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angharaI just read a comprehensive essay on the subject, which is well worth reading - go here to do likewise - and although I don't agree with EVERYTHING this guy says he makes some wonderful points, and he is also well-read enough to quote from quite a number of other people with names that are quite luminous in the genre who had things to say on the same subject. I'm not going to do that - the quotage, I mean - but the piece did stir up the subject in my own mind and I'm going to throw out a few ideas here.
Fantasy is a lens which sharpens and clarifies the sliver of reality viewed through it, or at least that's what the very best fantasy is. Magic is one of the tools used to accomplish this, and it's a powerful one. I'll even go so far to say that it's a threatening one, because there is, and always has been, that propensity to react against something that affects you deeply.
Sufficiently advanced magic takes on a reality all of its own and begins to be something believed in on its own terms, with something approaching religious faith. This is possibly the reason why the more fundamental Christian ilk feels so violently threatened by such things as the magic in Harry Potter, because they confuse a powerful system of magic being used to shape a fictional story and certain aspects of the reality in which it is based with a potential rival to their own creed and dogma and set of beliefs and a false dichotomy of "people who like and believe THIS cannot possibly believe OURmagic faith and so they must be like be our enemies". And enemies are there to be attacked. And thus magic gets a reputation because it's batting against an already established system which is entrenched, and very much opposed to the things that the new fantasy might be bringing in with it.
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superversive writes from the POV of a Catholic baseline – and that may be the reason why I instantly put the thing into a Christian frame in that paragraph above. But I am going to take this one step further, and perhaps into contentious territory. If any sufficiently advanced technology, as the quote goes, is indistinguishable from magic then it is also possible that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a religion.
If anything that is beyond our comprehension or ability to explain away by empirical means may be tagged with the word “magic”, then the Christian mythos starts to drip with the thing – what are miracles if not magic? Changing water into wine? Walking on water? Resurrection, for that matter…? But over the course of two thousand years the magic has hardened into a cracked outer shell of dogma. It is no longer the original magic but the recasting of that magic into something useful and controllable by a series of human interpreters who sought to use the instances of true magic into something that supported their own thesis, or theory, or grip on power.
I believe there is real magic in belief. I truly believe that sometimes wishing for something hard enough actually does make it come true because the sheer power of the act of visualisation often means that you are, however unwittingly, also working in real-terms for the manifestation of that thing in your life. I remember reading Richar Bach’s “Illusions: the adventures of a reluctant Messiah” (I couldn’t remember the exact title so I just looked it up and this jumped out at me from one of the book’s Amazon reviews: “I'm a Christian, but believe that when you move beyond a literal interpretation of Christ's words and see the symbolic message in them, it's not too different from what's in this book. But that's a big leap for most Christians and this book will probably make their blood boil).” – this encapsulates precisely the conundrum I was talking about up there in the third paragraph…) Specifically, I am thinking about the blue feather incident, where the reluctant Messiah of the title instructs our POV character, his equally reluctant disciple, on the principles of visualisation. Visualise something, the Messiah says, and it will manifest in your life. All right, says the disiple, a blue feather. The Messiah raises an eyebrow but goes, okay, blue feather. CONCENTRATE on it.
Next thing, they’re passing a dairy delivery truck and our disciple’s eyes go wide. Hey, LOOK, he says, and sure enough, on the side of the truck it says BLUE FEATHER DAIRIES.
This is where it gets interesting.
The disciple says that he expected a “real” blue feather. Yes, says the Messiah, but how did you visualise this when you invited it into your life? Were you holding it in your hand or was it just, like, floating disembodied in space?… Floating, the disciple admits. Well, the Messiah explains, that accounts for it. You didn’t personalise the magic and all you did was manifest a generic iteration of the item that you were seeking, not the thing itself in your possession.
Oooooh. It’s MAGIC. It’s real magic because this is delievered utterly matter-of-factly, as though it were common knowledge, as though anybody could do it.
