High Sun 13th 3474
I feel better now than I did last month. Summer is well and truly underway, and both the early flowering plants and my own researches have proven fruitful. The power of emotions and states of consciousness has proved a fascinating field of research. I was right, the alligator was superfluous, but that's not the important thing.
The important thing was, it should indeed be possible to tie our ritual framework to non-physical objects, and doing so would grant a level of anchorage to make our original triune appear unstable indeed. The optimal grounding for such a design would be what might be termed personality traits, rather than pure emotion, though pure emotions as a _source_ of power are more effective.
It has to do with linking the pony to their anchor. Whereas our thaumic resonances with the planetary bodies were fixed, it is a rare pony that stays in one emotional state all the time. Personality traits are however a more permanent part of the make-up of a pony, making it easier to match the pony to their respective anchor. There is also a secondary benefit. If we choose positive personality traits, it might limit the possibility of misuse.
I am still developing my ideas, as I have an intuition that there is more to be found in this field, and I shall not leave it until I have eaten every last morsel from it. However, it is not all good news. I still have no idea how to resolve the geometry problem for the ritual diagram; I have instead found an additional one with its implementation.
While the gems that will act as power transfer nodes can be reinforced by enchantments powered off the very magical energies flowing through them, the material of the diagram itself cannot. At least not beyond a certain power level, dependent on the material. Chalk is useful only for student spells, even if enhanced with powdered dragon's tooth.
No, I have never gone out and beaten up a dragon; purely for the sake of removing it's teeth. However, back when I was a pegasus, I may have wandered through juvenile dragon territories looking delicious, and let events happen as they might. Though Luna always said wearing a sprig of parsley in my mane was overplaying my role. It was aversion therapy, they learn not to eat ponies, and I might just have picked up a few teeth in the process. They do grow back after all.
Anyway, for the highest level rituals, an inlay of cold laminated electrum-orihalcon alloy is best, and was what we used for our original triune. But my latest arithmantic calculations show that even that would flow and melt under the manna flows it will be required to handle. I must find a better magical conductor to lay out the diagram whose geometry I cannot yet work out. However, I'm confident we'll overcome these problems eventually.
Authors Note: Sorry, another filler, because it was the start of a larger part that's a lot more serious and the mood difference is too much to suspend disbelief that Celestia would write about both things at the same time. That, and as a long part, I didn't want to to make it longer with an unrelated addition. Did I mention the fact that it's bucking me solidly in the flanks? I want this chapter to be right. It isn't canon critical, but it's background development.