Poetry as a Magic System

[Catullus64]

One of the main fantasy conceits of a setting I'm working on is the identity of poetry and magic. As in, the people within the setting use the terms interchangeably; all poetry is believed to have (or to at least intend) some magical effect, and all (human) magic relies upon carefully constructed and organized use of language.

There are numerous cultures in the setting, and therefore as many traditions of magic as there are peoples. But for clear, practical reasons, the culture whose poetic forms most resemble English ones receives the most focus. I have just enough facility with other languages and their verse forms to know that I lack the skill to really make those forms resonate in English, which the setting material needs to be in.

With that level of variation established, there are some ground rules I've established for this magic system:

#1. Hierarchy. Since magic uses human language, the most easily mastered magic is that which is composed to affect the minds of people. Indeed, there is deliberate ambiguity here as to whether this "magic" is genuinely supernatural, or is merely the kind of influence that poetry can have over people in our world. More sophisticated magic is required to command animate life in general, and the most potent of all to command elemental things like trees, iron, or the sea. The more alien a thing is to human thought and speech, the more difficult it is to command, the more precision in sounds and their enunciation is required.

#2. Influence, not Creation. Since magic is essentially the act of influencing things with language, any magic requires a specific thing to work upon. You cannot conjure something that is not present to "hear" you. (Note then that when I speak of a spell's "listener", that listener is not necessarily a person.)

#3. Repetition. Though poetic traditions can employ stock formulas and tropes, each spell must be a composition made specifically to the desired task; the formulas must be newly arranged, at the very least. Used, "empty" magic is fit only for entertainment and chronicle. A poet studies them to master the art, but they hold no direct power. Nobody creates music simply for entertainment, since a new composition not directed at a specific aim might have unexpected consequences.


These are less hard-and fast rules, and more general guidelines for how composition of a spell works, and certain devices that are considered well-suited to certain kinds of magic. Remember that these are strongly biased towards English-language poetry. While the poetry of other languages is valent, it must needs be kept fairly abstract.

#1. Rhyme is to be used sparingly. A fully-rhymed spell is likely to become predictable, and thus the listener is more likely to be inured against it. Internal rhymes are safer, but a good poet typically only uses an end-rhyme as a strong cadence to a spell.

#2. Accentual verse: Stress-accents are the primary source of metrical organization, rather than tone or syllable length. For poetry which is meant to influence people, iambic verse is best, because of its close approximation of natural human speech-rhythm. For animals, one must study their chirps and barks and growls, and find the dominant verse-rhythm which imitates it. An even greater degree of abstraction is required to command inanimate things, but one must look for rhythms, proportions, and sounds that are natural to the thing.

#3. Alliteration and onomatopoeia: These devices are particularly apt for conjuring illusions and phantasms in people. They tend to be more valuable than rhyme as an organizing device for spells with non-human listeners.

#4. Antithesis, parallelism, metaphor: These are the bread and butter of any spell which seeks to influence behavior or opinion. The fundamental action of such a spell is to create strong mental associations between concepts and images. Parallel construction allows you to draw upon the strong positive or negative feelings a listener has towards Thing A, and apply those feelings towards Thing B. Antithesis establishes a strong contrast for similar purpose, or a proportion. Metaphor is more complex to pull off well, but can have a stronger version of the effect of parallelism.

#5. Kennings and epithets. This tradition relies upon a stable of epithets (formulaic titles for people or things) and kennings (complex figurative expressions of single words). They are most powerful if improvised, but stock formulas like these are a compromise in power for the sake of being able to easily extemporize verses.

Firstly, I would welcome any critique of the above system from a world-building perspective; does this create certain changes in societies that need to be addressed in the fiction? How would this kind of practical magic-poetry fit into a society that is of roughly Bronze-Iron Age technology? Secondly, does the system feel consistent, or are there logical problems with it? What additional restrictions or details should I impose to make it more dramatic, or closer to real-life understanding of magic/music?

I would appreciate help with developing more magical "tropes", more ways to make this system feel fleshed-out. I welcome examples of devices from poetry of any language. If you think that the poetry of a particular language or era would lend itself really well to a certain type of "listener", do say so, and do your best to explain why.

