"He who professes the Sodalitas as mere tyrants
He who professes the Sodalitas as mere scholars
He who professes the Sodalitas as mere regulators
May his lying tongue be cut out"
Anonymous, written ca. 11th century
Excerpts from,
A Beginner's Handbook to the Association of Magi
by T. Y. Lee
Foreword
In modern popular culture, the Mage's Association is a subject of much speculation and, at times, much fantasy, appearing in popular works such as The Lord of the Magi and The Edge of Delusion. Much of this appears to originate from the Association's mystique, which in turn came from its sudden and mysterious disappearance in 1517, leaving behind ruins where there were magnificent buildings only days before.
I admit that I was also drawn into the subject matter when I first read The Lord of the Magi as a high school student. Like many young adults who are first fascinated by something, I was entranced by the idea, a romanticized vision, of what I wanted to study and immerse myself into, and for several years I held delusions that I knew all there was to know about the history and socio-politics of the Association. After I entered college and took courses under esteemed professors such as Peter Edwards, however, I came to acknowledge that what I truly knew was little, and that the rest of what I thought I knew was either amusingly misinformed or utterly wrong.
Once I became less ignorant of subject, I began to wonder what I, as a young high-schooler with his eyes glued to a copy of LotM, would have been like had I known the truth behind the fiction that I was reading. I realized that, on top of my being an impatient youth, I had little access to sources that were both informative yet easy to read, comprehensive yet simple to understand. I believe that there will be less misinformation and a better understanding of the complex socio-political institute that was the Association if such sources become available, and so I write this
This essay will not cover any medieval thaumaturgy (that is, the system of magic that was the most popular brand of magic in Europe), or any sort of metaphysics, as they are topics for another time. It will only cover the history of the Association, some important terminology, and its socio-economic and political situation throughout history...
Glossary
Legend:
Latin name/English name (alternate name): Description
Sodalitaris Magorum/Association of Magi (Mage's Association or simply Association): the sovereign institution of thaumaturgy practitioners based in Rome, disappeared in 1517 due to unknown circumstances. Often used interchangeably with the term "Rome" as a political power. Ruled by an oligarchy that held absolute power. The term Sodalitaris Magorum appeared in writing ca. 580 CE.
Senatus/Council of Lords: the oligarchic ruling body of the Association, with total control over all aspects of the Association/Rome. Made up of thirty members, or Lords, who make decisions through debate and voting. Appeared ca. 530 CE. Two-thirds of the members were from the Italian peninsula/surrounding territories.
Magus/Mage: used today to denote any person who is capable of regularly using sorcery and/or True Magic, but in pre-modern times referred to a magic-user who was part of the Association. The actual term Magus appeared in the early Roman Republican period in Latin to denote scholars from Babylon, but changed over time to mean what it became.
Magia Magna/Greater Magic (True Magic): magic that is able to do what was thought to be impossible at the time. Discovering, rediscovering, and/or developing these great powers was thought to be the ultimate goal of some mages in the Association. By the 11th century, there were five magics officially recognized to be True Magic by the Council of Lords.
Magia/Sorcery (Magecraft): magic that is within the realm of common knowledge of the time and uses the magic circuits within a mage's body to perform magical phenomena. In Western Europe, the most popular (and therefore most powerful) form of sorcery was thaumaturgy, though other kinds of magic such as Rune magic and Witchcraft also existed. Latin does not have a term for thaumaturgy, instead using Magia for both "magic within the realm of common knowledge" and "thaumaturgy", and relying on context to distinguish between the two.
Veneficorum/Magic: any sort of phenomena beyond the realm of technology/mundane human effort. Both True Magic and Magecraft fall under this.
Versio Elementorum/Elemental Conversion (Formalcraft): sorcery that does not utilize Magic Circuits. Because this sort of magic typically used mundane objects and rituals to convert what metaphysicists of the time called "elements", it came to be known as Elemental Conversion, and later Formalcraft. This sort of magic was rarely well-received by the Association.
Alchemia/Alchemy: a school of magic that deals with the conversion of matter, or transmutation. The alchemists of Atlas were, however, known to research the art of converting phenomena, or predicting and changing the flow of events and fate.
