Essential Nature

In accordane with medieval philosophy, in Mythic Europe every thing has an Essential Nature that Hermetic Magic cannot alter. Magic can suppress certain qualities or introduce others, but the object's essential nature is maintained.

Consider for example a lead coin magically turned into gold. The magic alters all the coins' qualities (color, softness, weight, and so on) into those of gold. The coin is still god underneath, however, and when the magic ends will revert back to gold, reasserting all the natural qualities manifested by its essential nature.

Any quality of any thing may be part of its essential nature. A person may be cripple in his essential nature, for example, in which case it would be impossible to use Hermetic magic to heal his legs. Usually such flaws chosen at character creation represent a flaw at the character's essential nature that he has had since birth, but non-Hermetic magic or Twilight may change someone's essential nature.