A Greeting and Question

[Leblanc]

I just got Dominions II Last week and Im really loving it. The shear amount of depth in it made the demo a big enough drain on my time that I didnt actually buy the game for a month. I kinda suck at it right now but I have managed to win a few games, most notably as R'lyeh and Ulm.

Anyway, my question is this: is there any way for mages to advance permanently in paths besides empowerment? I understand that temporary battle spells that will boost levels for the duration of the battle, but the empowerment description seems to hint that there are alternate ways to give peramnent levels. Am I just reading too far into a bit of text?