But this is where the organised and dogmatic faith departs from the pure unfettered faith of a child not yet trained to obey all the “rules”. The original miracles are crusted over by the barnacles of creed, words that are repeated verbatim every Sunday to the point of becoming invisible, and completely detached from the things that they may actually mean. True, there are occasional intra-dogmatic kerfuffles within denominations who argue until they foam at the mouth whether “Body of Christ” and “Blood of Christ” are representations of the things they puport to be or whether they MAGICALLY (and I use the word advisedly) transform into the actual real thing when the priest intones the words above the plate and the chalice. Magic is rich and powerful stuff. Powerful enough to make the faithful, who would otherwise recoil at the idea of eating human flesh or drinking human blood, accept even the most potent of the interpretations of those words when they are uttered by a consecrated being over a consecrated thing and freely partake of it despite the implications and moral and ethical contradictions inherent in what they believe they are consuming.
True magic lies in weaving together something that is impossible with something that is yearning for the impossible in such a way that the impossible thing becomes not just possible but inevitable.
This is what writers do every day.
What is it that makes magic come alive for the reader? Is it that the writer must believe in it first, and to what degree should that belief be taken – philosophical, empirical, dogmatic? What is it about magic that pulls in the human mind? What are the riptides and the undertows of that wine-dark sea in which we all like to occasionally drown?
What makes magic… for YOU?…
Fantasy is a lens which sharpens and clarifies the sliver of reality viewed through it, or at least that's what the very best fantasy is. Magic is one of the tools used to accomplish this, and it's a powerful one. I'll even go so far to say that it's a threatening one, because there is, and always has been, that propensity to react against something that affects you deeply.
Sufficiently advanced magic takes on a reality all of its own and begins to be something believed in on its own terms, with something approaching religious faith. This is possibly the reason why the more fundamental Christian ilk feels so violently threatened by such things as the magic in Harry Potter, because they confuse a powerful system of magic being used to shape a fictional story and certain aspects of the reality in which it is based with a potential rival to their own creed and dogma and set of beliefs and a false dichotomy of "people who like and believe THIS cannot possibly believe OUR
superversive writes from the POV of a Catholic baseline – and that may be the reason why I instantly put the thing into a Christian frame in that paragraph above. But I am going to take this one step further, and perhaps into contentious territory. If any sufficiently advanced technology, as the quote goes, is indistinguishable from magic then it is also possible that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a religion.If anything that is beyond our comprehension or ability to explain away by empirical means may be tagged with the word “magic”, then the Christian mythos starts to drip with the thing – what are miracles if not magic? Changing water into wine? Walking on water? Resurrection, for that matter…? But over the course of two thousand years the magic has hardened into a cracked outer shell of dogma. It is no longer the original magic but the recasting of that magic into something useful and controllable by a series of human interpreters who sought to use the instances of true magic into something that supported their own thesis, or theory, or grip on power.
I believe there is real magic in belief. I truly believe that sometimes wishing for something hard enough actually does make it come true because the sheer power of the act of visualisation often means that you are, however unwittingly, also working in real-terms for the manifestation of that thing in your life. I remember reading Richar Bach’s “Illusions: the adventures of a reluctant Messiah” (I couldn’t remember the exact title so I just looked it up and this jumped out at me from one of the book’s Amazon reviews: “I'm a Christian, but believe that when you move beyond a literal interpretation of Christ's words and see the symbolic message in them, it's not too different from what's in this book. But that's a big leap for most Christians and this book will probably make their blood boil).” – this encapsulates precisely the conundrum I was talking about up there in the third paragraph…) Specifically, I am thinking about the blue feather incident, where the reluctant Messiah of the title instructs our POV character, his equally reluctant disciple, on the principles of visualisation. Visualise something, the Messiah says, and it will manifest in your life. All right, says the disiple, a blue feather. The Messiah raises an eyebrow but goes, okay, blue feather. CONCENTRATE on it.
Next thing, they’re passing a dairy delivery truck and our disciple’s eyes go wide. Hey, LOOK, he says, and sure enough, on the side of the truck it says BLUE FEATHER DAIRIES.
This is where it gets interesting.
