Four essences

The wheel of magic divided into quadrants, with the points pointing towards the four essences of Mind, Spirit, Life, and Matter, and the quadrants representing arcane magic, divine magic, primal magic, and occult magic. Eight colored rings surround the wheel, one for each of the schools of magic.

See also: Planar essence, material essence, spiritual essence, mental essence, and vital essence

Several scholars consider four essences to fundamentally compose reality: material and spiritual essences composing the material and immaterial natures of reality, and mental and vital essences composing the energies that give shape to the former. Each of these essences also go by many other names.

Each pair of these essences is naturally immutably polarized; Matter and Spirit do not directly intermingle with each other, nor do Mind and Life. However, each essence can indirectly or adjacently manifest in its pairing (such as the phenomena of ectoplasm and aether as spiritual manifestations in material forms), and some properties are spread or shared across multiple essences (such as emotions that can span mental and vital essences in different contexts or applications).

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In culture

The most standardized deck of playing cards among Pathfinder Society members is the Old Mage deck, also known as the Magician's Deck in Taldor and the Deck of Masks in the Shackles. It consists of 54 cards in four 13-card suits, one for each of the four essences.

In items

The essence prism is a unique magical device that can refract selected essences of an entity—such as a living creature—positioned in its input streams. The result can create new living creatures who embody separated or combined elements of the input entities' essences.

Spells that manipulate material essence can be disrupted through exposure to disordered energy. A material essence disruptor is a gadget that emits such disordered energy in a manner that can counteract the casting of arcane and primal spells when used at a sufficiently close distance.

In religion

The irreconcilable duality of each pair of essences is a cornerstone of Nethysian faith. One of the Godsrain Prophecies claims to foretell the catastrophic destabilization of magic and death of Nethys by his theoretical forced fusion of the opposite essences in each pairing.

Notable works

• "On Essences", by Marquise Cordelia Perseis