I understand why alchemists invented, and modern fiction writers use, systems with a few understandable Elements like Earth / Fire / Air / Water / Light / Dark.
I understand why even most nerds don't bother to study the Elements in real life. There's too many of them, and they don't neatly correspond to meaningful aspects of macro-level existence.
But just once I'd like to read a worked magical system where the author has looked up the properties of the real Elements, has put in all the work to build up a system of plausible-sounding correspondences, and the protagonist is a rare dual-element Tellurium-Iodine wizard.
I forgot that you're on tumblr
Does the imbalance in "meaningful aspects of macro-level existence" imply that oxygen or carbon or something rules the world?
Yeah, my first thought was that carbon-benders are extremely powerful, whereas all the [synthetic element that doesn't exist in nature and lasts a fraction of a second]-benders are essentially muggles.
(Which actually would be a cool explanation for the existence of muggles, they're the people born with the potential to control element 300 or something.)
But I think the idea in the OP was more of a metaphorical system based around the properties of the elements, rather than element-kinesis. Even Avatar does this a bit; air-benders are really good at dodging like a leaf in the breeze, water-benders can heal because water is soothing, earth-benders can echolocate because earth is good at conducting vibrations, etc.
Aerb, the world of Worth the Candle, stands out as a prototype I think - a setting with a ton of different magics, like Gold Magic or Bone Magic or Gem Magic, each based on different metaphors and properties of the thing in question. (Gold is valuable so Gold Mages get more powerful the more gold they hoard but risk being undermined by their greed, Gem Mages shoot lasers based on the refraction of light through their gems, bones form the underlying skeleton of the body so Bone Mages can pull a creature's innate abilities from them, etc.)
So like, a xenonmancer wouldn't necessarily control elemental xenon, they might channel it's unreactivity to become immune to poison and acid (a shared power of all Noble Gas mages?) and it's fluorescence to shoot beams of blue light.
The more I think about this, the less unwieldy it seems, since the properties of elements are fairly well-structured. (A xenonmancer is a noble gas mage and a fluorescent, plus probably some stuff based around density and being a gas at human-livable temperatures, etc.) If you really wanted each elemental school to be totally unique magical schools in ways that are somehow still convincingly tied to their properties, even allowing for cultural properties like "gold is valuable", that would be harder.
Quickly sketching out a setting:
The Fire Age
Most cultures possess Ash Mages; that is, Carbonmancers (in modern terms) who have awakened to the first allotrope using high-purity charcoal. The ability to channel fire under normal atmospheric conditions was historically extremely valuable, as was the ability to track game by sensing highly bioavailable carbon, and to a lesser extent the ability to hide; the Fire, Life, and Dark channels have been wielded extensively by almost every human culture. The Fire Age largely takes its name from these early channelers, whose power both came from and made more readily available the power of fire.
Presumably there have also been exceptional individuals who stumbled upon and awakened to those elements which are present in raw form on occasion throughout prehistory, but no definitive examples have been proven prior to the Metal Age.
The Metal Age
Early human mining efforts ushered in what is commonly known as the Metal Age.
The second and third forms of power a Carbonmancer could awaken to were discovered here, both gifted with the defensive Stone channel - Coal Mages (not always clearly distinguished from Ash Mages historically), and a little later, the much more powerful Adamants (whose Refract channel was historically considered a more powerful version of the Dark channel.) Access to diamonds and the resulting Adamants was a major factor historically, although the generalised concept of allotropy extending to other elements was not discovered until the modern age.
Importantly, a number of metals were also discovered by many cultures during this era, before the advent of written history: Copper Mages, Lead Mages, Gold Mages, and Silver Mages all became fairly common. A small number of Iron Mages are also known to have existed, using rare meteoric or telluric iron. In addition to, to varying degrees, the standard metal channels (Stone, Bend, Mirror, Chill/Warm; the Electric channel would not be understood for some time), Lead introduced the Death channel, Copper and Iron the Pull channel, Silver and to a lesser extent Copper the Purity channel, and Gold the Immortal channel.
The earliest Sulphur Mages are also thought to have begun in this age (possibly even earlier in regions with substantial sulphur deposits), employing their unique blend of Life, Death, and Purity channelling, although the more advanced allotropic techniques were not discovered until much later.
The Historical Age
The Historical, Classical, or Civilized Age is marked by the introduction of smelting, farming, and writing.
Iron Mages became commonplace around the beginning of this Age with the introduction of smelting, alongside Tin and Bismuth Mages. Over the course of this era Platinum (c. 600 BC – AD 200), Mercury (c. 1500 BC), Antimony (c. 1000 BC), Arsenic (c. AD 300), and Zinc Mages (c. 1000 BC - 1300 AD). The Death channel became more common, and the Water channel was introduced by the discovery of Mercury.
While the concept of alloying channels had been known since the early Metal Age, it was during this era that more complex alchemical rituals were discovered for the first time.
The Scientific Age
Also known as the Early Modern, Reason, or Industrial age, the Scientific Age was marked by the scientific method and we have much clearer historical records (including, for example, knowing the specific discoverers of most elements.)
The elements discovered in the Early Modern age are too numerous to list here, but notable among them are Phosphorus (the first Light channel), Hydrogen (the first Air channel), Uranium (the first Radiation channel), the considerable advances in Fire channelling represented by Sodium, Fluorine and Oxygen Mages, and the advances in Death channelling represented by the increasingly-toxic elements isolated during this era. Also notable are the discovery that the Electric channel allowed the manipulation of electricity, dramatically improved understanding of the Life channel and its applications, the increasingly clear recognition that no one channel was inherently limited to a single element, and the development of the periodic table.
The Modern Age
The precise beginning of the Modern Age is often debated, but is typically dated from the discovery of the first synthetic elemental school synthesised through nuclear processes, rather than being isolated from the natural world - Radonmancers, Technetiumancers, or Curiumancers depending on one's precise definition.
Although a large number of new elements have been successfully synthesised in the Modern Age, none have displayed any truly novel channels, and many have proven difficult to wield due to a short half-life. The discovery of several new fullerene allotropes of carbon in the Modern Age is notable for its impact on Carbon Mages, however.
The Seventeen Channels
Reactivity: Fire (high; can include reactions other than the exothermic) or Immortal (low). (Non-exothermic reactions are sometimes termed Acid channels, although this is somewhat misleading.)
Optical: Dark (low reflectivity), Mirror (high reflectivity), Refract (transparent), Light (luminescence).
Biological properties: Life (present in living things, necessary for life, moves around a lot), Death (toxic), Purity (toxic to microorganisms but not humans - not really distinct but considered so for historical reasons)
Rigidity/Toughness: Stone (high), Bend (medium). Exact details will vary depending on exact properties. Crumbling under pressure is not something you want to channel.
Phase of matter: aside from solids as covered above, Water (liquid) and Air (gas). (Some overlap with Life, via sensing motion, although sensing the movements of e.g. xenon is less immediately useful.) Dependent on temperature and pressure, which in a few elements can allow for different channels under different (but non-fatal) conditions.
Conductivity: Warm/Chill (thermal), Electric (electrical). Low conductivity can be useful for Stone channelling. Related: Pull (magnetic permeability).
Radioactivity: Radiation. High-density Stone channels can be protective. Elements with a short half-life become increasingly difficult to channel period.
