Lightknight said:
It actually is the one truth. Everything else is something people just call magic, while in reality its a toolbox or a bazooka or a machinegun with different particle effects.
Or, perhaps, wise versa?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". (c).
I, in fact, hate Tolkienesque magic.
Because it's not magic there - it's much more like priestly powers. Remember – Gandalf, for instance, was not a wizard per se - he was a demigod. (I might be wrong, though - dont't remeber all intricacies Tolkien wrought in detail)
MY idea of magic that it's like quantum physics - governed by strict and utterly predicable rules... but those rules are so deep, bizzare and require so much time and intelligence to comprehend that most that try and use it never really understand HOW it works - only performing rituals that suppose to work, and afraid to chance a movement or an utterance - because they are afraid (and for a reason) of terrible consequences... and those spells are were discovered by trial and error. (And every error usually leaving researcher dead or crippled... or worse)
However, a truly powerful mage, who knows exactly how and why it works, would cast spells with 100% predictable result, much faster and efficient then mundane 'shamanistic' mages.
But once a critical mass of those 'true mages' accumulate, it's no longer 'magic' and much more like exotic science.
Of course, idea of magic being appeal to 'higher powers', with understandably unpredictable results, also have it's merits - but, like I said, it's not magic - it's divine (or unholy) invocations.
And I don't consider it 'magic', just like I would not call art of calling Bill Gates and convincing him to buy you a new car 'Conjuration trick'.
