My father pissed his life away on magic. He read somewhere that magic was real, fell into a group of fellow true-believers who also believed in it, and spent his meager savings contributing to a fake cult leader who promised to teach him The Way. When everything was gone, my father couldn't pull a gold piece from behind my ear, whether he had a gold piece or not. And he didn't.

By the time I was a young man, I KNEW that magic was a grift, a con that could be explained by natural phenomena, the right ingredients assembled in the right order, whether you worshipped any god or not. My father sacrificed everything to the pursuit of magic, and it didn't save my mother or my brother, did it?

If you work hard enough, and learn the right things, about natural elements and how you can use them to drive machinery, you can do ANYTHING, on your own, with no debt to any god or man. Mix saltpeter, carbon and sulfur, and it will burn the same way every time, no matter what you believe in.

I worked hard, and learned the right things, and I am happy to earn what I can from what I know, and continue to learn.

But most of what I know is, THERE IS NO MAGIC.