Peccator/Witch: a person with magical capabilities who has not received Association-approved training. The Latin term means "sinner" or "transgressor". The English term "witch" comes from the Old English term wicce, who were usually independent mages who used different magics from the Association. Because such wicce typically refused to submit to Association authority, they thus became peccator. "Witch" then became a word with very strong connotations, and eventually became the word that English speaking peoples used to refer to illegal mages.
Proditor/Warlock: a person proscribed by the Council of Lords. Being declared a proditor by the Council was a death sentence for any mage, since it meant that the Association would expend resources to hunt the individual down and execute him, usually without a trial. The English term came from waerloga, meaning "oath breaker" or "traitor". Because Warlocks were seen as "traitors" to the Association, the term waerloga came to be used to refer to such people (English speaking peoples often preferred English translations of terms from Latin over using the Latin term itself), and phonetically evolved into "warlock".
Turris de Horologium/ The Clock Tower: a multi-story tower containing a colossal time keeping device and living quarters, lecture halls, and workshops for many Association members and students. The nature of the time-keeping device is unknown, but it likely used some sort of highly advanced sorcery. Constructed ca. 794 CE in Rome.
Academia Atlantis/Atlas Academy: an expansive facility, much of which is underground. Greek alchemists who took refuge in Rome were the primary inhabitants of the Academy. Like the Clock Tower, it contained living quarters and laboratories. Constructed ca. 817 CE in Rome.
Abbatia/Abbey (monastery): an Association embassy outside of Italy. Because the land that they were built on was legally Roman territory, abbeys followed their own laws independent of local legal systems. Most were constructed to house Association members outside of Rome and provide legal education for mages who cannot travel to Italy, as well as serving as outposts for Association interests. Famous ones include the abbeys in Sponheim, Prague/Praha, and Aachen (known as the Thylee/Thule Abbey). The supreme authority of an abbey was called an "abbot" or "director".
Fabrica/Workshop: a mage's personal laboratory in which he carries out his research and experiments. Workshops located outside of Italy were typically protected by dozens of spells and magical barriers to prevent intrusion. In mage culture, to trespass into a mage's workshop was an act of open hostility, and the Association created much legislature to punish those who would violate a mage's sanctuary (whether on accident or on purpose).
Terra Spiritualis/Spiritual Land: a piece of land with an unusually high concentration of leylines. These were highly valued by the Association by the 11th century. Famous spiritual lands in Europe includes the Black and Teutoberg forests in Germany, the city of Rome, and the land upon which the Stonehenge rests.
Executor/Executors: martially-inclined people of the Association who were sent out to perform dangerous tasks, such as the execution of Warlocks. They were often viewed with contempt throughout the history of the Association, as mages in Rome have always valued knowledge and intellect over physical ability. Executors were frequently described as serving as bodyguards for mages who performed research outside of the safety of their workshops.
Monachus/Monk: members of the Association who perform everyday, mundane tasks, including masonry (it is likely that the architects and builders of the Clock Tower were monks), accounting, cooking, cleaning, and non-magical maintenance. Some monks were people born in or around an abbey who managed to get hired, while others were failed mages. Attitudes towards monks by fully fledged mages were typically scornful, sometimes even abusive.
...for clarity, I will use the term "magic-user" as a person who commands any sort of magical phenomena, regardless of method.
Chapter I
A Brief History
It is difficult to truly pinpoint the foundation date for the Association due to the fact that there was no official "founding event". There was no grand speech by an Association official that declared the start of a new era for mages, no grand feast celebrating the creation of one of the most influential political bodies in the history of Europe since the Roman Empire. Instead, the many elements that make up what we would call the Mage's Association were added onto an earlier existing institution over a period of time, and continued to evolve and adapt until the end of its existence. Thus, the Association was never "founded" as much as it "became".
Nonetheless, it is easier for modern thinkers to imagine the Association having some sort of definite starting point. The earliest elements of the Association can trace its roots back to a collection of scholars and thaumaturgy practitioners (scholaris and magi in Latin, respectively) that existed since the foundation of Rome, ca. 755 BCE. Over time, these learned men grew in number, knowledge, and power, though, according to Polios, the Roman Senate and its consuls made sure to never rely on or give too much power to these learned men—for this reason, magi were unable to successfully "unionize" ...
