Magic Discussion

Welcome, one and all! Because the topic came up in the chatbox, I will now proceed to create this thread for the discussion of magic in the Raildex verse, for the sake of interesting conversations and assistance for anyone looking to create a new magician.

Magic > Espers

Index, you do realize that Mikoto is an esper, right? Anyway, for the sake of adding content, as well as something for people to respond to, I shall explain my theory on how magic works, in the broad sense.
Note: Possible Spoilers for NT9
My understanding of the phases is this: there is the Pure World, which is governed by the laws of science. The phases seem to be created by various religions and possibly other beliefs (I assume they are created whenever a large enough amount of belief or power or something similar aggregates and/or is amassed, e.g. when enough people believed Christianity to be true and/or sustained that belief long enough, a phase of Christian origin was created, or when a Magic God creates one through sheer power or through some more delicate procedure which is entirely possible as the most in-depth definition of a Magic God was stated by Stiyl in Volume 1) and add on new 'rules' which are superimposed over those of the Pure World, and form the basis of magic. For example, the 'rules' added on by the Christian phase allows Christianity based magic to work. Going a bit off topic here, but because of how Imagine Breaker is used in NT9, I hypothesize that it works by canceling out the influence of the phases, making their 'rules' non-applicable. On that topic, the notion of why it doesn't destroy the Ley Lines or kill people by erasing their life force brings up the question of how much is added by the phases and how much was there to begin with. Going further off-topic and into spoilers,

NT9 Spoilers: