#sonja’s essays

An excerpt of A Guide to False Visions : Illuionsary Magic by Sonja Rysti.

….Oh course, the first spell most illusionists master is making something look like another. It’s a simple thing to make a flower look like a weed, or a brick look like a rock. With practice an illusionist can glamour the view out of a window from rain to shine. A talented one can glamour themselves, and thus vanity runs rampant in followers of the lost art. There is a freedom in it, but all mages are too aware and remember that you cannot change the core of the thing with the illusion. The flower is still a flower, the brick is still a brick, and the day is still rainy.

And yet.

At what point does illusion become truth? What we take for truth is what we experience with our senses. By its nature Illusionary magics change how items are perceived.

This is what makes the magic so dangerous. It is not merely the destruction that we can evoke, much like conjury and thamauturgy, in the physical sense. It is too easy to play tricks on the mind, to haunt a person to madness.