...and by the late-middle of the 3rd century CE, mentions of some sort of organization of magic practitioners appear in the works of Roman writers. Modern historians have taken this to mean that a body of thaumaturgy scholars and practitioners was formed some time around the beginning of the reign of Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus. Judging from the fact that contemporary writers of this little-known organization did not seem to agree on what to name it, it seems that said organization was not an official government authority or branch—if it were, it is certainly strange that Roman authors did not use the proper name in their works. Instead, it is more likely that this group of scholars and thaumaturgists simply grew in fame and probably gained some legal infrastructure, possibly academies of some sort modeled after those in the Greek provinces.
While it has not been confirmed by historians, many have argued that these gains and the rise of Marcus Julius Philippus were not mere coincidences. There are many theories, even among leading historians, that there were mages involved in the mysterious death of the previous emperor, Marcus Antonius Gordianus Pius, and that Philippus was either aware of or supported (or even hired) their efforts. In return, it is said, these mages were given some funding and resources. Again, this is a source of much contention in academia...
...but nonetheless, according to surviving documents and archaeological work done in Rome, the god-king Gilgamesh and his armies not only dismantled Roman authority in its non-Italian provinces, and in many areas outright exterminated entire Roman populations, but also crossed the Alps and into the Italian Peninsula and pillaged the some of the cities there (but spared Rome). By the late 5th century, the Roman Empire was no more; in the lands where Romans had once settled, the eastern German Gothic tribes swept through and either assimilated or rooted out what was left of Roman culture and society in places such as Gaul (France) and the Iberian Peninsula.
Writings from this period seem to indicate that the Roman people did not wish for another emperor, possibly because they lost faith in such an authority after watching it be utterly defeated and humiliated by a seemingly invincible living god from the east. Other writings suggest that the existing body of mages seized control over what was left of Rome. Historians today deem this the most plausible model for socio-politics in early post-Imperial Rome. With more than 90% of its forces destroyed or completely scattered throughout Europe, the Roman legions did not have the manpower to assert control. Without military support, any politicians left alive (such as the members of the Senate) could do little, and records indicate that the populace had little trust in such people anyway, so no amount of orating could have given those former heads of state much power. Many Roman merchants and trade ships were killed or destroyed, and with no more raw materials coming in from the provinces, the economic strongmen had no real authority as well.
Thus, it was left to Rome's mages to bring about order and stability. As they were able to sustain much of Rome's advanced public services (particularly plumbing services such as baths, aqueducts, sewage, etc.), and since the remaining populace became reliant on the mages' hunger and disease preventing spells, the remnants of Rome's once extensive network of magical personnel were able to easily gain the support of the people, and thus authority of the peninsula. The fact that the mages who were left in Italy were the ones who were politically savvy enough to not get sent out to battle Babylonian forces certainly helped them gain political control. Around the early 6th century, the Council of Lords was formed from the leading mages of nearby cities and from Rome itself. This oligarchic authority assumed total control over Italy by the early-middle 6th century, and named itself after the once-prestigious Senate of Rome, the Senatus.
Despite being able to stabilize their immediate surroundings, however, the mages of Rome still had to contend with foreign invaders. Gothic tribes from eastern Germany, for example, attempted several raids through the Alps, and one even managed to partly sack the city of Rome. What little writing that remains from this period suggest that the Council of Lords focused resources on military and food production, while any magical research was devoted to logistical, strategic, and/or tactical applications, thus gearing the entire state towards defensive war and shifting the attentions of Roman mages from gathering knowledge to maintaining political power...
By the late 6th century, the term Sodalitaris Magorum (Association of Magi) begins to appear in Latin writings. It is also around this time that the Association began to actively weaken the link between a mage and his lord.
Judging from various surviving images and poetry, mages outside of Rome during this period were often mistreated and exploited by nobles—as powerful a mage may be, he can do little without food, shelter, resources for research, and protection, and non-Roman nobles were almost always the only source for such necessities.