The disciple says that he expected a “real” blue feather. Yes, says the Messiah, but how did you visualise this when you invited it into your life? Were you holding it in your hand or was it just, like, floating disembodied in space?… Floating, the disciple admits. Well, the Messiah explains, that accounts for it. You didn’t personalise the magic and all you did was manifest a generic iteration of the item that you were seeking, not the thing itself in your possession.
Oooooh. It’s MAGIC. It’s real magic because this is delievered utterly matter-of-factly, as though it were common knowledge, as though anybody could do it.
But this is where the organised and dogmatic faith departs from the pure unfettered faith of a child not yet trained to obey all the “rules”. The original miracles are crusted over by the barnacles of creed, words that are repeated verbatim every Sunday to the point of becoming invisible, and completely detached from the things that they may actually mean. True, there are occasional intra-dogmatic kerfuffles within denominations who argue until they foam at the mouth whether “Body of Christ” and “Blood of Christ” are representations of the things they puport to be or whether they MAGICALLY (and I use the word advisedly) transform into the actual real thing when the priest intones the words above the plate and the chalice. Magic is rich and powerful stuff. Powerful enough to make the faithful, who would otherwise recoil at the idea of eating human flesh or drinking human blood, accept even the most potent of the interpretations of those words when they are uttered by a consecrated being over a consecrated thing and freely partake of it despite the implications and moral and ethical contradictions inherent in what they believe they are consuming.
True magic lies in weaving together something that is impossible with something that is yearning for the impossible in such a way that the impossible thing becomes not just possible but inevitable.
This is what writers do every day.
What is it that makes magic come alive for the reader? Is it that the writer must believe in it first, and to what degree should that belief be taken – philosophical, empirical, dogmatic? What is it about magic that pulls in the human mind? What are the riptides and the undertows of that wine-dark sea in which we all like to occasionally drown?
What makes magic… for YOU?…
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 09:11 pm (UTC)While not all Christian protests against the blanket of "magic(k)" really know WHY they are protesting, there's a basic theory to it:
1) Faith requires you to wait on God and believe HE will take care of the situation.
2) Magic is using your will to take care of the situation on your own.
Hence, at least the informed Christian's problem with "magic" is that it is the precise opposite of "faith" by that definition. You either believe God will do as He's said He will, or you will do it yourself. It's one of those "...submitting your will to God..." things.
Magic is subtle manipulation beneath the surface rules of the 'game', so to speak. I don't think when God 'does a miracle' it's actually 'magic' in that He's the Rulemaker. However, I can see where miracles could be viewed as magic.
I think the Christian reaction against Harry Potter would have been lessened if J.K.Rowling had not used some real stuff in there, like the name "Nicholas Flamel". A child researching that would discover the man was real--and a curious child would begin to search further. That's the sort of thing that hooked me as a child. I got into magic at age 8 and by age 11 I was fervently into the Aleister Crowley/Hermetic/Thelemic system and stayed with it for over years. All because I saw references in things that led to real people and real books on magic (albeit years before Harry Potter was a twinkle in Ms. Rowling's eye).
I'm just sayin'... *laughs*
Nechtan :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 10:14 pm (UTC)Of course God doesn't grant every prayer, so I guess it comes back to submitting to the lack of love life or excess of cancer one seems to be dealt, but there is this extra level, of sin and dealing with evil spirits instead of praying to the most powerful spirit of all, that's going on in the Christian mindset, if I'm reading it right.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 03:05 pm (UTC)If what's happening glorifies God, then it's not evil. If it it directs focus anywhere else, in the very least, it's mundane and therefore 'not of God'. Or it's purely "to be avoided" because it's bad for any of us to be around.
This is precisely why I have difficulties with my friends who seem to see "evil spirits" brooding over cities, affecting their cars, etc. There's a point where all they talk about is "evil spirits". I ask them, "So when do you talk about and focus upon God?" I think it's more important to be looking at God instead of trying to hunt down and 'come against' what we think we perceive of evil.
