Though magic is one river, its waters flow into many channels. From the earliest days, sages and druids, priests and sorcerers sought to name and divide the currents they touched. What seemed at first a chaos of wonders was found, through long study, to fall into patterns — disciplines of power that differed not by accident, but by essence.
These patterns are the Paths of Magic: nine disciplines by which mortals may study and wield the Art. Each Path draws upon the same Weave, yet bends it to a different purpose. None is greater than another, though each bears its own dignity, its own peril, and its own philosophy.
The division of magic into Paths is not mere vanity of scholars. Without such divisions, the student drowns in the immensity of the Art, grasping at fragments with no anchor. The Paths give language, order, and focus. They are not cages, but vessels; not barriers, but bridges.
Yet let none be deceived: the Paths are incomplete. Each is but a shard of a greater whole. To walk only one is to learn deeply but narrowly; to walk many is to glimpse more of the river, though mastery becomes more distant.
Thus the wise say: “He who knows one Path knows a tool. He who knows all knows the world.”
The scholars of Reyumi’s court, working in unity with druids of Ashenmoore, priests of Elyndor, and sages of the Eryndor peaks, discerned that the Weave manifests in nine principal expressions. These are here named and ordered:
Abjuration – the Path of Wards and Denial.
Alchemy – the Path of Matter and Change through Substance.
Conjuration – the Path of Calling and Binding.
Divination – the Path of Sight and Fate.
Enchantment – the Path of Influence and Command of Will.
Evocation – the Path of Force and Elemental Fury.
Illusion – the Path of Veils and Perceptions.
Necromancy – the Path of Life, Death, and Soul.
Transmutation – the Path of Form and Alteration.
Each shall be given its own chapter hereafter, for in each lie mysteries too deep to be spoken lightly.
The Paths do not stand alone. They oppose and complete one another, their strengths answering each other’s weaknesses. The abjurer wards against the evoker; the diviner pierces the illusionist’s veil; the necromancer seeks to bind death, while the transmuter bends life.
To understand magic is to understand not only one Path, but how the nine entwine, as threads in a tapestry. Thus the Celestial Academy teaches not only the mastery of one discipline, but the awareness of all, that a mage may know his allies and guard against his rivals.
Every Path holds peril, for each draws upon planes and principles greater than mortal flesh can safely bear. The evoker risks being consumed by fire; the necromancer risks binding his soul to Draethor; the enchanter risks losing the boundary of his own will.
Thus, the Paths are to be studied not in arrogance, but in reverence. For though they are doors into wonder, they are also thresholds into ruin.
"The Nine Paths are not the Art itself, but windows into its vastness. Each Path is a lens through which the Weave may be studied, each a flame by which the world may be lit — or burned. Let the mage who opens one walk carefully, and let the mage who opens all remember that he gazes upon eternity."
