Magic These Days

Magic is just so different now, y'know? It used to have some class, some artistry. The great masters of the Renaissance really knew their conjuring. I still feel like the best work of human history all came before 1900.

Now it's all prefab cantrips, pop magic you can buy at the store, pick up in an afternoon. Even the best illusionists are supplementing their work with synthetic lights and sounds. I can probably count on one hand the number who don't. And people just don't seem to care, y'know?

I tried talking to some girl in her twenties about the Hermetic traditions, just some basic stuff, right? She didn't even know what I meant. Not just not knowing Devinshire or Kulari. She flat out didn't even know what the Hermetic traditions even were. I mean, I know that schools have a lot to teach these days, but to not even touch on the oldest work? It's a damn catastrophe.

I dread to think what it's going to be like another twenty, thirty years down the road. The oldest masters, the ones who really remember that stuff, are already starting to die off. I'm starting to think the necromancers are the only ones who will be left to talk about how things really were, where it all started. Keep people grounded.

I mean, where will we be if nobody knows the fundamentals? We can't just build prefabs over prefabs. Eventually society will have forgotten all the mystic rules, the true ones, the ones that underlie reality. People will just be replicating what their grandparents heard from their grandparents. It'll just be so much gibberish written in a tome, to be rattled off as needed.

I hope I don't live to see that, I really do. So if you ever wonder why I've turned off my longevity research, that's why. It's just not worth it.