>>24874535
>So Sanderson is actually sort of on the same wavelength as ancient sorcerers when he reduces the supernatural down to consistent systems with repeatable formulae
It was still poking at mystery. Confronting it. It was still risky business. Like, sure, the system in ancient China was “drink this mercury for longevity” at the time. Natural learning even very recently was spliced with spirituality, religion, etc, and all religion, all spirituality, has mystery, mysticism, at its core.
Magic is cutting edge. Again, it’s sort of like Marie Curie poking at radiation, trying to figure it out, and becoming sick in the process. Her diary is still radioactive. Or just Isaac Newton treating natural sciences as a side project in his obsessive theological disputes. He was obsessed with Hermetic alchemy and sacred geometry.
There’s definitely a system afoot (if there wasn’t nothing would happen), but it’s iffy and possibly even dangerous, and it may even be closer to the realm of psychology—the softest science of all—if it’s a lot like, or comparable to, tossing a piece of raw meat to a wild and dangerous animal. How personable is the magic? Magic is Alive. Spirits and gods and other forces that *interact*. Magic in ancient times usually had or was attributed it to external intelligence(s). Magical ability, even prophetic ability, was seen as a gift from the gods. Or demons. Do demons see themselves as magical? Do the gods for that matter?
Otherwise it’s just humans interpreting esoteric knowledge bases as magic, the way the Greeks did, or the way poisoners, alchemists, artificers and smiths were seen as sorcerers, and wizards, etc, once upon a time.
Magic is something to entertain, be it on your end or another’s, and perceptions will definitely change over time. The word for pharmacy came from an old Greek word for sorcery, and the word for magic in ancient Greece eventually took on or incorporated higher forms of natural learning, not solely just hocus pocus or superstition (which was, again, just the realm of psychology - the Greeks thought the Persian magi demon summoners and magicians - but later they realized they’re just tending to their own religion, and they have legitimate knowledge to impart).
Magic, like religion, or power, is relative and it updates itself, but the essential ingredients are mystery and exposure logic. Wonder and enchantment. “Wow, how, and why?”. It births religion. “I know something you don’t know”, “I can do something you can’t do”, “I have friends you don’t have”, etc, falls along into it.
The universe is its own stage as well as its own magician.
