While innate magic, inborn into the body and directed by the will, is available to some members of the takma species , most takmar cannot use it. For these, and for any other sophonts in the world, the realm of metaphysical interaction is accessible only through enchanting: the use of special symbols - glyphs - in specific configurations to produce physical effects.

There is no understanding whatsoever as to why glyphs produce the effects that they do, except that something about their shapes invokes gaps in the ordinary laws of physics. The library of glyphs that produce the effects is constantly growing, albeit slowly; the discovery of new ones, and of the means of connecting them together, must come about through laborious trial and error, for there are often no obvious connections between the shapes of glyphs even if their powers are similar.

When enchanting an item or surface, there are several rules of thumb that need to be borne in mind:

• The orientation does not matter. A glyph, in and of itself, may be rotated in any direction without losing is function, provided the surface it is on rotates with it (i.e., if a glyph is actually inscribed backwards on a surface, it may function differently). If a glyph is arrayed together with other glyphs, then their relative placement must remain the same in order for the array to function; i.e. it essentially becomes a larger glyph.
• A glyph is defined in three dimensions. A glyph demands a specific shape and proportions to remain functional. There is no guarantee that a glyph carved into a flat surface will function when carved into a curved surface. In recent cycles it has become possible to design glyphs with “give” that can be usefully drawn on flexible material, such as the pages of a book, but even then it is best to use a stiff material that will remain relatively flat.
• Choose a medium that allows accuracy to be maintained. Because the shape of the glyph is vital to its function, the medium through which it is made will ideally be one that allows that shape to be maintained for as long as the effect is needed. If carved into stone, it should be a hard stone, not easily eroded; if written on paper, it should be with a sharp pen and a neat hand, with paper that resists blotting.
• If something goes in, something else must come out; if something comes out, something else must go in. Most of the effects produced by glyphs, similar to those of Spark magic, rely on energy transfers. The output of any glyph must ultimately be matched by input. By default, a glyph will input or output energy as ambient heat, and so the simplest and lowest-power enchantments can rely on this property without further specification; but in situations where this property would result in the local temperature falling or rising unacceptably, extra glyphs can be added to specify other means of input or output.

For the most part, the effects possible with enchanting involve the transfer of energy or the manipulation of fields.

One of the earliest and most basic applications of enchanting was to move heat around, and even today some of the simplest and most widespread enchantments are effectively forms of heating; the glyphs used are designed to emit heat, which they absorb from the substrate upon which they are placed. Cooling enchantments are less widespread, because even though the same glyphs could be used, not all cultures have sufficient grasp of the nature of heat energy and thermodynamics to take proper advantage of the principle, and must use a more complicated enchantment to achieve the same effect by drawing heat out of the air and into the substrate.

Heat is not the only form of energy that can be manipulated through enchantment, though the others are usually far more complicated to deal with. There is, for example, a subset of glyphs dealing with the imparting of kinetic energy: that is to say, it can cause objects to move. But until recently, the object that would move was that on which the glyph had been placed, and it would begin to do so immediately upon the completion of the glyph. This means that the object must be not only be braced during at least the final stages of enchantment, but that it must be contained thereafter, lest it escape from the control of its makers and travel across the countryside as far as the direction and terrain permit. Lately the xtauh of Poradrin have discovered how to cause kinetic energy to be imparted to an object that merely touches the enchantment; while this is a one-time, temporary effect, it is far more controllable than the previous method, and has already been the center of attempts to build projectile-launching devices.

Among the most complex and impressive feats of enchanting is that of glyphic teleportation, the use of an enchanted surface to send the one who touches it instantly from one place to another.

The origins of enchanting appear to lie with one of the xtauh civilizations that inhabit the northern brightness. A people remembered by later xtauh histories as the Stone Eaters, dwelling mostly along the banks of the Ehvanti, lived in the region during the Storm and Steel Eras, and were distinguished by the large, abstract, and highly individualistic symbols they carved into nearby sandstone cliffs, apparently as a form of devotion to their gods. It seems likely, given the similarity of some of the symbols to those used for emitting heat, that the first enchantments were discovered by accident as a byproduct of this practice. While the exact time of the invention cannot be known, enchanting was certainly in existence by the early Steel Era, where the records of the court of the Radiant Queens mention - dismissively - reports of their use among xtauh tribes.

The circumstances of its discovery, to say nothing of the miraculous nature of its effects, meant that the effects of enchantment were ascribed to the power of the gods. On the one hand, this - together with the habit of inscribing the glyphs on large masses of stone, whose internal properties could not be easily investigated - meant that the ultimate source of the energy being produced was not understood for some time thereafter; although the heat was moved out of the mass of stone and into the air, it was seen to simply appear. On the other hand, since it became clear that some glyphs produced a real, measurable effect and others did not, it sparked a search to find other glyphs that might be pleasing to the gods. This trend remained even after the collapse of the Stone Eaters' civilization, where stonecarvers specializing in this branch of knowledge spent their free time trying different configurations of symbols. The greater portion of their compatriots tended to consider them holy men (or, just as frequently, women), and their search to be a divinely inspired quest.

In the late Steel Era, the importance of three-dimensional geometry and proportions was understood, and allowed the miniaturization of some simple enchantments to fit onto portable objects. By the end of the Vigil Era, energy-direction glyphs had been derived, allowing emitted heat to be transferred across a surface rather than directly into the air, allowing it to be concentrated at another point. Not long afterward, in approximately 7 Cloud, the first known kinetic-energy transfer was achieved when the completion of a huge carving upon the exterior of a brick fortress wall in Ivridan resulted in a sudden blast of icy-cold air and the implosion of the wall, followed shortly by the collapse of weakened remainder of the fortress. The cold air provided the xtauh with the first clue about the sourcing of emitted energy from its enchantment's surroundings.

Over the course of half a turn in 14 Cloud, one test carving on a cliff face remained quietly inert before violently detonating, leaving a glassy crater and a strange pestilence around and downwind of the site. The carver remained alive long enough to draw a crude mockup of the glyph so that it could be avoided. Not long thereafter, in 16 Cloud, the first, undirected glyphic teleportation enchantments were made, and developed a religious significance as portals to the spirit realm.

By around 18 Cloud, it was understood that glyphs operated on received and stored ambient energy, and the first input-control glyphs were developed, allowing the enchantment to specify from where its energy was received, although the only available input type remained heat. In combination with energy-direction glyphs, this allowed heat to drawn from the air in one place and released in another, making possible the first refrigeration systems. The implications for storing food and surviving the desert heat were immense, and xtauh populations began to increase.

By 43 Cloud, xtauh had learned to create glyphic teleportation enchantments that pointed to a specific destination. These 'gates', with some limitations, allowed instantaneous travel across the xtauh sphere, but also led to a severe disruption of the species' civilizations. While more of the details are discussed in the technique's own article, the ultimate result of the expanding gate network was the Gate Wars of 48 to 50 Cloud, which resulted in the collapse or crippling of most northern xtauh civilizations and the destruction of most functioning gates.

The development of enchanting stagnated for a time among the xtauh, though many “safe” existing enchantments remained in use, and some were successfully miniaturized. Enchantments became widespread among the xtauh of the southern deserts for the first time, from whom they were learned by takma colonists. Since 75 Cloud or so, both xtauh and takmar have begun to investigate new glyphs again, in the case of the xtauh with more care in experimentation.