Oh, I see. I was count pre-Heian because that's the first "modern" mention of Philosophy Magecraft.
Oh, I see. I was count pre-Heian because that's the first "modern" mention of Philosophy Magecraft.
Tamamo can use Xian art tho. Used it to regain the 9 tails in CCC, Koyan also could use it due to copying Tamamo. The fox pretty much could use Dakini-ten magic (Hindu/Buddhism), Onmyoudou (Shinto) and Xian arts (Taoism) all at the same time. The perk of being a syncretic entity of those religions.Originally Posted by Comun
Tho I think back then it was not exactly fleshed out, or was one of those "taoist arts" kind of stuffs that doesn't require a Philosophy key. It seems that the idea of a detailed system (the key and the foundation) only got fleshed out during FGO time. Prior to that it was one of those vaguely detailed and unexplained magical stuffs placeholder where the name and the general idea is there but only will get a focus once explanations are really required. They probably did not expect the series to explode and the amount of characters required will increase exponentially with FGO.
Last edited by Lily Emilio; October 3rd, 2022 at 11:53 PM.
I'm not even sure it being called a pseudo-Root is even an "official" term used by the Guan. It might have just been Rin using an analogy in her explanation, same as the library comparison was.
As far as whether the Philosophy Foundation contradicts characters introduced before then, the Chinese mages before it were
-Zhuge Liang
-Sima Yi
-Chen Gong
-Is Sanzang a mage?
-Paisen but she's a Xian
-QSH, but he's wonky because Lostbelt
And 1) do we know if they were mages in life or their powers are Servant-exclusive (except QSH and Paisen) and b) do we know they don't use it? They never mentioned it but I don't think they've ever said anything about having Crests either.
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muh merge
Taigong Wang did retroactively acknowledge that the Three Kingdom tacticians practiced Fangshi(same as Taoist Arts?) in his My Room lines. Notable that it's one of the rare instances where Zhuge Liang surfaced, to warn Taigong to be careful discussing it around people from Clock Tower.
Xuanzang is a Buddhist monk so she's only a mage in the same vague sense that priests and Executors are mages. Sima Yi has nothing implying he was mage. Zhuge Liang is only acknowledged as a mage in Traum, so post-Adventures, and the Stone Maze Sentinel he uses as his NP is a Qimon Dunjia spell Xu Fu can access with her Philosophy Key. And Chen Gong wasn't a mage but was an inheritor of Mystic Codes he couldn't use.
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Oh, right, I forgot Taigong's lines.
Ziya called it "本源たる太極".
Inb4 本源 here is actually 本 + the 源 in 根源, where 本 functions as a determiner similar to "our". So it's actually "our (version of the) Root" lol. 本 also serves as the book analogy too.
You don't always need to be a mage with a key to use Taoist arts. Just like some servants are not mages but can still use some amount of magecraft. And you can train to use it regardless of whether you are a human or a yokai or a god or a Xian. Sure if you obtain a key then you can access more juicy stuffs in the library cuz you are more trained and refined, but you can also obtain knowledge of how to use it from other places. So you have various things like Fangshi, Xian arts, Neidan, Philosophy Magecraft and even some concepts of Chinese martial arts seen with Li Shuwen based on the same principles of Taoism. Which one actually requires you to pull directly from the library using a membership key everytime you activate the spell is still not very clear tbh, since QSH pulls from the Fusang tree and Zhang Jiao got it from the book.
So Fangshi=Taoist Arts=Philosophy Magecraft?
Taigong in Tunguska: Fangshi=Xian Arts
Xu Fu's profile: Fangshi = Tao Arts
Also Xu Fu's profile: Tao Arts is one kind of Philosophy Magecraft and Xu Fu's Philosophy Key is pretty restricted if she can only use that.
IRL logic: Xian Arts is a level above Tao Arts
So Fangshi covers both Xian and Tao, but it's unclear if it's synonimous with PM as a whole or if it also gets the "one kind" treatment.
Not only did Nasu make me research Buddhism and watch Three Kingdoms and read Fengshen Yanyi he's gonna make me research Taoism and stuff about Xians. Thanks.
Adding to what Comun said, which quite accurately inline with how the arts are sorted IRL, Fangshi you can consider it to be the primitive form of the big stuffs you usually hear when talking about Taoist arts. Prior to the appearance of Laozi and later popularized by QSH during his reign, ancient Chinese tribes had extensive ways to practice their totem faith and other nature worship, alchemy. All of those various types of "magic" at that time was not systemized into what is known later in Taoist teachings, or in the case of Nasuverse take - the Philosophy Magecraft. Fangshi is more accurately one of the five great arts of ancient China at the time. It is also known by the name "Mountain arts", where practitioners go to mountains to train their asses off to obtain enlightenment, immortality, harmony with nature, mystical power to defeat demons, Chinese martial arts, and other crazy shits. It is the basis for most of the insane stuffs you see in later Taoism. The other 4 include divination of fate (primitive form of Taoist divination), form observation (primitive form of Fengshui), Bagua Astrology (primitive from of what tacticians like Zhuge used) and Medicine.
Taigong being the one first talking about Fangshi is a nice nod, because according to legends that does not include the Fengshen Yanyi stuffs, he actually found a book written by Xuanyuan Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) in the Kunlun mountains. The book contains Huangdi's compilation of these five great arts. So Taigong in this legend was not taught by big Xian master, but rather used the magical stuffs inside the book to then help overthrow Shang dynasty. During the Warring States era, it appeared again in the form of the Guiguzi, then used by Zhuge Liang during 3K era, tho by that time a lot of the juicy contents were lost to history, the remaining stuffs got interpreted differently by later Taoists, giving birth to multiple Taoist sects.
So TLDR: Fangshi is the primitive form of a group of arts that constitutes the majority of what the Philosophy Magecraft is about.
It is called pseudo root and that's because it functions only one function albeit in limited way but for modern day mages it might as well be limitless. Only function it does is limited akashic records
Im just saying if a lot of the earlier characters were added now they would've had the philosophy skill
Again, which earlier characters?
By god byegod you have a really big issue with this whole hermeneutics bojangledangle dontcha
Spoiler:
In all likelihood some character wouldnt have them as skills, but it would have likely come up. Prob the most obvious who should have it as skills are zhuge and chen gong, the latter explicitely using xian stuff already. and i dont count interludes or mentions after the concept was introduced as a whole.
Hell does philosophy magecraft even come up in lb3? like the words themselves? Considering that Qin shi huang searched for xian stuff, and the philosophy stuff was already established by the time of taigong which was before Qin shi huang.
The world was built around considering philosophy magecraft from as far as Kara no kyoukai
Asking to mention Philosophy key all the time is like asking all Clocktower mages to have a skill called Magic Crest (insert clan name here).
Sure, buddy.
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