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Author
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Comment
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Helen
Registered User
(9/17/02 11:46:44 am)
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Schools of Magic, Schools of Thought ...
Dear All:
I've always been interested in the ways in which knowledge of magic is transmitted, and after seeing _The Fall of the Kings_, I'm now determined to suck the rest of the world in with me; I'm planning to suggest a panel, either at ICFA or at WisCon, to examine the presentation of magic as a subject for study in modern fiction, and to discuss (here I will shamelessly steal from what I wrote in the "Melting Pot Fairies" thread, as I can't think of a better way to put it right now) works that capture the "enchantments of academia; those tennuous elements that keep us all, scholars, authors, essayists, and hobbyists, in willing thrall to our subject matter." There are so many great works out there, that approach the issue in so many different way ... I'll try to offer a few examples. In the Harry Potter books, it's just another subject to be studied. In _A College of Magics_, you learn about it be being in the right environment, but as a price for the existence of the environment itself, you *don't* study it ... it infuses you, and you have to learn to deal with the consequences yourself, it seems. In _The Fall of the Kings_, love of the area can lead to unexpected discoveries, which, as in reality, make absolutely no sense - but, with the application of sufficient energy and intellect, they can come to function nevertheless. And so on, and so forth ... other works that ought to be discussed (sometime when I'm not running late for a meeting) include _ Wizard's Hall_, _A Wizard of Earthsea_, _Tam Lin_, and so one... what do you guys think? Any works that ought to be included?
Best,
Helen
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Kate
Unregistered User
(9/17/02 12:22:21 pm)
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A doltish reply
Helen,
I just wrote you off board about that "other thing."
But on this, somewhat off-topic: the Buffy episodes re-aired last week were about Willow's descent into badness, during which she falls into using "the Magics." I'm not sure that's the spelling implied, but the Magics are a baaaad drug for the girl. "You're back on the Magics," Buffy exclaims. She gets her fix at a seedy Magics Den. I know it's not *quite* literature, (I'm not a big fan of the "television as literature" approach) but I rather respect Joss's vision and writerly talents. He stands apart, in my view. (Others do as well; the "Decalogue" series, created for public television, are great art as well.) I'm not sure if these Buffy episodes were done in the season Joss did not write, however--they're less popular I think. I for one liked these episodes though. I think a more educated Buffy fan such as Terri would be able to provide more information! If you're interested.
Kate
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dorisi
Registered User
(9/17/02 12:33:55 pm)
ezSupporter
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Re: Schools of Magic, Schools of Thought ...Phillip Pullman
I think Phillip Pullman's trilogy, ' His Dark Materials', would be good here, with his alternate worlds where what is magic in one is science in the other and the drive to understand and make sense of them. Also the recognition of the dangerous power which comes with the acquisition of knowledge/science/magic and the responsibilities it brings.
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Heidi
Unregistered User
(9/17/02 4:35:24 pm)
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New Book along this topic
There is a new book I have only seen on Amazon and in BN, but I haven't read it yet.
A School for Sorcery
by E. Rose Sabin
www.amazon.com/exec/obido...lalufairyt
I hope it hasn't already been mentioned, but here it is again.
Heidi
And Dean's Tam Lin is on my short list for "must be reread every year." It is also just a challenge to see how many of the literary references I get. I get a lot more of them than I do when I read Dorothy Sayers, so at least my English degree is still helpful sometimes.
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Heidi
Unregistered User
(9/17/02 4:40:57 pm)
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Okay, so it may be a reprint...
that is trying to cash in on that other wizard we are all tired of, but I still haven't read it.
Heidi,
who likes Harry but is tired of being asked when the next book will be out, but probably not as much as J. K. Rowling is, but then again she gets paid a lot more money to answer that question
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Helen
Registered User
(9/17/02 5:57:11 pm)
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Tee hee ...
That's one of the things that I love about it myself! it's one of those books that ends up acting as a kind of a measuring stick for education - I remember empathizing with Janet enormously as she pored through the course catalogue, thinking of how she hadn't read this author or that one *yet,* but how there was always next year ... and trying to relate that to my own discomfiture at not yet encoutering the Jacobians, or a great many of the other authors that were mentioned in passing.
Maybe I should have been a Classics major ...
