Do real life traditions have this divide between magic users and priests role playing games have...

DnD clerics are living saints. Their spells are miracles. Scientists/Alchemists don't make miracles, so they are wizards.

Hermeticism was a religious tradition, albeit an esoteric one, the divide isn't so clear-cut in reality.

I think the line is where the locus of control is.
An arcane caster has an internalized locus of control: he is tapping into the universe, but the power comes FROM him. A cleric is just a vessel for their god's power, which they can take away at any time: that's why clerics lose all their powers when they go rogue.

>but the power comes FROM him
This was never the case outside of Eastern Faiths, iin western traditions the power was coming from other entities that you didn't necessarily worship so much as bargained with.

In my games, it's mostly about the intent.

Clerics believe in gods, and their faith shapes reality. Monks and Paladins are similar.
Druids are animistic, and a more primitive version of a Cleric.

"Arcane" magic is like IRL Chaos Magic. They aren't necessarily religious, but they understand that with will and intent, reality can be shaped. So they use rituals and sigils to reinforce their will and made up belief.

We aren't talking about Eastern faith, we're talking about how magic works in fantasy games. In most of them, arcane magic has an internal locus of control in the vast majority of cases, with classes such as warlocks who have external loci presented as exceptions.

>locus of control
I mean, you need to define Locus of Control or me in this context as Arcane Casters in D&D are all dependent on externall factors to preform their magic be it the Weave, the planes, or a patron. Only Psionic organisms had an internal source.

>all alleged magical practices are religious in origin
What examples of that are there, aside from miracles or Zoroastrianism magi?

>Internal locus of control
The caster is the one enacting the effect: when a mage casts Fireball, he uses the Art to shape the energy of the Weave into fire and throws it.
>External locus of control
The power rests entirely outside of the caster: when a cleric casts Smite or a similar effect, they pray to their god, who then grants the prayer, but ultimately it is ANOTHER power, not them, that puts the act into motion.

Ah, I see what you mean now. That makes a bit more sense, thanks.

That's not really how the cleric works though, they receive spells from their god but then cast them in the same way a wizard does. The god isn't actually doing anything when the caster uses "smite", they're only involved during the rest period when you prepare spells. Not to mention divine casters with no deity like druids.

Then the division is purely mechanical and seems arbitrary.

That's because Vancian casting assumes all the prepwork and stuff is done during the preparation phase(i.e studying/praying) instead of the actual casting, this got lost in translation over the years which is how you get abominations like spontaneous Vancian casters that make zero sense.
>Not to mention divine casters with no deity like druids.
This isn't a thing outside of corner case rules that exist more to maintain "balance" by not axing core classes(because divine classes are the only real source of healing/status fixing) regardless of lore. In most settings druids worship nature spirits(which are effectively deities in all but name) or are required to outright worship deities.

no, it's the complete opposite

Chrysopoeia's a hell of an endgame-can't blame Rome for wanting in on the ground floor if one of those lunatics figured it out.

The divine magics involve having the caster entreat a higher power to grant a desired effect. Usually, this is accomplished via incantations/hymns/invocations (verbal component) a ritual dance/procession/motion (somatic component) and is often historically accompanied by a sacrifice of coin/blood/food (material component).

The arcane magics require the caster to provide specific reagents (material components) which are then manipulated in some fashion (somatic components) possibly involving some sort of incantation (verbal component).

At face value, these two processes seem identical. The defining line between the arcane and the divine boils down to two things: permission and understanding.

The divine spells only work at the whims and wills of the higher power appealed to. That is to say, the caster of divine magics requires the permission of their deity in order for any of their magic to work at all. In effect, if I do my rain dance on two different days, I may get a different result on each day since it is up to the deity to decide whether to indulge my request.

By contrast, arcane spells are done with the understanding that following a "recipe" will create consistent, predictable results with each successive use. That is to say, the caster of arcane magic controls the end result of a spell by deciding to either follow the recipe or to diverge from it. In essence, arcane magic is a science of understanding how supernatural forces work.

