Thread Magic requires the caster to be initiated to learn it and follow a elemental based magical tradition. It is also very limited access as only a few people know of it in game.
Thread Magic is a type of magic that perceives spell theory a bit differently. It sees spells as a series of matrixes that are charged with an Elemental Thread. These threads are individual elements that the caster learns similar to learning spells. Then the spells are based more on their general effect and not on any element effect. Then the caster weaves them together to augment the spell.
Each thread has an Elemental Effect which does extra damage and does some side effect. Threads can also be cast as spells by themselves and each are purchased as a spell. They are more limited (touch only) but they can be used to intimidate someone or can be channeled along a weapon focus to add it’s damage type just as it would to a spell.

Air – Increased knockback and area effect wind secondary effects.
Lightning – Electrical Damage (½ impact armor)
Fire – Fire Damage, can start secondary fires
Ice – Either freeze someone in place, act as ice knives, or ice sheet
Metal – Shards of metal
Stone – Flying rocks

They can be combined in various ways to either create additional effects (Smoke from Air and Fire) or can be mixed to cause both effects (Fire and Ice would cause frost and burn damage – but no secondary effects). Some can make for very nasty combinations (Fire and Stone to make Meteor Shower or Fire and Metal to make Burning Shrapnel or even Metal and Ice to make a Razor Ice Sheet). What is really nasty is a lighting/metal/burning/stone area attack spell.
You can combine as many threads as you can cast but it gets harder to cast and resist drain. Each thread past the first adds +1 threshold to cast and +2 drain code.

It also is very obvious on who is doing it. The effects are blatent as hell. The threads you are using glow around your hands. When you attack it is obvious. Area effects also either come from your hands or you direct them into the sky above and it rains down from there.
Thread magic has another benefit in that gives the caster a +2 dice to resist that damage type – magical or otherwise. You are so used to it’s energies you can even subconsciously bend them to your will.
There is also a chance of side effects or backlash with Thread magic. A glitch will always cause sideeffects of those elements on the world around the caster. This can not be directed by the caster for their benefit.

Damn not what I was hoping for when I read the title.

what were you hoping for?
If anyone can think of a better term for it then Thread Magic then suggest away.

I'm just thinking of how many of the immortals that would shit a brick if something like this came to light

What do you mean about the Immortals?
In my game this is actually a rediscovered ancient magic that one of the players is trying to reconstruct. Any immortals and dragons already have it.

I haven't read the Tir sourcebook. What was his response?

The source of the info in my game was some rediscovered ancient tomes from the 4th age. They have spent the first month or two of my game just trying to translate stuff. They are actually trying to stop an invasion force of demons that are trying to soften up the world in preparation for the Horrors. Only the magic user has even paid attention to the strange spell stuff.

I wouldn't be able to help myself. I'd just have to slip Harley in there somewhere.

well I may but I'm not sure it would work. I need to research him more.

According to what I know of magic in Shadowrun, how you envision it does not effect it. There is just one kind of magic, and the paradigm through which you view it shapes only your own methods, not the end result. If a new magical paradigm could change the nature of magic, you'd expect different traditions to have different abilities, wouldn't you?

Now, in SR3, they did... But no longer. I don't see how rediscovering ancient knowledge could teach you a new variety of magic, since magic does not seem to have varieties. The only exception is metamagic which doesn't change the nature of magic but rather gives the initiate extraordinary techniques of controlling it.

Of course, there may be stuff directly contradicting my ideas in some of the fiction, I haven't read any of it... But not all fiction is canon.

Weaving different elemental effects into one spell does not need a new 'type' of magic. You could very, very easily create new spells with combined effects, without eviscerating the theme or making new rules at all. You could make "burning bolt" which shoots a flaming lightning bolt, or "Acid spear" which shoots frozen shards of acid into stuff...

Or, you could make a metamagic which allows the user to more dynamically combine effects. Call it "Weaving," and allow them to add elemental effects to existing spells on the fly in exchange for higher drain. In other words, much like your original idea, but without the unecessary un-canonical disocvery of a "whole new" type of magic.

ixombie, Ummm You just said that there are no new types of magic being discovered - which is contradicted by EVERY magic suppliment they have EVER put out (because they are always added new techniques and metamagic and spells).

Magic doesn't have varieties? WHAT??!?

So you are saying that the Ancient magics (represented by Earth dawn) work the same as they do now? That they have always worked the same???

The whole point was to not have 50 little spells but few spells that can be adjusted on the fly. Many of the spells do nearly the same thing. From a magical theory point of view it seems like they would be mostly the same with a dash of this or that added. I thought that it made more sense to deal with the overall effect and give the caster more versitility.

How does this eviscerate the theme of shadowrun? It is based in the shadowrun spell creation system and doesn't do any of the restricted magics like teleportation. The Theme of Shadowrun is not a list of spells.

It's not a new type of magic. You can't do anything with these that you could do before.

Now if I brought in Nethermancy from Earthdawn then THAT would go against the current restrictions but still actually be a part of the setting.