As Kaiser said, magic is like science in TES, and to use magic you have to learn the science behind it, such as the concept of fire and lightning. How precisely is lightning created? One of the books I really like, that portray this kind of science behind magic is Mora'at's Theory of Lightning.
Shock, like Flame and Frost, is an expression of magical power that takes the form of a natural force. Everyone has played with this force when one was a ja'khajiit, scuffing one's feet across a rug and then stinging a sibling with a small spark from an extended claw, or rubbing an inflated rat's-bladder against one's fur until the hairs stand up and the bladder "sticks" to one's chest or arm.
So it was apparent to this one, even from an early age, that shock was an inherent property of fibrous matter, a property stimulated by friction into sparks. This also explains lightning, as clouds, which resemble nothing so much as huge Tenmar cotton-balls, generate shock when storms cause friction through colliding masses of buoyant fiber.
So this guy goes on about how lightning or static energy is created by friction of a matter. So what does that mean? Maybe it means you have to figure out how to create fricting between the particles of magicka to create lightning. And you won´t manage to do that the first time, and maybe not even the second time. It times time and practice to figure that stuff out, how to control the flow of magicka, the friction, the end result. So the more you practice the more understanding of the spell you have and your magicka pool slowly increases.
As for Conjuration for example, that is all about mentally circumpenetrating the limen, the fabric between Nirn and Oblivion, and reaching into to it to pull something out. Now, it hasn´t always been as easy as we see it in the game, just waving your hand and it´s all done. The Principles of Conjuration explain it the best:
The notable success I have had in formulating safe and reliable conjuration spells comes from my system of defining such magics as always having two essential and interlocking components: a summoning incantation and a binding rune. It is the latter part, of course, that protects the conjurer from the entity or item summoned by enthralling it to the summoner.
Heretofore conjuration has been quite a dangerous pursuit due to the fact that a conjuring wizard had to cast summoning and binding as two separate spells, and if the binding was miscast or cast too slowly, the conjurer might pay for the error with his life. My innovation has been to interweave the magics of summoning and binding so that they become one spell that manifests both effects simultaneously, thus ensuring that what is summoned is also necessarily bound.
So at first it were two spells. A summoning incantation and then binding rune or sigil, but Corvus Direnni figured it out to make both components part of one spell. And it is through this binding sigil that the summoners control the Daedra, telephatically linking themselves with what they summon.
Now Mysticism, that is a tougher nut to crack. It´s like... okay, try to imagine that there is some kind of stream for every kind of spell. Stream for fire, for weight and such. And Mysticism is where all the streams begin, but it´s not a like but a storm, chaotic and constantly changing. And for Psijics, Mysticism is kind of a belief or faith, pretty much one of the Walking Ways. But Mysticism: The Unfathomable Voyage and Fragment: On Artaeum might give you better idea.
Mysticism is the school of magic least understood by the magical community, most difficult to explain to novices mages. The spells effects commonly ascribed to the School of Mysticism are as wildly disparate as Soul Trap -- the creation of a cell for a victim's spirit after death -- to Silence -- the extinction of sound. But these effects are simply that: effects. The sorcery behind them is veiled in a mystery that may go back to the oldest civilizations of Tamriel, and beyond.
The Psijics of the Order of Artaeum's term for Mysticism is the Old Way. The phrase becomes bogged in a semantic quagmire, because the Old Way also refers to the religion and customs of the Psijics which may, or may not, be part of the magic of Mysticism.
There are few mages who devote their lives to the study of Mysticism. The other schools are far more predictable and fathomable. Mysticism seems to derive its power from its cunundrums and paradoxes; the act of experimentation, no matter how objectively implemented, can influence the magicka by its very existance. Thus, the Mystic mage must regulate himself to finding consistant patterns in an imbroglio of energy. In the time it takes him to find a source with a consistant trigger and result, his peers researching in other schools may have researched and documented dozens of new spells and effects. The Mystic mage is a patient and uncompetitve scholar.
For centuries, mostly during the Second Era, scholarly journals publishes theory after theory about the aspect or aspects of magicka that we call Mysticism. In the tradition of the Mages Guild to find answers to all things, respected researchers suggested the energy source as coming from Aetherius or the Daedra themselves to explain the seemingly random patterns of Mysticism; some ventured to guess that Mysticism comes from unused elements of successfully or unsuccessfully cast spells; discussion with the Order of Artaeum after its reappearance has led some scholars to postulate that Mysticism is more spiritual in nature, either the intellect or emotion of the believer influences the energy pattern and flow.
None of these explanations is truly satisfactory. For the beginning student of Mysticism, it is best to simple learn the patterns distinguished in the maelstrom in the centuries past. The more patterns are found, the clearer the remaining ones become. Until, of course, they change. And then the journey begins anew.
Even then, the Psijics were the counsellors of kings and proponents of the "Elder Way," taught to them by the original race that inhabited Tamriel. The Elder Way is a philosophy of meditation and study said to bind the forces of nature to the individual will. It differs from magicka in origin, but the effects are much the same.
