real world esoteric ideas with pathfinder

[Drogan Tome]

So I am running a game with a bunch of my wiccan friends and while building out the fluff and framework for the world I wanted to use real world occult and magical themes as a guide post for various aspects of the game.

Right now I have set up a complex magical system in the empire where magic is practices with an elemental focus and thus 4 great arcane schools dominate the landscape each to one element. drawing inspiration from the Tarot I assigned the traditional arcane focus for each school to their corresponding tarot suite:

fire-wand/staff
water- chalice/cups (a scepter cup design)
air- swords
earth- pentacle/coins (amulet form)

To further make tie ins for my players (most of them have some form of magical character) I am also working on trying to assign secondary schools of magic that also correspond to the symbolic meaning of the 4 suites.

Water/cups is primarily about emotions so I felt that the enchantment school was a good fit. earth/pentacles is about not only wealth but also material things so I though that transmutation with its focus on the material world works. For air/swords I had to go with divination as it focuses on information, communication, thinking, and logic.

I'm having trouble with fire/wands. This suite is all about energy, passion, and motivation; the flame that provides energy to new ventures. On the surface evocation comes to mind but I'm worried that this is too concentrated. Not only do the majority of the spells with fire descriptors already come from that school, making the affiliation evocation just implies they are heavily geared towards blasting. My goal with the school affiliation is to further flesh out the magical disciplines and provide another dimension to them beyond the elemental spells they tend to choose.

What do you think would be a good school?

[Set]

I've seen them broken down more like;

Cups - water, healing, growth, enhancement (physical, mental or spiritual), plant growth / animal growth / enlarge effects, curing and dispelling

Coins / pentacles - earth, protection, solid structures (walls), binding and protective circles, glyphs, wards, abjurations, conjuration (creation, items conjured rise up out of the earth in the pentacle drawn)

Staves - fire, passion, energy, light, sound, enchantment and evocation (can both inflame passions and set peeps on fire, if that fails...)

Swords - air, travel, transportation (anything from jump to expeditious retreat to dimension door, teleport and plane shift), wind

Now, that all said, I saw it as four superhero fantasy characters, each with an item that gave them some respective abilities (a sword that allowed the knight to fly and create wind, a ring with a pentacle-shaped stone that allowed the wearer to call up walls of protective earth & stone, or imprison other people in stony shackles, etc.)

There wasn't really any attempt to balance it out, by assigning two schools to each of the four groups, for instance, but it ended up with Cups covering the healer role, Wands the DPS role, Pentacles more of a Defense/Control role (with the earthen shackles and walls of stone) and Swords a highly mobile Control role (tossing peeps around with wind and zipping around herself with wind-jumps).

[VoodistMonk]

Maybe associate the different suits of magic by their associated planetary body or metal or mineral... like,

Fire: Sun, Gold, Wealth, Masculinity

This kind of adds Domains and areas of concern to each suit of magic. And it takes like 10 seconds to search which metals and planets and minerals are associated with different pagan rituals/traditions. To keep it simple you can go with the basic seven associated with planetary bodies visible to the naked eye... still should provide plenty of material to work with.

[Sysryke]

There are numerous ways to draw parallels and associations here. If it doesn't get too complicated, you might consider allowing for customized sub-schools and/or archetypes that allow for characters to come at the elements through different interpretations. Also, you could check the variant elemental wizard schools that already exist.

But, to take a crack at your two schools per element approach: (I'm not a Tarot "expert" by any stretch)

--Earth/Pentacles: very much associated with wealth and the physical world, the meeting of financial, nutritional, and shelter based needs.
NECROMANCY for the physical body associations
CONJURATION for the manifestation of physical resources

--Air/Swords: Direct action and imposition of will, intangible but still "real world" or practical matters; also conflicts
EVOCATION for the direct effect route
ENCHANTMENT for the imposition of ones will upon others/circumstances

--Fire/Wands: Intensity and passion, creativity and powerful action
TRANSMUTATION for using your energies to modify and change the world to your whims
ILLUSION for the free form expression of whatever you can create

--Water/Cups: emotional issues, interpersonal (especially family) relationships, hopes and dreams
DIVINATION for looking to the future and securing ones dreams
ABJURATION for protection against negative energies and the direction of positive forces towards goal achievement

With all of that I can see arguments to swap places for Conjuration and Transmutation, Divination for Enchantment, and probably several others. You'll have to figure out what "feels" right for your group, but maybe make allowances for out of school spells that carry the appropriate elemental descriptor.

The big issue of course is that you can have all four classic elements well represented within any caster class, and nearly every school of magic.

If you wanted to take a different route, you could try ascribing each element to a different magical source or flavor. Perhaps Air is Divine, Fire is Arcane, Water is Occult, and Earth is Alchemical or Nature (if you remove the divine aspect from Druids and their ilk.) Again, those could all be argued different ways.

You could even divide the classes from each source into different elements. For instance: Arcane; Wizards are Air, Sorcerers Fire, Arcanists Water, and Witches Earth. Mix and match as appropriate.

If the 4 elements divide is your hard and fast setting rule though, it seems to me the most organic solution would be to have a council or coven of all the caster classes for each element. So, a high wizard, grand witch, head cleric, etc. of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
To wrangle back in the Tarot theme, you could use the 22 Major Arcana cards as inspiration for the 22 most prominent casting classes. Each element would have a member of each of those 22 classes represented in/on their ruling body.
Alternatively, have each elemental council composed of the 14 "cards" (classes) of their suit, the Minor Arcana. Then maybe there is a new force/school/organization/threat that is comprised of the 22 Majors who access all of the elements, or an entirely new one.

Sorry to go so long. I love theme campaigns like this; and elemental themes are right up my alley.