Starting a letter with almost nobody reading it is the right way round. It means I can say what is actually true rather than what would sound good at scale, and it means the first few replies will shape this far more than anything I decide on my own.
Someone who registered asked what the ten domains refer to, specifically. That is a better place to begin than an introduction, so here they are.
The names are doing two jobs. They are a bit of fun, and they are also accurate — every one of them was a real category of study before it was a fantasy trope, and the older word is often the more honest one. Nothing here is a supernatural claim. If you removed every archaic name and replaced it with a plain one, the list would be exactly as useful, which is the test I hold all of this to.
- Lore History, mythology, literature, languages, philosophy.
- Natural Philosophy Physics, astronomy, biology, geology, ecology.
- Technomancy Computing, electronics, engineering, AI, security, making.
- Alchemy Chemistry, cooking, brewing, materials, experimentation.
- Artifice Craft, fabrication, repair, tools, practical competence.
- Creative Arts Music, visual art, writing, performance, illusion.
- Discernment Logic, critical thinking, evidence, observation, media literacy.
- Human Arts Psychology, communication, teaching, negotiation, leadership.
- Wayfinding Travel, navigation, outdoorsmanship, cultures, exploration.
- Service Applying knowledge and skill in useful service to other people and communities.
The longer descriptions are at modernwizardry.org/domains, one paragraph each, and rather better written than a list of nouns.
Nobody is expected to do all ten
That is worth saying early, because the list can read as a syllabus. It is not one. Most people I have in mind are deep in two or three, competent in another two, and cheerfully hopeless at the rest. The interesting part has never been coverage — it is what happens at the joins, when something you learned in one domain turns out to explain something in another.
Service is the odd one out, and deliberately. It is the domain that keeps the other nine honest: knowledge that never leaves the study is a hobby, which is an entirely respectable thing to have, but it is the part that makes it a practice.
What would actually help
Tell me which of the ten you would turn up to something about. Not which ones interest you — which ones would get you out of the house on a weeknight, or up early for a video call in the wrong timezone. Those are very different answers and only the second one tells me anything.
Reply to this email; it comes to me. Several of you already wrote something in the box on the form, and those answers have been more useful than anything I would have arrived at alone.
What does not exist yet
Anything to turn up to. There is a site, an argument, ten domains, a set of principles, and now a list. There is no event, no membership worth paying for, and nothing being charged for anywhere. When that changes you will hear about it here first, and not often.
Thank you for being early. It is genuinely the useful thing to be.