Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: A book to help beginner mages study on their own, contains a collection of lectures covering basic topics, presented by various older mages.
A compendium for the knowledge-thirsty initiate:
Magic, and the attainment of magic has been known as a tempting, Faust-like offering to the unknowing masses for much longer than almost the beginning records of human history. It’s the perfect embodiment of human ‘must-not-have but desperately-want-to-have,’ sneaking into fairytales of mighty fire-spewing dragons versus knights in resplendent steel and bellowing fire snaking down the lungs of maidens burned at the stake. No doubt, you know these stories well, but for the sake of convenience, I’d ask you to permit me to tell you to let them slip from your mind.
The reality is that magic, much as you or we like to humor the thought of a supernatural power and whispers of guidance from beyond the great veil, is nothing of the sort. It’d be wrong and on the nose for several reasons to refer to it as ‘base,’ but perhaps it’s the closest thing to a valuable, grounded start.
The mind, precisely your own mind, shapes the reality around you, and how you acknowledge and experience the reality around you shapes your own mind. This interplay of minds and reality for one and all has come to be known as, and referred to as Consciousness Grids, for the sake of sharp-minded convenience, easy to find within yourself on your feet. Together, the structures that this loving melding of Mind and Reality is what stabilizes the idea, the concept of Reality Itself, forming a consensus of what constitutes an “objective” Reality. Curiously, or perhaps not so, humans have developed to exist upon their Grid, with all the subconscious inklings of power and prowess that follows.
Magic follows the idea of the Grid more closely than anything else – or at least, the human concept of Magic. Not entirely unlike how those fairytales have helped shape things, but… no, not quite. The human mind comes to impose its change upon the Consensus, often subtly for the lack of resistance. It’s an art, one you need to learn how to refine to help form the Grid to your wandering Desires.
The Human Concept of Magic, or rather being a user of it, a Mage, as it were, is about facing the reality of Reality. All the horrors and escaping dreams of eversleeping minds of other humans and other curious things alike, in essence – all coalescing into a sprawling gallery of spatial perspective and logic, coming face to face with how Reality might just mean something so very differently to how You Yourself perceive it.
Magic’s truly a curious thing, isn’t it? Not to fret; you’ll have more than enough time to be taught. I’m sure.
Esoteric Musings... 