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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 17:35:19 GMT -5
Magic had a strong role in this setting, but not a lot of it is accessible to mortals. You certainly don't see faun wizards or centaur warlocks lobbing fireballs at the White Witch. But there are definitely instances of magic objects and even spells being used by 'normal folks.' In deciding what role magic will play on Age of the Witch, I'm going to be relying on this archive of the full text of the Narnia series, but it's an awful lot. If anyone finds quotes or passages that are relevant to coming up with a coherent picture of magic, please post them here. Not looking for anything directly associated with Aslan, the Witch, the mechanisms of going to Narnia, etc., in the sense of things that it seems like only they could do. (The Deplorable Word, for example, or mass petrification.) |
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 17:42:18 GMT -5
"Won't the string be perished, Su?" said Peter.
But whether by some magic in the air of the treasure chamber or not, the bow was still in
working order.
***
Of Magic he learned only the theory, for Doctor Cornelius said the practical part was not
proper study for princes. "And I myself," he added, "am only a very imperfect magician
and can do only the smallest experiments."
***
"My gentlemen-in-waiting will be there," said Caspian.
"They are fast asleep and will not wake," said the Doctor. "I am a very minor magician
but I can at least contrive a charmed sleep."
They went into the antechamber and there, sure enough, the two gentlemen-in-waiting
were, sprawling on chairs and snoring hard.
***
"Shall I never see you again?" said Caspian in a quavering voice.
"I hope so, dear King," said the Doctor. "What friend have I in the wide world except
your Majesty? And I have a little magic. But in the meantime, speed is everything. Here
are two gifts before you go. This is a little purse of gold alas, all the treasure in this castle
should be your own by rights. And here is something far better."
He put in Caspian's hands something which he could hardly see but which he knew by
the feel to be a horn.
"That," said Doctor Cornelius, "is the greatest and most sacred treasure of Narnia. Many
terrors I endured, many spells did I utter, to find it, when I was still young. It is the magic
horn of Queen Susan herself which she left behind her when she vanished from Narnia at
the end of the Golden Age. It is said that whoever blows it shall have strange help - no
one can say how strange.
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 17:43:44 GMT -5
"This is my greatest friend and the saviour of my life," said Caspian. "And anyone who doesn't like his company may leave my army: at once. Dearest doctor, I am glad to see you again. How ever did you find us out?"
"By a little use of simple magic, your Majesty," said the Doctor, who was still puffing and blowing from having walked so fast. "But there's no time to go into that now.
***
"I had a pretty good guess from my crystal as to where I should find you."
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 17:44:55 GMT -5
"I will never forget this, Trumpkin," said Caspian. "Send for Pattertwig, one of you. And
when shall I blow the Horn?"
"I would wait for sunrise, your Majesty," said Doctor Cornelius. "That sometimes has an
effect in operations of White Magic."
***
"I think," went on the learned man, "that they - or he will come back to one or other of
the Ancient Places of Narnia. This, where we now sit, is the most ancient and most
deeply magical of all, and here, I think, the answer is likeliest to come. But there are two
others. One Lantern Waste, up-river, west of Beaversdam, where the Royal Children first
appeared in Narnia, as the records tell The other is down at the river-mouth, where their
castle of Cair Paravel once stood. And if Asian himself comes, that would be the best
place for meeting him too, for every story says that he is the son of the great Emperor-
over-the-Sea, and over the sea he will pass. I should like very much to send messengers
to both places, to Lantern Waste and the river-mouth, to receive them - or him or it."
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 17:46:15 GMT -5
"Worshipful Master Doctor," came a thin, whining voice. "So please you, I'm only a poor
old woman, I am, and very obliged to his Worshipful Dwarfship for his friendship, I'm
sure. His Majesty, bless his handsome face, has no need to be afraid of an old woman
that's nearly doubled up with the rheumatics and hasn't two sticks to put under her kettle.
I have some poor little skill - not like yours, Master Doctor, of course - in small spells
and cantrips that I'd be glad to use against our enemies if it was agreeable to all
concerned. For I hate 'em. Oh yes. No one hates better than me."
"That is all most interesting and - er - satisfactory," said Doctor Cornelius. "I think I now
know what you are, Madam. Perhaps your other friend, Nikabrik, would give some
account of himself?"
A dull, grey voice at which Peter's flesh crept replied, "I'm hunger. I'm thirst. Where I
bite, I hold till I die, and even after death they must cut out my mouthful from my
enemy's body and bury it with me. I can fast a hundred years and not die. I can lie a
hundred nights on the ice and not freeze. I can drink a river of blood and not burst. Show
me your enemies."
