Yes.
Resolving an aging crisis could be covered by either or both foci - up to each SG/troupe to decide because the rules don't say.
They are mutually exclusive, in that you can only ever have a single magical focus, regardless of source.
I would generally not accept using a Focus for Healing for Longevity Rituals. I do not see these as relevantly similar. I would accept being over ruled by my troupe though.
I can see an overlap between them in dealing with Aging Crisis. But an Aging focus would work for Longevity Rituals, as well as Perdo Corpus and Perdo Animal to age creatures.
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IMO healing will help with resolving aging crisis but not longevity rituals. Also have you considered a serpent? Numerous cultures (including our own symbol for medicine) have incorporated snakes as a symbol for the healing arts.
I concur with the interpretation that a healing foci will help with an aging crisis, and I wouldn't allow it to impact a longevity ritual, which would fall squarely under the aging foci.
Depending on whether you classify them as faerie or magical, and if magical, magic human or magic animal, some centaurs could fit very well given the myth of Chiron.
A magical leech could also fit. You could consider reading this for inspiration: Asclepius and His Animals’ Roles in Healing.
Centaurs are generally defined as magical humans whose monstrous form is that they are equine from the waist down.
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Weasels have Greater Purifying Touch (venom)
Animals associated with healing include: pigs, snakes, ravens, eagles, frogs, and turtles.
You're probably right, silveroak.
I love that. I had always thought that centaurs were faerie. But that there could two types of centaurs resolves the difference in portrayal between Chiron, and the rambunctious drunken other centaurs.
But now you have me wondering how a magical centaur comes about. Maybe the pregnant mother slept/took shelter in a stable full of magical horses?
I would expect them to be some form of magic kin, breeding true, or else be the result of either a woma mating with a horse of virtue (Cathrine the Great style), a man mating with a mare (at least the childbirth would be easier) or some form of magical transformation in the tradition of the great beasts of bjorner, though of a prior age.
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There are certainly Faerie centaurs; you're right about that. There's a good bit about them in RoP:F. But, as you said, there could be both Faerie and Magic.
Interesting. A Bjornaer with a horse heartbeast (and possibly a Healing focus) produces children. A century later the Bjornaer becomes a Great Beast, and one of its descendents being born at that moment becomes part horse out of magical blood sympathy? That might work to produce a "contemporary" Chiron.
But can such a magical, monstrous human become a Familiar?
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No, I mean some magical group back in 1200 BCE had something similar to heartbeasts where they turned into hybrid human-horse people and then had children.
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I love this idea.
Probably not - it's probably still a human.
Your problem can be solved canonically one of two ways:
- If it were Faerie instead of Magic, then Faerie Magic could allow binding it.
- If it is an animal with human features rather than a human with animal features, then regular Hermetic magic would allow binding it.
The joys of the limitations in hermetic theory. My current character in a game was dating a Magic Human that developped the capacity to shapeshift into drake form over time. Part of the theme for the storyline of the past few years was "I can't make you my familiar, sadly. Let me increase my magic theory, then I can look for a practical solution to that problem." At one point, as we were getting close to starting the original research, the solution came from another route: she underwent a process of transformation as a result of a story, becoming a drake that can change into human form and the virtue changed from Magic Human to Magic Animal and suddenly I was wondering why I was looking at years of original research when the only stat change on paper was the name of a virtue and which form was the natural form prior to the shapeshifting.
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I've had a similar feeling about some other stuff. I'm not so worried about Magic Humans. But, for instance, there is the homunculus. I'd be happy having elementalists bind elementals, too. Of course, spirits do require one of several special Virtues. So at some point requiring a discovery should be reasonable.
Perhaps I should tweak the origin story to:
Horse heartbeast Bjornaer sires colts while in horse form. Later when Bj mage becomes Great Beast a foal descendent being born at that moment is born with a corpus monstrosity human torso and head, representing the humanity lost by the Bjornaer
The way I see it, any thong (or one) aligned with a realm can come in a faerie flavour. Whether it is a unicorn (divine or faerie), mythological creatures (magic or faerie), as the story about the original is likely to attract a faerie who will try to inhabit the personnage for he vitality. While I don't know how long a faerie pretending to be a demon might take before it switches into an infeenal being, Krampus (or anachronistically a Hans Trapp) could be aligned with either realm.