Ace Dreamer Wrote:Historical magic would have no real solid theoretical basis, just loads of 'working rules', many of which might be useless, or worse than useless. But, here and there, there would be useful practices, such as use of meditation, emotional control, training a 'magic self', that sort of thing.That was my idea. Let's take Alchemy: They discovered many important chemical processes like distillation, calcination or purification. But they did not think on then as steps in an experiment, they were mystical paths called things like "the green lion eating the sun" (solving gold in a solution of nitric or sulphuric acid); and they did not use it to create dyes, stronger metallic alloys or medicine, they were obsessed with the Philosopher Stone, a myth.
I'm not saying that there are the equivalent of full-blown combat mages ready to step out of the shadows of "Real World" history. What I'm saying is that there is a lot of weird stuff, not adequately explained by conventional science, and the odds are there are people with some strange, if relatively low-key and 'deniable', talents.
So as a "science" alchemy was useless -worse than useless, becuase it made real discoveries and hid it under a layer of secrets and codes. But it did make those discoveris, and eventually soem alchemists set the bases for the creation of Chemistry.
Magical traditions should be like this: Yes, there may have been some effects, discovered by change or emphirical research, butthey were so bogged donw in superstition that by the time something esembling the Scientific Mehod appeared, it was too late for magic to be studied properly.