a thought about wizardry

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

There have always been wizards as long as the battle has been taking place between the One and the Lone Power.

As readers in the 21st century, we think nothing of Nita and Kit travelling vast distances, or attaching air supplies to themselves when they go into space.

But what about wizards 100 years ago? 500? 1000? Before the kind of science we had is available? In the absence of the understanding we have today about the human body, it's capabilities, it's limitations - about the universe and where we fit - how would the wizards of hundreds of years ago have done their work?

We're told that the power of wizardry is in the description - that wizardries don't work if the parameters are incorrectly defined. Fine and good. In A Wizard's Dilemma, one of Nita's wizardries won't work because her attitude has changed and she's not the same person she was when she wrote her name.

But what if the description you have of the world is flat, and the sun and planets travel around the Earth? What if your people believe that spirits make a person sick, or that different 'humours' of blood are what causes ailments and mood swings in humans and people need to be bled in order to rid them of the bad humours. How do you deal with the idea of aliens?

While the battle would remain the same, I'm trying to work my mind around the concept of doing wizardry when one's view of the universe is a lot simpler than our scientific-based one. I'm reluctant to believe that there were no wizards until our language got complex enough to describe the universe - and even our perception of the universe may not be 'true'.

So how do you think wizardry worked in 'olden times'? In Babylon, Greece, Rome, and Enlightened Europe? In Imperial China, Civil War America, or colonial Australia?

Thoughts? Discussions? Debates? I'm curious.

Comments

[tuxedo-elf.livejournal.com]

Interesting question.

Now, as I understand it, Nita and Kit do things and go to places that would be considered impossible by non-wizards. They have an enhanced understanding of the universe. I would imagine that their counterparts in other times would have the same, but without the technology of the present day. Maybe it would be a little harder for them to accept, but then, aren't wizards chosen for their open minds? :)

Perhaps the knowledge would have been in a different form - imagine, the manual as an Egyptian papyrus! - but I cannot see the powers denying a wizard information they might need.

Tux

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the manual would certainly be different. I'm not arguing that wizardry itself would be changed, just curious about how the Speech would be phrased and how 'flexible' it might be under the circumstances of the wizard's understanding.

Ramblings

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a darned fun story to read, is my first thought.

I would think that no matter how advanced your technology is, there are things about your concept of the universe that just don't jive with reality. I'm sure that some of the scientific theories we hold today are quite wrong. I mean, we have a pretty good idea on a macroscopic level how our own little corner of the universe works, but everything else is still at least a bit up on the air. Wizards will always be those who see the universe in a different light; I'd imagine, however, that the concept that wizards have of the world is colored by their culture. For example, when Nita and Kit interact with people from other planets, they tend to notice the technology, and the way that the technology integrates with wizardry, and they seem to think of wizardries as technological in some way. I expect that's a very 21st-century view of wizardry. A society that had just developed agriculture would probably notice the ways that tending a wizardry is like tending plants, and they would notice the ways that wizardry figured into a people's agricultural practices, the production of its food sources... A nomadic society would create wizards who thought a lot about the travelling aspects of errantry, the wizardries used to allow transportation of the stuff you need in wizardry, and the ways that the patterns of the universe resembled the patterns of travel, where you're always moving forward and yet you see the same things again and again.

I don't think it'd come as that much of a surprise to wizards of any persuasion that no matter at what angle you look at the world, it looks like a circle.

Re: Ramblings

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

I thought about it for a while. Seriously thought about it. But I'm lost with DD's explanations in the here-and-now 21st century. Trying to work my brain around situations from the past is considerably more difficult.

You have a point that the individual wizard's focus on the universe and their fight against the Lone Power would probably form around the wizard's cultural view of the world.

It's just thinking outside the box of our present-day westernised technological view of the world that's difficult.

Re: Ramblings

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

Of course. I'm guessing, though, that it probably wouldn't even occur to a wizard from a society less centered around technology to try to explain things in a technological way. I think that the concept of "This is a ____ so _____ that it's beyond my comprehension, so I'll just accept it" exists in most cultures... For us, it's advanced technology. For somebody else, miracles from God. I think it's easier for us to accept magic if we think of it technologically... Not so for a culture that sees "magic" in everything unexplained. (Or the thing that was going around the Internet for a while where gravity was another name for Christ's love)

The difficulty of thinking outside the box does beg the question: Could we actually *read* a story about a wizard from a different culture? Or would the way that she thought about wizardry be so alien to us that it would make no sense?