After approximately a century of chaos and struggles to maintain power and order, the Association seemed to have amassed enough wealth to provide any mage of proven skill and worth with plenty of necessities and resources, and by offering such things to mistreated mages, they were able to significantly increase the manpower of the Association. Most of these newcomers were from Frankish and Germanic territories, with a few from Scandinavia, Denmark, Britain, and Slavic lands. At this time, almost no Greek mages seemed to wish to leave the comfort of their reinstated city-states. This is where the Association's monopolization of European mages began.
Of course, the wise amongst the nobles who were rapidly losing their mages began to introduce new policies for treating their magi-wielding retainers, and as such the period in which a relatively large number of mages relocated to the Italian peninsula was very brief. Because there were still an appreciable number of mages remaining in their old territories, thaumaturgy continued to develop independently outside of Rome...
By the mid 7th century, the focus of the Association seemed to revert back to knowledge, which is the most common explanation that historians use to understand why Rome did not bother to expand its borders into Europe once more aside from certain cities along the northern Mediterranean coast, such as Venice...
...aside from some border skirmishes with Greek city states and Franko-Germanic kingdoms, little else of note happened until the Kullervo Incident...
In ca. 680 CE, Europe was rocked by what was to be one of the defining moments in history. Modern historians call this the Kullervo Incident. Contemporary Association records refer to the event as Clades Arctoum, or the Northern Calamity... (1)
...
(1) The effects of the Kullervo Incident had other major consequences throughout Europe, one of which being the beginning of the long decline of the Vikings. Although Viking activity continued after 680 CE, mostly from Scandinavians who pushed out the Danes and settled themselves in Denmark, they never returned to the levels of activity from only decades before. Among other things, this cut off most of the Danish Viking settlers in England from Denmark, which forced them sue for peace from their former Anglo-Saxon targets.)
Scandinavian sagas tell of a man from what is today Finland, a man of great magical power, possibly a highly advanced form of thaumaturgy or, more likely, True Magic. The sagas say that the man was born with great potential, but also matched his magical power with great hatred and a thirst for vengeance on the tribal leader who slew his father and the rest of the his tribe save for the woman who would become his mother. A violent and angry person from birth to death, Kullervo's fierce temper eventually lead to the annihilation of much of civilization in Scandinavia, thus creating a chain effect of refugees fleeing to other countries and pushing out its former inhabitants, thus creating more refugees. The initial Scandinavian population mostly fled south-southwest and displaced Danes and Slavs, who in turn fled south and pushed out Germans and some Greeks, who fled down to the relative safety of Rome or went west into the kingdoms of the Franks (this is now called the Kullervo Effect).
The Council of Lords apparently determined the cause of this great disaster to be the lack of control over magical education throughout Europe. They thus strongly proposed (some say demanded) that all mages from across Europe be trained by Association-approved sources of education, in order to prevent another rogue mage such as Kullervo from appearing again. In practice, this immediately applied only to areas that were severely destabilized by the Kullervo Effect, namely most of Germania, some of Frankia, and many Slavic territories, which, after being displaced (and thus severely weakened) and hearing of horror stories from the north about the madman Kullervo, were all too glad to comply. Other areas did not agree to this edict for at least a century, mostly due to popular pressure. After the Kullervo Incident and the Association's decree, rogue or "illegal" mages became anathemas to society, and so most illegal mages were turned into Association authorities by frightened or angered commoners than actual Association enforcers (1)...
...
(1) Many historians cite the Kullervo Effect to be the reason why Charlemagne rose to power. With the influx of a large number of eastern Germans and Scandinavians, including many nobles and their retinue of mages, the Franks were given enough resources to fend off invading Ghanans at the Battle of Tours/Poitiers in 732, which in turn set up for the rise of Charlemagne to the throne partly via the exploits of his ancestor, Charles Martel, at Tours. The prestige of being the descendant of the man who defeated the Ghanan army at Tours, along with the extra population and thaumaturgical knowledge gained from the Kullervo Effect, gave Charlemagne the resources he needed to create the Carolingian Empire.
...Initially, the laws governing the education of mages were very strict, if not outright draconic. Public executions, sanctioned by local authorities and Association representatives, were common responses to illegal mages being found. Any mages who were conducting particularly dangerous or forbidden thaumaturgy or research were exiled from the Association and hunted down. Fear of illegal mages, and mages outside of Rome in general, rose dramatically, and as a result many people were accused of being peccatoris ("witches") and were subsequently lynched.