But, seriously, one of the things that I love about Dean's views on magic and education is her apparant belief that a good liberal arts background is more than a match for the Queen of Fairie and her court all together. Janet doesn't have any latent magical ability; she never studies the subject directly. What she does have is a good grounding in the basics, and some fine research skills, all of which come in handy in sleuthing out the fact that she's surrounded by ancient actors, why that would be so, and how to remedy the situation. After all, how many people would think of yarrow? Or of consulting texts on similar situations in times long gone?
Definitely one of my favorite works ... I think that I'll go read it again, for inspiration (and to see how I match up with the Blackstock curriculum after my MA) ...
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swood
Unregistered User
(9/18/02 6:00:19 am)
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Tam Lin
Heidi,
Tam Lin and its variations (mostly modern) come up a lot on the board. Have you thought about including this as a part of your fairytale index?
Sarah
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Nalo
Registered User
(9/18/02 11:21:41 am)
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Re: Tam Lin
Barbara Hambly's recent novel _Sisters of the Raven_ is about a young woman who's the first woman to be allowed into a school for mages. She's being hazed horribly by the boys, and the school's teachers are ignoring it because they don't really want her there in the first place. To make it worse, men in this world are finding their magical abilities waning, while women, who have traditionally been barred from learning magic, are finding that their intutuitive magical powers are becoming stronger. This is putting many women's lives and wellbeing at risk as the men discover that they are practising a forbidden art, and untutored at that.
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Munin
Registered User
(9/18/02 12:50:23 pm)
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Re:
The books -Master of the Five Magics- by Lyndon Hardy and and the -Banned and the Banished- series by James Clemons all have some interesting and well defined systems of magic.
The banned and the banished follows pretty much the same premise as -Sisters of the Raven- and both books make for good reading.
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(9/18/02 3:42:43 pm)
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Earthsea
Helen -
I love the idea of studying Earthsea in this way - especially because LeGuin has looked at it in so many different perspectives. I loved the first three Earthsea books, and then adored Tehanu and how LeGuin re-looked at how men attended school and became wizards while women became hedgewitches or sorceresses or found their way outside the bounds of school because the school didn't really have a place for the shape their lives took. Haven't read the most recent Earthsea books yet, but am sure there's more food for thought there.
Laura Mc
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Meurglys
Registered User
(9/19/02 5:57:12 am)
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Stories about learning about magic
Green Magic by Jack Vance is an interesting short story about studying magic and a possible downside of learning too much.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(9/19/02 6:20:09 am)
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Children's book
There are always the Strega Nona books by Tomi DePaula (sp?) too. I know these are for the very young, but the morals of the stories mimic some that I see above, eg. learning magic without controlling it is a bad thing. They also seem to indicate that magic is the "realm" of women. I wonder what influence reading a book like that at say 3 has on children and their response to magic?
Jess
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Terri
Registered User
(9/19/02 11:48:41 pm)
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the study of magic
Patricia McKillip's "Transmutation" is a wonderful exploration of the study of magic. It was first published in Jane's anthology Xandu II, and also appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror Vol. 8.
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Delia
Unregistered User
(9/20/02 11:39:31 am)
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Patricia McKillip
McKillip seems to have a lot to say about studying--magic as well as other things. In my teaching days, when there wasn't much fantasy around that dealt with a girl's coming of age, I taught FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD, in which the heroine (who, as far as I can remember, was born magic) learns how to reconcile humanity with magic. Now that I come to think of it, many of her books are about that, secondarily if not primarily. The Cygnet books are, and the one I'm reading now, SHADOW OF OMBRIA, certainly is. It's a metaphor that means something to me--magic as something that can, if you're not careful, turn you away from your humanity. Which is the problem that I had with Magic as Crack on Buffy. It did, in fact, make her less human, but the metaphor seemed to indicate that magic in and of itself was harmful (which makes Giles and the late Tara (please, may her soul rest in peace) what? Social drug users? Medication takers?). Which is a little too simplistic, in my opinion.
All of which, I suppose, is thoroughly off the topic, since most of McKillip's magicians, sorcerers, and wizards are self-taught solitaries. Still, they study a lot.
