In a dusty library somewhere in the land lies many dusty tomes, people come and go, vellum and scrolls taken and returned, and in an old, rarely visited section sits an old... scarred man, his long, sinewy fingers splayed to hold the cracked, dusty scroll on the table while he read. "Ah, old friend, I knew you were more than you claimed..."
There is no reason to try to classify all the aspects of the arcanum. Scholars are always trying to define the very distinct, and different flavors of the arcane that we see, but from mine own experiences and the observation of others, and even strange, fae creatures that might even be qualified as arcane, I have always come to the same, all-too-obvious conclusion. That is, that all arcane magics are the same.
They are the same, but they are different. Cut from the same cloth, but dyed differently, each flavor of the arcanum is a different flavor and the more "types", and I say "types" loosely, that you can touch, the easier this point of view becomes to see. In students I have seen for years the aptitude spark flames, freeze water, affect the whether, to heal the flesh, or to harm the flesh, and less often we see students who have an aptitude in all of these facets. A question everyone has asked is... why? Why can't a student who can create fireballs not mold the earth to his will with the same aptitude?
In our studies, we find that it just comes down to aptitude, either they can, or they cannot. Most sorcerors now, with proper tutelage and the proper tools, for example, rituals or runes, chants or spells, can learn to touch the other facets of their magic to some extent, these tools are merely focuses and amplifiers of course, working in varying degrees to tap into ones' latent talents. These people we typically classify, mage, wizard, witch, pyromancer, necromancer... their aptitude limits them somewhat, and it is this wall that does NOT exist in certain sorcerous beings that interests me. High mages, Archmagi, Archmage, High Sorcerors, The Enlightened, it is those whos magic knows no boundaries that I have found myself interested in.
This library, has countless resources, touching on the history of orders of mages that we have not even begun to discover, I have read of guilds and gaurdians, heroes and villains, and none of them truly try to explain the topic of...source. I have gotten slightly off track but it is important to build up to my fundamental argument for what, or where, we get our abilities from, this seeming endless fount of power that we draw on, the veil of something that we can touch, this draught we consume to fuel the magicks of the world.
What we draw upon is a large, multi-faced, wild flowing river. Imagine it, hundreds of different currents, different flavors and combinations that you can draw upon, ever moving and abundant, all the same...but different, never mixing or crossing, never entering our world without catalyst, that catalyst being the fae, or... Us, Sorcerors, Mages, Witches... We are what define the magic, not the source, and I see no reason that individuals cannot grow to grasp these other facets....