This furthered the monopolization of magical resources by the Association, and it was not long before the Association had many powerful nobles by a leash, threatening to cut off access to mages and magical resources if the noble did not comply with the Council's wishes. perhaps it was not mere serendipity that the Association's proposals resulted a great rise in Rome's influence, though it still did not expand its borders aside from the handfuls of territories here and there.
Also of significance is the addition of personnel from Greece. The few Greeks who fled from their city states to Rome were almost all alchemists who were originally from Egypt. In 569 CE, Egyptian alchemists rebelled against the god-king Gilgamesh and were subsequently wiped out. Those who managed to flee went to Greece, where they eventually made their way into the northern edges of Greek influence. Due to the Kullervo Incident, they were once again forced to seek refuge, and this time they went to Rome (as they had, perhaps unwisely, angered their Greek neighbors some decades before). In exchange for their vast knowledge in alchemy, they were given a place in the Association of Mages, and several of their leaders joined the Council of Lords (which by now also included some Germanic, Frankish, Ulster, and Anglo-Saxon/Danish members)...
...the most common explanation for a relatively minor but sudden expansion of Roman borders outside of the Alps is that, due to the sudden appearance of the Ghanans in the Iberian Peninsula, the Visigoths were weakened to the point that they seceded territories north of the Alps in order to procure an alliance against the invaders...
...and due to the dramatic influx of wealth from other countries, the Association was able to construct two magnificent structures, which still stand today in Rome.
The first was the Clock Tower, or Turris de Horologium. The Clock Tower, at the time of its creation, was a techno-magical marvel (the engineering and metaphysical principles behind it are matters that I will not get into here), and was a demonstration of the Association's power, knowledge, and prestige. It is certainly the most famous among Rome's tourist attractions, and the most well preserved one.
Social archaeologists theorize that the Clock Tower's primary function, to accurately keep time, was deemed necessary by the Council due to the rise in wealth and manpower: because of the extra wealth, mages were able to perform even more research and education, and because of the extra manpower, there were obviously more mages running about Rome. It is thus hypothesized that the mages desired to be able to better keep track of the time they had in the day so that they could more spend that time more efficiently doing things.
This does not fully explain, however, why there are also extensive living quarters, offices, and classrooms for students, teachers, researchers, and many members of the Council itself. Archaeologists have thus also theorized that the original Roman members of the Association were alarmed by the great influx of foreigners, and thus (perhaps unconsciously) sought to distance themselves from such people. Indeed, for the first hundred years of occupation, records indicate that the people who called the Clock Tower their home were almost exclusively Roman, and absolutely no Greeks.
The Greco-Egyptians who came to Rome formed their own facility, the much humbler Atlas Academy. Parts of the facility were underground, possibly to minimize damage from alchemical experiments (which were sometimes volatile). Most of the Academy was devoted to such laboratories, but there were some living quarters (mostly for Greek Council members) available. Archaeological remains indicate that the facilities were used almost exclusively by the Association's alchemists, who in turn were mostly Greek.
Interestingly, the Frankish, Germanic, and Slavic newcomers did not seem to have built their own facilities. The reason for this is unknown...
...however, aside from naval skirmishes in the central Mediterranean, Rome was mostly untouched by Ghana Empire's incursions into Europe through the Iberian Peninsula, though there are passing mentions of handfuls of Celtic and Visigothic refugees...
...but by the 11th century, the once draconic ideas governing magical education and legality were relaxed, both socially and legally...
The next great political upheaval for the Association was Alexander the Great and his conquest of fully half of Europe by 1063 CE...
Chapter 5
The Tri-Objective Model
For those who have studied the Association of Magi in high school history courses, you will no doubt be familiar with the "Tri-Objective" model. Although it is a useful way of easily memorizing the complex socio-politics of the Association, simplicity has reared its ugly head. A painfully common trend has appeared recently, in that people learn the simplified explanation given by the model and forget that there is so much more to the matter. Part of this is the fault of teachers who fail to make students understand that the Tri-Objective model is only a simplification of the truth.
