View source for A Brief Overview of the Spheres and Their Properties

;[[Spheres]]
= A Brief Overview of the Spheres and Their Properties =
So what ''are'' these Spheres, and what can they do? That’s another one those things that mages can wax poetic about for months on end. The basic principles involved, however, can be summed up more or less like this:

== [[File:SphereCorrespondence.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Correspondence: The Principle of Connection''' [[File:SphereCorrespondence.png|100px]] ==
Everything’s connected in some way. Despite centuries of
what’s been called ''discrete phenomenon perception'' – that is, the
idea that we’re all separate objects and entities that occasionally
cross paths – both physics and metaphysics remind us that all
things are intrinsically interconnected. Your actions affect me,
my actions affect the dog next door, a butterfly flaps his wings
and stirs up the proverbial hurricane... that basic idea. Those
connections aren’t immediately apparent, of course. If we saw
all of the connections between us, we’d probably go insane.
It’s no wonder, then, that masters of Correspondence – the
Sphere originally called ''Connection'' – often seem pretty weird.
They perceive unity where the rest of us see division.

Correspondence is the anti-Ayn Rand principle. When you
understand this Sphere, you start to recognize connections between
places, people, and things, ultimately realizing that the idea of
“places, people, and things” is all an illusion anyway. A Master of
this Sphere can step across distances, reach into one place and
take something into another, and see into areas that appear to
be far away unless you understand that ''all'' places are actually ''one single'' place. Like Papa Legba or the trickster god Hermes, a mage
who deeply understands Correspondence transcends the idea of
separation. He sees doorways where no one else notices them,
learns to open them, and eventually ''becomes'' them.

== [[File:SphereEntropy.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Entropy: Fate, Fortune, and Decay''' [[File:SphereEntropy.png|100px]] ==
Change is an innate law of the universe. If things stopped
changing, everything would freeze into eternal stasis. Even then,
though, such stasis is an illusion; sooner or later, that frozen state
begins to decay. The Entropy Sphere, then, works with the forces
of change and decay, speeding or slowing the effects of mortality.

Entropy throws open the box that holds Schrödinger’s
cat. Its principles guide probability, inevitability, and the
results of both. Masters of Entropy – who often seem morbid,
fatalistic, or terribly cheerful – can force the hand of Chance,
boost or destroy someone’s luck, degrade substances, and even
destroy thoughts. Entropic mages tend to follow either order
or chaos; devotees of order examine patterns and look for ways
to reinforce them, whereas students of chaos look for ways to
break down those same patterns and guide their energies toward
a new beginning. Like the Fates who are often associated with
this Sphere, mages pursuing Entropy pick up the threads of
Creation, work with them, and eventually cut them off.

== [[File:SphereForces.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Forces: The Principles of Elemental Might''' [[File:SphereForces.png|100px]] ==
Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Long before the Periodic Table of
elements existed, mages realized that the natural elements held
power of their own. How could they ''not?'' Even now, when we
live in houses more stable and climate-controlled than anything
else in history (and for that, incidentally, you can thank the
Technocracy), the power of a hurricane or firestorm can turn
security to ruins. And so, of course, when our forebears turned
their minds and powers toward control, the first place they
looked for inspiration was probably the elements.

Forces is the Sphere of elemental energies. Although Matter
deals primarily in the products of Earth and Water, and Spirit
and Prime deal with the Fifth Essence (which is either Spirit or
Quintessence, depending on who you ask), the Forces Sphere
allows a mage to understand, influence, and eventually command
the powers of Air and Fire. Beyond that, this Sphere also grants
power over the invisible Forces that drive all earthly elements:
gravity, momentum, light, darkness, and even – at its highest levels
– the titanic power of the atom. And because of all that, masters
of this Sphere command the most devastating energies on Earth.

“Forces” is an appropriate name for this Sphere. Its
masters and manifestations are pretty damned forceful. Given
the immense powers within their reach, it’s no wonder that
Hermetic wizards, Taftáni weavers, and Technocratic troopers
seem both arrogant and confident. In the realm of Zeus, you
live and die by lightning’s hand. To wield this Sphere, you’ve
got to be proud enough to throw your weight around, yet
disciplined enough to know where – and where not – to hurl it.

== [[File:SphereLife.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Life: Understanding the Living Form''' [[File:SphereLife.png|100px]] ==
The frighteningly intimate Sphere of Life is not an Art for
weak stomachs or squeamish minds. This visceral discipline
celebrates the messy splendors of organic life. Beneath our skins
and furs and scales, we’re all pulp and bones and vile fluids. The
mage who understands Life accepts our frailties and learns how to
heal them, exploit them, and twist them into interesting shapes.
And to do that, you’ve got to get your hands very, ''very'' dirty.