>Do real life traditions have this divide between magic users and priests role playing games have? Seems to me like all alleged magical practices are religious in origin.

I would argue that we do in fact have this divide in the real world. I would argue that science itself is our world's form of arcane magic. Arthur C. Clarke once said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

>pic not related

I don't know about "all" but it was fairly common. In ancient Egypt, magic was regarded as a gift from the gods and priests were the most respected practitioners of it. Roman divination was usually based on the principle that the gods would hide messages in nature (the flight of birds, the shape of clouds) for humans to decipher. In Polynesia, mana derived from the gods and was cultivated through rituals performed by priests. Esoteric traditions like Hermeticism and Kabbalah were based on their respective religions, and eastern magic is usually rooted in Buddhism, Taoism or some form of shamanism. It's mainly the Abrahamic faiths that tried to establish a clear division between religion and magic, but even then you can find weird traditions in Christianity and Islam that are basically magic.

I think the division in D&D is mostly just an artifact of the fact that magic-users and clerics were the original magic classes and certain mechanical distinctions emerged from that. Those distinctions have mostly disappeared now.

Bards get their magic from performing music, sorcerers are born with it, and warlocks get it from a higher power. None of these are scientific but they're all "arcane". Druids get it direct from nature and paladins are now powered by their own conviction, but they are "divine". Monks and psions have their own kinds of magic. Thing about magic is because it's all made up, it's never easy to fit into neat little boxes.

Why should miracles be put in the same instance as magic spells you can do on command?

But magic isn't real, so how could you use historical examples to justify unsegregated clerics and wizards?

Lots of people in history firmly believed that magic is real, and the records they left behind about their beliefs are fine inspiration for fantasy.

People trying to justify and maintain an arbitrary divide purpetrated by D&D. It's almost as dumb as trying to defend why Warlocks and Clerics and Druids are different when thematiclly they're not.

Christianity. Merlin is a very good example of this. Magic is the Devil's work (as opposed to miracles of God), but Merlin was a good guy (mostly). Christians reconciled these two aspects by making him a cambion, a half-human with a demon parent. This allowed him access to magic, but didn't nail him down to being Always Chaotic Evil™ like demons.

Which is not a trait unique to christianity. Abe no Seimei's mother was believed to be a Fox woman hence why he could do magic.

Then you have people like Circes who is a literal goddess of witches and witchcraft

>all alleged magical practices are religious in origin.
Ninjas. No, seriously, ninjas. They're literally the only group of magicians that historically had flashy effects like throwing fireballs attributed to them.

The issue with a lot of those classes are they're just bastardized versions of classes that were clerics or wizards. Sorcerer as a class concept shouldn't exist, at least from a mechanical standpoint.
>. It's almost as dumb as trying to defend why Warlocks and Clerics and Druids
You could make an argument for Clerics and Druids, but Warlocks and Clerics are different. A Warlock need not like his patron or worship his patron, or really even advance the personal goals of his patron. A cleric does. It's the difference between making a deal with a Columbia drug lord for 5 briefcases full of money and getting a company credit card.

I feel we might be on the same page so I'll say this much. The fact that the Warlock has to entreat with a high power for their magic is no different then a cleric doing that even if the warlock can get away with it somewhat by not placating them (i.e. daily rituals and prayers and all that bullshit).

And just as you said the sorcerer shouldn't exist as a class concept the warlock could literally just be another wizard or simply a way someone became a wizard with the owing a greater power a bill for study being narrative conceit rather than a mechanical one (which it isn't anyways)

Ninja magic was rooted in Taoist/Buddhist practices though.

