TSH: How many types of magic?

Craig Brewer · 19 Apr 2010, 03:23 · from 2010-April.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 20:23:19 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) TSH: How many types of magic?
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(I'm stepping away from my disbelief in magic here, so back
to the world of the fiction...)

How many different types of "magic" are there in
THS? I mean, what in the book does a sorcerer actually do?

1) We have the discussion of "numen" early on and
its association with the triannulus.
2) We've got familiars. (Winkle/Winker)
3) We've got soul-swapping to become a werewolf (and so
becoming a shape-changer is something a human can apparently decide to do by a
"spell" of some sort). [And why the literal nature of the wolf's
skin? Earlier, Emlyn says that "A werewolf is a man or a woman who puts on
a wolf's skin." (69), and I took that to be metaphorical/magical. But when
they face Lupine at the end, they literally cut off the wolf-skin.]
4) We've got some vague power hidden in birth names
discussed by old Nick.
5) We've got travel through magic portals with the windows
and Ieuan's breaking windows to keep Bax from going into faerie. (At least I
assume that's what was going on.)
6) Martha talks about distinctions between sorcerers,
witches, and warlocks: "There's almost no one there [in faerie]. ...
Sorcerers who war with sorcerers. Sorcerers who war with witches. Warlocks who
war with everyone." At the very least, the sorcerer/warlock distinction
seems important, so just who the frak IS Goldwurm?
7) We've got Martha's talk about magic language: "Magic...is
diplomacy. It isn't just saying the words. It's who says them, how he says
them, and when he says them." (283)

So is there some way to tie all this together? I might have
an easier time just going with "magic is magic, so let it be vague,"
except that, early on, the whole discussion of the triannulus and numen is
given in such detail and then sort of casually forgotten that it just seems to
beg for some kind of more systematic approach. Then Martha's sudden mini-lecture on how to cast a spell comes back to something like instructing Bax how to be a sorcerer, which is what I thought the early numen talk was setting us up for.

(I have to say that #7 really struck me as resonating with
what Bax says about language and lying earlier: "I don't say it often,
because anyone can say anything. Words really mean very little. Men can be
defrauded with words and women can be seduced with words, and it really comes
to about the same thing." (195) What Martha says is very similar to how
Bax talks about fraud: words mean little; it's how they're used, with whom and
in what circumstances, that matters. If anything is a flag that we should at
the very least question how much we should believe of magic in this
story-told-through-people-talking-to-other-people, isn't this it?)

Oh, and his neighbor Mrs. Nabor/neighbor...a tiny thing that
I just noticed, but with old Nick's talk about birth names being so powerful,
does every character, major or minor, have this kind of (Dickensian, even)
meaningful name? (Although "Nabor" wouldn't have been her birth name...Murrey
was.)

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