The rawest and most carnal Art, Life requires both passion
and ''compassion''. Its masters are simultaneously the most loving
and the most ruthless mages you’re ever likely to meet. These
folks can change shapes, heal wounds, cure sickness, rend
limbs, turn people into toads, grow trees with a glance, and turn
enemies into writhing protoplasm. This is the Sphere of Kali,
the Dark Mother who celebrates sex and carnage in her dance,
or Aphrodite, whose favors hold the cruel beauty of Life itself.

== [[File:SphereMatter.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Matter: Mastery of Inert Substances''' [[File:SphereMatter.png|100px]] ==
Whereas Forces deals with ephemeral elements, Matter
deals with things you can hold in your hands. The elemental
principles of Earth, Water, and – in the Asian sense – Metal
are the dominion of this Sphere and its adepts. Things that
bend, break, hold firm, or give way retain solid Patterns... or
maintain at least an ''illusion'' of solidity... in the Earthly realm,
so this Art depends upon taking them apart, strengthening
them, or transmuting them into something else.

<span style="color:#800000;">(An important note: certain substances, like wood or
cotton, are governed by the Life Sphere while they’re alive
and governed by the Matter Sphere when life has fled. Bones,
flesh, fur, and so on pass from Life into Matter when their
animating energies are gone. As a result, certain substances
that are both alive ''and'' dead – most notably, the uncanny forms
of vampires – are governed by ''both'' Spheres together. Neither
Life nor Matter can affect them alone, because they belong to
the realms of both at once.)

Matter is, in many respects, an associative Art. Mages
often combine it with other Spheres to create greater effects.
Prime combined with Matter weaves objects out of apparent
nothingness; Time combined with Matter takes objects out of
the normal time stream; Entropy combined with Matter causes
things to erode; Spirit and Matter shift those things to spiritual
ephemera. Although it’s a potent Sphere in its own right, Matter
works best when its properties blend with those of other Spheres.

Matter specialists tend to be what you might call crafty,
working with their hands, often gauging, tinkering, or
deconstructing objects for the sake of further knowledge.
Most, if not all, of these mages master arts like carpentry and
stonework, and each one of them can hold forth for hours about
metallic properties or different grains of wood. Like Daedalus,
the godlike inventor from whom early Technocrats took their
name, Matter is ingenious yet dependable. Behind apparent
inflexibility, they’ll often surprise you, because experts in this
field understand how mutable so-called solid materials can be.

== [[File:SphereMind.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Mind: Exploration of Consciousness''' [[File:SphereMind.png|100px]] ==
“It’s all in your head.” How often have you heard that
particular dismissal? And yet, as Mind adepts will tell you,
''everything in existence'' is “all in our heads.” Each thought, each
sensation, every emotional realization or abstract perception
manifests through electrical impulses in the brain that
get processed by consciousness. That consciousness is the
playground of the Mind Sphere, and its experts can turn
everything you thought you knew about reality inside out.

Certain Mind-mages see consciousness as an untouchable
abstraction; others view the brain as a complex computer, to be
programmed and downloaded at will. Both schools of thought
appear to hold some vision of the truth. Consciousness clearly
reaches beyond mere physicality, and yet it’s chained – at least
for most folks – to our physical forms. In time, a Mind master
learns how to uncouple his mental process from his physical
state and then project his mind off on astral journeys. Even
then, however, a hard blow to the head can scramble his brain
and throw his mental mastery out the nearest window.

Mind is one of the fuzzier Spheres – more of an art than a
science. Where Matter, Life, and Forces deal with things you can
touch and measure, Mind reaches into abstract fields. Thoughts,
feelings, impressions, identity – these are the tools and toys
of mental magicks. And so, if Mind adepts seem somewhat...
heady at times, there are good reasons for their “thought-full”
state. Like Odin One-Eye, the trickster seer, such mages scan
the horizon, sending out Thought and Memory as their guides.

== [[File:SpherePrime.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Prime: Exploration of Quintessential Energies''' [[File:SpherePrime.png|100px]] ==
As I mentioned earlier, there’s a Primal Essence that
pulses within all things. Whether it’s bound up into Patterns
or flowing through concepts and potential, this Quintessence
forms the basis for our world. Mages who explore the mysteries
of Prime understand the ebbs and flows of this sublime
essence – the “Blood of the Dragon” and the seminal fluid
of the gods.

Prime Arts study energies and forms, spotting traces of
Quintessence in or between each Pattern and then channeling
them to suit the purpose of a mage. Masters of this Sphere can
follow Quintessential flows, taste the Resonance of certain
energies, shift those energies in or out of Patterns, and thus
bring things into being or drain them of the power to be real.
Most willworkers know the basics of this Sphere, but very few
manage to master it. Prime’s a slippery Art, easily obscured
by esoterica.