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Kate
Unregistered User
(9/20/02 12:41:24 pm)
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Giles
Delia,
I see what you mean. I am new to Buffy, and only began watching when these reruns of the "magics" abuse began. However, in the most recent episode I saw, Giles gives his magics away in a gesture that actually saves Willow from saving the world. Magics there not as crack, I suppose, but more like LSD . . . she sees "everything, alive, all together, it's too much . . ." and goes to end the everythingness she sees but is saved by love, which, Giles says, his magics allowed. So it's not only a destructive force.
There are other instances of the study and use of magic on the show, as well . . . I do see what you mean, absolutely. But for me, though the metaphor to crack is pretty foregrounded at certain points (I mean, impossible to ignore) it didn't render the use of "magics" one-sidedly destructive, I don't think. It also saved Willow from herself.
But again, I am *not* a Buffy expert!!! I just watch the show with my popcorn, and wish I could kick some vampire *@#! myself.
I'm glad you chimed in on Buffy--I was beginning to feel like a dolt for bringing it in here (it's not literature!) but also curious how others saw that. I feel better now . . .
Kate
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arsekickingrl
Unregistered User
(9/20/02 11:21:42 pm)
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A somewhat long term Buffy fan comes out of lurkdom . . .
Bear in mind that I onyl watched Buffy in reruns this year, though I had previously been a pretty faithful viewer.
The "magick as crack" metaphor that was employed on this show was really a betrayal of the way the use and study of magic had been portrayed up to that point. Most Buffy fans have generally agreed that it was out of step and a terrible way to sum up the storyline.
Previously on Buffy, magic had been used as a tool for power and control, not a drug. Willow was addicted to the power that using magic gave to her, not the physical effects it produced. The concept of magic putting someone in a high state had never been portrayed on Buffy before, and it was introduced relatively late into the mix. However, magic had been
treated as a powerful force that should be used wisely. Giles was careful to gard the kinds of spells Willow performed in the early years of the show. Tara, also a witch, had sever ethical qualms about how reckless Willow was with the magic, and broke up with Willow after she tried to erase Tara's memory of an argument they had. I'm not exactly an expert on addiction theory or anything, but I think being addicted to the power or control one gets from such a thing is very different than depicting it simply as something that gets you "high".
So the bottom line is that I would trust the whole "magick as crack" thing as being a representative of the way magic is usually portrayed on the show. It's actually quite a departure.
Also, Joss is not really involved with the show very much these days: Marti Noxon pretty much is running things. Marti can be a terribly unsubtle writer, and can even go off the deep end in terms of continuity for absurd reasons.
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Terri
Registered User
(9/20/02 11:23:45 pm)
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Re: Giles
Kate, I'm in Delia and Arsekickinggrl's camp when it comes to Willows "magicks addiction" arc on Buffy. The idea of magic as a potential addictive substance is an interesting one, but in the Buffy universe it flat out doesn't work in terms of the show's continuity for a number of reasons, including: magic has never been shown to be addictive (in a druggie sense) in 5 previous seasons and Willow has never been portrayed as having an addictive personality in 5 previous seasons. If you watch Seasons 1 - 3 (when Joss Wheddon was more involved with the show, and thus its best seasons), Willow's magic was portrayed as a clear metaphor for her bookish intelligence. Her mind was her "power" -- which contrasted and complimented Buffy's power: her ability to take charge in moments of crisis and kick vampire ass. In Season 4, when Willow became romantically involved with Tara (and when the show was still on the WB network, which wouldn't allow overt scenes of lesbian sexuality), magic was also used as a metaphor for sex -- the writers gave us lovely intimate scenes of the two of them casting spells together.
Then suddenly, bam, in Season 6 Willow's magic, instead of being the thing that empowered her, that she'd worked for years and years to master, was a metaphor for drug abuse -- which not only did not fit with the previous 5 seasons, but also sent out a nasty message: Yes girls, don't be too smart, don't be too powerful, and don't have lesbian sex for heaven's sake, or you'll go from being a smart, passionate young woman dedicated to saving the world, to a quivering junkie...and then turn evil. Many of us long-time Buffy watchers cried foul at this subtext, and felt that the character of Willow as portrayed in Season 6 bore little relationship to the character we'd come to know and care about over 5 previous years.
