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Exploring the Arcane
Enchantment tables and brewing stands are perfectly fine magical tools, but perhaps you yearn to explore a school of magic in depth. Perhaps out of practicality? For power? Or perhaps for the sake of knowledge itself?
In terms of practicality, blood magic has much to offer: living armor that adapts to the wearer's needs, rituals and routing nodes that can facilitate all manner of automation, and an alchemy table capable of producing potions far beyond the capabilities of a conventional brewing stand. However, all this power does not come without risk. Once your soul network has tasted blood for the first time, its hunger will never be sated. You will need to feed it blood, or you will risk it feeding on your own. Your soul network's hunger will only increase as your power grows. Should you deem yourself worthy, the Sanguine Scientiem can be readily crafted. However, due to your body's unusual weakness, you may want to start filling your altar using dwarven fluid transfer technology, and a bucket of life essence filled by other means.
While not strictly magical, you will find Dwarven technology [Embers] to be very useful for automating many magical devices. Item suction, for example, can be achieved by activating a lever on an item pump connected to an item pipe network. A similar process is also possible for fluids. Item transfer can then be used to feed a bedrock-touching ember bore with coal and later output the harvested ember shards. With time, you can process these shards into refined ember, which can be routed with a Tinker Hammer to various dwarven machines.
You can learn the details of how to use dwarven technology using the eye of a golem, known by dwarves as the "Eye of the Ancients," aimed at a Research Table containing the technology you wish to learn about. Traditionally, this eye is obtained by killing a golem with a pickaxe, however some alchemists have had success crafting a lifelike substitute.
In terms of pure offensive power, Hermitian spellcasting [Ars Magica] has no equal. Ranged spells and self spells can, with practice, render arrows and potions obsolete. However, be mindful: as you continue to cast spells, the pull of one element will eventually win out. You will not only master control over that element, but embody everything that element represents. If the idea of spellcasting excites you, you can create the Arcane Compendium by placing a book in an item frame near a pool of etherium. [Ars Magica for 1.10 still has some bugs to work out, so be prepared for the experience to be a bit rough around the edges.]
If knowledge is what you seek, there is no better place to find it but in the stars. This school of magic, astral sorcery, harnesses the power of starlight. Starlight is needed for even the simplest of crafting recipes, but unfortunately concentrated starlight is not easy to come by on this lowly plane. You will need to find a roofed marble temple and dig into its lower chamber, where an unbreakable floating crystal can be found. You must borrow the starlight for crafting by placing a crafting table near the crystal. A Resonating Wand, a Luminous Crafting Table, and a Journal if you do not already have one, must all be crafted there before you can harness starlight on your own. The Journal will then tell you everything you need to progress.
One cannot forget to mention one of the oldest and most venerable schools of magic: equivalent exchange [ProjectE]. Even the most magically challenged will find covalence dust undoubtedly useful. Different tiers of the dust can be crafted with tools to slowly repair them, and there continue to be found crafting recipes for the magical dusts that even the ancient masters could not have predicted. A dabbling alchemist can quickly find use for the transmuting abilities of the Philosopher's Stone, and the Klein Star-powered destruction catalyst as a terrain-clearing building tool. All these and more await you, should you be willing to pay the proper fee in matter. While the ancient masters are long dead, and much of the knowledge lost, budding alchemists have found success re-creating the Book of the Alchemist from relatively simple materials. [The official documentation is sparse, but the rest of the mod can be gleaned pretty easily from JEI and the mod's item tooltips.]
Perhaps not as old as equivalent exchange, but nearly so, is Thaumaturgy. To a wizard in the know, Thaumaturgy is a versatile theoretical framework with many applications. To outsiders, Thaumaturges can appear unfathomable, and are known to have diagnosable forms of insanity. They tend to hoard their research closely. In fact, there have been numerous occasions throughout history where a new generation of Thaumaturges has had to rewrite the study of Thaumaturgy. How one manages to become a Thaumaturge is unclear, but those on the path have been known to experience dreams and visions, echoing knowledge of a past life... [The Thaumcraft Beta for 1.10 is pretty stable, but you may encounter a few bugs and missing features]
Vital alchemy [Alchemic Ash] is also worth mentioning. It may lack the glamorous danger of blood alchemy or the precision of equivalent exchange, but its powders have no shortage of uses both practical and aesthetic. With a few hoppers or item pipes, many of its resources can be automated rather simply. Budding vital alchemists are encouraged to consult "Vital Alchemy," a guide crafted simply with two pieces of sand.
There are some who say that humans, animals, and monsters are the most advanced forms of life, that their ability to move about freely, and to think and reason, make them superior to the seemingly brainless and fiber-bound life-forms we know as plants. Magi who believe in this are close-minded; they will know nothing of the wander-lustful dimensional jumps of an Ender Lily, the empathic fiery passion of a Mary Jane, or the capricious demands of a Feroxia. Interacting with the herbal bestiary requires a gentle hand, with the other hand holding a stick to guide the work [holding a stick prevents right-click harvesting]. A description of magical plants and their care can be found in the book "Unique Crops." Caring for the most intelligent of magical plants, like caring for a cat or a dog, can be rewarding in itself, although it is not without its material benefits. Botanists looking for plants to produce a specific material may be more interested in the uses of Inferium Essence and the mob-leeching Soulium Dagger.