The past 300 or so years have been ruled by the odd marriage of science and Christianity. Christianity is dying out in the west, and the American flavor is kind of tainted irreparably by the peculiar devotion to Ayn Rand that serves as an addition pillar of "Christianity" here in the good ol' USA. Let's posit that one of the reasons that it hung on is that alcohol served to depress that part of us that might attune us to magic.
Hence the importance of wine in the Christian Ritual. Christ's first miracle was turning water into wine. I have almost no doubt that other drugs were available and their effects known, but the long history of Greek and Roman boozing is still with us.
Now, we weren't the only major culture that likes their booze. The Persians are fond of their Shiraz, and Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan invented the alambic in the long ago. But the technology didin't really take off until nearly eight centuries later with the advent of the industrial revolution and the need for more.
So, just to make it clear, I am by no means going to stop my long-standing love of the booze due to this odd-ass writing seed, I am just curious as to what depressed the knowledge and use of magic in the last three centuries. I am thinking that the depression of magic might be multivariate in nature. I am thinking through a bunch of different changes that could be shanghaied by fiction to support a strange story. Possible candidates for this are:
Now, we weren't the only major culture that likes their booze. The Persians are fond of their Shiraz, and Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan invented the alambic in the long ago. But the technology didin't really take off until nearly eight centuries later with the advent of the industrial revolution and the need for more.
So, just to make it clear, I am by no means going to stop my long-standing love of the booze due to this odd-ass writing seed, I am just curious as to what depressed the knowledge and use of magic in the last three centuries. I am thinking that the depression of magic might be multivariate in nature. I am thinking through a bunch of different changes that could be shanghaied by fiction to support a strange story. Possible candidates for this are:
- Booze as a depressant and magic suppressor
- Newtonian thinking as a way to not focus on the courtesy required to work with the magic "vectors"
- Population as a thinning agent for the medium of magic, there is a certain bandwidth available for the actual medium of magic, and everyone has some ability to access the bandwidth. Also, everyone has limited use of magic (hence dreams and serendipity) but in population concentrations, the ability to access gets badly diluted.
More to come on this, I figure that I have to work out the "magic" system prior to get going on characters.
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