| Ahira's Hangar https://ahirashangar.ihugny.com/phpBB3/ |
|
| What is magic? https://ahirashangar.ihugny.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=468 |
Page 1 of 1 |
| Author: | Highdrake [ Sat Nov 08, 2003 7:05 am ] |
| Post subject: | What is magic? |
I love how Le Guin explains the nature of magic. Here's three quotes that show what I mean. From A Wizard of Earthsea:Quote:"It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name." From The Farthest Shore:Quote:"And the weaving of spells is itself interwoven with the earth and the water, the winds and the fall of light of the place where it is cast." From Dragonfly:Quote:"What brought you here, Azver?" the Namer asked. "I’ve often thought of asking you. A long, long way to come. And you have no wizards in the Kargish lands." "No. But we have the things wizardry is made of. Water, stones, trees, words…" The magic is the universe, and everything in it! And what's more, in their natural state, these things are stronger than the magic of the mages. At least if these next two quotes are to be believed. From The Word of Unbinding:Quote:The water ran timelessly from its clear spring. He lay on the sand of the pool’s bottom letting running water, stronger than any spell of healing, sooth his wound and with its coolness wash away the bleaker cold that had entered him. From The Farthest Shore:Quote:Yet as he gazed he became aware at last that it was no magelight, no cold glory of wizardry, that lay shadowless on every line and plane of the man's face, but light itself: morning, the common light of day. There was a power greater than the mage's. stronger than any spell of healing a power greater than the mage's The entire business of Roke might be seen as nothing more than a silly little attempt of humans to control that which is far greater than them. Of course, most know that such is impossible, and let the universe work the way it will. From Dragonfly:Quote:"How do you know what name to say, Rose? Does the water tell you?" "The witch shook her iron-grey head once. "I can’t tell you." Her "can’t" did not mean "won’t." Dragonfly waited. "It’s the power, like I said. It comes just so." Rose stopped her spinning and looked up with one eye at a cloud in the west; the other looked a little northward of the sky. "You’re there in the water, together, you and the child. You take away the child-name. People may go on using that name for a use-name, but it’s not her name, nor ever was. So now she’s not a child, and she has no name. So then you wait. In the water there. You open your mind up, like. Like opening the doors of a house to the wind. So it comes. Your tongue speaks it, the name. Your breath makes it. You give it to that child, the breath, the name. You can’t think of it. You let it come to you. It must come through you and the water to her it belongs to. That’s the power, the way it works. It’s all like that. It’s not a thing you do. You have to know how to let it do. That’s all the mastery." "Mages can do more than that," the girl said after a while. "Nobody can do more than that," said Rose. Maybe a good way to think of it would be that wizardry is an attempt to use these things of power - wood water stone light - "the things wizardry is made of" - for various reasons. Of course, this is always the case. The difference is that, in Earthsea, the wise understand their place in the hierarchy. ____________ Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i> |
|
| Author: | Duchess of Malfi [ Thu Nov 13, 2003 6:46 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: What is magic? |
What I find interesting, after reading The Finder, is how much the mission of the School of Roke had changed in the centuries between its founding and the time of Ged. Makes me seriously wonder how different the practive of magic might have been if the school had remained as inclusive as it originally had been...so cool meeting the original Masters... ****************************************************** Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell ****************************************************** Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i></i> |
|
| Author: | Highdrake [ Thu Nov 13, 2003 11:27 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: What is magic? |
Definitely something to think about there, with the women being excluded!! What would things have been like!?! I can't even imagine. I'm also amazed whenever I consider that the author is female! But anyway, yes, meeting the original masters is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GREAT!!!! I love Ember!! But then, that's no surprise, since I love the Patterners so. ____________ Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i> |
|
| Author: | Highdrake [ Mon Apr 05, 2004 4:01 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: What is magic? |
I just remembered this conversation from Northern Exposure, which goes along nicely with my first post, the reason I started this thread. Ed: So, if you don't believe in spirits, Dr. Fleischman, well then, what do you think happens to us when we die? Joel: Nothing. I mean, metabolically speaking, we simply cease to be. Ya know? "The worm crawls in, the worm crawls out, the worm plays pinochle on your snout." I don't know. I mean, I suppose, in some way, we live on. In the way people remember us. Ed: Like spirits. Joel: No, not like spirits, Ed. Like memories. Like... like feelings, images. Ed: Sounds like spirits. ____________ Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i> |
|
| Page 1 of 1 | All times are UTC |
| Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group http://www.phpbb.com/ |
|