> In a society where information is king, the question "What's new?" pops up the most often. We aren't satisfied with the now. There has to be something more, something different, something that will set the world on fire and yet be passé in the next five nanoseconds.
A few colleagues say that this is a sickness that plagues us. Sometimes, when I see yet another magician wannabe die from trying out a new and untested theory on a dare, I'm half-inclined to agree. But it is also this continuous drive for the new and different that keeps us moving forward and learning. Stagnation has never been one of our overriding traits. The only problem is that we tend to forget or disregard the lessons of the past and so lose part of the bigger picture.
To put things in plainer language for the attention-deficient "now crowd": new is not bad, but neither is old. So before you move on to the meaty bits that you're craving, take your Magic Theory veggies. Trust me, they're good for you.
> Silicon Mage
Regardless of your background, mages, shamans and scholars of magic alike can always use an overview of the basics. Too often, we get lost in the details and need to be reminded that there are still many things that we simply haven't discovered yet-and many times the key lies within the things that we already know.
> Or think we know. Magic is too fluid for us to claim that it can only act in certain ways. Look at what happened during Halley's Comet, or the changes we've seen in the past ten years, and then tell me that.
> BethSheba
> I'm not too sure of that, Beth. What may look like chaos and an upset in the order of things might actually be natural. We just haven't figured what patterns or rules of behavior it follows decisively enough to be able to make that call.
> Magister
> Hermetics! Always analyzing things. Accept that magic just is and learn to live with it.
> Grizzly
To give an example, we know that in order to track someone through ritual sorcery, we must have samples of the person's DNA: blood, skin, hair and the like. The question now is: why? As in, why is that necessary? Why does that work? And why is this relevant?
The answer is simple, really. Magic is a science in the truest sense-"science" coming from the Latin word "scienta," or knowledge-and has its own laws, which allows us to predict its effects to a degree. Just how large or small that degree is has been in dispute long before the Awakening, along with arguments of whether magic is an art or science.
> And it's become extremely cliché as to which sort of magician will argue for one or the other. We all know that hermetics will argue for science and that shamans will argue for art. This duality conveniently neglects that many of us are somewhere in between. This whole affair parallels some of the debates that used to (and sometimes still do) go on about religion versus science. Both are equally valid; just because I know how something works intellectually doesn't mean that I can't believe that I had Owl's help.
> Whisper