rules for magic

In writing out the first half of my second act one of the things that is going on is Braden is learning more about magic. It's all well and good to have mages and wizards and witches chanting in weird languages and casting firebolts and such, but when a pupil like Braden is being taught there needs to be some kind of philosophy or rules that actually govern magic that they (and by extension the audience), can learn. I am a huge fantasy literature fan and have learned several models for magic from various series. I have also started learning the philosophies behind wiccan/pagan beliefs on how spells and magic work. It is very interesting as paganism deals with two alternate world, the physical and spiritual, with most magical energy coming from the spiritual realm and being channeled into the physical. This concept worked very well with my idea of how with the rise of the modern world magical forces and energy became weaker. In Tolkien's writings, something similar happens when the race of man tries to invade the undying lands where the elves and gods live, and the gods then seperate the spheres of the world (it's a really complicated mythology). Anywho, i was toying with the concept of something similar happening where magic was set up so that in the old days, the magical realm and physical realm were one, but as man advanced and removed itself from nature so to did the 2 realms seperate. This then brought symbols such as the pentagram into my script and the use of magic as one interpretation of the pentagram is that 5 points represent the 5 visible planets. I thought the planets and starts could be a cool link between the two realms and so pentagrams would serve as a way to access magical energies.

So as you can guess this is getting really convoluted and out of hand, and impossible to describe in my script. So i am now exploring a revised idea of the rules of magic that is similar but different. Now, there is the philosophy that everything living has an aura of energy and that energy flows in and around it. As the modern world came to be, nature was destroyed and thus less energy. There is still a spiritual realm with spirits and imps and demons to allow for the exhistence of merlin, who is half demon (fathered by an incubus). this opens the way for Braden to have special powers as a descendent of merlin and having demon blood he is able to access the power of the spirit realm as well as the physical realm. pentagrams are still important symbols for harnessing energy as they allow for a concentration on the 5 elements (earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit), but it also allows for higher level mages to be able to spell cast without relying on a pentagram or circle as they can just channel the energy around them. (I am also much more comfortable with this philosophy of magic because it is much closer to the philosophy of projecting ki, which is the basis of aikido, the martial art I practice). So yeah, that is the new system of magic I am incorporating into my script. We will see how it goes.