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>
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