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 17:53:18 GMT -5
Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of
the trees; not merely a dance for fun and beauty (though it was that too) but a magic
dance of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came
into existence
***
There he
would explain that what had happened to Eustace was a striking illustration of the turn of
Fortune's wheel, and that if he had Eustace at his own house in Narnia (it was really a
hole not a house and the dragon's head, let alone his body, would not have fitted in) he
could show him more than a hundred examples of emperors, kings, dukes, knights, poets,
lovers, astronomers, philosophers, and magicians, who had fallen from prosperity into the
most distressing circumstances, and of whom many had recovered and lived happily ever
afterwards.
***
There was no title page or title; the spells began straight away, and at first there was
nothing very important in them. They were cures for warts (by washing your hands in
moonlight in a silver basin) and toothache and cramp, and a spell for taking a swarm of
bees.
***
Lucy could hardly tear herself away from that first page, but when she turned over, the
next was just as interesting. "But I must get on," she told herself. And on she went for
about thirty pages which, if she could have remembered them, would have taught her
how to find buried treasure, how to remember things forgotten, how to forget things you
wanted to forget, how to tell whether anyone was speaking the truth, how to call up (or
prevent) wind, fog, snow, sleet or rain, how to produce enchanted sleeps and how to give
a man an ass's head (as they did to poor Bottom).
***
Hardly - but she did notice the first words. They were, An infallible spell to
make beautiful her that uttereth it beyond the lot of mortals.
***
A little later she came to a spell which would let you know what your friends thought
about you. Now Lucy had wanted very badly to try the other spell, the one that made you
beautiful beyond the lot of mortals. So she felt that to make up for not having said it, she
really would say this one. And all in a hurry, for fear her mind would change, she said the
words (nothing will induce me to tell you what they were). Then she waited for
something to happen.
***
On the next page she came to a spell "for the refreshment of the spirit'. The pictures were
fewer here but very beautiful. And what Lucy found herself reading was more like a story
than a spell. It went on for three pages and before she had read to the bottom of the page
she had forgotten that she was reading at all. She was living in the story as if it were real,
and all the pictures were real too. When she had got to the third page and come to the
end, she said, "That is the loveliest story I've ever read or ever shall read in my whole
life. Oh, I wish I could have gone on reading it for ten years
***
She turned on and found to her surprise a page with no pictures at all; but the first words
were A Spell to make hidden things visible. She read it through to make sure of all the
hard words and then said it out loud. And she knew at once that it was working because
as she spoke the colours came into the capital letters at the top of the page and the
pictures began appearing in the margins.
***
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 17:55:59 GMT -5
"Oh that? I never thought that was eavesdropping, Asian. Wasn't it magic?"
"Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.
***
The table was bare when they entered, but it was of course a magic table, and at a word from the old man the tablecloth,
silver, plates, glasses and food appeared.
***
and after dinner the Magician did a very useful and beautiful piece of magic. He laid two
blank sheets of parchment on the table and asked Drinian to give him an exact account of
their voyage up to date: and as Drinian spoke, everything he described came out on the
parchment in fine clear lines till at last each sheet was a splendid map of the Eastern
Ocean, showing Galma, Terebinthia, the Seven Isles, the Lone Islands, Dragon Island,
Burnt Island, Deathwater, and the land of the Duffers itself, all exactly the right sizes and
in the right positions. They were the first maps ever made of those seas and better than
any that have been made since without magic. For on these, though the towns and
mountains looked at first just as they would on an ordinary map, when the Magician lent
them a magnifying glass you saw that they were perfect little pictures of the real things,
so that you could see the very castle and slave market and streets in Narrowhaven, all
very clear though very distant, like things seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The
only drawback was that the coastline of most of the islands was incomplete, for the map
showed only what Drinianhad seen with his own eyes.
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 18:02:04 GMT -5
Next day, the Magician magically mended the stern of the Dawn Treader where it had
been damaged by the Sea Serpent and loaded her with useful gifts.
***
There is nothing like a good shock of pain for
dissolving certain kinds of magic.
***
"I'll tell you what it is," said Puddleglum. "That Witch has laid a train of magic spells so
that whenever she was killed, at that same moment her whole kingdom would fall to
pieces. She's the sort that wouldn't so much mind dying herself if she knew that the chap
who killed her was going to be burned, or buried, or drowned five minutes later."
"Hast hit it, friend wiggle," said the Prince. "When our swords hacked off the Witch's
head, that stroke ended all her magic works, and now the Deep Lands are falling to
pieces. We are looking on the end of Underworld."
