Spell Categorization

Context: A poll asking how many categories I would use to organize all spells.

This has been twisting my brain around because personally, a spell’s “intent” matters much less to me than its action - how it achieves its goal.

I’ve come up with at least 6 supercategories though.

Spells that influence movement

Repel a thing away from a target. or attract it towards the target. Or keep the thing from moving away from where it is right now. Or prevent it from entering a specific space.

Transformation

An object or bunch of objects are fundamentally changed. Something like paper, ink, and words becoming a talisman, or a bunch of herbs in a jar turned into a spirit, or a stick turned into a wand.

“Contamination”

An object takes on the traits of another, through ritual, or physical/metaphysical/symbolic contact with the energy, etc. Not a movement spell, but also not a transformation spell because the object’s nature isn’t fundamentally altered in some way.

“Cultivate-wither”

Something like an increase or decrease. “Waking” tools and materials, weight loss/gain spells, etc. Like stoking a fire to make the flame burn stronger, or salting the earth to wither plants. No new fire is added and the fire isn’t transformed, but just made more. Nothing is removed from the plant, but it wanes.

Spells that affect connection

Cord-cutting spells. That genre of spells where some folktale or myth or prayer is recited and the situation likened to the story so that it will conform to it. Linking a poppet to a person, so that whatever is done to the poppet happens to the target. those kinds of spells.

Knowledge-seeking

Any spell whose goal is to find information or experience. Divination. Prophecy. Seeking visions. Finding treasures. That lot.

They’re not really distinct categories - I know that a lot of spells overlap more than one of the supercategories. So the actual number of categories could be at least (6!).