As students of the Primal Utility Theory can tell you,
Prime energies tend to ebb and flow around living things...
most especially around people. When human beings invest
themselves, emotionally and intellectually, in something, that
something tends to gather Prime energies. Your favorite shirt
has more Prime energy than one just purchased off the rack
at a store because you have put more of yourself into that
Pattern and its energies. Thus, certain students of the Prime
principles view their magick in terms of strange math and
hypereconomics, calculating the sublime energies involved in
transactions between living and unliving things. By tracing
those connections, they believe, you can manipulate those
energies as well.

Like the energy for which it’s named, the Prime Sphere
is sublime, transcending firm analysis or concrete definitions.
Its adepts speak in riddles and metaphors, often blazing with
charisma and robust health. Yet despite their bright personas,
they have quicksilver personalities. Prime is the milk of Kuan
Yin, the spit of Jesus, the blood of Tiamat – an essence both
rarified and vulgar, whose properties energize all things.

== [[File:SphereSpirit.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Spirit: Accord with Spiritual Essence and Emanations''' [[File:SphereSpirit.png|100px]] ==
Despite materialistic preconceptions, any mage – even
a Technocratic one – understands that matter is just part
of Creation’s Tapestry. Beyond the physical mass of Matter,
the consciousness of Mind, and the energies of Forces and
Prime, there’s the ephemeral quality of Spirit: an element
distilled from – or perhaps the originating source of – those
other components. In some schools of occult thought, Spirit
is the fifth element, the rarified soul-stuff of the Universe
at large. To other outlooks, Spirit is the core of every living
thing, the Resonance of life, or the alternate dimensions to
the Earthly plane. All perspectives agree on this much: Spirit
transcends the physical elements, yet it has a consciousness
all its own.

One of the earliest magickal pursuits, the Spirit Sphere
encompasses the Otherworlds, Umbral entities, and the principles
of the human soul. Like Mind, it’s impossible to quantify with
precise measurements. The word spirit comes from the Latin term for
breathing, so certain mages call this Art “the Breath of the World.”
This is the primal Art of the shaman and the priest, the bridge
between what we feel with our hands and what we feel with our souls.

(Dimensional Science specialists have a somewhat more
scientific approach to this weird Sphere. Even then, though,
they often admit that many things remain beyond the reach
of science... for the moment, anyway.)

Spiritual mages have an otherworldly air about them –
sometimes spacey, often serene, frequently capricious, and
occasionally cruel. They tend to get impatient with the importance
that folks place upon material things. Spirit magicks echo with
the cackle of Coyote and the throaty laugh of Baron Samedi – a
mockery of the so-called real world and its denial of infinity.

== [[File:SphereTime.png|100px]] <span style="color:#4B0082;">'''Time: The Perception of Chronological Flow''' [[File:SphereTime.png|100px]] ==
The most confounding Art of all, Time skirts the strange domain
of Chronos, titan of eternity. The Ecstatic Tradition once named
itself after that legendary titan, and few other mages understand
Time’s principles as well as the Ecstatics do. More abstract than
Mind, more ephemeral than Spirit, this Art dizzies anyone who tries
to understand it. Mages who manage to unravel Time’s mysteries
can look forward or backward, slow or speed time’s momentum, or
even step outside the passing minutes, hours, and years of our lives.

Like Correspondence, the Time Sphere confounds rational
analysis. Its principles go against everything you’ve been taught
to believe. Perhaps the human mind needs drugs in order to
accommodate such levels of temporal dislocation. We all get those
feelings that “this has happened before” or “this seems to take
''foreverrrr''...” Only a Time mage, though, can truly comprehend
the fluid nature of time and turn it to her advantage.

Like running water, time has currents, tides, and undertows.
Going ''with'' its flow is far easier than going ''against'' it. Mages
who work with time understand that turning back the clock
is incredibly difficult, even for masters of this Sphere. If you
think of time like a strong tide – pushing against you with
unfathomable force, splashing you when you struggle to push
back – then you’ll understand why certain feats, like time-travel,
are vulgar as far as the Consensus is concerned.

Time masters tend to be either dreamily distracted or
fanatically precise. They can be punctual within a split second,
answer questions you haven’t asked yet, and speak in an eternal
present tense. There’s no past, present, or future to the masters
of Time. In the words of Janis Joplin, “It’s all the same fucking
''day'', man”... a day they can stretch or compress at will.

== <span style="color:#4B0082;"> '''Final Thoughts''' == 
Whether you view the Spheres with a Tradition’s respect, a
Technocratic analysis, or some other cultural outlook, these nine
principles give you a metaphysical toolkit. Combined with Awakened
awareness, focused belief, and dedicated willpower, the Spheres turn
the keys in Reality’s doorway and invite you in to have a look around.
For those of us who understand their ways, there is no truer form
of magick. Lesser sorcerers and Night-Folk have their own powers,
true enough. None of them, though, can do the things we do.
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