Magic (The Irregular at Magic High School)

Magic is a central part of the light novel series Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (Eng. The Irregular at Magic High School) by Tsutomu Satou. In the world of the novel series (a fictional Earth), magic, once thought of as something supernatural, underwent scientific research until it is now considered akin to a technological skill.

The Basics
The theoretical basis for modern magic is eidos. Eidos (個別情報体, literally "individual information body") is the individual collections of metaphysical information that defines an individual object's or phenomena's current state of being/existence in the universe. Magic in its modern definition is the act of altering an event, object or phenomena by altering their infromation body, eidos, By altering the information in the eidos, it causes a change to whatever that eidos is defining in the universe.

An important concept is the Idea, the information body dimension. This refers to the metaphysical dimension where individual eidos are recorded. When performing magic, magicians access this dimension to rewrite the eidos there by outputting magic programs into the dimension.

Two types of massless particles belong to the demension of spirit phenomena, psions (thought particles) and pushions (spirit particles). Psions are information particles that record awareness and thought results. The information in eidos are made up of psions. Altering the psions making up eidos is the basis of modern magic.

A magician (in this series, a shortening of "magic technician") is the term for a person with the ability and skill to use magic at a practical level. A magician can output psions of their own into the Idea. These outputted psions can be used to interfere with the psions that make up eidos in order to alter eidos, but simply outputting psions will not perform magic. If just outputted as-is, the outputted psions willd dissipate without having an effect. To make the outputted psions have an effect, they need to be further refined into a magic program (or magic sequence).

The essential part of having the talent of magic is to have a magic-calculation region. This is a mental region that constructs magic programs and exists within the magician's unconscious. Without having this region, a person cannot perform magic. Being born with a magic-calculating region appears to be a genetic trait. Experiments to create an artifical magic-calculating region and transplant it into people who do not possess one have been performed with very limited success. A magician can use the region consciously, but all the processing of information that happens within when performing magic is inperceivable. The region has been likened to a black box.