Magi time and analogy

The question came up recently as to what typical magi do with their time considering the amount of power they already have. It occurs to me that if a magus was interested in more power the most obvious source is gaining the ability to boss other magi around.
Then it occurs to me that there are, by canon, roughly 1000 magi in mythic europe.
The US congress has 438 congresspeople.
The US Senate has 100 senators
President, Vice President and the Cabinet is 24 members
Supreme court has 9
That's 573 people, or roughly half of the population of Hermetic mages in Mythic Europe
If you want to consider what an elite group of people with a lot of power and vying with each other for more power are likely to be like.
Of course, there are also 50 state governors, and so on that are just a level down from those august bodies.
Food for thought.

One thing to consider too is the total number of inhabitant : in modern day USA there are 333 millions of inhabitants, wherase there were only 68 millions inhabitant in mythical Europe (both numbers came from wikipedia).
It means that Congress is far more exclusive that Order of Hermes (if we use the same proportion for Mythical Europe it would mean something like 115 people, almost ten time less than Magi)

If I am not mistaken you will need a group of 4900 people to build your analogy :slight_smile:

Only if you assume that proportionality is necessary for the analogy to work. In many ways magi have more power than a senator or congressperson, in that they can bend reality in certain ways. Plus there are numerous spirits and undocumented entities that would contribute to greater proportionality.
The main point is about how such power is managed within a given size of community that is effectively already at the top.

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