We are all comfortable with it because we know its all done with tricks and that there is no true magic happening but no one knows how these tricks work except for the magicians themselves. As far as the general public knows real magic could be happening right there in front of us, on stage, all the time. We’d never know.

Perhaps option number 3 is the expose the truth about what the magicians do in private, there are no tricks there is real magic in the world, they just want to keep it for themselves.

Alternately there’s the ‘gifted individual’ approach of Star Wars – a few rare Jedi are possessed of magical powers, but a dark force has killed off most of those with talent, and as a result the powers of the force exist only in legend.

A third option is a sort of Prometheus story, where a class of protective magicians do exist, but your heroes come from outside of that class and effectively steal the knowledge, and through their innovation and ignorance perform the ritual in an ‘incorrect’ way.

There’s no reason you shouldn’t compromise and have a world where the public have some knowledge of magic, but it’s shrouded in confusion and darkness, with many so-called magicians performing as quacks because they don’t know what they’re doing.

I would link the success of the ritual to several arcane factors – characteristics of the individuals involved such as heritage or their combined heritage, specific knowledge they possess, trick questions or anti-intuitive aspects to the ritual that others would fail on – so a whole combination of unlikely factors come together in an almost farcical way to unleash chaos. There can be an added level of fun in that the heroes aren’t quite sure how they’ve done what they’ve done, and they need to figure out how they’ve done it to set things right.

This sounds like a cool idea. Although it’s possible I’m saying that because it sounds similar (but with a different emphasis) to an idea I had a few years ago. I was inspired by the mythology of the Severn.

Best of luck with it.