Magic is actually a spectrum of physical effects created by the "soul" of the creature. Because different creatures have different soul-bodies, the magical capabilities and affinities of each species are different.
Most girl species have a series of spirit-matter organs called "chakras" which are used to create magical effects. The potential and flexibility of these organs is very high, but most people do not develop them beyond a basic state. The spectrum of organs provide girls with an easily accessible spectrum of magical types.

The "Elements", Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, are nonsensical from a physical standpoint--everything is made of energy, and nothing truly holds any sort of elemental essence. They are, however, quite valid concepts from a magical standpoint, because they directly correspond with four of the five primary magical chakras in the majority of magic-using species. Though each of these chakras have myriad abilities and are designed to combine their energies fairly readily, it is easier to simply master the use of a single chakra at a time than to use them all at once. As a result, many magic users only make use of one or two of their chakras and this is reflected in the fact that their magic is always of a type readily producable by that chakra. In some cultures, the chakras are named after the elements they most easily produce, but these are partially misleading, as each chakra is actually attuned to many possible effects and uses--for example, "Light" magic and "Air" magic both origionate from the same chakra in most mages. While some cultures refer to their chakras by element, other magic-users refer to them by a certain color.

There are five primary chakras in the average girl--the "Red" or "Fire" chakra, the "Blue" or "Water" chakra, the "Green" or "Earth" chakra, the "White" or "Air" chakra, and the "Chroma" chakra, which is called by many names including the "Black", "Grey", "Void", "Sorcerous" or "Rainbow" chakra. Most chakras are flexible enough to produce nearly any spell effect that a different chakra could produce, just not with the same level of efficiency. Their specializations mean that simply attuning a spell to the correct chakra (which happens instinctually in most mages) makes it much easier to master.

• The Red Chakra
  The Red chakra is a no-nonsense energy producer. It feeds raw power in unrefined forms to the other chakras, and can release this power into the world in a few different forms--primarily fire, but also potentially as lightning, movement, or just about any other direct application of energy. (That is why many combat-oriented mages who are uncomfortable with air magic can nonetheless produce lightning bolts with relative ease.) Uncontrolled and unrefined energies are the specialty of this chakra. It is better at generating raw energy--particularly physical energy--than any other chakra, but it's capabilities beyond that are limited. Despite this, it remains in heavy use among magic users since simple fire generation has proven a very popular means of combat.

• The Green Chakra
  The Green chakra is best described as the chakra of organization, stability, and complex relationships, and the energies that most easily maintain such. It is adept at providing a magical resilience to items, and is actually a chakra well suited to biology as well. As it's energies are excellent at binding things into stable forms, it is often referred to as the Earth chakra. The true power of the Green chakra is not in earth, however, but in it's (largely unrecognized) ability to perform complex feats and create balanced, lasting structures. Enchantments are often considered the forte of the blue chakra, but the most powerful and precise of permanent magical effects almost always involve the green chakra. Almost all magic that involves creating physical matter uses a combination of the Earth chakra, for it's organizational abilities, and another chakra, typically blue or red, to provide the raw energy to form the matter.

• The Blue Chakra
  The Blue chakra concerns itself with controlled dynamics. It is skilled in controlling the interactions and movements of energy and matter. While the Red chakra generates energy and the Green chakra organizes it, the Blue chakra manipulates and controls it. It is the biological counterpart to the green chakra--between the two, most biological effects can be attained easily, as biology is a combination of complex organization and constant, controlled action. As it can easily direct the flow of physical matter, it is often called the Water chakra, but it can also redirect or create wellsprings of new energy, giving it unusual enchantment abilities as well. Simply creating a random wellspring of magical energy in an item gives "Water" mages a way to make effective (if unpredictable) magical items. While this may appear to mean that the Blue chakra creates energy, that is not the case--it simply allows for control of existing energy flows, which allows external and ambient energies to be siphoned more efficiently.

• The White Chakra
  The white chakra is adept at the manipulation and creation of energy fields and the generation and control of ethereal, non-physical energies. This makes it a natural at dealing with highly ephemeral energy types such as those found in spirit matter and certain types of magic, while it's ability to control energy fields makes it excel at the creation of lightning and other such energy-based spells. It is poor at controlling physical energy unless the energy is dispersed over a wide area; this, in part, has given it the monicker of the Air chakra. An often overlooked ability of the air chakra is that it is just as good at manipulating light and similar energies. "Light" and "White" magic both tend to heavily involve the white chakra. Though the white chakra is poor at generating biological effects, it is actually quite capable of healing spells which it creates by suffusing the target's spirit with the energy it uses to maintain and regenerate it's body. (This is actually similar to how blue chakra healing works)

• The Chroma Chakra
  The Chroma Chakra is actually one of the most powerful chakras and is designed with flexibility rather than speciality in mind. It can produce much more astounding effects than a normal chakra, but at correspondingly greater energy cost, and the Chroma chakra is more difficult to master than any of the others. It's abilities are somewhat less defined than the others--the chroma chakra provides complex, exotic, long-term or exceptionally strong powers where the other chakras provide quicker, more easily accessible powers. Extremely specialized spells such as metamagic, divination and other complex effects generally utilize the chroma chakra to one extent or another. It is capable of complex manipulation of both physical and magical energies at every scale, but has none of the specialized 'shortcuts' that the other chakras have. Almost any spell is more efficient when cast through a chakra other than the chroma chakra, but once a spell reaches a certain level of complexity, only the Chroma chakra has the ability to generate and control it. (In very skilled spellcasters, the chroma chakra will often call upon the other chakras to produce the energies it requires while orchestrating the creation of the spell.) Generally, "Dark" and "Angelic" magics tend to involve the chroma chakra heavily (though they rely on different chakras for support), as do "grey" magics and certain aspects of sorcery. The magic known as "Void" magic is almost entirely Chroma chakra.

