Meta-Magic

Fragments from imaginary dialogues

“What is meta-magic?”

“It’s a concept from my gaming past. More specifically from D&D (Dungeons&Dragons). 

In the D&D multiverse, magic is a reality, which allows its practitioners to shape physical-reality through the casting of spells. Meta-magic is a higher-order level of magic that allows one to modify the properties of a spell. 

For instance, some spells in D&D have a somatic component, they require some kind of body movement to be cast. Meta-magic allows one to ‘still’ a spell, that is, to cast it without its somatic component.

In the same way magic shapes physical-reality in D&D, language shapes our mental-reality. 

Words have power. In a profound sense, language is magic.

Mental models are a higher-order level of meaning, a meta-language.

If language is magic, Models Thinking is the meta-magic.“