The next generation of Mages

Ah, well, I suppose that I got caught up in my personal interpretations again, rather than pure RAW.   Well, I still stand by the thought that Prime is about more than just meta-magic.

I just find it difficult to believe that throughout all of human history no mage, anywhere, has ever though about using his cosmic powers to work with the mana which is the life and soul of his own magic and spells.

It's like someone "inventing" the idea of using your eyes to see with in 2008. You wonder how it's been possible for people to not notice that your eyes can see until such a modern age and time.

After all, mana is a HUGE thing for mages, given how much it's used and influences most of the things they do with their magic. How has it never occured to a single person to try and do something with it before now?

similarly Prime is used to create magic items. So apparently no magic item creators have ever existed? It's an interesting idea, but seems rather.....strange and ludicrous to me.

It's all about the suspension of disbelief, when it comes down to it. This one simply doesn't seem to have enough internal sense to be plausible to me.

My question is how could a lot of mythology around magic exist if prime was never accessible?

Illusions are an example. But what about control of hallows, the craft of wonderous relics. Prime encompasses the ability to ward others from the effects of magic, like priests and benedictions. It encompasses essential understanding of the unity of the universe. A theme common everywhere in history from Kaballah to Taoism. There's also Platonism and Gnostic concepts.What about protection of the soul which can also fall into p;rime?

Seriously I just can't picture mage as it is presented with prime suddenly being "that new arcanum". Makes no sense to me.

Okay my ST and I were talking and came up with a more believable background story. When Atlantes fell all the old schoool mages that used prime died off and the practice of it was forgotten, untill when the newly awakend came along and atumbled on it. Learning how to harness prime to do freaky shit and using it to bunp up other arcana sapells. 

    Refrence to the old school mage, there was a fabled tenth arcana, prime is our tenth fabled arcana.

Here's a question for you - how many of the PCs are actually taking Prime, and how many are following a different magical style.    In other words, how relevant is this setting change to the Players?    There's a ton of styles that wouldn't care about investing in Prime in the first place.

All of them use prime, some more than others, And everyone else is using different types of magic styles. The setting change is just a shift of power to the newly awakend mages, the old school ones are kinda cautious of us. Like the X men, the next generation of mutants are more powerful then the last generation.

My recommendation, which wouldn't require you to change much, is to keep this a local phenomenon.  For some reason the area your characters play in has been hostile to Prime users, so much so that no one awakens with any dots of Prime and Prime users are driven away.  It's been this way so long that local mages don't even acknowledge the existence of this Arcanum, until now.

This way, the mystery is an artifact of the local setting and not of the entire world.  I think this fits the local feel of the NWOD a bit more and gives you more room, as well as a more approachable mystery.

Yes it would give an interesting feel and story line to the game.