Sphere's & Path's
Sphere's
All magic begins and ends with the nine Spheres; each represents some fundamental force that mages can influence. Spheres can be combined in order to produce novel effects that exist outside of one single Sphere's influence. Besides the nine Spheres, there is also an undiscovered tenth Sphere, believed to be the key to Ascension itself.
Click on the sphere type to be taken to White Wolf's site and read more about the sphere.
- Correspondence: Deals with spatial relations, giving the Mage power over space and distances. Correspondence magic allows powers such as teleportation, seeing into distant areas, and at higher levels the Mage may also co-locate herself or even stack different spaces within each other. Correspondence can be combined with almost any other sphere to create effects that span distances.
- Entropy: This sphere gives the Mage power over order, chaos, fate and fortune. A mage can sense where elements of chance influence the world and manipulate them to some degree. At simple levels machines can be made to fail, plans to go off without a hitch, and games of chance heavily influenced. Advanced mages can craft self-propagating memes or curse entire family lines with blights
- Forces: Forces concerns energies and natural forces and their negative opposites (i.e. light and shadow can both be manipulated independently with this Sphere). Anything in the material world that can be seen or felt but is not material can be controlled: electricity, gravity, magnetism, friction, heat, motion, fire, etc. At low levels the mage can control forces on a small scale, changing their direction, converting one energy into another. At high levels, storms and explosions can be conjured
- Life: Life deals with understanding and influencing biological systems. Generally speaking, any material object with mostly living cells falls under the influence of this sphere. Thus, being alive protects a thing from direct manipulation by the Matter sphere and vice versa. Simply, this allows the mage to heal herself or transform simple life-forms at lower levels, working up to healing others and controlling more complex life at higher levels.
- Mind: Dealing with control over one's own mind, the reading and influencing of other minds, and a variety of subtler applications such as Astral Projection and psychometry. At high levels, Mages can create new complete minds or completely rework existing ones.
- Matter: Matter deals with all inanimate material. Stone, dead wood, water, gold, and the corpses of once living things are only the beginning. With this Sphere, matter can be reshaped mentally, transmuted into another substance, or given altered properties.
- Prime: This sphere deals directly with Quintessence, the raw material of the tapestry, which is the metaphysical structure of reality. This sphere allows Quintessence to be channeled and/or funneled in any way at higher levels, and it is necessary if the mage ever wants to conjure something out of thin air (as opposed to transforming one pattern into another). Uses of Prime include general magic senses, counter-magic, and making magical effects permanent.
- Spirit: This sphere is an eclectic mixture of abilities relating to dealings with the spirit world or Umbra. It includes stepping into the Near Umbra right up to traveling through outer space, contacting and controlling spirits, communing with your own or others' avatars, returning a Mage into a sleeper, returning ghosts to life, creating magical fetish items, and so forth. Use of this Sphere became more difficult after the Avatar Storm. The Technocrats, who do not believe in spirits, call this Sphere Dimensional Science.
- Time: This sphere deals with dilating, slowing, stopping or traveling through time. Due to game mechanics, it is simpler to travel forward in time than backwards. Time can be used to install delays into spells, view the past or future, and even pull people and objects out of linear progression.
- Tenth Sphere: Though many sourcebooks hinted at the nature of this Sphere, it was deliberately left vague, and consequently every Tradition had a different theory as to what it might be. Endgame scenarios in Time of Judgement suggest the Sphere could be named Telos. The Sphere of Death from Mage: The Awakening appears to be an interpretation of this Sphere.
Path's
Click on the sphere type to be taken to White Wolf's site and read more about the path.
Sometimes referred to as Hedge Magic, Sorcerers and other groups within the World of Darkness practice arts very similar to magic, but are not truly magic, at least not as the Traditions would define it. Some mages choose to work closely with these groups, as a means to discover more about the nature of magic, and find the path to Ascension.