Magic in the world
The maesters would tell you magic is a dead thing, a comfort for fools. The maesters have not been beyond the Wall lately, nor to Asshai, nor watched a candle of Valyrian glass burn without heat in their own Citadel. Here is the working taxonomy — one card per craft, ordered against a rising tide.
The systems
Magic in the books is not one power but many crafts, most of them quickening again with the return of dragons. Spoiler-veiled cards cover events past the ranging and the War of the Five Kings.
The tide
The old powers wax again
For a century after the Doom of Valyria, magic in the world guttered like a spent candle, and the maesters were pleased to call it superstition. Then dragons hatched again, and the sorcerers of half the world found their spells suddenly biting. The Citadel is not of one mind on the cause, but the pattern is plain enough: where there are dragons, the old powers stir. Every craft below should be read against that rising tide.
Sources:A Clash of Kings — (Hallyne on the pyromancers' craft) · A Feast for Crows — Prologue (Marwyn)
See the greenseeing spoke
Warging & skinchanging
The commonest surviving magic, and the least sorcerous in feel: a skinchanger slips their mind into a beast and wears it like a second skin. Beyond the Wall it is feared and half-worshipped; a warg, strictly, is one bonded to a wolf. The rules, the taboos, and the second life have a full accounting of their own — this card is only the signpost.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Prologue (Varamyr)
See the greenseeing spoke
Greensight & the weirwood net
Rarer than the skinchangers are the greenseers, who dream true and, the tales say, see through the red eyes carved into the weirwoods — across leagues, and across centuries. The old gods have no scripture and no priests; they have trees that remember. This too is charted elsewhere in full.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Bran
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
The pyromancers' craft
Pyromancy & wildfire
The Alchemists' Guild are the last shabby remnant of a once-mighty order, keepers of the substance they call wildfire — a green fire that clings, that water will not drown, that burns hot enough to melt stone. Their own wisemen admit the spells now hold better than they have in living memory, which the wiser reader files under 'dragons' rather than 'coincidence'. Handle their pots as you would a sleeping wyrm.
Sources:A Clash of Kings — Tyrion (Hallyne)
Valyrian glass, lit again
Glass candles
In the Citadel stand candles of black Valyrian glass that are said to burn without heat, to throw a light no draught can trouble, and to let an adept see across the world and speak mind to mind. For centuries they stood dark, and the acolytes were taught that this was proof magic had died. Now they are burning — a fact the Conclave would much prefer the acolytes did not dwell upon.
Sources:A Feast for Crows — Prologue (Pate & Marwyn) · A Dance with Dragons — (Marwyn)
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.
More than ice
The spells in the Wall
Seven hundred feet of ice, and — if the sorcerers can be believed — a great deal more. Spells are said to be woven through it as surely as the stone stair is cut into it; the dead cannot pass while it stands, and even the living feel something press against them at the gate. The Wall is the largest working of magic in the world, and the men who guard it mostly do not know it.
Sources:A Dance with Dragons — Melisandre · A Storm of Swords — (Coldhands at the gate)
How does magic work in Game of Thrones?
There is no single system. The books present magic as a set of separate crafts — skinchanging, greensight, blood magic, shadowbinding, pyromancy, glamors, fire-resurrection — each with its own rules, costs, and traditions. What they share is a link to the return of dragons: as dragons come back into the world, the old powers grow stronger.
Is magic getting stronger in the books?
Yes, and the text is deliberate about it. The pyromancers admit their wildfire spells hold better than they have in generations; the glass candles of the Citadel have begun to burn again after centuries dark; sorcery bites harder across the world. The turning point is the return of dragons — magic waxes with them.
What is blood magic in ASOIAF?
Blood magic is among the oldest and darkest crafts in the books, worked through sacrifice and the power believed to reside in blood. Mirri Maz Duur's ritual is one documented working: she warns that only death may pay for life and exacts a life under terms with devastating consequences. Other blood magic is not shown to obey one proven universal rule, and its mechanisms and costs remain uncertain.
Are the Faceless Men magical?
Partly. The Faceless Men of Braavos change faces using real faces they harvest and preserve, bound up with a fierce discipline of the self — closer to a sacred craft than a spell. That is different from a glamor, which is true illusion-sorcery: a charm, often anchored to a ruby, that wraps a false seeming around someone.