Can we imagine magic that isn’t all about words?

Magic comes from secret words, usually spoken but sometimes written down. Sometimes you also have to be a special person. That’s how it is in most fiction nowadays. And when I say nowadays, I probably mean at least the last 100 years.

You can see the trope handled well, like in Ursula K. Le Guin’s, A Wizard of Earthsea

“It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”

And you can see it done less well in something like the Harry Potter series, with all the fuss about saying the right word with intention. If you’re online enough, a meme gif of Hermione Granger saying “It’s Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa” has probably sprung into your mind unbidden already.

A combination of words and some innate power in the magician is a literate and individualistic society’s most obvious view of magic. But where else might magical power come from? Well, I made a list of some preliminary ideas and, no joke, if you’re writing some magical fiction, maybe try some of these out. I’d really like to see some new sources of magic in my fictional magic users. I’m not saying go all Brandon Sanderson on it and write a whole roleplaying rulebook about your magical system, but consider, try it on, what would it feel like if in your world magic came from something like this:

• Life force, as in blood sacrifice
• Stored in empowered objects
• Songs
• Gestures and dance
• Sacrifice, as in self-mortification
• Given by a god to a favored follower
• Theurgic practice where the practitioner aligns with the qualities of a god and thus gains some of its powers
• Channeled from a force of nature
• Channeled from another plane
• Done by ancestors with whom the magician has a relationship
• Done by a helpful familiar spirit
• Done by an enslaved demon
• Done by a transactional spirit
• Channeled from a magical place
• Potions
• Innate to earthly magical beings that might help you out
• Focusing mathematical forces, as the rays of the planets in astrology
• Done by gods as an answer to a prayer
• Wordlessly manipulated through connection with emptiness
• Magical symbols which innately have power no matter who uses them
• Secret connections between alike objects—sympathetic magic
• Monsters created by something going wrong with the normal human course of life
• Arising out of the purity and correct life of the magician
• Arising out of the exceptional evil of the magician
• Magical animals
• Special times when magic occurs
• Candles and wax
• The evil eye
• Smells
• Underground places
• Ancient artifacts which can somehow be tapped
• Secret procedures of manufacture or of doing things
• A terrifying deal with a demon
• Drumming
• Transforming into an animal
• Entering into an underground space
• Getting high and going to the underworld
• Being on the brink of death
• Eating a magical plant
• Making very small and precise miniatures of what you want to happen
• Granted temporarily as part of a special role or employment contract
• Tying and untying special knots