>The kuji ("nine characters") is a concept originating from Taoism, where it was a string of nine words used in charms and incantations.[100] In China, this tradition mixed with Buddhist beliefs, assigning each of the nine words to a Buddhist deity. The kuji may have arrived in Japan via Buddhism,[101] where it flourished within Shugendō.[102] Here too, each word in the kuji was associated with Buddhist deities, animals from Taoist mythology, and later, Shinto kami.[103] The mudrā, a series of hand symbols representing different Buddhas, was applied to the kuji by Buddhists, possibly through the esoteric Mikkyō teachings.[104] The yamabushi ascetics of Shugendō adopted this practice, using the hand gestures in spiritual, healing, and exorcism rituals.[105] Later, the use of kuji passed onto certain bujutsu (martial arts) and ninjutsu schools, where it was said to have many purposes.[106] The application of kuji to produce a desired effect was called "cutting" (kiri) the kuji. Intended effects range from physical and mental concentration, to more incredible claims about rendering an opponent immobile, or even the casting of magical spells.[107]

>(which it isn't anyways)
This is what annoys me the most about the Warlock class anyway.

Also, I kind of agree with you on that account a lot this shit could be fluff. This is kinda of why I LOVE the idea of Spheres of Power as a magic system for a fantasy system. I know, I know
>Pathfinder
Your class is just a chassis for determining what magic your good at and how good you are at magic in general, the "spells" are mechanical effects, and you take drawbacks and work with your GM to determine how it's contextualized in the world. It's not perfect by a longshot, but you can create pretty much any magical character concept under the sun without a shit ton of re-tooling/radically different classes.

It's how you fill up splat books but taking a nebulous concept and trying to squeeze as much water out of the rock as possible.

The barbarian and ranger are just examples of the fighter. The Paladin (in my opinion) should not be a class in and of itself and every magic user is a wizard but... and nevermind the fact the baseline wizard can learn every spell with no real restriction (or have feats that let them learn outside their own spell list, but why would you do that?) with no drawbacks or any means of keeping you in check

Barbarian should be a race if anything, not a class.

functional loss of translation across editions. od&d through second edition had a cleric spell failure chance which represented the gods not answering the clerics prayers. it is also the reason clerics didn't have a limited spell book/ maximum number of spells known.

That is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

>I'm gonna go to barbarian school and learn how to be uncivilized

That's not how class works, user.

Kind of, there are occult traditions that don't necessarily worship a god but you could still consider them religions

i think you're misremembering. it was only when preparing spells the god might choose not to grant you spells, or to grant you different spells to those you requested. but once requested the spells are yours to cast.

It depends on the culture, but usually the dude that makes crazy shit happen is also qualified to do god talking on the side(or the other way around).

Sometimes shit happened because religion, sometimes from magic but overlap was not uncommon.

In a fair number of religions, gods (Odin is a great example) used magic independent from their divinity.

It's as real as religion

The first thing that comes to mind for me is Lovecraft. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is a good example of this where you have these sorcerers clearly acting like scientist and yet to do their magic they have to invoke the names of such cosmic entities as Yog-Sothoth and what have you because their names are associated with certain concepts and spells and what not.

In Swords & Sorcery literature there are magic users in service to Lords of Law, not just to the Lords of Chaos.
Clerics were introduced for the 'hammer horror vampire hunter' niche, 'servants of higher powers' was already full.

Historically most 'magic' has been intimately tied to religion. The distinction between the two is quiet a modern phenomenon.
Some folk magic is sort of an exception to this, but most RPGs don't model things like charms to improve the health of your cow, so they aren't as relevant.

No.

Seriously: they don't. DND can't into religions, even by chance.

You have some religions that say that you shouldn't rely on any other thing than God (well, basically monotheism) but even then you have a) limited miracles directly from god b) magic (which is bad). Catholic priests didn't have "magic".

>women are religious

no

But at the same time catholicism was balls deep into chemistry.
Hell it may be argued most of the western roman church's beef with alchemy was them already proving alchemists wrong on the use and hazards of certain substances but alchemists still mixing dangerous shit up in venetian city workshops because lolgoldandimmortality!