From:	Journey <jjgray@**********.COM>
Subject:	Re: Mana Cycles ? Merlin (the NBC movie)
Date:	Mon, 4 May 1998 01:30:44 -0400

>However, remember his last words? something like "that's it, no more
>magic. it's all gone"? As he and others had less and less ability to
>demonstrate, people started to forget and disbelieve, and they lost more
>power, etc ... It's a downward spiral ... So what started the drop? Good
>question ... I would think it was non magic users who were doing more
>without magic than those with magic (ie Queen Mab not saving the life of
>Merlin's mom) I'm assuming (ack! no! I must delete that word from my
>vocabulary) that magic users even in a peak mana cycle would still be
>pretty rare... also, Merlin's time was in 5th world (in about the middle
>of 1/2 of the cycle on the upswing side) so I think it was maybe a brief
>period of high mana ... not an awakening per se, but very close ... (btw,
>do you think the dragon in the movie was any of the SR dragons? <j/k> I
>wouldn't say it was a great drake just a "normal one" ;) Ah well, even
>if this theory has holes I kinda like it :)

An interesting relation to this idea can be found in Mage: The Ascention.
There, the reason magic disapeared from the world was simple... there was a
group actively trying to banish it. The Technocracy (a group of initially
well meaning philosophers who wanted to banish all harm and chaos from the
world) strove to make the average person believe in science, not magic. As
more and more people began disbelieving the 'illogical' principles of the
arts arcana, less and less magic was possible.

Jay