That Evil Magic, Part IV

Just magic

So why does that Evil Religion hate all those wonderful people who practice magic?¹

With all those wonderfully wonderful wonders, the people who can just do magic? Without stuff so you do not have to worry about graveyard dust, or worse?²

One notes that even here we have not entirely left historical examples. There are indeed cultures where witchcraft is a power inherent in a person. Frequently driving that person to commit murder by magic.

All right, if the person uses it for evil, even lesser evils than murder, that we can agree is evil, and the Religion can think so.³

But surely just being able to do magic through no fault of your own is not a problem? Especially since fantasy wizards need nothing more than words and gestures, or possibly a wand? If they do not need objects, you do not have to worry about their using horrible things as means.

This is where the fantasy trope of “some people can just do magic, and nobody ever wonders how they get to be so special”⁴ collides, hard, with reality and common sense.

It is positively silly to assert that someone is horrible for attributing an evil origin for your powers when you yourself do not have the slightest knowledge where they come from.⁵

This is aggravated by the common trope that such innate magic can bubble up spontaneously in the wizard’s childhood. Often in accidents. Frequently to those who have acted maliciously toward the child.⁶

One notes that in the European witchcraze, it was held that whatever the Devil promised a witch in terms of power and wealth, he was lying. What he really gave was the power for revenge, and a devil would go about the sabbat, urging witches to revenge themselves on those who had injured them.

Even at the time, one writer noted that those who accused others of witchcraft could be acting out of a guilty conscience. It did not dent the craze, unsurprisingly.

Partly because you had such stories as a man falling deathly ill because he and his wife, who had been selling milk to the accused witch, had decided to sell it to someone else. Disproportionate revenge would be a problem. Revenge claimed to be disproportionate, also, people being what they are.

Even where it is recognized that the children don’t control the magic in these mishaps, the power would be regarded as being as dangerous as the Evil Eye. Indeed, technically it would be the Evil Eye, merely not controlled by sight.

Except that the Evil Eye was generally regarded as being powered by envy. Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Or, for another approach --

In some cultures, such children would be regarded as monsters -- that is, as portents. Omens. And therefore ominous. Anomalous occurrences that mark times of disasters.

Usually it is the birth of abnormal children that is the omen, and they often had such medical issues that they could not have survived, but their survival is not helped by people’s reactions.

Then, the typical wizard-child in fantasy is older than the historical cases. Old enough to survive for at least a little time if he gets away.

On the other hand, perhaps the religion will claim such children as signs from the gods? They might claim them to work as oracles for the church, but they might try to -- return them to the gods.

Or, for yet another approach --

The wizard-children may be regarded as changelings from another, magical (and probably malicious) species, or touched by such a species, or by a demon. Not human, at any rate, or not really human. Maliciously inflicted on mankind, often enough. In many a changeling tale, the changeling is enormously old and with fully developed judgment, so disposing of it is merely a matter of tricking it into revealing itself as an impostor, and then dealing with it as such.

If the child keeps such an origin secret for years, only revealing it when seven, or fourteen, or whatever, that’s evidence of deceit on top of malice.

If the wizards then come and take the child away, and years must pass before the new-minted wizard can safely return, well, you are not only a few steps along the masquerade -- after years and new friends, why would he return to where everyone was so afraid of him? -- but also reinforcing the notion that these children are produced by strange effects.

They will blame the wizards, most likely. First they bewitch other people’s children, then they steal them.

Indeed, the wizards may be to blame. Their magic may affect the children. Or perhaps the decadent civilization that left behind all the ruins had wizards whose spells still turn children into spell-slingers, and then the wizards take them away.

The Religion may agree that such beings are not human, thus reinforcing that they do not fall under the same laws. Or it may hold that all rational beings are moral agents, or even that only mankind are rational beings, and therefore whatever evil race did this thing, they are part of mankind despite their powers.

Whether they are evil for using such powers is another matter. Perhaps they gained them because their ancestors had pacts with devils, which would make them at least very perilous, and best left unused.

Perhaps they will try to convert the wizards. If the wizards can not give a coherent account of how they gained their powers, and why no one else can do what they do, this is not an irrational or bigoted response on part of the Evil Religion.

All in all, there are many sagacious reasons for the Evil Religion to be wary of magic, and establishing that it is in error to do so is a matter of weighty work, not dismissing its concerns. If you do not have an innocuous explanation why some people can just do magic, the question of why they can is not going to just go away, and some people will reasonably conclude that it’s probably an evil reason.

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