I'd guess a *beginning* wizard from another culture would be pretty understandable, but when they start talking about pocket universes and managing worldgates...

[mat-t.livejournal.com]

I would suspect that, even if the general view of the world was "wrong", the manual would have the "right" one. The new wizard thinks the world is flat? Reading the manual would probably tell them otherwise. After all, general humans may believe that there are no aliens, or that there's no "devil", but the manual would say yes, there are aliens, and hey look, the Lone Power. And as for language complexity, it's the Speech that the descriptions matter in, and I get the impression that the Speech has always been around. :)

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in the concepts that the wizards would think of to describe their thing. I mean, I doubt that 13th Century wizards thought of their pockets of personal space as claudications.

Would a 13th Century wizard travelling out of the Earth's atmosphere know to provide air for herself? And how much of it? And even if she's describing it in the speech, would it be precise - and in what kind of terms precise? Could you say "as much air as I need between sunrise and sunset?" in the Speech and have it run the computations itself.

What if you're illiterate or innumerate?

Sorry. :) I'm full of these kinds of questions.

[kirinomiaka.livejournal.com]

Nah, they wouldn't've had "claudications". They'd've had Bags of Holding! (RP reference)
Well, if she needed to travel, she'd probably ask the spell to take what she needed with her--though she might not think to specificly request air. But perhaps she'd think to bring "a pocketfull of wind to guard my path" for whatever lenghth of time she thought she'd be away. There's probably a particular term in the Speach for the type of "wind" that belongs specially to our earth.
As for the lack of literacy...it's been established within the series that some versions of the manual aren't written. Darryl starts out with the Silence. The whales have the Heart of the Sea, and the cats have...um, I forgot. But it isn't written. And the Irish wizards have everything in their heads--no written book. It would seem to me that the Powers would find whatever way possible to give a wizard whatever he/she needs to do the work of Life.
It's interesting to think about this kind of stuff, though! *^_^* How would they have worked it? It'd make a really good story!

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

I bet ancient English-speaking wizards referred to everything in Latin :)

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

Also... If you're innumerate, you don't count.

*runs away*

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's bad. Really bad.

:)

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

As there's reference in A Wizard Alone to the One Speaking the universe into being in the (I think) Edactive verb form, yeah, you're right on "always." :) On the other hand, the Speech also changes... I don't know whether the cats in TBoNWM are right about words going from Ailurin into the Speech, but there are probably at the least new constructions now and then.

And, oh! TBoNWM also includes a fair amount on cat legends and myths... and how they keep some of the language of them (the sun as Iau's eye under another name that slips my mind at the moment... Rhoua?)... and how if you walk into other universes, there are places where the stories are literally true. (I think this phenomenon gets a name in Wizard's Holiday, but I forget what that was too.)

I think that there are probably things that other... systems of thought? ... would process better than we do, actually. The idea that names have power, perhaps. That speaking a name might allow you to control the thing or person named, or call them up. And there might be cases where metaphor is as powerful as coordinates.

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

*eyes*

I've seen you in the Stargate Atlantis fandom!

I haven't read TBoNWM yet - or any of the cat series. So I don't know anything more about Ailurin than the books have said (which is less than is said on Cyene).

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I've seen you in the Stargate Atlantis fandom!


...You have? I didn't think I was in it! (I kind of... don't really watch TV, much.)

Ohh. But I do read miss_porcupine and occasionally wander into other people's stuff, so maybe you have. I guess it's sort of one of my secondhand fandoms, where I have a vague idea of it based on other people's fic. ;) I just wasn't expecting to be, you know, recognized from my occasional forays into comment there. *grin*

I actually suspect that the cats might have things backward, and perhaps Ailurin derived its power-words straight from the Speech; but on the other hand they could be right. Anyway, the main point I was going for was the thing about stories and myths being true, sometimes more so in one universe than another -- basically that story holds as much sway as science, sometimes. (And there are examples of the Manual that don't require reading -- they whisper -- so I figure being illiterate is still no barrier.) But there might also be, as you say above, things like "enough air for X activity." It certainly looks to me, in the books, like for all the importance of precision, there's still room to cover mistakes or things you just don't know about. (Chao actually says in one of the more recent ones, I think, that the universe seems to be kind to young wizards despite or because of their not knowing all the nuances of the Speech, sometimes.)

