maesters, magic, and times with or withought magic

[Waters Gate]

The maesters of the citadel are by all accounts in general to be considered sceptical of magic, with a few exceptions of those maesters who do take a great interrest in it like Marwyn or Qyburn.

Nevertheless, maesters tend to be educated in magic anyway, represented by the fact that many have a Valyrian steel ring. Their scepticism probably however stems from the fact that much of the knowledge they are taught on the subject of magic appears to be useless, it does not work.

Or it does not work in a time withought much magic.

But i do wonder what happens should magic have times where its strong or weak, which is implied, and if such changes might happen abrupt and suddently so maesters would realize that suddently all those things that they were taught included in their valyrian steel ring suddently makes them very powerfull mages, able to do great magical feats, something i guess which no maesters trough time would have experienced before.

How much substance is there in an education on magic? Surely given that the Citadel would be stupid to award those valyrian steel rings to easily this probably is a rather meaty course.

I could add there even be a suestion behind their reasoning for having that course in magic which includes donning out valyrian steel rings when the Citadel considers it worthless anyway. Why do the maesters continue to teach the subject? I must say that i never bought the explenation that the test with the glass candle's were there to teach acolyte's that magic is non existant, the more so because even in times of low magic it doesn't appear to vanisch completly neither. Maybe the Citadel is rather unsure about the matter itself, and the glass candle's are more there as an experiment in finding possibly natural born magicians or something.

[Elm Tree]

Few have a Valyrian steel ring, Maester Luwin said. Most of them do not bother, probably because they don't believe in it or see no use.

[Archmaester Drew]

Only about one in 100 maesters have a Valyrian steel link. Each link represents a level of knowledge on the subject and a maester can have multiple links of the same metal, signifying the level of knowledge in that subject (and the archmaesters hold a rod, ring, and staff made of their subject metal). Even fewer maesters have more than one Valyrian steel link. I think only a handful of maesters know very much about magic and the occult: chiefly Archmaester Marwyn. :)

[Minstral]

I think of it like this:

In real life the Church fought and suppressed knowledge thought because it wanted a monopoly in order to determine the "divine picture" it painted. They didn't have a problem with many of the discoveries save for people not wishing to attribute the phenomenon to God.

In Westeros, the reverse is true. They don't have the political power of the Catholic Church, but they wield a soft power over the politics of the continent. These men simply want a monopoly on what they say is right and wrong and suppress that which they deem is in conflict with their goals and dogma.