Can a Magus use Knowledge Pool to Learn a racial spell from the magus list?

Question

I'm trying to understand the effective use of this ability, as my magus is about to hit level 7. And there are a few spells on the spell lists that are un-available except to certain races.

1) Racial spell(s) --

Such as "Blend", which is typically an "elf" racial spell. It doesn't say only elves can cast it, just the following:

"This spell was originally created for Elves. Characters or creatures of other races can learn to cast it with GM permission."

But doesn't say anything about casting it being restricted to race, only acquiring the spell initially.

2) Using "Knowledge Pool (Su)" ...

As written, I see no reason why the magus could NOT temporarily "memorize" a racial spell that is on the magus list ... As it is; from the magus spell list

"At 7th level, when a magus prepares his magus spells, he can decide to expend 1 or more points from his arcane pool, up to his Intelligence bonus. For each point he expends, he can treat any one spell from the magus spell list as if it were in his spellbook and can prepare that spell as normal that day. If he does not cast spells prepared in this way before the next time he prepares spells, he loses those spells. He can also cast spells added in this way using his spell recall ability, but only until he prepares spells again."

For clarity; I'm not concerned about Pathfinder Society rules ... just standard pathfinder. And if you disagree, please cite specific rules and not just opinions.

edit refined the question to only relate to knowledge pool and racial spells ... as writing spells "memorized" with Knowledge Pool has been previously addressed.

Answer 1

This is fundamentally a question about priority: racial spells say only members of those races (barring GM say-so to the contrary) can learn these spells, knowledge pool says that it can let the magus temporarily “learn” any magus spell. The two do not reference each other in any way.

Pathfinder, as with most RPGs, is an exception-based system. You have general rules, and then you have feats, spells, class features, and so on that provide exceptions to the general rules. In a sense, these things are forms of regulated, sanctioned cheating, “breaking the [general] rules” in some fashion or another. An important aspect of this is that the general rules do not account for exceptions; they don’t list the exceptions and they don’t make explicit mention of the possibility for exceptions or how those exceptions might work. That’s the whole point, to free up later work to produce exceptions in a variety of ways.

So the question becomes, which of these two rules is the exception to the other? There is absolutely no indication of this; both are somewhat specific (one applies only to certain spells, the other applies only to spells learned a certain way), but also fairly broad and general (the former applies all spells of that type, the latter allows learning any spells from that class), and certainly, neither one is a subset or variation of the other. So there is nothing in the rules to indicate priority.

That does not mean that the rules allow a magus to learn a racial spell through the knowledge pool. It means that the rules are ambiguous, and one of two equally-valid interpretations would allow the magus to learn a racial spell through the knowledge pool. The alternative, equally valid, is that the racial spell rules are exceptions to the knowledge pool rules, and prevent the magus from learning them. There is nothing available in the rules text to resolve this ambiguity.

So you will have to ask your GM to make a decision one way or the other. Under the rules, allowing you racial spells, denying you racial spells, or allowing you some but denying you others, are all valid interpretations of the rules as written.

Answer 2

The availability of racial spell is, as indicated, up to the GM. Your should ask this question to yours.

As far as I know, there is no additional information on racial spells in the rule books. As such, I think it is interesting to look at Pathfinder Society rules as a pertinent interpretation.

The additional resources state the following :

Alternate racial traits, racial feats, and racial spells are only available for characters of the associated race or human ethnicity.

In their rules, it is impossible to learn, cast or buy a scroll of a racial spell if you are not of the appropriate race. This emphasizes the uniqueness of those spells by making them completely unavailable to characters of an inappropriate race.