[quote=@Prisk]
Guardians possess thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of spirits, but only a few actual manifestations of magic. I'm not going to set a definite number, but 3-6 is a reasonable number of different magic attacks (to begin with) that your character is able to do.
[/quote]

Thank you for this, I may have been looking at spirits the wrong way; i believe i understand now. I was thinking 1 spirit, alone, would unlock a specific magic type. The user would then gain access to more skills within that "magical tree", with time and experience. Though, if I'm understanding this correctly, spirits are much like materia in the sense that they are linked to a single ability. So, they may make you stronger, faster, grant you a magical attack, etc. but it will only be one of these.

Sound about right?