Excerpt from The Origins of Soulcery by Brighid Sortiarius

Soulcery is the act of using one's own soul as a magical medium. The etymological roots of soulcery trace back into the Vitaen Empire and the first peoples that walked on the surface of Kyro.

Soul + -cery

The word soul has its origins steeped in religion. The word itself has connotations to the sea. For the soul is a traveler bound in the ethereal sea or the Wheel; the cycle in which mana enters the world and is taken back into the magical plane. The second part of the word soulcery is simply to "practice".

Soulcerer and sorcerer are generally considered one and the same. They are similar in how mage and magician are treated. The formers (soulcerer and mage) are the common variants that have supplanted the original words.

Sor + -cerer

"Sors" means luck or the casting of lots. "-cerer" comes from "-tiarius". The word itself means "belonging to". Sorcerers are the "ones belonging to luck". Since sorcerers are mostly awakened by chance, they are the ones chosen by luck. The goddess of magic and fortune were one and the same in ancient Vitae. Soritaria, Fortuna. Among many other names for the mantle.

Sortiarius is a common surname in Vitae. It is both a title and name given to those that awaken. Anyone with such a surname can trace their ancestry to a soulcerer.

Soulcery as a practice is one of the very first magic mediums used (among them being the neohpytian triad: spiritualism, sorcery, and mentalism). It's the easiest to present and intuitive to use. All sapient species on Kyro have dabbled in a mixture of soulcery and shamanism at the start of their existence. Mostly the first soulceries were elemental magicks. The calling of lightning, the bending of great winds, the lifting of roaring rivers, and the creation of flames.