As Kaiser said, magic is like science in TES, and to use magic you have to learn the science behind it, such as the concept of fire and lightning. How precisely is lightning created? One of the books I really like, that portray this kind of science behind magic is Mora'at's Theory of Lightning.
Shock, like Flame and Frost, is an expression of magical power that takes the form of a natural force. Everyone has played with this force when one was a ja'khajiit, scuffing one's feet across a rug and then stinging a sibling with a small spark from an extended claw, or rubbing an inflated rat's-bladder against one's fur until the hairs stand up and the bladder "sticks" to one's chest or arm.
So it was apparent to this one, even from an early age, that shock was an inherent property of fibrous matter, a property stimulated by friction into sparks. This also explains lightning, as clouds, which resemble nothing so much as huge Tenmar cotton-balls, generate shock when storms cause friction through colliding masses of buoyant fiber.
So this guy goes on about how lightning or static energy is created by friction of a matter. So what does that mean? Maybe it means you have to figure out how to create fricting between the particles of magicka to create lightning. And you won´t manage to do that the first time, and maybe not even the second time. It times time and practice to figure that stuff out, how to control the flow of magicka, the friction, the end result. So the more you practice the more understanding of the spell you have and your magicka pool slowly increases.
As for Conjuration for example, that is all about mentally circumpenetrating the limen, the fabric between Nirn and Oblivion, and reaching into to it to pull something out. Now, it hasn´t always been as easy as we see it in the game, just waving your hand and it´s all done. The Principles of Conjuration explain it the best:
The notable success I have had in formulating safe and reliable conjuration spells comes from my system of defining such magics as always having two essential and interlocking components: a summoning incantation and a binding rune. It is the latter part, of course, that protects the conjurer from the entity or item summoned by enthralling it to the summoner.
Heretofore conjuration has been quite a dangerous pursuit due to the fact that a conjuring wizard had to cast summoning and binding as two separate spells, and if the binding was miscast or cast too slowly, the conjurer might pay for the error with his life. My innovation has been to interweave the magics of summoning and binding so that they become one spell that manifests both effects simultaneously, thus ensuring that what is summoned is also necessarily bound.
So at first it were two spells. A summoning incantation and then binding rune or sigil, but Corvus Direnni figured it out to make both components part of one spell. And it is through this binding sigil that the summoners control the Daedra, telephatically linking themselves with what they summon.
Now Mysticism, that is a tougher nut to crack. It´s like... okay, try to imagine that there is some kind of stream for every kind of spell. Stream for fire, for weight and such. And Mysticism is where all the streams begin, but it´s not a like but a storm, chaotic and constantly changing. And for Psijics, Mysticism is kind of a belief or faith, pretty much one of the Walking Ways. But Mysticism: The Unfathomable Voyage and Fragment: On Artaeum might give you better idea.
Mysticism is the school of magic least understood by the magical community, most difficult to explain to novices mages. The spells effects commonly ascribed to the School of Mysticism are as wildly disparate as Soul Trap -- the creation of a cell for a victim's spirit after death -- to Silence -- the extinction of sound. But these effects are simply that: effects. The sorcery behind them is veiled in a mystery that may go back to the oldest civilizations of Tamriel, and beyond.
The Psijics of the Order of Artaeum's term for Mysticism is the Old Way. The phrase becomes bogged in a semantic quagmire, because the Old Way also refers to the religion and customs of the Psijics which may, or may not, be part of the magic of Mysticism.
There are few mages who devote their lives to the study of Mysticism. The other schools are far more predictable and fathomable. Mysticism seems to derive its power from its cunundrums and paradoxes; the act of experimentation, no matter how objectively implemented, can influence the magicka by its very existance. Thus, the Mystic mage must regulate himself to finding consistant patterns in an imbroglio of energy. In the time it takes him to find a source with a consistant trigger and result, his peers researching in other schools may have researched and documented dozens of new spells and effects. The Mystic mage is a patient and uncompetitve scholar.
For centuries, mostly during the Second Era, scholarly journals publishes theory after theory about the aspect or aspects of magicka that we call Mysticism. In the tradition of the Mages Guild to find answers to all things, respected researchers suggested the energy source as coming from Aetherius or the Daedra themselves to explain the seemingly random patterns of Mysticism; some ventured to guess that Mysticism comes from unused elements of successfully or unsuccessfully cast spells; discussion with the Order of Artaeum after its reappearance has led some scholars to postulate that Mysticism is more spiritual in nature, either the intellect or emotion of the believer influences the energy pattern and flow.
None of these explanations is truly satisfactory. For the beginning student of Mysticism, it is best to simple learn the patterns distinguished in the maelstrom in the centuries past. The more patterns are found, the clearer the remaining ones become. Until, of course, they change. And then the journey begins anew.
Even then, the Psijics were the counsellors of kings and proponents of the "Elder Way," taught to them by the original race that inhabited Tamriel. The Elder Way is a philosophy of meditation and study said to bind the forces of nature to the individual will. It differs from magicka in origin, but the effects are much the same.