The Tri-Objective model argues that, throughout history, the Mage's Association's political actions and social structure were guided by three principles:
Gathering and developing magic and the advancement of knowledge of magic
Accumulating and maintaining political power
Regulating the usage and education of magic
(A popular mnemonic for this is GAR*: Gathering knowledge, Accumulating power, Regulating usage.)
Once again, many people learn the meme and leave it at that. The problem with this is that it assumes the history and political mindset of the Association was something so simple and organizable, that there were distinct groups of people within the Association who believed in one of those three goals and nothing more. If there is one thing I would like readers to bring with them after reading this book, it is that the Association was a far more complex institution, filled with contradictions and illogical occurrences.
Problems with the Tri-Objective Model
Part I: Gathering
The first goal, Gathering, seems to imply that the mages were unified in always trying to learn one single thing, and that they about doing so in similar ways. This is as faulty as claiming that, for example, all biologists conduct research to learn one single thing, and that their experiments and research methods were all the same. Archaeological records indicate that mages seeking to gather knowledge were very vaguely divided into two groups: those who sought to advance the limits of magic and to make anything once considered impossible into something possible, and those who sought something called "The Akasha" (also known as the "Root"). Even with this distinction, however, there were mages who could be classified in both groups, seeking both things equally, or leaned towards one or the other. There were also mages who refused to share their research with others, and those who worked in groups: those who used utterly inhumane methods to gain knowledge, and those who were serendipitously seen as heroes for their research.
As mentioned before, mages with similar goals did not necessarily use the same research methods, either; in particular were the mages who studied the Akasha. One surviving paper, The Nature of the Soul and the Source, mentions how this Akasha phenomenon could be found by, "...tracing the origins of the soul, which is connected to the Root..." Another document, Corpus and Origins, goes into detail about finding the Akasha through the artificial synthesis of an "original" human body, theorizing that such a form would be able to reach the Akasha. Other theories involve "reducing oneself to nothing" (it is unclear as to what this is supposed to mean)...
Part 2: Accumulating
The second goal, Accumulating, seems to imply that, once again, the mages (and in this case the Council of Lords) were not only politically unified but also shared the same political goals throughout time. This is a laughable assumption, on par with claiming that a modern country's politicians are politically unified and share the same political goal. Needless to say, the Association was politically no different from modern political institutions in that it was rarely, if ever, completely unified in political ideology.
The T-O model also implies that the overall political agenda for the Association remained the same throughout history, which was also untrue. For example, as mentioned before, the Council ordered several unusually large military excursions outside of Italy throughout the 7th century, and documents from accountant monks from the time period indicate an increase on military spending, such as significant boosts in the import of food, charcoal and iron ore production, and military conscription. Compare this to the Association in the 10th century, where military excursions were almost non-existent, and most imports were luxury goods and construction material.
Also note that the Council's foreign policies were radically changed after the Kullervo Incident. Before, it was simply another minor nation, difficult to assault but lacking the manpower to do much outside its territory. It was a political equal of, or in some cases an inferior to, the various other kingdoms and empires that grew from the destruction of Rome's, such as the kingdom of the Visigoths (before it was pushed out of Iberia by the Ghanans and then absorbed by the Carolingian Empire) and the Franks, and thus had limited influence in world politics aside from certain cases. Thus, it could not simply command the rulers of other nations the way it did a century and a half after the KI. After the event, however, when it gained the political muscle to strongarm half of Europe into doing much of what it wished, the Council changed its foreign policy to exploit its advantageous position.
Nor can it be assumed that all, or even many, mages were particularly interested in politics...
Part 3: Regulating
The third goal, Regulation, seems to imply that there was one single way of teaching students thaumaturgy and other magics, and that all mages who taught students used such a method. This is quite false. Even today with standardized education and curriculum, there are differences in how a given subject is taught between schools and even between teachers; the same applied to the education systems of the Association.
Records indicate that, both before and after the Kullervo Incident, teaching between mages and students was always a master-apprentice system. Fully fledged mages rarely, if ever, took on more than one apprentice at a time, and even then not all mages were interested in teaching others (aside from the mage's direct heirs) the ways of magic. There is no evidence that any sort of curriculum was enforced by Association authorities on such relationships, so it is likely that masters taught their apprentices in whichever way they saw fit. Nor did masters always teach apprentices everything they knew. As mentioned earlier in Chapter 2, masters were usually careful to keep non-heir apprentices at an arm's length in order to prevent the junior from divulging the secrets of the senior...