In Season 3 (or perhaps it was Season 2), there was an episode in which M.O.O. (Mothers Against the Occult) and the evil Principal Snyder had lockers searched and books from the library burned -- on the theory that all magic was bad. The writers clearly sided with Willow here (and Giles, and other magic users) in saying that magic (i.e.: books and knowledge) was *not* bad and M.O.O. (i.e.: book banning fanatics) were dangerous, deluded lunatics. But now with Season 6, the writers seem to be telling us: "M.O.O. was right all along -- magick (knowledge, power) *is* to dangerous for high school girls and Willow should never have been playing with that nasty stuff...just couldn't handle it...just look where it leads." Which not only contradicts what they've portrayed before, but actively betrays it. (Similarly, in Season 3 Principal Snyder taunts Buffy by telling her that her only future is as a fast-food employee...and Buffy proves him wrong by getting stratospheric SAT results and entrance into several good colleges. Then suddenly in Season 6 the writers show us that Snyder was right and Buffy is such a loser that all she can do is work at the Doublemeat Palace...all because Marti Noxon once worked in a fast food joint and thought putting Buffy in one would be funny, show consistency be damned.)
The saddest thing is that if they wanted to do a plot arc of Willow turning to the dark side, they had much better material to work with. Willow had previously handled at least two, if not more, really dangerous spells: restoring Angel's soul (season 2), and bringing Buffy back to life (season 6), both of which could have worked on her in ways she was not even aware of, leading her toward darkness. Further, long-time viewers could easily have believed that Willow would abuse magic while *thinking* she was doing good, trying to fix things, save things, make things better,without realizing she was becoming "addicted" (if we must use that word) to power rather than magic, to playing God with people's lives. This would have seemed consistent with the deeply idealistic character we'd known for several years. Instead, she gets a taste of Rack's "magic crack," has a druggie magick trip, and is stumbling around like a drunk, while all the other characters are saying: "Well, of course, she has an addictive personality you know." And many long time-viewers are scratching their heads and saying: "The hell she does! What is this blatant Anti-drug Message doing in our show, and where has our Willow gone?"
Oi, don't get me started on Season 6 Buffy....Grrr, argh.
Edited by: Terri at: 9/20/02 11:50:43 pm
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Helen
Registered User
(9/21/02 7:00:10 am)
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Buffy Madness ...
Dear All:
You know, I had just finished sending Kate an e-mail discussing Buffy off-board, and thought that, with all of the free time afforded by the weekend, I ought to come here to post ... and found that you'd all beaten me to it! If this makes it into a panel, I definitely want to raise the issue that people who manage to get all of the facts of a magical system wrong have no call to decide on the system's potential reprecussions .... a Wiccan raising a Satanic temper? Terri, might I borrow the "Grrr?"
Best,
Helen
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Kate
Unregistered User
(9/21/02 3:26:42 pm)
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Of Course!
Terri,
Yes, that's why I deferred, in even raising Buffy, to the experts on the show out there, thinking of you! As I said, I only *just* began watching this season--with your caveats about the season in mind (personnel changes in writers, Joss not Exec Producing, etc.) as I began viewing. So I was curious about sexual overtones, and the Magicks addiction, what had preceded all that, philosophically.
I'm glad it's all explained now to me by you and Delia. In other words, to clarify for any other readers, I definitely wasn't "in a camp" about any of this, but raising the question for the Buffy experts out there!
xo
Kate
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Kate
Unregistered User
(9/21/02 3:32:17 pm)
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By the way,
Terri,
I've gotten an invite to Joss Whedon to write for the new anthology I'm doing--if he agrees, maybe he'll address some of this! My best friend dated him in college for years . . . ). In any case I seem to recall him working on a series of comic strips that were decidedly Buffy-like. But I seem to recall they feature a sort of Rat Boy. Must be making that up.
xo
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ellen k
Unregistered User
(9/21/02 4:53:33 pm)
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schools of magic panel
Helen, would you feel horribly poached upon if Delia & I suggested this as a panel idea for World Fantasy Convention (Oct. 31 - Nov. 3, Mpls, MN)? We could get Pam Dean, Caroline Stevermer, Pat McKillip et nous deux to line up at a long table, since all will be there... this wouldn't preclude other versions happening at ICFA and/or Wiscon.
Let me know. I think it would be great fun.
Ellen K.
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