Lore-Wise, where does a Paladin draw upon their Divine Magic from?

[Ryan77k]

Doubt this would ever be addressed by the devs but for the longest time I've wondered how it is that Paladins suddenly added spells to their sword and board arsenal. I know obviously that the Paladins in FF - and fantasy in general - have the ability to channel divine (or white) magic, but I always felt like it came a little bit out of nowhere in XIV, to the point that not even the job quests ever really refer to anything you do as "holy" or "divine", then we got the "Divine Magic Mastery" trait, giving name to their particular school of spellcasting, being a reference to FF11 for one, but also being namedly unique as compared to Black Magic, White Magic, Red Magic ect.

So out of sheer interest, I'd love to hear what other people's take on the source of a Paladin's spellcraft is.

[Cilia]

The only source a non-denominational paladin has - absolute faith in their own self-righteousness.

[MistakeNot]

Doubt this would ever be addressed by the devs but for the longest time I've wondered how it is that Paladins suddenly added spells to their sword and board arsenal. I know obviously that the Paladins in FF - and fantasy in general - have the ability to channel divine (or white) magic, but I always felt like it came a little bit out of nowhere in XIV, to the point that not even the job quests ever really refer to anything you do as "holy" or "divine", then we got the "Divine Magic Mastery" trait, giving name to their particular school of spellcasting, being a reference to FF11 for one, but also being namedly unique as compared to Black Magic, White Magic, Red Magic ect.

So out of sheer interest, I'd love to hear what other people's take on the source of a Paladin's spellcraft is.

Magic is magic in FF14. The different schools of magic are just different ways of channeling and controlling aether.
So the source of a Paladin's spells is the same as all magical powers of all classes and jobs - aether. Either their own (most common) or the aether around them.

Paladins presumably learn it as part of their Paladin training. Except for free paladins, like ourselves, nearly all paladins are part of the Sultansworn - the elite bodyguards of the Sultan/Sultana in Ul'dah. As bodyguards they would naturally learn various ways of protecting and healing their charges.

[Anonymoose]

At this point we can be relatively confident that when it's not purely elemental (but some kind of mix of energies or aspected in a way other than elementally), aether can be influenced by psychology (it looks like what you associate it with). Bad feelz and DRK techniques, virtuous feelz and PLD techniques, the magicks of NIN and SAM, chakra stuffs, etc. It also does some of the lifting in explaining away the Shadowbringers revelations that Darkness is responsible for creating astral charges and vice versa even though all of those aetherial representations are visually still shadow = umbral.