...and, as I have said in Chapter 3, due to regional specializations and preferences in magic, it was not uncommon for teachers to have biased curricula; for example, Association abbeys in northern Germany and Denmark taught more rune magic than the Clock Tower did...
...the education system in Rome, however, was more standardized than that of abbeys outside of Italy. The various thaumaturgical subjects were divided into a number of "schools", including Spiritual Evocation/Invocation, Minerology, Alchemy, etc. The master-apprentice system still remained, but students could also attend lectures on several subjects, assuming that the lecturer felt generous enough to bother giving one (personal records left behind by disgruntled students indicated that lecturers were somewhat fickle on this matter). The Clock Tower and the Atlas Academy were thus a bit similar to modern universities...
...but one must remember that, although the education in Rome was probably the best (and certainly the most prestigious), non-thaumaturgical subjects were rarely taught, which seemed to have been the advantage of monastic education...
Conclusion
...the point of all this is to demonstrate that the Association was never truly unified and organized in increasing its knowledge of magic, taking and maintaining political power, and teaching and regulating the learning and usage of magic. The objectives, methodologies, and ideologies were greatly diversified throughout all of the Association's history.
Appendix C
Academic Subdivisions in the Association
As magic is as widely varied as any other academic subject, it is of little surprise that the educational branch of the Association was once divided into many departments, called schola ("schools"). Each schola instructed students on a specific subdivision of thaumaturgy.
The Schola Evocationis Spiritualis ("School of Spiritual Evocation") dealt with the art of summoning spiritual bodies into the physical plane, outside of the mage's own body. The Association considered spiritual evocation to be different from normal summoning, but it is not entirely clear why or how.
The Schola Epiclesis Spiritualis ("School of Spiritual Invocation") dealt with communicating with/working through spirits, and sometimes with spiritual possession. The difficult art of spiritual surgery fell under this department.
The Schola Mineralogiae ("School of Minerology") dealt with the study of how minerals and magic interact. Note that magical minerology is slightly different from alchemy; if, for example, we take a jewel that can conduct magical properties, minerology would study how to store and maximize magical energy into the jewel and how to efficiently release it, whereas alchemy would seek to transmute it into something else.
The Schola Exquaesitionis Universalae ("School of Universal Research") dealt with miscellaneous thaumaturgical subjects. Archaeological studies indicate that this was the most popular department throughout most of the Association's educational branch's existence.
The Schola Alchemiae ("School of Alchemy:) dealt with, not surprisingly, alchemy. This school seemed particularly popular with ethnically Greek students.
It is debatable whether or not the Association taught subjects that were non-thaumaturgical but nonetheless fairly popular in Europe, such as runologio (study of magical runes), ars anathematismi ("the art of cursing", or what was colloquially known as "witchcraft"), or versio elementorum. Recovered diaries of monk scribes mention that such subjects were "unpopular", which may imply that they were formally taught on a small scale; however, remains of tools used in witchcraft and rune magic found in Rome suggest that they were imported from foreign areas, and instructors who seemed to possess such objects came from various different departments throughout the Association. Combined with the fact that tools and materials necessary for research and study in the five known schools were made in the city of Rome itself, it seems unlikely that these non-thaumaturgical subjects were formally taught at all, and instead were personal projects of individual teachers and students...
End
Vignettes
"Probably one of the most pretentious pieces of trash I've ever read...his insulting and snobbish tone in the latter half of the book...was both unnecessary and arrogant." -Johnathan Magle, The American Review
"...the irony is rather amusing. He wanted to make a book easily readable and accessible to high schoolers, yet comprehensive and informative, but failed at both." -Dr. Peter Edwards, Oxford University
"Although the book is fairly informative, the author skimps out on critical details at times..." -Jane Sable, Professor of Medieval Socio-Archaeology at the University of Harvard
"This book sucks." -Emily Tanaka, High School student
*: Please tell me someone gets the reference.