"This barrier kept the outside world's common sense outside, leaving what lacked common sense inside, in Gensokyo."
— The Touhou Project
Our legends tell of a time long ago, a Time of Myths, when trolls lurked under bridges, dragons flew through the air, every kingdom had a court wizard, and gods rained down thunderbolts from their flying chariots. But in our modern era, such fantastical things can't seem to be found (at least for those of us not in on the Masquerade). This has led many Fantasy writers to posit that our world was once teeming with magic and monsters, but at some point in history The Magic Goes Away, leaving behind the mundane world we know today.
But where did all that magical stuff go? If you don't like the thought that everything magical simply died off, the handy answer is they went to another world—usually Another Dimension, sometimes a distant planet. This is Where The Magic Went.
There are two forms this trope can take. One says that all fantastical beings originated on the Earth we know, but for one reason or another (a weakening Background Magic Field, persecution from the Anti-Magical Faction, no longer having enough humans who believe in them) they retreated into another realm.
The other says that this alternate world is where those fantastical beings came from in the first place, and our legends are accounts of when they crossed over to our world (or when someone from our world crossed over to theirs and returned with stories to tell). In this case, it's less that The Magic Went Away, and more that The Magic Doesn't Visit Anymore.
In either case, the important thing is that this world is populated by the magical beings told of in our ancient legends (or at least by those beings' descendants). Thus, not every Magical Land qualifies—for example, Narnia is full of giants and centaurs and Talking Animals, but it's never suggested that the Narnians were the inspirations for our world's legends (and The Magician's Nephew makes that impossible, as it shows Narnia didn't exist until the 19th Century).
May overlap with Spirit World, Land of Faerie, or Fantastic Nature Reserve.
Examples
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Comic Books
- Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld reveals that Earth used to be home to spellcasters and many fantastical creatures, but when a celestial event altered the workings of Earth's magic, they retreated across dimensions and settled in Gemworld.
- The Sandman (1989): In "A Midsummer Night's Dream", the Faerie Beings return to Earth one last time to view William Shakespeare's play of the same name, based on their own stories. Morpheus commands a design on a hill to open and serve as the portal between Earth and Faerie.
Film — Animated
- The Flight of Dragons: The green wizard Carolinus observes that mankind is developing mechanics, physics, and other sciences while moving away from magic and mysticism. He calls for a council of wizards, where he proposes creating an enclave on Earth where magic and mystical beings can live undetected by humans. Three of the four wizards concur, but the red wizard Ommadon nixes the idea as a "fool's paradise." It's not until Ommadon is defeated that this invisible enclave is created, where unicorns, fairies, and wizards can exist unbothered by humans and their science.
Film — Live-Action
- Halloweentown: The titular Halloweentown is a town in a dimension separate from the mortal world where magical creatures live, which includes witches, ogres, goblins, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other various creatures. It was created by witches and warlocks after they left the mortal realm to keep themselves safe from the mortals who were frightened of them, and to keep themselves from turning hateful in turn, during the Dark Ages. The portal between the realms only opens on Halloween until the Cromwells open the portal permanently at the end of Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge, after which point magic is slowly introduced to the mortal world.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Thor uses Norse Mythology's concept of there being nine worlds, and has the Norse gods and the Frost Giants living on the planets Asgard and Jotunheim, respectively — our myths of them come from when the Asgardians repelled Jotunheim's invasion of Earth. Later films would go on to establish planets inhabited by Dwarves, Dark Elves, and Fire Giants.
- Thor: Love and Thunder shows that most of Earth's other gods have buggered off to Omnipotence City, and no longer have much, if anything, to do with mortal affairs.
Literature
- Dad, Are You the Tooth Fairy?: Discussed — Gabi's father claims that all manner of magical beings (the Tooth Fairy, dragons, etc.) used to live on Earth, but had to leave because of technology (however, he could be making that up). He suggests that the magical entities may have relocated to the moon or the stars.
- Everworld: The backstory is that, long ago, the gods worshipped by the Greeks, Norsemen, Aztecs, and a dozen other cultures created a new universe called Everworld and relocated there, bringing along all their supernatural creatures, as well as a smattering of human worshippers. Over time, other legendary figures also made their way to Everworld (such as King Arthur and Merlin, as well as Ka-Anor, a god worshipped by an alien civilization).
- Fablehaven: The Fantastic Nature Reserves scattered around the world, such as Fablehaven itself, were created to be refuges for magical creatures as human civilization grew. A few sprites, gnomes and fairies still live in the outer world, but most of the mythical beings, and all of the powerful and impressive ones, now reside in the safety of the preserves.
- Guards! Guards!: Dragons big enough to pose a threat to humanoids on the Disc seemingly went extinct ages ago, but in fact still exist in a nearby dimension. The plot of the book is set off when a cult conjures one as part of a plot to overthrow Patrician Vetinari in favor of a heroic knight that "slays" the dragon (while the cult actually unsummons it), only for the dragon to figure out how to return from that world, kill the "hero" right back and take over the city, demanding human sacrifice.