I wish I could refer to my Bible for more direct quotes, but when it comes to answered prayer, I think He does answer them all, but not in the ways we always anticipate. God uses everything to the good, even our tragedies, and while we don't understand why we're enduring evil, we can look at the Book of Job. All those evil things happened to Job as a witness to the love of a man for God. It wasn't because Job did evil, although his 'take' on what was happening was corrected by God.
I think the best most of us can do is pray for the understanding through/after a huge trial, to have at least a small comprehension of why we went through it. Trials will strengthen us, or are used to demonstrate to others that it's worthwhile to hold onto God, or even to demonstrate to 'evil' that no matter what they throw at us, we'll hold onto God if we're truly in love with Him.
Nechtan :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 12:04 am (UTC)Actually, that's an attitude that drives many Christians crazy, because it leads to apathetic acceptance of problems. "God helps those who help themselves," they'd counter-argue. Or, more to the point, get off your butt and start doing something about the problem yourself.
The problem with magic is that you aren't doing it on your own. You're calling on someone else's power. And since the power of God cannot be compelled, it must be the power of the Devil. You can see this very much at work in the issue of miracles: there are countless historical examples of "is this a miracle (and therefore from God and good) or is it magic (and therefore from the Devil and bad)?" The distinction between that two could be the difference between being canonized as a saint or burned at the stake as a witch. (And the answer generally depended more on the people involved and the local situation than on any clear litmus test.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 12:15 am (UTC)Hm. The dichotomy seems to be leaning towards the idea that Good Magic = COmes From God (call it miracles, or whatever you want to name it) and can therefore sometimes be assumed to come from a purely divine source without human intervention, and Bad Magic = something done by people with the possible help of something supernatural like demons or fairies or the devil or whatever evil avatar holds sway in a given moment. Which, distilled down, seems to imply that good magic is untouched by human hands...
Oof. This could be a whole different can of worms.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 03:22 pm (UTC)Sorry if I warped your questions into another direction you didn't intend!
Nechtan :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 03:11 pm (UTC)God does occasionally instruct what we should do, but more to the point is that while we're given "...the Sword of the Spirit...", which is God's Word of truth whereby we might discern what's truth and what's false/wrong/evil, we're called (as I think it's Ephesians 6 or 10) "...to STAND." All our spiritual armour is defensive except for God's Word, and we're not told to run into the fray, we're told to STAND, "...and having withstood all..." we're then where God wants us to be.
I like your comment about "The distinction between the two could be the difference between being canonized as a saint or burned at the stake as a witch." I think of Julian of Norwich or St. Teresa de Avila and how they were only canonized long after there were questions of heresy.
Nechtan :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 11:59 pm (UTC)Isn't it amazing how a man besotted by some woman who will have none of him for whatever reason is handed the excuse of, well, she must have BEWITCHED me and therefore I am no longer responsible for any further actions I might take...?
You might say that magic is a little like fire in that is a good servant and a lousy master - but "false" magic is a very good servant indeed if you use it as a blunt instrument in order to bludgeon some opponent into doing what you want by accusing him or her of practising the forbidden...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 05:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 09:36 pm (UTC)I think, perhaps unromantically, that the answer to What is it that makes magic come alive for the reader? is that the reader must be willing to believe in it to begin with.
Poor writing can ruin that belief, or make the reader feel as if it's been sullied; skillful writing will play on the belief and bend it into what's appropriate for the story. So I suppose what a writer needs to do (second to having an appropriate audience) is start small.
I'm not anyone special, but I do critique alot. And when I critique novice fantasies, I find they're often willing to throw the reader in a complex magical system (or just powerful magic without any system at all) that they believe in, without considering that the reader's belief is smaller or different. Experienced authors seem more willing to hide the magic at first (like Ms. Rowling!) and introduce it to the reader slowly enough to let them believe in it.
