Haruri, Beryl, and Proto Ayaka's magecrafts are all translated as "witchcraft", but are they really all the same thing or do they have different names in the original Japanese?
Haruri, Beryl and Proto Ayaka's witchcraft are all the same as Celenike's and Ritsuka's. Riddell's modern witchcraft also uses the same 黒魔術 name.
Thanks. I always assumed at least one of them was something else that was just being translated to witchcraft, like how a few different things have been called "shamanism".
Then why call it the root. it makes no sense
The root is supposed to be literally everything, its a oxymoron to call it that, you cant have two seperate 'everythings'
It just seems like a way to justify some parts of actual chinese/asian stuff like the taiji in a way that rubs up really badly with the OC parts of the setting.
And tbh i kinda wonder how that all works with earlier asian servants and lore (outside the fact that i have heavy suspicions that this idea literally only came into being like.. 2018-2019 as its never mentioned nor doesnt 100% fit some bits of lore)
That's what the pseudo part of "pseudo-Root" is for.
Mainland Asia having a particular magecraft has been a thing for years, even the name:
Originally Posted by Plus Period (2004)I'm not saying the whole Philosophical Foundation was planned since then, or even since Nasu did his whole worldbuilding shakeup regarding Church and Association circa 2010, but I doubt it came out of nowhere, certainly not as recently as barely one year before the first Adventures volume. That's way too cynical.Originally Posted by Fate Encyclopedia (2005)
And what earlier Asian Servants put a doubt to it? Sasaki? Tamamo? Lü Bu? Shirou Amakusa? How early are we talking?
Sasaki, Tamamo, and Amakusa are Japanese, and Lu Bu is not a mage. It has to be Nezha, Chen Gong, Shi Huang, or Akuta. Maybe the tactician and Guifei too.
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.
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.
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.