Author Aztec
Magic is the result of a process of shaping and manifesting distilled mana through a receiving force to alter the physical properties of the world. Because distilled mana naturally permeates in the world in form of corpuscles and ansibles, it can be intercepted and forced to take on predictable characteristics through the process known as "shaping" or "sculpting".
Because the creatures of this world evolved under constant mana irradiation, our anatomy developed in a way to handle and exploit it. A so-called biological shaping (or natural shaping, or organic shaping) relies entirely on how an organism processes the ambient mana. "Academic" shapers discipline their own nervous and circulatory systems into sort of a moulding channel (academic term is "managuide"). It requires a deep awareness of their own physiology and the surrounding world, as they must precisely regulate their corporeal and mental processes, and carefully navigate the mana through their body, in order to shape it into a calculable form. The shaper must maintain a solid mathemagical understanding of natural laws, because once the distilled mana is inside the body, the mind must guide it. The final release of the shaped mana carries great danger, as the shaper pushes the channeled energy out through their skin, forcing reality to reshape according to the mental blueprint the built in the process of mana-guiding.
"Intuitive" shapers achieve mana-guiding through intrinsic, sometimes almost mystical connection to the world and their own physiology. Intuitive techniques include monastic kind of trainings, aimed on refining the inward feelings through rigid discipline of interoception. Easier path is to be born with natural bodily or mental predisposition and deviations (astral mutants, droaithe). Some intuitive casters can also tap into the energy seeping from the Realm of Nature to control and shape the mana, which could be considered the hardest of the known intuitive techniques.
In time, we developed magical apparatus to shape mana outside the body, streamlining the processes and making them much more accessible and less risky. Among them are scrolls, staves, wands and rods, and various of other uniquely designed items that serve as managuides.
Cheap, temporary storage of magic, made with a specially enhanced inhibiting paper that keeps the mana particles still and shielded so they do not react with the surroundings while the magical ink forms "tracks" for the conscious to follow. During the creation, the scribe must magically bind a minuscule fraction of their own conscious essence into the apparatus. This bound fragment of mind remains dormant until a caster triggers the scroll. Once awake, the consciousness "reads" the written script and shapes the releasing mana into the spell.
These apparatus design is based on the core principle of scrolls, but instead of expendable paper it utilises catalysts -- a more permanent solution in form of enchanted crystals, woods, metals, etc. When a user channels mana into the device with a sequence of special motions, or frequencies, or just simply by pressing on a stud or switching a tumbler, this bound consciousness wakes up.
The mana-tech managuide automates shaping by pairing refined mana with a firmament crystal reconfigured to mirror the structural patterns of natural phenomenon. The process works by injecting the mana into the crystal, which forces it through the crystal's geometric lattice due to its natural mana repulsion, and shapes it much like glass refracting and polarising a beam of light.