About the Institute
History
The Institute traces its legal existence to the Convention concerning the Comparative Observation of Residual Thaumaturgic Phenomena, signed at Geneva on 17 September 1921, while the Second Assembly of the League of Nations was in session. It was not an organ of the League: the eleven participating governments created a separate technical organization and designated the Swiss Federal Council as depositary. Bern was selected for the permanent secretariat, while the central archive and reference laboratory were established in nearby Wabern.
The original parties, under the names used in the 1921 instrument, were the Swiss Confederation, the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Republic of Finland, the French Republic, the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Norway, the Republic of Poland, the Kingdom of Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The first network brought together 28 observatories, most of them attached to universities, meteorological institutes or national standards laboratories.
Regular exchange of records was interrupted after September 1939. Stations in Bern, Stockholm, Dublin and Lisbon maintained reduced observations, and the Secretariat issued no consolidated European bulletin between 1941 and 1946. Because the Institute had been constituted by a separate convention, it did not lapse when the League of Nations was dissolved in April 1946. A revised convention, opened for signature at The Hague in 1948, admitted non-European states and established the present Assembly of Parties and Executive Council.
In October 1954, alongside the wider international work then under way on common measurement standards, the Institute adopted the International Thaumometric Scale. The reference value was assigned retrospectively to the best-documented maximum of 1854 (100.000 points); surviving observations made before 1921 were recalculated with published uncertainty estimates rather than treated as direct readings on the modern scale.
The Bern Protocol on the Control of Dethaumizing Technologies was opened for signature on 22 September 1987 and entered into force on 1 January 1990. Its status tables preserve the names of states at the time of each treaty action—for example, the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—and record later accessions or successions separately. As of 1 January 2026, the Protocol has 63 parties.
TALOS-2, a fictional 12-unit secondary payload, was launched into a near-polar orbit by a Soyuz–Fregat from the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana, on 18 December 2019. Its commissioning added orbital cross-checks to the long-established ground and balloon programmes; it did not replace surface stations, which remain the basis of the historical series.
Legal status and governance
The IIMBM is an independent treaty-based intergovernmental organization. It is not a United Nations specialized agency and does not exercise regulatory powers within member states. The Assembly of Parties approves the programme and budget every four years; the twelve-member Executive Council supervises implementation; and the Director-General heads the Secretariat. Measurement data remain the property of the originating national services unless released under the Institute's open-data rules.
Mission
The mission of the Institute is to provide member states and the international community with complete, reliable and timely information on the state of the global magical background, to produce scientifically grounded forecasts of its dynamics, and to coordinate measures for the preservation of the residual background and the limitation of anthropogenic dethaumization.
Scientific position on the causes of depletion
The 2024 Consolidated Assessment distinguishes measured trends from explanations proposed for them. It finds high confidence in a long-term decline of the standardized index, but only low to medium confidence in attribution. The principal hypotheses under test are interference associated with dense electrical infrastructure, alteration of historically mapped high-gradient corridors, and a slow natural decay of the relic field. Reported correlations with urbanization or survey participation are treated as possible sampling effects; the Institute does not regard belief or disbelief itself as a demonstrated physical cause. Results are published with confidence intervals, instrument-drift corrections and an explicit statement of data coverage.
Structure
Department of Thaumometry
Responsible for operating the observing network, metrological assurance, calibration of thaumometers against the BET-3 standard, and quality control of primary data.
Department of Forecasting
Develops and maintains the ensemble of numerical background-dynamics models (the THAUM-GCM family) and prepares seasonal and medium-term forecast bulletins.
Department of International Cooperation
Services meetings of the treaty bodies, maintains the Protocol status tables, liaises with national focal points and coordinates technical assistance. Volunteer observations may support anomaly reports but are not incorporated into the reference series without instrumental verification.
Leadership
