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// Appendix: Twilight’s Simple Guide to Magic and Equestria 
// Story: The Humans in Equestria Club 
// by billymorph 
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Twilight’s Simple Guide to Magic and Equestria (page 1-2 of 34 31 27)

Hello, if you are reading this you have recently fallen through the surprisingly thin wall between realities and are now are a pony or some other magical species. Magic, as I’m sure you are aware by now, is ubiquitous in Equestria; indeed magic is a poor choice of a word to describe the many rules, systems and manipulations thereof that define life on Equestria. While this document contains all you need to know to have a firm grounding on all known physical and metaphysical systems, I have first included this short summary, to prevent any danger that comes from misunderstanding the magic of Equestria.

The first crucial thing to note is that magic can be divided into six critical pillars of creation. Each pony tribe can manipulate two, and other species each have their own speciality; please ask if you do not know what your particular species’ specialty is, as it will avoid embarrassment further down the line.

The most visible and crucial form of magic is Solar magic, but under no circumstances attempt to perform Solar magic. It is potentially lethal, can drive mortals insane and in some rare cases cause both death and insanity at the same time. More generally, Solar magic governs the movement of the sun and the moon, touches on both pyromancy and destiny, and is the domain of dragons, alicorns and unicorns. If you are reading this and thinking that, being a unicorn, you want to try and use magic on the heavens, don’t. History is littered with unicorns who reached for the stars and were consumed by them. As you can probably infer, we know very little about Solar magic, most of the old rituals being lost to the ages, and it is best to keep them lost.

Aether magic is next on the list. Created by the interactions between the heavenly spheres and the material world below, aether is the breath of life, forms the vital waters and is also strongly linked to both storms and lightning. It is also the domain of the pegasi and the gryphons, both of which can manipulate the aether in flight to achieve all manner of effects, from creating or controlling weather, to reanimation, and truly impressive feats of speed and agility. If you find yourself with wings, the Club will be providing practical lessons on flying which, for all intents and purposes, is aether magic.

Vita magic comes immediately after aether. It is the magic of living things, of growth and of healing, of creation and death. All that is alive on Equestria is alive through vita magic. In your veins flows streams of vital energy and in your cells are vital forms that define everything about you. Actual vita spells are a subtle thing, sometimes taking generations to come into full force, bound by ritual and tradition and are woefully understudied by modern ponies. Earth ponies experimenting with vita powers should note that, while vita magic is never truly dangerous, overuse can make it feel like you’ve galloped to Canterlot and back.

Most familiar to humans, materia magic is the magic of physics. It covers both the earth beneath your hooves (or otherwise), and the building blocks of everything else. Wood, rocks, gems, water, or sulfur, are all expressions of materia magic, and their interactions are defined by this pillar of creation. Manipulations of materia magic can be unsettling, breaking rules that I understand can not be broken in the human sphere, but please do not be too alarmed if things like: conservation of momentum, volume constraints, or large scale distortions in structure, occur around a materia mage... yes, that means Pinkie Pie. Materia magic is more dangerous than vita and can cause serious damage to the world around you, so please try and avoid practicing in a built up area or without proper instruction.

Arcana is the school of thought, of motion and of memory. It is by far the most versatile and understood of the pillars, even stretching to things like time travel, but you’ll most often come across arcana magic as unicorn levitation. Moving beyond these humble foundations, arcane spells can influence nearly all other aspects of creation (though it requires an incredible amount of skill to influence the sky as they are anti-aligned spheres). I’m sadly limited to a single paragraph summary here but, to give a taste, any spell seen in the show, a unicorn could replicate with practice and dedication, and many I will be explaining in later pages. 

Lastly, we have prime. Prime is emotion, passion, drive and spirit. We know little about this final form of magic; the pegasi can use prime, but they disdain, it only using it in simple, instinctive forms such as Fluttershy’s stare. Changelings are also masters of prime, even going so far as to feed off it, though we have no idea how such a mechanism works; while I would advise against experimenting, there’s little evidence to suggest instinctual prime magic has ever hurt anypony.