In the Wishverse, the Wishborn setting, wizard magic is categorized by function. There are eight major magical taxa represented by eight major Guilds:
Elementalism: the art of controlling nature itself - air, fire, water, wood, earth, and metal. The Association of Elementalists is really a dozen smaller Guilds in a united front.
Summoning: the art of beckoning spirits to your aid. The Coalition for the Summoning of Otherworldly Entities is similar several schools of magic working together.
Bardic casting: Expressive folk magic unified under the umbrella of Bardic working. The Society for Creative Spellcasting and Magical Self-Expression welcomes anyone whose magical expression is through a creative art.
Artificing: the art of physical spellcraft. The Guild of Artificers and Mystic Weavers makes magical items or embeds magic in physical things.
Necromancy: the art of speaking with the dead and mastery over memory. The Somber Order of Speakers with the Dead are all priests of Finality, the God of Death, and serve them personally.
Illusionism: crafters of beguilement and other spells that baffle the senses. One of the youngest major taxa, has a sudden swell of membership in The Sworn Kinship of the Beguiling Arts when there was a boom of children with an illusory affinity fifty years ago.
Potioning: the smallest of the major Guilds, but a major Guild no less. Potioning is a complex and difficult art, mastered only by the dedicated - but there are quite a few dedicated, as the membership of the Union of Arcane Chemists and Apothecaries attests.
Foresight: Future sight, clairvoyancy, prophesy and other oracular powers , the Seers membership only outranks the Potioners by the slimmest of margins. The Oracular Union of Foreseers and Clairvoyants supports anyone whose vision looks forward in time as well as ahead.
There are forty-eight recognized minor taxa, and countless others unrecognized by the Taxonomic Order. Wizards with uncategorized magic join the Freelancers Guild, if Guild life is for them, or must demonstrate a skill in one of the other taxa, so the wizard may serve them instead.
The Freelancers Guild has the membership to be counted as a major Guild, but has been barred from official entry on account of a philosophical disagreement among the highest wizard council: If the Taxonomic Order permits uncategorized magic, it would then no longer be taxonomic. But, is not the act of categorizing the uncategorized in and of itself taxonomic?
The subject is reopened for debate on the New Year and has since become a part of the festivities for the last fifteen years.
