Basic Principles of Magic

Chapter 1: Levitation

In this chapter, you will learn

• How to manipulate basic levitation

• The theory of magical charge

• Why two unicorns cannot levitate the same object at the same time

• The limitations of simple levitation

Chapter 1.1: Basic levitation

Levitation is the simplest spell all unicorns quickly learn how to perform in the first few years of infancy, seemingly by instinct. However most ponies will never understand how it works until they learn about Basic Principles. Levitation, or rather, simple telekinesis, is actually a rather complicated spell to perform through Basic Principles. To begin this journey, close this textbook and levitate it off the table for a while.

Exercise 1.1.1

Perform a simple levitation spell on this book for 1 second.

Welcome back, and while the experience is fresh in your mind, let me remind you that firstly, you felt your horn heat up, and you saw your horn glow, and that this textbook had an aura around it. However, a few things happened that you may not have noticed. Firstly, your brain sent an electrical signal to your alicorn, sparking a chain reaction we will explain in Chapter 3. This chain reaction caused a flow in energy from a different part of the universe into your horn, and shortly after, that energy proceeded to flow through an invisible (to the untrained) tether to this book. In fact, it was due to this energy that you are able to see this sentence, as we have printed these words with MagicReveal ink. If you can’t read the previous sentence, you better get your horn moving and levitate this book!

Try to levitate this book again, but this time, pay attention to the invisible tether. If you are able to sense the magic tether, go ahead and reach out with your hoof to touch it. Keep in mind that this tether may be quite energetic, and does not necessarily flow in a straight line!

Exercise 1.1.2

Perform a simple levitation spell on this book for 1 second, again, this time sensing the tether and then trying to touch it with your hoof.

Congratulations! You are ready for the next portion of this chapter.

Chapter 1.2: Levitation manipulation 1

If you touched the tether with your hoof, you would’ve felt the aura from the book disappear and it would’ve dropped harmlessly back to the table, because the energy flowing from your horn and to the book was disrupted. The tether is a fragile thing, but it’s also very efficient at connecting energy. It’s because of the tether’s simplicity that the unconscious brain is able to manipulate objects during levitation without conscious effort. However, taking steps to understand levitation from the ground up was Aricoltle’s greatest discovery, and his greatest contribution to Magic. To do so, we have to try to construct what the unconscious brain had constructed, using the conscious brain.

To construct the tether, is really quite simple and contains two steps.

Imagine the energy flowing out of your horn while you perform a levitation spell. It would create a thread of energy from the tip of your horn to the book. However, it is not the right image. Rather, imagine the energy curve from the base of your horn through the spiral to the tip before extending towards the object, rather than simply from the tip. This will create a spiralling tether, like yarn, that will be able to self modify using slight adjustments of the flow of energy. Don’t worry if you can’t get this right away. Levitation and sensing magic is learnt through instinct, and wrestling control over an unconscious effect is not easy. In fact, it took years for Aricoltle to figure out how the tether is manipulated through the horn!

Exercise 1.2.1

Channel the energy through the base of your horn then the spiral rather than through the tip, and observe how the tether feels stronger, and try to interrupt the tether.

If you succeeded in doing this exercise, you should’ve noticed that the book was not immediately dropped, but pushed in whatever direction your hoof was pushing the tether in, somewhat like a puppet on a string. Congratulations!

This is because consciously, all unicorns put in a lot more magical energy than necessary for levitation. As a result, this accident results in the tether being quite strong.

In order to move the levitated object around in more complex ways, you’ll need to observe the tether more carefully.  Go ahead and try this out one more time. If you’re noticing the pattern of having to repeat the same thing more than once, good, because you’ll be repeating this more than 10 times very soon.

Exercise 1.2.2

Observe the reinforced version of the tether by sensing it.

BONUS: Draw a picture of how the tether looks like.

Do you notice two strands of energy twisted together into a rope? Good, because it gets complicated from now on.

Chapter 1.3: Levitation manipulation 2

Although it’s hard to explain or observe the exact structure of the strands, hundreds of years of research shows that the strands of energy themselves are also coils of energy, so the tether is like yarn made of yarn (made of yarn, but this layer is complicated).

By adjusting energy flow of latent magical energy from the universe into your horn, you alter the speed of which the energy is forced through the spiral of your horn, and that changes the properties of the coil. By forcing more energy into the horn, in a sense, you can expand the coil and make the tether longer. This may seem intuitive, but the universe will betray your ‘understanding’ in future chapters :)

Given enough focus, you should be able to sense that there is not one, but two channels where you allow energy into your horn. However, the details are not relevant until Chapter 2.

