What is "formalisms"

Usage examples of "formalisms".

When I was buried they would be written on a sheet of paper narrow as my thumb, in the symbols of Formalisms & Transformations, and tucked between my breasts and buried with me.

The question was, would Hifalutin Magic do it, or did I have to move clear on up to Formalisms & Transformations?

Macon Desirard Guthrie was no common person, but a man skilled in Formalisms & Transformations.

She had cast Spells half the night, she’d done Formalisms & Transformations till her hands ached, and she’d gotten only one answer.

There was a reading of the Articles of the Confederation, with a commentary to follow from the senior Magician of Rank pointing out the satisfying parallels between the structure of the Articles and the notations of Formalisms & Transformations.

A Magician of Rank, using his Formalisms & Transformations against an old woman-phaugh, it’d make a worm puke for shame.

And for the Magicians of Rank, the highest level-the Formalisms & Transformations.

The Magicians of Rank didn’t take kindly to a twelve­year-old girl in pigtails being able to call them in and set them to doing Formalisms & Transformations like you’d show off a fancy Mule team at a fair-and they took even less kindly to not knowing why they were unable to refuse her, or why they were unable to speak of it afterward.

But seeing as how he didn’t have, and no number of Formalisms & Transformations tried by him or any of the other Magicians of Rank would yield it up, there was little point in fretting over it.

Spells were not a part of Formalisms & Transformations, they fell into Granny Magic, and mixing levels was a sure way to get into a mess.

And then there was the speech of the Magicians of Rank, restricted to those nine, laboriously learned along with the Formalisms & Transformations, intended to force respect by its elegance and elaborate usage, as artificial in its way as the mode of the Grannys.

While Responsible of Brightwater went about her interfering and infuriating business on this planet, we were truly Magicians, with the power of Formalisms & Transformations at our command.

Either you leave off your drivel and come along to get started on that, or I’ll push you off the roof—how’s that for managing without Formalisms & Transformations?

At fifty-three going on fifty-four he was a sure and experienced man with his Formalisms & Transformations, and he made no fuss whatever over bringing Terrence Merryweather McDaniels the 6th down to his parents.

Reading a paper is always something of an abstraction -can you really believe the experiments reported in the dry formalisms which the scientific style demands?