magic, you may as well go back to play D&D or Pathfider. Merging all kinds of supernatural powers into "magic" is only in a extremely rules light system.

See, there's one right now.

Akelarre has been translated I think.
>kickstarter.com/projects/1861515217/aquelarre-the-dark-and-mature-medieval-rpg-now-in

I also think you should focus on the more grounded aspects as well. Non-magic casters I should say. Not to George R.R Martin monkey-wrench you but do non-magic casters get to be kings, imams, inquisitors etc? Is there "magicism"? etc. Believe it or not, focusing on these specific things as well as magic can help you develop a well-done, fleshed out story. To answer your question though: be regional about it. Those in the Levant, Middle East and Holy land area should have a propensity towards fire magic as well as illusion magic. Those in the more European settings like France, England, Germany (just naming countries, I know Germany didn't exist) should have a more clerical base to them. Whereas if you go further north and east to the more "corrupted Christian" lands of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe should have a more druidic approach.

Honestly yes kill all those barbaric inbreed savages.

Makes sense, didnt medieval islam also mention stuff like djins and such that could give magic powers?

Great game, although it goes a little to far with "realism".

Djinns are also explicitly stated to exist in islamic tradition. Even in the fucking quran iirc, which technically (not in practice) would mean that all modern muslims must believe in djinns.

Also I don't know if asking djinns to do magic for you counts as forbidden sorcery, since djinns aren't explicitly evil. I know Salomon had djinn servants, but he enthralled them with a magic item which most certainly is evil sorcery.

All kinds of supernatural powers are magic, even if they have different flavors and mechanics. That's literally what magic is.

Magic in the middle ages was split into two "schools:" white and black. White magic was given through God, typically in the form of blessings and miracles. Black magic (where we get the phrase from) was from any other source, normally attributed to the devil.

If you could prove you were using white magic, inquisitors wouldn't touch you. On the subject of inquisitors: "The overwhelming majority of sentences seem to have consisted of penances like wearing a cross sewn on one's clothes, going on pilgrimage, etc." and "When a suspect was convicted of unrepentant heresy, the inquisitorial tribunal was required by law to hand the person over to the secular authorities for final sentencing, at which point a magistrate would determine the penalty, which was usually burning at the stake although the penalty varied based on local law."

Only if you use a very loose and modern definition of magic, and at this point you may just as well drop it since it's useless and devoid of real meaning.

What inquisitors and where? Because inquisitors normally had better things to do than persecuting old hags.

In the 12th century, it would have been the push against Catharism.
In the 13th, they would have been looking more inward towards bishops and other church officials.
The end of the 14th was a heavy push against Judaism NOBODY EXPECTS THE...

"Old hags" were convicted through the Inquisitorial System, which did NOT actually require an inquisitor to be present. The inquisitorial system is a legal system where the court actively investigates the facts of the case. This is different from the earlier used adversarial system, in part that it didn't require a wronged party to make an accusation, or a large number of people pointing the finger at one person.

Exorcisms are not manipulating the supernatural, it's mostly just prayer and I'm not sure you could classifly prayer as magic. Manipulation would also assume you have the power to do it, which doesn't exist.

Suleiman ibn Daud would also be a chosen of Allah, so different rules apply to him

There's no difference between natural and supernatural for a pre-renaissance (well, not quite that period, but it's a complicated topic) person

I would say that you are wrong, in fact Aquinas has a rather heavy split between the two. The separation is necessary to fight the impulse for pantheism found in many authors such as Eriugena and in anticipation of Spinoza from the presocratic monism. The Orthodox theologians would for this reason and others accuse Catholicism of rationalism and still do.
What would be correct to say is that the medieval intellectual at least often saw nature as completely separated from God, but upheld by and lead by Providence.
Have you by any chance read Letters on the Spanish Inquisiton by Joseph de Maistre? It's a pretty cool work.

>And this is why it's okay to shoot up abortion clinics

>but he enthralled them with a magic item which most certainly is evil sorcery.
Last I checked, the ones didn't follow him willingly were all non-believers.

This.

Look specifically for Realms of Power: The Divine (and Realms of Power: The Infernal for the Satanic side of things). It's a magical representation of real world Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

>Manipulation would also assume you have the power to do it, which doesn't exist.
>implying the servants of the pharaoh didn't have the power to turn sticks into snakes
>implying the moral of the story when Moses turned his stick into a snake and it killed the magician's snake sticks wasn't that God is the superior power.

Rather Inquisitorial.

Magic is the work of the devil.
You can only use magic if you sell your soul

>implying the servants of the pharaoh didn't have the power to turn sticks into snakes
They were the servants demons who are actually in control and the power was only made to seem as if it was actually theirs. This is how Catholics see this and I think this is relevant for the discussion of medieval Christianity.
>implying the moral of the story when Moses turned his stick into a snake and it killed the magician's snake sticks wasn't that God is the superior power.
God is the superior power, but neither Moses nor the servants had the power in themselves, the powers always came from another source which does what it does through the "medium"
Correct, the video I linked earlier is interesting for at least seeing how this is seen from the inside of the Church.

>This is how western heretics see this
Fixed that for you.

Yep, Ars Magicka is basically THE system for medieval magical roleplaying or any time you want something to simulate being a scholarly wizard.

Exorcisms are using prayer, magic blessed water, magic blessed holy instruments, and commands with holy authority to cause a demon to retreat to the hell from whence it came without sacrificing the innocent it possessed in a moment of weakness. Alternatively, using the same magic relics to drive evil spirits from a location and sanctify it.

The basis of exorcisms is that there is 1) a supernatural force and 2) that there are humans who can channel a form of supernatural power to evict them. That's what exorcism is, using Christian magic to defeat demons and prevent them from using their magic to hurt people.

Christian mysticism is still using magic, triply so in terms of a game system.

That absolutely doesn't matter for the purpose of saying if something was magic or not. Christians in the 8th century would be virtually identical to other "magic" using religions at the time because the catholic church wasn't organized and embedded into the government.

It was the local government that banned "magic," because it was a threat to their seat of power. The church abandoned any sort of "magic" and aligned themselves with the political power. By the 12th century, the invention of the witch and warlock were set into the Christian mythology.

>Akelarre
Sounds interesting. Anyone have a pdf?

Well that is just fascinating. Thanks.