A little explanation on Mentalism

Excerpt from "Shadow's Rising, Chapter VII"

(a never-completed novel, and a chapter that does not actually exist)

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Thaliomancy, of course, is the simplest type of magic. It is also the most complex type of magic. These two statements, both true, do not indicate a general state of confusion on the part of the narrator, but rather should give an idea of the difficulty to classify the magic that deals with the human mind.

As explained the Arcanor Ayin Selten of the Sixth: Magic, when referring to its practice by humans, is an almost exclusively mental process. Channelling the energy permeating the astral planes - the Chyaralia - is accomplished through the mind only, especially the Strength of Will, followed by the fine honing of Reason. Thus, all magic that is ever cast by sentient beings is really "magic of the mind", making the term Thaliomancy rather obsolete.

Which also causes the amazingly diverse area of this specific circle: So diverse it is, in fact, that initial attempts to associate it with one of the classical Elements - and place it in one of the seven towers of the academy at Carenath -, were unsuccessful.

"The Wind is Thought", argued the Aeolomancers, and called for it to be placed in the First Tower.

"The Mind is at Rest, it is the foundation of our existence", replied the Geomancers who would rather see it in their own school.

"It is not at Rest! It seeks Rest and cannot find it, like Water, and that is why the Wet element is attributed to Man," the Hydromancers would hotly retort and go on to explain that the magic, closely associated with humans, should - like the Healing circle - be within the Fourth tower.

"You are all out of your minds yourselves! Man ever Strives, he never wants Peace, he ever seeks War, he ever seeks Disorder and upheaval. His greatest inventions come from his curiosity and urge to adventure! The mind is like Fire, never resting, roving ever higher to touch the wisdom of Heaven and at last falling, blown away as ash upon the wind," the Pyromancers would finally yell, to place it in the Third.

The Light and Shadow towers never even thought about making a bid for the circle - to place it in either of their towers would have labelled Man as fundamentally Good or fundamentally Evil, and they were careful to avoid that kind of judgement.

A movement to place it in the highest tower was made (quite apt, since the Seventh was concerned with magic of all the elements, and mind magic certainly contained all of them), but dropped since that would have required any mind mage to graduate in the field of resonance magic (or metamancy), and the latter was not only radically different from the former, but also vastly harder to learn.

So one was again left with the four Lesser Towers that were so hotly contending for influence. And in the end, they decided to place it in the Wind Tower, on little other final deciding basis than that the current Archmagus of the First, Riano Mown, was the only graduated Thaliomancer among the archmagi, and his tower held a slight majority of the courses in the Thaliomancy curriculum. The decision was voted on by the archmagi, the Lesser Towers each voting for themselves, and the vote was swung by the three Greater Towers. The Aelomancers had won - the Wind was indeed Thought.

The decision, already arbitrary, was made all the more laughable by the sad fact that not even a tenth of the mentalists who wandered the land had ever set foot inside Carenath. Thaliomancy, with its broad range of applications, required a radically different syllabus than the great academy offered with its enforced elemental specialization. The college of Duskinholm had been established a little less than a century ago, and was but a blip on the map of magical education, but it had become the center of mentalism within a few years of its founding. It is here we turn our sights next.