Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-7472785-20130908092917/@comment-17760348-20130908121453

My take (please don't hurt me):

Dust is not activated by Aura but may be inhanced by it - evidenced by Roman shooting a crystal and Ruby's sneeze causing an explosion

standard (unmodified) weapons along with everything else can be a conduite of aura - reference Pyrrha's description of Aura in Ep 6

Dust is primarly used to generate a physical/environmental effect to augment an attack - based on the attacks immediately following Weiss' modifications to the crystals in her weapon such as fire and ice.

the Gliphs are spellcasting and are independant of dust - they match closely the casting seen in the battle between crimson and Glinda in Ep1 and there was no evidence of switching between different types of dust when they changed attacks, as such the spellcasting in entirely Aura related. Which might support the theory that Jaune will be a powerful caster despite not having and dust modified tools to hand.