How do non-divine beings grant divine magic?

[Morhek]

Not to dip too far into the subject of another thread, but I would extend the mutable quality of divine form to all outsiders - we see an angel, but what we see is just the physical world rearranging to present something mortals can comprehend. Even native outsiders like aasimars, tieflings, and the plane-touched present some physical features that make very little physical sense, but are representations of a "higher" nature that they manifest as horns or living fire or fists made of earth, and so on. The scale is orders of magnitude in different, but the same underlying principal is at play.

[Lonesomechunk]

this makes me wonder where divine magic itself comes from since classes like Oracles can bypass the whole god thing and still make use of divine power, is it like how druids use the magic of the natural world but instead of the natural world its just the energies of the outer planes themselves or something?

[keftiu]

Lonesomechunk wrote:

this makes me wonder where divine magic itself comes from since classes like Oracles can bypass the whole god thing and still make use of divine power, is it like how druids use the magic of the natural world but instead of the natural world its just the energies of the outer planes themselves or something?

I've seen arguments before that Divine magic has a fundamental tie to belief, but I don't quite understand how that squares with innate Divine spellcasters.

[The Raven Black]

keftiu wrote:

Lonesomechunk wrote:

this makes me wonder where divine magic itself comes from since classes like Oracles can bypass the whole god thing and still make use of divine power, is it like how druids use the magic of the natural world but instead of the natural world its just the energies of the outer planes themselves or something?

I've seen arguments before that Divine magic has a fundamental tie to belief, but I don't quite understand how that squares with innate Divine spellcasters.

TBH innate Arcane (magic through study of the tangible Material world) makes far less sense to me.

At least, with Divine, you can just connect and have faith in yourself, fate, your good luck, whatever.

[Lonesomechunk]

thats fair, I feel like divine magic is odd because the others kinda just get away with being vague and not entirely explaining where the magic comes from in specific terms but divine magic is a little strange since it tries to make explicit connections to "Gods" but then that makes me wonder how that system works, what makes a non-divine being capable of granting divine spells? Do they simply "become" divine when they reach a high enough level? Theres a lot of little things that get me wondering

I like the idea that belief is tied to divine magic but then I get confused with classes like Witch that use Intelligence and can still tap into the divine or Oracles who don't need to worship a god

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

It may be a small distinction to some, but I believe that the word 'faith' applies more to divine magic than 'belief'. The average person on Golarion may not be presented with proof the gods actually exist, but belief or disbelief isn't especially relevant to them since they do exist. Faith in them is much more relevant to discussions of how to gain divine magic ad a Cleric. Likewise, faith can be applied to a broader category than just the gods, so it doesn't seem as strange to me that different kinds of faith power different forms of divine magic.

(Likewise I don't necessarily think that gods are the exclusive source of divine magic in the cosmos, only the biggest and most relevant since anyone could learn to become a Cleric where sorcerers and oracles gain access to the power by external factors)

[Temperans]

Being able to give divine magic has nothing to do with your actual level. You could be level 1 and have 10 ranks of mythic and thus give spells. What matters for handing out spells is having the sparknof power big enough to allow you that.

Similarly what matters for being able to cast divine spells is not your level as seen by level 1 creatures. What matters is having the faith/knowledge on what provides that power. Clerics get their power from the faith they show in their god getting reciprocated. Oracles get their power from tapping into the same source as the gods without the body to handle it.

Sorcerer probably uses the latent energy in their blood to fuel their spells but I have no idea how that works. Arcane makes sense to me since that is sorcerer using their blood as a shortcut, explaining why their number of spells is constrained.

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To be honest in my opinion witches should always had been occult casters and not pick-a-list. With their spells coming their communion with the familiar and by extension the patron, while hexes are their's proper. That means that they have spells for as long as the patron is willing to provide the familiar, but the witch can keep the hexes.

But in the context of how they actually work in PF2 my guess is that they use the power of the patron more directly. (But that doesn't make much sense given baba yaga not being primal).

[PossibleCabbage]

keftiu wrote:

I've seen arguments before that Divine magic has a fundamental tie to belief, but I don't quite understand how that squares with innate Divine spellcasters.

Innate magic is always sort of handwaving "you have special blood" that makes the assumptions for people who don't have it incorrect. But there are beliefs that we all have that you believe so far down that you don't actually think about them (e.g. "physical objects exist largely as we perceive them" or "there are real numbers, despite the fact that we can't measure anything that is not rational") even though you can convince yourself with effort that it's possible this is not the case.

So it's possible that people who have innate divine magic have similarly deeply seated belief that is the kind of belief that makes divine magic work. Similarly people with innate arcane magic just might understand certain things innately that other people don't.

[The Raven Black]

Maybe Divine energy is constantly pouring through the universe and all beings. One just needs the proper attunement to be able to channel it and cast Divine spells.