Excerpt from The Path of the Soulcerer by Malhpas Eventide - Introduction

(Take in mind that this will start simplified, and thus will have certain things that later turn out to be slightly wrong. It's the cost of being brief and a primer for any newly awakened sorcerer than a true in-depth piece)

Overview:

Magic is the manipulation of mana; magical energy. The word "magic" comes from the ancient Cyroshi for power. And mana comes from the language of the first tribes of peoples. It means power or divine power. Though the word has clear shamanistic roots, it is commonplace in most academic circles.

The soul can be used as a magical medium for the manipulation of mana. The use of the soul as a medium is called soulcery, or sorcery in the vernacular.

Every single living being with a complex enough consciousness is born with a soul; a shadow of that being's psyche that resides in the magical plane. Mana leaks from the tear to the magical plane that is inside the being. Soulcerers can manipulate (move and alter) mana intuitively, but for more complicated techniques, they need to concentrate on specific actions repeatedly to acquire enough motor-like memory to accomplish them almost effortlessly.

As this will be going deep into how soulcerers function, this will be a great study upon the soul and the spirit.

In-Depth View:

Mana:

Mana is magical energy. At rest, it is not yet fully matter, neither truly energy—it functions as nothing until it is acted upon. Mana that has yet to be acted upon and is found throughout the body when at rest is called grey mana.

Mana's mass is dependent on what it is copying.

Grey mana is not actually grey. Mana reflects light only when acted upon and/ or when there is enough of it. When dense enough, mana is seen as a white mist similar to steam (this is how a non-mage's mind interprets it). The denser the mana in a given area, the easier to see it becomes. The color of mana, when acted upon, is also dependent on the technique or construct—it is easier to create a fireball of mana that is orange than it is to create one that is green. The color of mana also depends on what the caster associates the physical change with and the area under which it falls in mana type alignment.

Mana is colored blue in many technique manuals for uniformity, ease of identification, and prestige. A text that does not have mana colored as blue (an expensive dye color) is considered of poor quality. Mana is called magicka in many official documents and technique manuals, but for this being an introductory text, magical energy will be referred to as mana.

Mana is inherently attracted to consciousness. The degree of attraction is increased by the degree of consciousness. For example, plants attract less mana than humans. Sentience and sapience multiply the attractive nature of consciousness when regarding mana.

Mana's physical properties can be changed if the individual that is changing it has experienced such a change and understood it. For example, a soulcerer can intuitively move around their mana to a certain degree, but to be able to form shapes like numbers or letters, they must practice until they can achieve it. If a soulcerer has experienced a burn or constant strong heat, they can make their mana slightly hot. First, it's recommended that they expand their aura outward to avoid injury. There are many ways a soulcerer can develop or learn a new physical change of mana. A soulcerer could learn how to make their mana colder by either standing very still and applying the same phenomenon at the atomic scale or by staying in the cold for a long time. Testing by actively manipulating mana also helps - but the greater the cost to learn a change or aspect of the universe, the lower the difficulty of understanding and replicating the phenomenon with mana.

Those that go through physical changes themselves viscerally understand them and can apply such a change upon the world.

Experiencing physical changes, and understanding how matter works and acts is one step into the direction of mastery over the soulcerous. Practicing by altering one of mana's prime alignments, confers many different benefits. A mixture of both exposing one's aura to a physical change and practicing such a change confers the best benefits to mana manipulation.

When performing feats of magic, soulcerers experience a sort of heat from their mana being pushed outward into their aura. This phenomenon is called "burst". Their mana is pushed through their mana pathways at an increased speed, generating some residual heat. Usually not enough to be harmful, but causes some soulcerers to use loose-fitting robes when in hot climates. There are advanced techniques in which soulcerers slowly pool mana into their aura beforehand to accommodate for the heat and thus allows for the use of plate armor. And soulcerers may simply passively and instinctively gain the ability to automatically make their internal mana colder—this technique may also be proactively trained for.

If a soulcerer pulls out too much mana at once, they can develop soul-rot. The affliction's name suggests that the individual's soul is rotting, but it is actually the opposite. The increased flow of mana makes it harder for it to phase effectively, thus causing mana to "solidify" inside the body. The symptoms can be anything from infections, to sore muscles or cancerous growths. Since grey mana is a neutral mixture of life energy, saturation of it in large doses without proper circulation causes uncontrolled cellular neogenesis.

In extreme and very rare cases, this results in ghoulification. A ghoul is a horribly mutated organism that has succumbed to soul-rot. Their psyche withered away, anything that once resembled sapience is now gone. All that remains is hunger and the most primal desires of a savage. Soul-rot happens mostly when using certain volatile mana types best left unsaid, though it can still happen with more common and legal and natural varieties of mana. Such as with overload of life energy.

The Soul:

The soul is an entity from another plane of existence. The soul is located in a specific place in the magical plane called the Cradle or Vessel; the refuge in which the soul resides. A capsule-like membrane that protects it from the chaotic energies of the magical plane. The soul is one of the mediators between a mage and magic. Using the soul as a medium is called soulcery.

A soul is a spirit-construct that is sapient—the degree of sapience it displays before awakening is a vastly lesser degree than that of it fully awakened. The soul in most, if not all beings, is unawakened. It can cause too much damage if not properly bonded to its host. The formative years spent with its host during childhood is what makes a soul even care about its host. It's connected to its host's brain (in the case of humans) and sees all that which its host experiences. After years of experiencing, the soul eventually becomes the person - although be it, they are more of a shadow, a mirror copy. Though the soul is like a shadow, it harbors the very essence of a person. The soul knows every single location of each cell and holds every memory of a person. Though a shadow, it is substantially the very essence of any sapient being.

This is the soul-shadow theory. But, the soul is much more. The theory only explains the individual sections of the soul and not the parts that connect to the larger subconscious of reality. Individual souls can be seen as lily pads floating atop the astral sea. They connect in twain deep below in the dark, condensing to form a greater existence. The soul is one. The soul is many. The soul is all.