- Peter David's Hidden Earth series: giants, mermaids, vampires, dragons, and many other fantasy creatures all originated in Another Dimension. Specifically, they were that dimension's most violent and troublesome denizens, which is why they were banished to our dimension, with Earth as their Penal Colony. A small number of them were sent to Earth thousands of years ago, giving rise to numerous legends about monsters (before humanity killed them off). When a much larger batch of these creatures is sent in the 21st Century, it's The Magic Comes Back... and The End of the World as We Know It.
- Mick Oberon: The majority of The Fair Folk have fled back to Fairy Land due to the rising prevalance of Technology and Cold Iron in human society.
- The Talking Parcel is set in Mythologia, a Magical Land Beneath the Earth that a wizard created as a sanctuary. Fantasy creatures disappeared from Earth because people stopped believing in them, but in Mythologia, they all believe in each other.
Live-Action TV
- The 10th Kingdom posits that The Brothers Grimm were Multiversal travelers who discovered a universe containing such people as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Rumpelstiltskin. Upon returning to Earth, they wrote books of fairy tales, which were actually true accounts of the people they met in that world (which implies an Alternate History where none of these fairy tales were known on Earth until the Grimms wrote them down in the 1800's).
- In Stargate SG-1 and the broader Stargate-verse, where the magic went is ... everywhere else in the universe. The franchise is built on the Ancient Astronauts premise, with all our mythological gods being aliens using technology that looked like magic. However, the main way aliens travel between planets is via a Portal Network of Stargates. When Earth's Stargate was buried underground millennia ago, that cut off our contact with the aliens and all the other planets where they're still worshipped as gods.
Multi-Media
- Nasuverse: In this world, magic is gradually fading over time and is being replaced by science. As a result, most magical beings, including mythological monsters and gods, have retreated to "The Reverse Side Of The World", a land that exists underneath the normal world, where magic still thrives. As magic has continued to fade away, all entrances to the Reverse Side have become sealed off.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons, Forgotten Realms campaign setting. In the distant past, the Earth and the otherdimensional world of Toril were closer together and Earth humans knew about the magic, deities, and fantastic monsters of Toril. Over time the two worlds drifted apart and the connections between them diminished, causing Earth humans to consider the truth about Toril to be just mythological stories and Toril being called the Forgotten Realms by those who remember the truth. Additionally, a number of Earth's ancient gods moved entirely to Toril over time as their worship declined back home, such as the entire Egyptian pantheon and the Norse god Tyr.
- In Nomine: The Marches are an other-dimensional realm where humanity's dreams play out, and which are populated by the Ethereals, spirits born from the dreams, beliefs, and culture of humanity. All creatures of myth — monsters, fairies, culture heroes and villains, archetypal figures, and the old pagan gods — originated in the Marches. In ancient times, these beings often entered and lived in the physical world directly, but the Purity Crusade of Archangel Uriel either killed them or drove them out of reality and back to the Marches, where they exist today.
- Shadowrun and its sister game Earthdawn: When the cycle of magic ebbs, magical creatures either leave Earth to go to more magical realms (the Horrors), go into hibernation (dragons) or revert to mundane versions (elves, dwarfs, trolls and orks all became normal humans) until the magic returns. When it did return humans suddenly turned back into elves, dwarfs, etc., the dragons woke up, and some of the less powerful Horrors began finding their way back to Earth.
Video Games
- The Longest Journey Saga has Arcadia — a parallel world to what we know as "Earth" (known as "Stark" in the series), where all of Earth's original magical creatures, as well as magic itself, was split off about 12 thousand years ago.
- Touhou: Gensokyo, the main setting of the series, is a land where things that have been forgotten or have become "fantasy" in the regular world, such as youkai, lost items, and other such things, wind up. It is isolated from the regular world not only by the Boundary Between Reality and Fantasy set up by Gensokyo's creator, Yukari Yakumo, but by the Great Hakurei Barrier created in 1885.
- Valheim is set in the "10th world" (Norse Mythology only has nine
), a kind of purgatory/prison for Odin's enemies along with other monsters like trolls and dragons which no longer exist in Midgard.
Western Animation
- The Owl House: In the first episode, it's established by Eda that many of the Human World's stories of monsters and magic stemmed from inhabitants of the Boiling Isles making their way from one world to the other.
- Star Trek: The Animated Series: "The Magicks of Megas Tu" reveals that the denizens of Megas Tu (an alternate dimension that runs on magic rather than traditional physics) visited Earth long ago, giving rise to all manner of stories about magical beings, before fleeing when the witch trials started up. In particular, the jolly Satyr-like guy named Lucien who befriends the Enterprise crew? That dude was the inspiration for Satan.