***
"I dare not see the inside of that armour again," said the Prince. "I rode in it as in a
movable dungeon, and it stinks of magic and slavery.
***
And let us order magicians
and jugglers and dancing girls and flute players, all to be on board tomorrow night."
(located in Calormen)
***
For it was in this pool that the Hermit looked when he wanted to know what was going
on in the world outside the green walls of his hermitage. There, as in a mirror, he could
see, at certain times, what was going on in the streets of cities far farther south than
Tashbaan, or what ships were putting into Redhaven in the remote Seven Isles, or what
robbers or wild beasts stirred in the great Western forests between Lantern Waste and
Telmar. And all this day he had hardly left his pool, even to eat or drink, for he knew that
great events were on foot in Archenland. Aravis and the Horses gazed into it too. They
could see it was a magic pool: instead of reflecting the tree and the sky it revealed cloudy
and coloured shapes moving, always moving, in its depths. But they could see nothing
clearly. The Hermit could and from time to time he told them what he saw.
***
Uncle Andrew, you see, was working with things he did not really understand; most
magicians are.
***
"Why haven't these clothes all rotted away long ago?" asked Polly.
"Magic," whispered Digory. "Can't you feel it? I bet this whole room is just stiff with
enchantments. I could feel it the moment we came in."
***
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Post by Stormwall on Jan 14, 2015 18:12:50 GMT -5
The Queen put her other hand under his chin and forced it up so that she could see his
face better. Digory tried to stare back but he soon had to let his eyes drop. There was
something about hers that overpowered him.
After she had studied him for well over a minute, she let go of his chin and said:
"You are no magician. The mark of it is not on you. You must be only the servant of a
magician.
***
"Peace," said the Witch. "I see what you are. You are a little, peddling Magician who
works by rules and books.
***
And then the shrill, whining voice began, "Oh, bless his heart, his dear little Majesty
needn't mind about the White Lady - that's what we call her - being dead. The Worshipful
Master Doctor is only making game of a poor old woman like me when he says that.
Sweet Mastery Doctor, learned Master Doctor, who ever heard of a witch that really
died? You can always get them back."
"Call her up," said the grey voice. "We are all ready. Draw the circle. Prepare the blue
fire."
Above the steadily increasing growl of the Badger and Cornelius's sharp "What?" rose
the voice of King Caspian like thunder.
"So that is your plan, Nikabrik! Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed ghost.
And I see who your companions are-a Hag and a Werewolf! "
***
"You first!" he cried and fell upon the silver chair. That must have been a good sword.
The silver gave way before its edge like string, and in a moment a few twisted fragments,
shining on the floor, were all that was left. But as the chair broke, there came from it a
bright flash, a sound like small thunder, and (for one moment) a loathsome smell.
"Lie there, vile engine of sorcery," he said, "lest your mistress should ever use you for
another victim."
***
But the next day passed very slowly. Lasaraleen wanted to go back on the whole
arrangement and kept on telling Aravis that Narnia was a country of perpetual snow and
ice inhabited by demons and sorcerers, and she was mad to think of going there.
***
"Fourth point. Don't you remember - it was the very day before the ambassadors came
from the King of Calormen don't you remember planting the orchard outside the north
gate of Cair Paravel? The greatest of all the wood-people, Pomona herself, came to put
good spells on it. It was those very decent little chaps the moles who did the actual
digging.
***
"Do you mean, do something to make it happen?"
Eustace nodded.
"You mean we might draw a circle on the ground - and write in queer letters in it - and
stand inside it - and recite charms and spells?"
"Well," said Eustace after he had thought hard for a bit. "I believe that was the sort of
thing I was thinking of, though I never did it. But now that it comes to the point, I've an
idea that all those circles and things are rather rot. I don't think he'd like them. It would
look as if we thought we could make him do things. But really, we can only ask him."
***
"I had already cast strong spells on the hall where the images of my ancestors sit. And the
force of those spells was that I should sleep among them, like an image myself, and need
neither food nor fire, though it were a thousand years, till one came and struck the bell
and awoke me."
***
"My son," said the star, "it would be no use, even though you wished it, to sail for the
World's End with men unwilling or men deceived. That is not how great unenchantments
are achieved. They must know where they go and why.
***
Prince Rilian shivered as she spoke to him. And no wonder: it is not easy to throw off in
half an hour an enchantment which has made one a slave for ten years.
***
Jill couldn't remember the names of the things in our world. And this
time it didn't come into her head that she was being enchanted, for now the magic was in
its full strength; and of course, the more enchanted you get, the more certain you feel that
you are not enchanted at all.
***
The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks
flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost
complete.
***
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