That Evil Magic, Part I

Why so unreasonable?

So why does that Evil Religion hate all those wonderful people who practice magic? Especially why is it always that Evil Religion with no doctrines except hating magic and all the trappings of Christianity?¹ So unreasonable of them!

Possibly embodied in evil mobs of peasants, possibly in a transparent Inquisition. (Fun fact: in real life, both Spain and Italy had very few witch hunts, for the simple reason that in both regions, the Inquisitors insisted that witchcraft was not an excepted crime, all usual rules about evidence applied. That you will very rarely see in fiction.)

A belief in evil magic is far more widespread than that. Indeed, all cultures believe that some people practice malefic magic except for modern industrialized societies and certain hunting and gathering bands.

And by “modern” I mean quite modern. In late 19th century France, there was a case where two men murdered another on the grounds he had bewitched their cow.

The largest witch hunts on record were in the Roman Republic, with thousands of victims. To be sure, Roman law did not distinguish too sharply between a witch and a poisoner. And how could it? Powders of inheritance worked by occult -- that is, hidden -- means.

On the other hand, the magic writings that come down to us from that era are rife with invocations of Pluto, Charon, Hecate, and Persephone, and with the spirits of the dead. Lead curse tablets were often put into graves and invoke the corpse’s spirit. This would explain why the practice of magic was prosecuted as impiety. (In Athens, it was illegal to even know how to practice magic, which gave those defending themselves from charges an interesting problem of showing enough knowledge to deny they were doing it.)

One notes that in the Roman Empire, even those who claimed to conjure the gods² said that it required highest moral probity to succeed, and most people who tried would end up with evil daemons instead.

This dread of impious magicians trying to conjure the gods is found in older civilizations too. Mesopotamian civilizations, for instance, as far back records can be found, regarded those magicians as evil.

Indeed, once this is made clear, it might raise more questions for some readers that other regions did not prosecute such magic as impiety.

Which is historical, if unusual. The Greek magical papyri -- found in Egypt -- have spells where the writer overtly threatens the gods if they do not do as the writer commands, and we know that Egyptian magicians gathered the names of gods to use in magic. Yet Egypt did not prosecute magic. The animating power of the world, heka, was used by the gods to keep the world in order, but some gods had taught it to members of mankind, and these wizards could use it against other humans, and against the gods, there being no rigid division between them. Indeed the only record of someone being prosecuted for working magic was in an attempt to overthrow a pharaoh, and the charge was treason, not working magic.

But, at any rate, world-building a religion that thinks it evil to compel the gods, or enslave ghosts, or summon up evil spirits who may be tricking you into thinking you are compelling them -- is rather easier than the opposite.

Then, if you want a conflict, you can easily have one region where it’s held innocent, or at least justifiable, to conjure gods, and one where it’s held to be impiety and punished.

Perhaps there is a range where, say, conjuring a sea nymph is considerably innocent, but conjuring the goddess of sea would be impiety. One should note that piety and impiety would have a heavily practical note, as it did in Greek and Roman times: the important thing was to not offend the goddess of the sea, and so to not conjure her. Perhaps the nymph is not a problem because she can’t do much harm.

Or perhaps one region evaluates the conjuring by whether it will do harm, and the other regards it as all impiety.

It is worth noting that all the ones that regarded conjuring the gods as impiety also believed in daemons that, though not always entirely evil, were malignant and prone to murder and other crimes on their own account, killing babies or mothers after childbed, or any number of other groups according to their types. They were, of course, evil to conjure up. So conjuring lesser spirits might fall afoul of that -- depending on the metaphysics of the world.

Beyond that, natural spirits might have varying intelligence. Perhaps conjuring a natural spirit with no more intelligence than an animal is deemed innocent. If properly contained.

One thing I have seen is the villains regarding all working with spirits as WRONG, and the heroes who innocently conjure natural elemental spirits to do good things. The worst that happened was that we were told that once a little girl accidentally burned down the family home. It is very implausible that accidental bad effects would be that limited. Does conjuring up a wind produce no effects to other things, or wind patterns? And what happens when the wind is conjured up with malice, to ruin a crop, or sink a ship? Or with the highest of motives, to destroy, if the ship holds a foe?

And, of course, if the world contains neither limited polytheistic gods nor natural spirits, but only angels and devils,³ and a Supreme Being, the magic is conjuring either beings wiser and better than the conjurer, or evil, crafty beings who do not mean the conjurer well.

At that, what if the person claims to not conjure spirits? How do you establish whether any given piece of magic is conjuring? Can the devil use it as a signal even if the wizard is unaware? Does it matter? Or perhaps should it mean you are careful? (St. Augustine warned that if you didn’t know how something worked, so that it might be a signal to a devil, you should be careful that your intentions were pure. On the other hand, I have read a Russian advice book that said no one should take herbal remedies, it was all diabolical.)

Which is another issue in the great question of how the wizards know what they know.⁴

On the other hand, what if the person is just lying?

This gets particularly interesting based on how well it is established that such things can be done by conjuring spirits. Setting up how it could be proven that, in this case, it is not done by conjuring spirits takes quite a bit of work.

Then, these issues cover only that fantasy worlds have magic that is goetia, and involves conjured spirits. Magia, the art of using hidden properties, is another matter.⁵ Perhaps our wizards are innocent because they use that.

Further reflections here.

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