How much do ordinary people on a plane know about mana colors?
Lore forum
Posted on Feb. 19, 2021, 12:52 p.m. by legendofa
I seem to remember seeing somewhere that most people on any given plane don't know about mana, specifically the color meanings. Cards like Gemstone Array or Spirit of Resistance show the mana colors as abstractions. So why do the people of Ravnica, apparently Strixhaven, and Tarkir and Alara (to a lesser extent) wear clothing of the appropriate colors?
Does anyone have a source for the note that people don't know about mana, or am I wrong about that?
Massacar If an ordinary person actually saw the event depicted in Spirit of Resistance , would they be able to see colored lines bouncing off a forcefield? In Earnest Fellowship , is an aven really pouring out a rainbow?
Gemstone Array probably wasn't the best example, since Mirrodin's suns are literally the colors of mana. The five gem motif shows up in art often enough that it becomes shorthand for the five colors of mana. Maybe a better question is, how did the sculptor of The Three Seasons know to put white, blue, black, red, and green stones in the art? Are natural Mana Geode s common in the multiverse? Why does Naya Battlemage refer to schools instead of colors? Why are all of the Ravnica guild leaders physically in the right colors? How did Star Compass and Deathmark even get the symbols?
I guess what I'm asking is, what does mana actually look like? It clearly has a physical presence.
February 19, 2021 4:03 p.m.
The Magic universe has universal laws about how magic manifests. Like particular lands only provide particular colors of mana. And Mana exists in different varieties. These various forms of Mana are called "colors" in the Magic universe. They are not necessarily a literal color. I would think it would depend on the particular plane and how magic manifested on that plane whether or not people on that plane associated a color to a "color" of magic.
If you look in the storyline section of this wiki article: Mana it talks about how magic may be perceived. The whole page has some good general information about magic, colors, and mana as well. The various peoples on the different planes would perceive magic based on how it manifests on that plane. If that included color, and those colors followed the standard colors for Magic, then they would see them that way.
February 19, 2021 4:05 p.m. Edited.
MagicMarc What I got from that article is that mana basically takes different forms on different planes, and the people who need to interact with the mana perceive it however they can.
This is arbitrary, but it's consistent and the official stance. I guess it's the best I'm going to get.
February 19, 2021 4:19 p.m.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with imagining a universe where all the magic manifested with color associations all the time. So during duels the various colors of magic blaze across the sky leaving trails of color. Items crafted or imbued with magic could leak or radiate their primary colors. Fantasy literature is filled with iconic magic and it's various colors.
Unless the magic is being used to intentionally hide something or itself.
February 19, 2021 5:18 p.m.
But I also like the idea that how magic manifests is dependent on the plane it is on.
That way you could have a plane where all magic are music and songs for example. There are no colors only music and voices.
Or a plane where all magic are potions or food. It would make instants complicated but sounds interesting.
February 19, 2021 5:37 p.m.
I like the idea of a magically colorful world; The Seventh Tower was one of my favorite book series growing up. Still, I wish the description of mana wasn't "whatever WotC needs it to look like on this plane."
I just thought of this. Ravnica, Dominaria, and apparently Strixhavenland have major academic centers and colleges. They would naturally study mana, and if they get the concept of colored mana, they would wear the colors of magic they work with. An Earth equivalent would be if scientific studies were associated with colors. Biologists wearing the colors of zoology, botany and whatever, physicists wearing temperature and motion colors, sociologists wearing the colors of history and civics.
I think I'm putting way too much thought into this.
February 19, 2021 5:41 p.m.
And your Earth concept kind of assumes magic is not real. You are hurting the feelings of many druids, wiccans and Carlos Castaneda fans.
February 19, 2021 7:01 p.m.
Your honor, I plead not guilty to claiming magic isn't real. My only claim is that it doesn't run off the 5-color system presented by Magic: the Gathering. Maybe Richard Garfield, Ph.D. knows something I don't.
Massacar says... #2
Gemstone Array actually depicts each of the colored manas as the gems around the center crystalline structure, Spirit of Resistance also shows each mana color as the bolts of energy. So I guess I have to ask is what do you mean by showing it as an abstraction?
From my own understanding mana and their colors might have slightly different interpretations between planes (philosophically and otherwise), but the people working with magic on these planes generally are familiar with mana.
February 19, 2021 3:33 p.m.