One other thing I'm having trouble with is the problem of tonality, harmony, and musical modes. It seems like most pre-modern cultures don't really have a very sharp distinction between spoken poetry and song, and I want to preserve that overlap between the two; but naturally, that's very hard to bring across in writing, especially with a non-tonal language like English, without just sticking modern musical notation into things. If you had to add rules governing tone and harmony into the rules above, what might they be?

[Martin Greywolf]

My first thought when seeing this is "this magic system will be incredibly cool to some and incredibly hard to use for most" - unless you are the kind of guy who already has a solid poetic backing, actually using this will be... hard. This is almost a non-issue if you are writing this up for a novel or some such, but for a TTRPG...

Other than that.

The details of it

How does this work, at the basic level? Is it the intent of the caster, or does music have some sort of resonance with reality? If it's the latter, can radnom sound theoretically cast magic? Can such resonance be achieved with other forms of waves (light, electromagnetic, drawings, actual ocean etc.)? If the former, why does it have to be poeatry, or why is poetry the easiest?

Even if these sorts of questions never come up, having them solved usually gives you a lot more leeway to work with when it comes to powerful or weird characters. A mute wizard who has learned to cast via humming comes to mind.

Spicing it up

I don't want to tell you to look up hermetic magic systems of real life, because they are arcane and incredibly hard to understand, so let's do this via a cliffnotes version. Numerology and coding.

A verse, letters or words will have assigned numbers, and composing numerologically pleasing compositions will increase their power. This is sort of lifted from actual pre-modern numerology, which we can't discuss here, it's too tied into religion for that.

As for encoding, there will likely be several systems of recording spells, using various codes, ranging from Caesar squares to some custom weird version of heiroglyphs - you could have a lot of fun with that. Various magical traditions will probably have one general system each which every individual will spice up according to their wishes - it's this exact reason that makes medieval alchemy texts so inscrutable.

Finally, look into various forms of rap. No, seriously, you could well have a mumble rappers vs traditional rappers feud in your world, but with magic! 100% more fireballs!

Spoken poetry and song

We don't have much of a distinction either. Rap and punk are a thing, you know.

Historically, most of the times at leas,t there is no way to tell if there was or wasn't a distinction - we don't have music notations, and it's not like we can listen to Homer to find out if the Illiad is recited or sung. We can guess it's probably the latter based on depictions showing us lyres in hands of people who would recite/sing these, but was that universal? What about people who couldn't afford a lyre?

Societal changes

Here's the funny thing - there wouldn't be all that many. Pre-modern real world already is saturated with belief in powers of words, poems and songs in most of major religions - so again, can't discuss them.

What that means for you is that little changes - people still sing all the time, and still get persecuted if they wish something bad to happen to someone in their songs or poems, it's just turned up a bit. Nursery rhymes now actually have the power of protecting children, harvest songs actually make you harvest better and for longer and so on - but the outward appearance of people working the fields or of nursemaids at the crib is indistinguishable from reality.

One caveat here is that you probably won't see the natural/human sceinces divide in this world, not with poetry and song having tangible effects on reality. Maybe song and poetry will not even be classified as art, but rather a science, although that distinction was blurred often enough in the real world. Oh, and study of languages will be less of an idle pastime of scholars and more of a research of national interest.

[Catullus64]

My first thought when seeing this is "this magic system will be incredibly cool to some and incredibly hard to use for most" - unless you are the kind of guy who already has a solid poetic backing, actually using this will be... hard. This is almost a non-issue if you are writing this up for a novel or some such, but for a TTRPG...


It's a multimedia setting. The details and nitty-gritty of the poetic system never really emerge on the tabletop on a mechanical level, only in my own short stories which I write for my own amusement and private dissemination.



How does this work, at the basic level? Is it the intent of the caster, or does music have some sort of resonance with reality? If it's the latter, can radnom sound theoretically cast magic? Can such resonance be achieved with other forms of waves (light, electromagnetic, drawings, actual ocean etc.)? If the former, why does it have to be poeatry, or why is poetry the easiest?

Even if these sorts of questions never come up, having them solved usually gives you a lot more leeway to work with when it comes to powerful or weird characters. A mute wizard who has learned to cast via humming comes to mind.

