Magic is the ability to tap into the various forces and manipulate them to your will. This is a great power, but it takes a lot of intelligence and knowledge to utilize it effectively. No magician was created overnight. It takes a long time and a lot of patience to become a mage. Magic is treated as a secret and is guarded by powerful orders. There are a few Orders in my game: The Coven,
Pentacrime, the Esoteric Order of the Dragon, and the Freemasons. Each has its own agenda. They don’t take kindly to rogue practitioners. Each leader of an order is called a Magus, and the best magus on earth is called the Arch magus. There is only one Archmagus at a time.
Magic is manipulating the natural forces. A magician studies the
The Language of Creation and uses the language of the creator to alter reality as they see fit. The better one understands this Language, the better they are at wielding magic. Look at magic like this, God created the Code and the Code governs how the universe works. When you learn God's code, you can alter the code to suite your whim. Magic is, in a nutshell, the cheat code to the Cosmos!
No one knows all 52 characters in God's Alphabet. Due to this, no magician is able to perfectly wield magic. One must substitute for the missing letters. This is why material components, or more commonly called reagents, are needed. Reagents are symbols or representations of the affect we wish to create. If we knew all 52 letters, then reagents would not be needed. Wizards are constantly looking for better reagents, or better yet, undiscovered letters.
Many religions have regarded Magi with, at best, suspicion, or at worse, persecution. The wizard sets himself up as a substitute for god and this is offensive to most religious people. The word Warlock is an example of this. The world literally means, "word breaker". The Warlock literally breaks the word of god and replaces it with his own. This is why Warlocks are considered evil in the modern world. Blasphemy, or speaking out against the word of god, used to be a word for condemning magic or witchcraft. Its meaning has changed in the modern world.
A true Magician must study constantly to hone their craft. Learning the correct puncuation and grammar is a very difficult task when one doesn't even have all the letters to work with. This is why magic is more an art, then a science, and two magicians my have two different spells for the same affect.
One must learn mysticism to learn to think the correct symbols, and proper perspectives. Occultism must also be learned to reveal things that are hidden to most eyes. Presdigitation is also needed to make the hands flexible enough to outline the difficult words formed by the Byzantine symbols of the Primordial Language. Then all this is synergized by an understanding of Spell Craft. The last knowledge is a heavily guarded secret. Orders and Schools are formed to keep that knowledge from the hands of amateurs and unworthies. This knowledge must be taught. It is said that Angels taught this skill to the first human magicians. It is counter intuitive and no human has ever stumbled upon it by accident.