The Dark Arts
What are the Dark Arts?
This question popped into my head several times. How exactly are the Dark Arts in Harry Potter defined? Does it include every kind of magic that is harmful? If yes, then why aren’t curses and hexes performed by the students considered Dark Arts? And how do they learn these in the first place? But that is a different question I might tackle another time.
My main beef with this is, that characters who are associated with the Dark Arts are considered bad and evil. But how can something be evil if we don’t even know what exactly it is?
Anyway, this matter made me think of the game Final Fantasy X, because it addresses a similar topic, namely the machina. The world of FF X is called Spira and its inhabitants are spiritual and use magic. Well, summoners and mages do. Machina (machines) are considered bad and evil because they were used in a war a thousand years ago and caused great destruction. The Yevonites (believer of Yevon) are the main group of Spira and its leaders are the leaders of the world. Only a small group, called the Al Bhed uses machina and is shunned for it. The Al Bhed don’t believe that machina are generally bad and can be quite useful, e.g. air ships.
The first time we see the hypocrisy of the Yevonites leaders is when we see the Blitzball (a sport) arena, which is a machina. This is explained as being necessary because the people of Spira need something to keep them happy during the hard times (bread and games comes to mind here). That’s why the Yevonites allowed it. The second times is during an attack on Sin, the huge monster that threatens Spira. Suddenly the Al Bhed are allowed to use a big laser gun.
So basically the leaders decide which machinas are good and which are not. We later learn they have no problem with using forbidden machina as they please, but then the whole group of them is corrupt anyway.
This reminds me of the Dark Arts because I’m sure that the ministry in the Wizarding World are the ones that decide what kind of magic is considered ‘dark’. Someday someone decided that magic needed to be divided into good and bad magic and the use of ‘bad’ magic became punishable. But when does ‘good’ magic stop being good and becomes ‘bad’? Again I point to the hexes of the Hogwarts students, which cannot be considered good by any stretch. But we cannot even safely put the Unforgivables under the Dark Arts label since during the first war against Voldemort Aurors were allowed to use them to capture Death Eaters. So, do the Unforgivables only count as bad when beings used by the bad guys but not when the good guys use them? And why just stop there, why not use all kinds of Dark Arts, it’s for a good cause after all, isn’t it? So unless we get a definition in canon of what exactly the Dark Arts are, I cannot simply call them evil and call characters evil who use them.
This question popped into my head several times. How exactly are the Dark Arts in Harry Potter defined? Does it include every kind of magic that is harmful? If yes, then why aren’t curses and hexes performed by the students considered Dark Arts? And how do they learn these in the first place? But that is a different question I might tackle another time.
My main beef with this is, that characters who are associated with the Dark Arts are considered bad and evil. But how can something be evil if we don’t even know what exactly it is?
Anyway, this matter made me think of the game Final Fantasy X, because it addresses a similar topic, namely the machina. The world of FF X is called Spira and its inhabitants are spiritual and use magic. Well, summoners and mages do. Machina (machines) are considered bad and evil because they were used in a war a thousand years ago and caused great destruction. The Yevonites (believer of Yevon) are the main group of Spira and its leaders are the leaders of the world. Only a small group, called the Al Bhed uses machina and is shunned for it. The Al Bhed don’t believe that machina are generally bad and can be quite useful, e.g. air ships.
The first time we see the hypocrisy of the Yevonites leaders is when we see the Blitzball (a sport) arena, which is a machina. This is explained as being necessary because the people of Spira need something to keep them happy during the hard times (bread and games comes to mind here). That’s why the Yevonites allowed it. The second times is during an attack on Sin, the huge monster that threatens Spira. Suddenly the Al Bhed are allowed to use a big laser gun.
So basically the leaders decide which machinas are good and which are not. We later learn they have no problem with using forbidden machina as they please, but then the whole group of them is corrupt anyway.
This reminds me of the Dark Arts because I’m sure that the ministry in the Wizarding World are the ones that decide what kind of magic is considered ‘dark’. Someday someone decided that magic needed to be divided into good and bad magic and the use of ‘bad’ magic became punishable. But when does ‘good’ magic stop being good and becomes ‘bad’? Again I point to the hexes of the Hogwarts students, which cannot be considered good by any stretch. But we cannot even safely put the Unforgivables under the Dark Arts label since during the first war against Voldemort Aurors were allowed to use them to capture Death Eaters. So, do the Unforgivables only count as bad when beings used by the bad guys but not when the good guys use them? And why just stop there, why not use all kinds of Dark Arts, it’s for a good cause after all, isn’t it? So unless we get a definition in canon of what exactly the Dark Arts are, I cannot simply call them evil and call characters evil who use them.