Above: the Seal of the Elements, an official insignia used by Salenzian mages. It depicts the oppositions of Air/Earth, Fire/Water, and Darkness/Light. Furthermore, it depicts these oppositions in relation to the seventh, non-opposed, element, Nature. Earth, Water, and Light are close to it, while Air, Fire, and Darkness are far from it.

Maikrosian magic is, to a degree, well understood by the late Third Age. Such understanding is within the realm of the manipulation of magic. Of course, there is still more to understand, but the knowledge on the matter gathered over the millennia by Maikrosian mages is quite extensive. There are two widely recognized forms of magic - spark magic and formulaic magic. Spark magic is the sort of magic where the mage simply casts the spell, with no tools of any kind. This is achieved via thought, and there is a specialized neural organ among the structures of the brainstem that governs this connection between brain and mana. It is present in all known species of vertebrate, explaining those various species thereof which employ some kind of magic.* However, just because a creature has this structure in their brain, doesn't mean they can cast magic.* In most, it is usually determined by species: some species can cast magic,* while others cannot. In hominins it is determined on an individual level.*

Those individuals of Homo who are capable of magic are known to have two or three ways to cast their magic. In the two-variant system, there are knowledgeable casters and innate casters. Basically, knowledgeable casters understand what they are doing, while innate casters do not. Knowledgeable casters need training and practice, while innate casters do not. With such a lack of training and practice, there are understandably few innate casters present in the world, because they tend to end up blowing themselves up or something. In the three-variant system, knowledgeable casters are further subdivided into studied and intuitive casters. Studied casters are by far the most common today. As the name suggests, they reach their knowledge via study, whether from a book or from another mage. Intuitive casters, on the other hand, have an intuitive grasp of their magic - they just get it. These days, intuitive casters are more common in non-literate cultures, where their intuition has more time to develop on its own - while in literate cultures, those who might become intuitive mages usually end up studying their magic like all the others.

The physics of magic, on the other hand, are not well understood at all. Most of what is known about the physics of magic is related to its manipulation. It is rather uniformly distributed across every landmass and body of water. Mana saturation of Maikros is known to go well below the deepest underground any person has ever been so far.* The use of magic requires the mage to pull mana out of the ground or a body of water. Of course, the more mana, the more powerful the magic. When spent, the mana is no longer present in the surface, but gradually returns. As most spells are cast aboveground, this spent mana is speculated to linger in the air, though no spent mana has ever been conclusively detected.* Its eventual return into Maikros suggests that if the spent mana does descend from the air, then mana is affected by gravity.*

Furthermore, the larger the spell, the more mana spent, the longer it takes to return. There are various competing theories as to why mana does this, when - by all rights, unaffected by the air as it is - it should always fall back to Maikros at the same rate, if it is indeed being affected by gravity. The theory currently accepted by most mages is mana interference, which states that in its natural state, mana interferes with itself constantly, creating complex, interlocking structures. These structures, being mostly random, are usually completely harmless, but mana interference is also sometimes used to explain rare phenomena of sudden magical outbursts. However, almost all recorded instances of sudden magical outbursts were made by laypeople, many in earlier ages, before the scientific method. As such, the existence of sudden magical outbursts is debated.* Mana interference is also used to explain the existence of mana spirits, that occasionally, the random structures result in an intelligence that subsequently stabilizes itself. However, this too is sometimes debated.* Of course, again, this all relies on mana being affected by gravity. If it is not, then there must be some other mechanism not only driving its return to the ground, but also governing the rate at which it does so.

There are various schools of magic, as can be explored in the list to the left.