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theBook of Shadows: e Player’s Guide for Mage the Ascension, distills the
magic system down to four questions:
• “What do you want to do, and how do you want to do it?
• Do you know enough to pull it o?
• Do you succeed?
• If so or if not, what happens?” (Barnes 101).
Mage: e Awakening also has perhaps the richest schools of magic,
reclaiming the symbol of the pentagram for ve realms and ten associ-
ated schools of magic (called arcana) which escape the clichés of the ve
elements while drawing upon historical occultism. Each point of the
pentagram is associated with one plane of existence that, in the manner
of Magic: e Gathering, represents a fundamental aspect of rea ...