The Theory of Magic
This was
originally an article written for Odyssey Online, earlier this year.
It was one of those nights when time was ticking away far
faster than my homework questions were being done; when the first bout of
tiredness had passed and left restlessness in its wake - in short, it was a
night like so many other nights that it’s…a little concerning. But that is a
topic for another day. This being my first contribution to Odyssey Online, it
is only proper for me to begin at the beginning, with the little nudge out of
the door and into the wondrous world of literature that was Harry Potter.
On such a night as I described, in the middle of some
indiscernible differential equations, I began to ponder the theory of magic and
spellwork in the Wizarding World. Perhaps
it was because the trailer for Fantastic
Beasts had just come out that day, or else math was proving more
stimulating than I ever gave it credit for. In any case, I put aside Picard’s
theorem and put on my pointy witch’s thinking hat.
It was not spells of immense power that I started with, not Avada Kedavra or Sectumsempra. It was with the household spells that were Mrs.
Weasley’s mainstay throughout the seven books – until the stunning moment when
Bellatrix Lestrange met her end.
For the most part, household spells that we see in the series
are non-verbal. Not only are they non-verbal, they also appear to be
incantation-less. That means the only thing driving the magic in that case is
the will and concentration of the witch or wizard.
I imagined it to be almost like programming, except that
you’re commanding some mysterious force instead of electrical impulses. I
thought of it as visualizing the results of the spell you’re casting.
If you are a wizard, and you want to cut up a pile of
potatoes, you would command in your mind that the potatoes rise and split,
while specifying the split (lengthwise, cubes, etc). Verbal household spells
like Tergeo should also require some form
of mental directions – else how does the spell know what to clean? And the
classic Wingardium leviosa should
require concentration as well in that you ought to be able to only levitate a
certain object from amongst a pile.
Transfiguration in general appears to be an incantation-less
field of magic (off the top of my head, the only exception I can think of is Evanesco). To be able to concentrate on
changing something in its essence would require an absolute understanding of
the anatomy of the object and the theory of how the attempted magic works - kind
of like physics. I probably wouldn’t have been very good at Transfiguration.
It occurred to me that it was perhaps precisely concentration
that made bookish Hermione generally superior to her peers in spellcasting,
first with verbal spells and then non-verbal in the sixth book. There’s nothing
like copious amounts of reading to train you to calm your mind and focus it
intensely on one thought or action.
From there I moved on to consider the function of incantations.
Since non-verbal magic is possible, it stands to reason that the words to the
spell are simply an aid for concentration. Defense spells all have
incantations; this makes sense, since during the tumult of battle it is
unlikely that the typical wizard will have the time or presence of mind to
concentrate sufficiently. A wizard could never deliver the Killing Curse
without delivering its incantation as well.
And how are spells, or rather the incantations that conjure
them, invented? For obviously Snape was not the only person to create spells in
their textbook margins. And with J.K. Rowling’s recent confirmation that
magic-users exist all over the world, some of whom do not use wands, it is clear
that there must exist wizards who don’t speak a Romantic (or related) language
and would therefore not utter Lumos to
conjure light.
Here I returned to the analogy of programming. Perhaps a
spell-inventor is like a programmer. Inventing a spell would be like creating a
novel program or algorithm; the incantation is merely a label. It’s like naming
an object or a function, or a global variable: it doesn’t technically matter,
but it really boosts efficiency and user-friendliness if the name describes
what the spell is supposed to do.
A spell-inventor imbues the words with power, which means saying
incantations out loud tends to be more effective than using the spells non-verbally.
But I figured that if the wizard was powerful enough, there should be no
difference.
Perhaps it was even possible, I mused, that with enough
concentration, a wizard could say one spell and cast another.
The last thing I dwelt upon before reluctantly returning to
my studies was the troublesome topic of the destruction and creation of things.
We know, thanks to Hermione and her memorization of Gamp’s Laws, that food
cannot be created; but clearly many other things can, though Transformed
objects tend to be insubstantial compared with non-Transformed versions. And McGonagall
herself said in Book 7 that Vanished objects go “into nonbeing, which is to
say, everything.” Then perhaps the creation of things is merely a matter of the
conservation of matter. If Vanished objects disappear into, say, some sort of
void, where they disintegrate into formless matter, it is possible that when a
wizard creates an object ‘out of thin air’, they are in fact drawing up matter
from that void.
There are certainly many holes in my theorems of magic, as there
are bound to be when trying to understand that which does not exist. But
fantastical imagination must exist for a purpose other than entertainment of
the masses, else why would we have evolved to be capable of it? I look forward
to many more journeys of magic, from this summer’s play, The Cursed Child, to Fantastic
Beasts, its sequels (take my money, I don’t care) and beyond.
