#cabalines

[aigisthosia]

“The Virtu of the Mirador was created by the Cabal back in 16.5.1. It was a big blue globe, as tall as a man. They kept it in the Hall of the Chimeras, smack in the middle of the Mirador, and what it was supposed to do depended on who you asked. The Mirador talked a lot of mystic bullshit about purity and strength—the name “Virtu” was some kind of cleverdick Marathine-Midlander pun. The hocuses in the Lower City talked about focusing and matrices, and made even less sense than the official line. All I knew for sure was that all the hocuses in the Mirador swore oaths on the Virtu every single day, and that was what kept the Mirador from tearing itself apart. No matter how you felt about the hocuses sitting on top of the city like a pack of vultures, you didn’t want the Virtu broken.”

— Mildmay Foxe, Melusine (by Sarah Monette)

[aigisthosia]

“[The Cabal] created spells that hold the wizards of the Mirador — the magic of the Mirador — together without any conscious effort on any one wizard’s part. Those spells make the Mirador formidable, make it more than just a collection of squabbling academics and self-dazzled show-offs. With those spells, we are the Mirador; without them, we are a group of individuals of varying levels of ability and training, and we become, as the old saying has it, only as strong as our weakest link.”

— Felix Harrowgate, Melusine (by Sarah Monette)

[aigisthosia]

Magic As Metaphors:

In this world magic is manipulated via metaphor, and most wizards have their own preferred ones. Theda tends to default to textile metaphors; for her, magic is thread, and it can be spun, woven, sewn, etc. While Cabalines believe magic can only be worked by channeling it through physical objects, Eusebians learn both that method and a method of casting spells by manipulating raw magic. Particularly skilled Eusebian wizards, a category that includes Theda, can also use this technique to create spells on the fly if they must, though these spells are often rather sloppy.

It's possible to use undirected magic -- say you're attacked without warning, so you instinctively lash out with your magic to defend yourself -- but doing so is just as dangerous to you as it is to the attacker and any bystanders, and you may not survive.

[aigisthosia]

“They’re Cabaline,” he said and laughed, although not like there was anything funny. “They don’t believe in ghosts.”

— Melusine (by Sarah Monette)

[aigisthosia]

“I’m outnumbered, to put it bluntly, and that can be bad news with Cabalines. They tend to think in packs.”

— Mavortian von Heber, Melusine (by Sarah Monette)

[aigisthosia]

“Magic exists in two worlds. It is a force of the spirit, which wizards are able to use upon the material world. Cabaline wizards have historically denied that magic is anything except a force of the spirit, and that is where their teaching goes grievously astray... What Cabaline doctrine fails to acknowledge is the manar, the world of the spirit. The world of dreams, of ghosts. The world that diviners, sibyls, and oracles walk into when they go looking for the future. The world you were born with one foot in, as all wizards are. The world that rests upon the material world like the iridescent sheen upon a soap bubble.”

— Gideon Thraxios, The Virtu (by Sarah Monette)

[aigisthosia]

“To be a wizard of the Mirador implied a certain understanding of how magic worked and how it was to be used, different from the understandings of the Eusebians in the Bastion or the other schools of magic that flourished in Norvena Magna and Ervenzia and faraway Corambis. Cabaline magic worked with the material world, channeling power through material objects, such as the rings that every Cabaline wizard wore, or the Virtu itself. And, of course, Cabaline dogma said that the worst possible thing a wizard could do was to touch a person with their magic in any way. Even benevolent magics such as healing were anathema to the Mirador.”

— Felix Harrowgate, Melusine (by Sarah Monette)