death to capslock

On Human Sacrfice and Dark Magic

Wed, 24 Aug 2016 18:02:00 GMT

Posted by: annoni-no.livejournal.com

I've spent some time archive binging recently and got to thinking about what the new conclusions meant for old issues that weren't directly addressed. In particular, I was reminded of all the old complaints about Lily's sacrifice being held up as exceptional even though most parents would die for their children. And if sacrificial magic is as ancient, wild, and Dark as it is claimed, without needing any channeling incantations or rituals, there should be thousands, if not millions of people throughout the history of humanity clearly benefiting from such sacrifices. Yet canon says there aren't. Few people are even aware of the possibility that it could happen, let alone happen reliably. Why not?

Well. What is one of the most essential things we learn about the Dark Arts?

You have to mean them.

And that was just in reference to such highly domesticated spells as avada kedavra and cruciatus. (They have incantations! They give consistent results! And people want to call those Dark? Puh-lease.) I suspect that the further back you go, the more vital will and intent becomes to any manipulation of magic.

( So of course most parents would be WILLING to die for their children, but how many would WANT to? Would PLAN on it? )

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Magic Is Might: The Dark Arts and the Workings of Human Magic

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 23:21:00 GMT

Posted by: condwiramurs.livejournal.com

I was going to post an excerpt from my half-finished Severus and Voldemort essay, but instead it became an essay of its own.

Magic Is Might: The Dark Arts and the Workings of Human Magic

In her latest post, “Seclusion and the Dark Arts,” terri brilliantly brings together the two main strands of Voldemort’s and the Death Eaters’ interests, overturning Secrecy and dark magic, theorizing that they were seeking to make useable again the old communal magics that shamans and village magic-workers would have used to tap into the emotion-driven power of muggles to boost their own magical ability.

In my comment in reply I wrote, “You've also anticipated an argument I'll be making in Indestructible when I talk about Severus and Voldemort and flight being one of the dark arts.”

My thinking about the nature of unsupported human flight, the reasons it may have taken so long to be developed, and what role it played in Severus and Voldemort’s relationship led me to formulate some ideas about the nature of the dark arts more generally. And now terri’s essay has pushed it all into much clearer focus for me.

We’ve got a number of terms for the working of human magic, and they all mean something specific. Which has implications for understanding what Tom might have thought regarding the nature of human magic and the relationship of muggles to magic-users. Whether or not he was even correct in his suppositions.

Though he may have been.

( Read more... )

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Seclusion and the Dark Arts

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 18:22:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

This was inspired by oryx_leucoryx’s reply to condwiramurs’s post “I would sell out the nation”; oryx was trying and not succeeding very well in fitting this new hypothesis, that the intrinsic crime of the Death Eaters was their stated intention to overturn Secrecy, with Albus and Tom’s conversation when Tom dropped by Hogwarts to ask for a job.

So I reread “Lord Voldemort’s Request” in HBP, and indeed, the objections Albus articulated to Tom there had to do with Tom’s magical research, not his political agenda. In fact Albus gives no sign of realizing that Tom and his (apparently newly so-called) Death Eaters had a political agenda. If indeed they did at that time; we don’t know whether Tom took over and extended the old organization of the Knights, or whether he’d formed a group separately and eventually merged it with the older group. In which case the merger may have taken place only after Tom and his followers adopted the Knights’ goals, which might have been quite some time after Tom first formed his group of friends.

It really does seem that what Albus objected to was Tom’s experiments in the Dark Arts. Which seems to contradict our argument that his Death Eaters’ primary offense had been to plot treason/heresy.

Because why should there be any correlation, in either direction, between an interest in studying or practicing the Dark Arts, and affiliation with a political group interested (treasonously) in undoing Secrecy?

( Read more... )

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Indestructible - Part VI - Dark Marks and Dark Arts

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 17:44:00 GMT

Posted by: condwiramurs.livejournal.com

Indestructible – Part VI – Dark Marks and Dark Arts

Ok, let’s get back to talking about the books themselves for a bit, shall we?

We’ve talked about Albus, and alchemy, so perhaps we should skip ahead in the alphabet a bit and head on over to D. D for Dark; D for Death.

Dark Marks, Dark Arts, Dark Creatures, Dark Lords… Death, and Death Eaters.

Then we can get to occlumency and to Severus and Voldemort.

I should note at the outset that ‘dark’ is something of a fuzzy term to use when talking about moral and spiritual things and about that big ball of wibbly-wobbly vaguely-defined magical stuff we get in the Potterverse. In general, ‘dark’ should not necessarily be taken as a strict synonym for ‘evil’ – far from it. Darkness is natural and necessary and a part of life and it has great lessons to teach. Nor is ‘light’ the same as ‘good.’ Severus – our resident Dark Wizard – would be the first person to tell you that. For all that the HP books, and even Tolkien, like to conflate the two spectra.

But. Darkness does make it easy to do evil, because it allows one to hide. From others, and from oneself. Spiritual blindness, ignorance, forces that overwhelm one and prevent true sight or perspective… Things can be hidden to good ends or bad, and while sometimes we need to close our eyes, we also do need to open them again, as we see and see anew.

Right?

Ok. Onward.

( Read more... )

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Harry Potter Abridged! HBP Chapter 21

Thu, 11 Jun 2015 18:24:00 GMT

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

( Read Chapter 21 )

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Harry Potter Abridged! HBP Chapter 12

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 13:44:00 GMT

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

[The first Hogsmeade trip arrives]

( Read Chapter 12 )

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Harry Potter Abridged! HBP Chapter 9

Fri, 29 May 2015 18:49:00 GMT

Posted by: sweettalkeress.livejournal.com

( Read Chapter 9 )

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Dark Devices: The Mirror of Eris

Thu, 14 May 2015 10:10:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

Dark Devices: the Mirror of Eris.

Excuse me, that was Erised. How silly of me. Eris was the goddess of discord, and according to Hesiod (Works and Days), she sometimes worked by planting unsatisfiable desires in men’s hearts:

She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. But Strife is unwholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar….

Completely different thing from what that mirror does, got it.

Jodel suggested in “The Quirrell Debacle” that Dumbledore had set up Harry to look into that mirror. She argued that the headmaster had first moved that Mirror away from the heart of the labyrinth, and then had had Filch and Snape herd Harry to the appropriate room, primarily because Albus wanted to learn Harry’s heart’s deepest desires. Letting Harry gaze into that mirror, in that view, was Dumbledore’s test to make sure Harry wasn’t another future Dark Lord in training.

I think that there was something more going on than merely Albus’s test of Harry. If I am correct, I earnestly hope that Severus and Argus were not implicated in Twinkles’ plots.

( Read more... )

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Speculation on Liquid Luck

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 15:18:00 GMT

Posted by: terri-testing.livejournal.com

This idea came up in an exchange with, if I recall, madderbrad, but for those who missed it there, here’s my theory on Felix Felicis.

Horace told his class it was “Desperately tricky to make, and disastrous to get wrong.” (HBP 9)

Old Sluggy is glossing over things a bit here because Dumbledore is so hot against any Dark Arts theory being taught at Hogwarts.

( It’s )

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