I always like Richard Bach's work because even though I knew there was some great philosophical points being made, they were couched in interesting and surreal events that I enjoyed imagining. Now, embarrassingly, I haven't read something by Bach since junior high. I don't know how I'd feel about it now. But at the time I wasn't ready to tackle philosophy, but because of a degree of subtlety and what I remember as a slow introduction, I was willing to let go of reality for the metaphors he presented.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 01:15 am (UTC)what does that for me is the knowledge that the magic can't be used for everything. Eddings ended up abusing the magic in The Tamuli series. It because just to easy for the hero to 'pop' all over the continents to get what he needed...
In respect to the whole 'good' magic and 'bad' magic and its source. I beg to differ completely with you all. As a pagan and a wiccan I don't beleive in the devil, that is a christian concept. The devil does not form part of our faith, so we don't see 'good' magic coming from god, or 'bad' magic coming from the devil. The good and the bad come from the intent of the magic user.
In regards to christians not wanting to acknowledge the use of magic, this is why there were a few books removed from the bible. The book of Enoch in particular dealt with spell casting and demons, and thus removed.
My personal belief is that people should have belief in something, that they have faith in something... whether it be the Goddess, God, Allah whatever, because this belief that there is a (or several) all powerful beings that watch over them usually means that they strive to be a better person, because there is a structure to their belief.
Interesting topic!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 04:09 am (UTC)And yes, I do know that Wicca does NOT equal a belief in, and magical assistance from, the devil. But that's a piece of demonization, if I may coin a phrase, with roots way back in the dark ages when a "witch" was pretty much defined as the devil's agent on earth. People who don't know better stick to the "racial memory" and think the old devil=witch equation because that is the easy thing to do.
Wicca as a faith has always exercised a deep fascination for me. I think I should take the time to learn more about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 04:31 am (UTC)It isn't just witchcraft that has this issue... 'racial memory' is a bad thing in some situations.
and in regards to the threefold rule the intent is excpetionally important as it will determine what you get back. However just because your intent is good doesn't necessarily mean that the universe will see it that way. You casting a spell to win someone's love is imposing on someone's free will and that is a big no no, casting a spell for the winning lotto numbers is tyring to get personal gain which is also another no no...
You should take some time to learn about Wicca (but then I am biased ;) ). There are some wonderful books and webpages out (and some bad ones but it all must be balanced) and most teach how to be confident and how to learn to trust yourself that most people would benefit from understanding and exercising, however most just think "hollywood witchy thing" and don't even give it a second glance...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 09:56 am (UTC)I remember being amused in the Elenium/ Tamuli when the knights discovered that there had never been a need to go to other "pagan" gods to get magic, since magic in that world was a granting of prayers.
This, of course, upset a magician whose speshulness had just taken a nosedive.
Eddings had a pretty loose take on magic, in all his books, and that's fine by me. I'm pretty casual when it comes to magic systems myself, readingwise.
I'm an atheist, but I adore magic in fantasy, not because of any belief in it or religion, but because I find the idea of a world where theoretically anything is possible exciting. I love reading and learning about that world and its own particular limitations and majesties.
because this belief that there is a (or several) all powerful beings that watch over them usually means that they strive to be a better person,
with all due respect, religious people (of whatever kind) often make this statement, yet myself and other atheists would say that we try to be good people too.
Being godless does not equate us as being immoral. We take our morals and ethics from ourselves and human conduct.
You could say that, as cynical as some of us might get, we believe in humanity.
But we are not default immoral, and we do not feel the need to have supernatural agents watching over us to make us behave or strive to be better people.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 04:35 am (UTC)Magic that becomes systematic isn't magic to me anymore. I prefer "literary magic" with a very thin veneer of rules (The Elric Saga, Harry Potter, and so forth). If it starts looking like science, I'm going to drop the book (unless the rest of it is really, really gripping). Or maybe if it's some sort of sci-fantasy.
Strangely, the most magical book I've read recently was The DaVinci Code. I don't care whether someone believes in the book's underlying theories. The theories within the book are like magic, and they move the story with such power. I guess it's really the information itself, the arcane spells of knowing the truth. And maybe that's why it upsets Christians so much, beyond the obvious.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 11:59 pm (UTC)...I see you brought a familiar...?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-01 01:05 am (UTC)Thanks!