Hey it's a pagan article of the day, two days in a row!
http://paganbloggers.com/critter/blog/2017/05/09/on-pagan-writing-styles/
This one is actually really relevant to the conversations with @literorrery et all last night!
@indi Yeah, this is exactly the kind of note I want to hit. The word I was looking for when I was trying to think of this before was "case study." Everyone's magical system is a case study in how to apply the theories of metamagic. Not every system will use every example, but here's three reasonably fleshed-out examples and how they do use the theories, as well as a bunch more places to go look for inspiration.
@literorrery Yes. Yesyesyes. 'Case study' nails it perfectly. The most useful books on magic that I ever read, personally, were SPECIFIC. They weren't MY specific, but they showed me how to get to my sort of specific.
I think (I was actually thinking this even before I got to the part of your message that mentioned it) that it'd be fascinating to have one tome that actually went out of its way to line up different specfic ways of doing something.
@literorrery That's actually the sort of thing that was on my mind when I said "Can I help?" last night; I want to see a book that has High Invocations of Celestial Spheres, and then, overleaf, cuddly interpersonal plushie-totem spiritwork. ;)
@indi This. Thisthisthisthis.
This is what I want. Absolutely.
@literorrery @indi It's not quite /that/ syncretic, but have you looked at The Magician's Reflection, by Bill Whitcomb?
He wrote The Magician's Companion specifically as a huge encyclopedia of magical systems comparisons.
Reflection is more narrowed down: it's a specific manual on how to build your own magical system, and make it rigorous and work for you.
I've only read it in fits and starts and bits and pieces, like everything, but what I did read has been helpful.
@emanate @literorrery Yeah, this is probably one I should read. I've been shying away from it because I have found that pure-theory texts don't give me what I need to work with, but maybe now I have enough grounding of my own to get more out of it?
@indi @literorrery It's meta-theory, rather than pure theory. But I know what you mean, yeah.
@emanate Oh right also I haven't read it because there's no ebook.
Can I borrow your copy sometime?
@indi Yeah, fair. It's more useful as a reference thing you can bookmark and scribble in the margins. :-}
@emanate Well, for Magician's Companion I would not WANT an ebook.
I mean, if it was an entire app, the quality of that one cocktail book/app I have, that'd be one thing, but... that's a pretty tall order.