Magic that's "not" magic. What's your opinion?

I wonder it this is relevant: in the setting for "Mage: The Ascension," magic-users were people who had a will-to-power, with strong enough conviction in their personal beliefs to change reality to conform to their beliefs. (ie. faith in miracles, conviction of weird-science, trust in hoodun loas, conviction to the Tao, etc) But not everybody had this ability, and not everyone who had the ability could use it.

There was a faction of these magic-users who felt it was unfair that only the elite few could reap these benefits. There was also some disgust in what the other magic-users would do with their supernatural abilities, and how they treated those without gifts. So this faction worked together on magic that could be used by the non-gifted. Magic that was reproducible, and reliable. It was still magic-users imposing their will, but they would create smaller and persistent effects instead of huge one-off evocations of power.

The other magic-users despised these idealists for trying to break down the haves-and-have-nots caste system, and an idealogical war broke out. The idealists had numbers on their side, for even though they couldn't call down lightning or enchant a champion, they could mobilize armies who were armed with trebuchets (magic fists to batter walls), black powder (fireballs, later tube-rods of magic missile), or steel plating that wasn't as good as magic mithril but it could be worn by hundreds or thousands of troops instead of one champion. The wizards in their towers were eventually overrun, and forced to go into hiding from the tool-using normal people.

Many little magics overwhelmed the few extravagant magic-users. And since these little magics were so common, the insignificant will-to-power of millions of ungifted people became larger than the will-to-power of few (and conflicting) gifted people... and reality conformed to that accumulated will-to-power, and made these little magics "normal."

/r/worldbuilding Thread