If I had to try to define the internal logic of the system (something which I don't think any character within the world would ever think to do), it would be a very simplified sort of animism: every thing has something analogous to consciousness which can be commanded by the correct language. The poet's verse, on some structural or sensory level, has to imitate and describe the nature of the thing it seeks to control.

Why poetry and not other sonic phenomena? The Doylist response is that I want to write stories where the heroes triumph by composing poems and singing songs. If I have to invent a Watsonian response, I would say that it's more a human limitation than a metaphysical one. Language, specifically the highly organized language of poetry, is the best tool humans have for developing the "communication" necessary for powerful magic, but it's not the only possibility in existence; there are creatures in the setting capable of magic which is more natural to them.




I don't want to tell you to look up hermetic magic systems of real life, because they are arcane and incredibly hard to understand, so let's do this via a cliffnotes version. Numerology and coding.

A verse, letters or words will have assigned numbers, and composing numerologically pleasing compositions will increase their power. This is sort of lifted from actual pre-modern numerology, which we can't discuss here, it's too tied into religion for that.

As for encoding, there will likely be several systems of recording spells, using various codes, ranging from Caesar squares to some custom weird version of heiroglyphs - you could have a lot of fun with that. Various magical traditions will probably have one general system each which every individual will spice up according to their wishes - it's this exact reason that makes medieval alchemy texts so inscrutable.

Finally, look into various forms of rap. No, seriously, you could well have a mumble rappers vs traditional rappers feud in your world, but with magic! 100% more fireballs!


I've done just enough study of Pythagorean harmonics and the mathematics of tuning systems to write convincingly about it for the purposes of a story. I can imagine that complex spells, like those which high priests sing to placate the gods, might have such elaborate numerical structures that I can describe in the abstract. It doesn't need to be that esoteric; it can be something more akin to the meta-structures of poetry, like a crown of sonnets.

Rap is probably going to be my best touchstone, not necessarily for inspiration about poetic forms (it tends to be very rhyme-heavy, which I want to avoid) but for the nature of improvisational composition, and the dramatic structure of magical duels.



Historically, most of the times at least there is no way to tell if there was or wasn't a distinction - we don't have music notations, and it's not like we can listen to Homer to find out if the Iliad is recited or sung. We can guess it's probably the latter based on depictions showing us lyres in hands of people who would recite/sing these, but was that universal? What about people who couldn't afford a lyre?


Honestly, the more I think about it, the more this distinction is kind of a non-problem for me, since I'm working in written media. The words "chanted", "sung", "recited" and such can all be used interchangeably; I'm not exactly going to stick big immersion-breaking bars of modern, Western musical notation mid-page, so questions of tune can remain in the imagination of the reader.



Here's the funny thing - there wouldn't be all that many. Pre-modern real world already is saturated with belief in powers of words, poems and songs in most of major religions - so again, can't discuss them.

What that means for you is that little changes - people still sing all the time, and still get persecuted if they wish something bad to happen to someone in their songs or poems, it's just turned up a bit. Nursery rhymes now actually have the power of protecting children, harvest songs actually make you harvest better and for longer and so on - but the outward appearance of people working the fields or of nursemaids at the crib is indistinguishable from reality.

One caveat here is that you probably won't see the natural/human sciences divide in this world, not with poetry and song having tangible effects on reality. Maybe song and poetry will not even be classified as art, but rather a science, although that distinction was blurred often enough in the real world. Oh, and study of languages will be less of an idle pastime of scholars and more of a research of national interest.

The folk kind of magic is going to be harder to capture. My best and most familiar references for poetry are "finished" poems, highly technical works made by professional poets, often for elite audiences; these are the potent, high magics of the world. But the day-to-day songs, the healing incantations and love-spells and petty curses that seem to fill up archaeological evidence about ancient magic? That's harder for me to research and write.

But one point where I agree with you (I already suspected, but it's nice to have support) is that I don't need to depart too radically from real history in terms of what society looks like. I think fantasy writers often assume that people in the past can't have really believed in magic and demons and the like, and that society would have looked extremely different if they had; but the pre-modern world really does provide the best template for a world built around the efficacy of magic and the existence of supernatural powers.