And it does make me laugh when Nita is having trouble with her math homework, when the way things seem to be set up she's been doing more advanced calculations for spells since she started.

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

I think I spotted you in replies to a fic or two over on sga_flashfic. *g*

To be honest, I was considering doing a Young Wizards/Atlantis crossover for their current (?) challenge - secret superpower.

I don't remember the part about the universe being kinder to Young Wizards - was that in the YW series or the one with the cats?

See, I can understand the other way round - no trouble with Maths, but trouble with Physics - that's me. :)

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

One of the YW ones... Possibly Dilemma. Definitely not before Dilemma. The Transcendent Pig doesn't show up until then, and while I don't remember the exact wording, I'm pretty sure it was him.

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

I think I remember the quotation, now.

Thanks. :)

[fiveforsilver]

One of the main attributes that all wizards have is an open and curious mind, thus any wizard in the days before modern times would be open to the idea of a round earth (although that was a known concept long before many of us realize it) and a heliocentric universe and so on. Human language doesn't need to be complex enough to describe the universe - it still isn't, after all, even in the books. That's what the Speech is for.

Still, an interesting topic to think about.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes- I think it's C.S.Lewis who points out that, in the Middle Ages, educated people knew the world was round. They just knew! Wizards would know even more than ordinary clerks and scholars; they just wouldn't express it in modern vocabulary.

And do you really think a 4-year-old from Long Island - 21st century or not - *knows* exactly how much air to take with her for a trip to Mars? I couldn't do that math at that age! No, I'm sure wizards have always been taught how to express what they must (if that makes any sense).

Just my two cents. A neat question, though; I hope you don't mind my jumping in.

[fiveforsilver]

I'm sure many people have pointed it out (I certainly didn't hear/read it from C.S. Lewis) but he's as good a source as any to hear it from.

I'm sure wizards have always been taught how to express what they must

Yes, exactly. That's what I said - that's what the Speech is for. So they can express what they need to, even when their normal language doesn't have the vocabulary.

[seldearslj.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think the Powers would give wizardry to a 4 year old, Long Island or not. :)

But your point is taken (as are the points made by others in the thread) and I'm glad you jumped in! Thanks!

[ryouji.livejournal.com]

I have not read all of this, I was just looking over the post.

One thing that I would like to bring up however, is that fact that Earth was created by the Power, was it not?
Therefore, There must have been a great deal of knowledge of the univurse as it was being created. I believe that Adam and Eve in "Deep Wizardry" were described as wizards (or so my mind took it) and that the Lone Power came to Eve in the form of a snake, asking her to accept death.

Therefore, Eve, as a wizard, must have known about the great univurse, as she was placed there by the Powers.

So, consider this, As Adam and Eve began to have children, some did not accept, or were not offered Wizardry. Many generations after, Speach being lost and scrambled, (And remember that the Trees in one of the early books meantioned that everything used speach in the beginning (or earth I assume, as well as the rest of the univurse) So, Speach has enough to express whatever is desired.) But, Just like Nita, who talked with trees, even though she did not know it, Speech is known withen everyone. Just, with time, A person loses it, from the traditions of their fathers, I guess you could say.


So, What about those who still practiced magic? Well, what did they practice it for? To slow down the death of the univurse, Not to correct the silly thoughts of man.
Man believed the earth was flat, Not wizards, But it was not nessisary, and probibly better not to try and correct them, for it was not exackly their place.

But do you see where I am going with this? There was a split off, as far as I see it, from Thoughs who passed on the knowledge of the wizards, and those who forgot that wizards even existed. Created their own language, as they lost the use of speech (as they did come from Adam and Eve, who did use speech) And created their own traditions to explain things their minds don't understand.

A place such as Atlantis would carry all the knowledge of the Univurse, because it was passed onto them, and they have records explaining it (their own versions of the manual) And I am sure that they were all wizards.

And, don't forget, Animals can still be wizards too. They also have the knowledge of the world around them. And I am sure that they always had access to what else was out there, because, as a Cat talks to the wind, or a Whale talks to the water, the knowedge is there.

But who is listening?




(Ok, that was long winded. *laughs* I hope you catch this)