Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24722049-20151003205534/@comment-26356342-20151015192731

Just to add to this. A lot of people don't understand magic, and that fear of the unknown causes a bit of a bias. (this is seen in a lot of fantasy) Skyrim has a particular fondness for outright brute force and strength.(the way they see it) It's more honorable to fight with your own physical power, then it is to blast someone with fire from thin air, or to mind control them into a frenzy, or freeze them solid. Also, what Spartan Jack 17 mentioned, its sometimes viewed as a shortcut/excuse for lack of strength. It's not respected.

To top it all off, a lot of the "bad" things that happen within Tamriel often are caused by magic, or involve magic in some capacity. Conjuration magic also involves communing/dealing with Daedra which some view as evil. Necromancers raising the dead within places that honor the dead (like the Nords and Redguards do) is viewed as abhorrent.

Magic within the lore is often unpredictable as well, as we see with the apprentices within the college. There's the group of apprentices who left, and you find some of their bodies later, usually a charred husk surrounded by flames. Being turned into a horse by accident when testing spells. Etc etc etc. Not to mention Soul trapping.. literally stealing someone's soul so your sword will be on fire for another day would be a bit "strange" to say the least.

This all brings us full circle, the common folk and most warriors don't understand how all that works and that scares them, and typically when scared, they react aggressively.