In summary, those two separate channels allow you to form the two coils of energy, which when channelled through the spiral of the horn, allow you to spin that one more layer into a coiled tether.

The easiest way to see the impact of this is hoofs on observation.

Exercise 1.3.1

Fill out the following table with your observations.

Again, don’t be worried if it takes you some time. I’d come up with more reassuring words if I could. So, you can move objects around in the air now. Consciously. This is a good time to take a break from the textbook and get some rest. I recommend taking a day or two away from reading, just consciously practicing simple levitation to understand how adjusting the flows of the two channels actually affect the trajectory of the objects. When you’ve gotten used to levitating things away and towards you, which is going to be really fun, feel free to jump straight into the next subchapter.

Chapter 1.4: Partial levitation

So far, we have gone through in much detail how to levitate, and how the tether works, but not yet how the magical energy that covers the object you levitate actually… levitates the object. For this next exercise, you are going to require a partner. The theory is that the tether breaks apart when it comes in contact with solids, and this in turn results in the magical energy flowing out like the tether is a hose.

This flavour of magical energy (in-depth explanation in Chapter 5) has a slight magical charge. As a result, matter is attracted to the energy, and the energy is attached to the matter, because things with magical charge attract things without magical charge.

Exercise 1.4.1

Have one of you levitate a small object (like this textbook) and the other observe the point where the tether and the object collide, writing down your findings (illustrations if necessary)

Onwards with the rest of the theory. The tether and the blob of magical energy that surrounds the object are connected, and the magical energy is attracted to the object. Therefore, when the tether is manipulated, the blob follows, and the object follows the blob.

BONUS: Partial levitation

Here’s a little bit of history. When the Royal Sisters came to rule Equestria and a court was established, Princess Celestia would often drag ponies who irritated her out of the courtroom using levitation. The funny thing though, is that she did so by tugging at the ears of the irritating nobles. The technique we are going to discuss soon was discovered by Princess Celestia simply to pull ponies by the ear!

But how did she do it? This technique is achieved by limiting the flow of magical energy after the tether is established. Allowing energy to form the tether first, and then allowing energy to spill out and envelop the part of the object you wish to manipulate, before limiting the flow of magical energy such that only a trickle is left to maintain the tether.

The magical energy does not flow over to cover the rest of the matter because the magical energy’s charge means that it is more attracted to itself than the magically uncharged matter, and therefore sticks to itself, like the surface tension of water.

Though this is not very important to master, it’s quite a neat skill to pick up. It’s fun too!

Editor’s note: After consulting with some Magic professors, I have decided to leave this bonus chapter in despite my boss’s persistence that this portion is useless. It is their belief that if this skill was indeed picked up, it would help immensely in the next chapter.

Chapter 1.5: The limits of simple levitation

First off, the limitations of the mass of the object you want to levitate. It’s difficult to levitate heavy objects or very big ones because of two reasons.

For large objects, it’s because a lot of magical energy needs to be infused with the object. The magical energy will dissipate at a quick rate because of the large volume of the object, and as such it requires a large flow of magical energy, and alicorns can only handle so much.

For heavy objects, magical energy being dissipated is not as big of an issue as the tether being too weak to lift it. Again, this means a bigger tether is required, which means a large flow of magical energy.

A technique beyond Basic Principles that’s used by the most magically adept unicorns is to manipulate the tether itself into a single coil, which artificially makes it stronger, thicker and visible to the eye, before attaching the tether to the object, but after many years of practice I’ve only barely been able to maintain the tether’s shape for more than a few seconds. I wouldn’t say this is impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.

Secondly, there is a limit on the speed of how quickly you can manipulate the tether, firstly because of the speed of the flow of the magical energy, but also because of the tether’s shape.

If you recall, objects can be brought closer or further away by adjusting the flow of energy in both strands, and this results in changing how coiled the tether is. There is a short delay between adjusting the lengths of the strands and how coiled the tether is. This delay then limits how fast your object can go before your tether reaches its maximum length.

Finally, the most intriguing one, is that two ponies cannot levitate the same object at the same time, at least not using this technique.

This is because the two tethers, having a dense magical charge, attract each other, and this results in the tethers being connected to each other more than the tethers to the magical energy on the object, effectively severing the connection.

I strongly advise you to restrain from trying this out. This is because when the two tethers connect with the magical energy still flowing in, magical energy starts to bunch up where they connect and may result in the instability of the tether itself. Meaning, it might explode.

However, nothing is stopping you from both partially levitating two different parts of the object. All the more reason to learn partial levitation!