Void magic is the magic of everything and nothing. It is the magic that recognizes that concepts like earth, fire, air and water are just that--concepts. Void magic takes a special kind of mentality to master. While lower level void "spells" are easy to learn, the more advanced ones are not, because they require a sort of understanding that defies conventional thought.

Put simply, void magic is the magic of reality in it's truest form, detached from the mind and it's filters. Thus, the more attached a person is to their own concepts and understanding of reality, the less mastery of void magic they can obtain. This is almost the inverse of other magic types; other magics, taking cues as they do from the person's mind, are strengthened when the person has a clear and unquestionable conception of what they are doing (even if it is merely a psychological construct). Conversely, the more a person is able to shed their own beliefs and preconceptions, the more power they will obtain through the use of void magic.

Of course, void magic can be "taught," and this has the paradoxical effect of making the person believe that they must not believe anything, but so long as a person is open-minded enough to reach out and grasp the true universe, it does not truly matter what they think--and that is the true key. It is not what you think, but what you don't think, that limits your power as a void mage. If your beliefs limit you, you are hindered. If your beliefs open you up, you are empowered.

In practice, void magic is used for all manner of strange, often unbelievable effects. The simpler ones are easy enough, both to use and to believe--things like sensing the presence of other creatures in a certain radius around you, or casting spells using less mana. Some are strange and seem rather extreme, but do not seem impossible--such as the power to disenchant an item without ever having to break through it's magical defenses, or permanently alter one's own chakras. The most powerful and difficult void spells defy the imagination--spells that make the caster imperceptible in every way, spells that alter the memories of entire nations of people, and even spells that allow one to speak directly with the goddesses themselves. Void magic is one of the most difficult, and it is one of the only kinds of magic that no one--no race and no class--is born with an advantage in, or even knowing how to use. All the usual bets are off; void magic is utterly dependant on the mind of it's user, with all other factors being secondary at best. Even mana seems to be a questionable issue in the use of void magic; some void mages don't even seem to need it.

Other (Non-Spellcasting) Chakras

• The Pink Chakra (aka the Love Chakra)
  The Pink Chakra is not used in the generation of magic per se, but rather, serves as a transciever for numerous forms of energy. These forms are not typically associated with "Magic" and deal primarily with spiritual communication and social functions. The Pink Chakra is most often invoked during lovemaking and provides the "Spiritual Connection" that is so often talked about. It has secondary effects as a sensory organ, specifically to identify other members of one's clan or family when you have not met them before, in connection with the person's genetic code. In fact, genetic fingerprinting of a sort occurs with the growth of the pink chakra in order to facilitate this.

• The Flowstar Chakra
  The flowstar chakra gets it's name from the way it appears when mapped--it looks like a series of glowing, artery-like rivers that cover the creature. These are the primary mechanism for the instant healing that souls possess, and their sophistication and power directly determines how much energy a soul needs to spend to maintain and heal its body. The most powerful flowstar chakras belong to the girl races; the least powerful belong to the monster races.

• The Gastris Chakra
  Sometimes considered an extension of the Flowstar Chakra, the Gastris Chakra has one purpose, and that is to enable the ingestion and digestion of prey. It is the spiritual counterpart to the mouth, throat, and digestive tract. It is the most specialized of all chakras. In fact, it can produce only two effects: It can absorb magical energy, and it can distort the size of objects to allow the creature to swallow creatures that are larger than they are. In fact, the Gastris chakra will go so far as to distort armor that the person is wearing in order to accomodate her prey. This distortion is more spacial than material, so the metal itself will not be bent--if removed, it will resume it's original shape. The unique powers of the Gastris Chakra often result in a creature's stomach appearing to be bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.

The Flowstar and Gastris chakras are the only chakras that almost every animal species in Ishara possesses. However, the vast majority of higher creatures have all eight of these chakras. The power and efficiency of these chakras is not the same between species, however, and some species have additional chakras that give them unique abilities.

The strongest spellcasters overall tend to be girls and angels; they have strong chakras all across the board. Demons have strong chroma and fire chakras, but their other chakras tend to be lacking. Fae chakras are powerful, but are often devoted to exotic, pre-defined powers like illusion, flight, and so forth. The biggest weakness of Fae is a weak red chakra; this places them at a disadvantage in any serious firefight (if you'll pardon the pun).

Many magic-users do not know of the existance of chakras at all--they simply use magic intuitively. Conversely, others know enough to cast spells directly on their own chakras, achieving extremely powerful--if dangerous--effects.