Dark Magic Doth Never Prosper, Part I
“Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”- Ovid
Better minds than mine have talked about inconsistencies in the use of the term “Dark” as applied to magic in the Potterverse. Part of the problem is that the adjective seems to be used, variously, of magic that is evil, dangerous, formally illegal, or that transgresses the speaker’s code in some other way.
But then there is also a discipline or branch of magic called “the Dark Arts”, which is considered by some witches and wizards to be evil, by most to be somewhat dangerous, and some spells and artifacts of which are illegal, but which as a whole is both legal and (in some circles) socially acceptable.
Jodel and Whitehound have great essays on “the Dark Arts.” Jodel: “The History of Magic” http://www.redhen-publications.com/HistoryofMagic.html
Whitehound, “Sectumsempra and the Nature of Curses” http://members.madasafish.com/~cj_whitehound/Fanfic/Sectumsempra.htm
And there’s been some great discussion on my lj associating “Dark” magic with will, particularly interfering with will; and why that would seem particularly terrible (from the viewpoint of Gryffindors) because will is associated with fire, and fire with Gryffindor.
But that’s accepting a Gryffindor view of Dark magic.
My contention here is that part of the confusion can be resolved if we conclude that different groups in the Wizarding World use the adjective “Dark” in different ways, but that each group is largely internally consistent.
Part one contains:
Characteristics of Dark Magic
Magic not Identified as Dark which Displays Dark Characteristics
Uses of the Term ‘Dark’: the Three Groups
Who’s in Each Group?
CHARACTERISTICS OF DARK MAGIC
A branch of Magic called “the Dark Arts” is taught as an academic discipline at Durmstrang and not at Hogwarts. (I’m ignoring that last year at Hogwarts because I think we can assume that Riddle’s innovative curriculum had nothing to do with rounding out the students’ education and everything to do with cowing children and producing thugs for Riddle’s use.)
Yet if Durmstrang were teaching its students to become torturer/killers, it would hardly be welcome to participate in an international competition.
Whitehound amasses evidence that some magic taught at Durmstrang as Dark Arts is taught at Hogwarts in other classes (primarily combat magic in DADA), and that information on this branch of magic is available in the Hogwarts library-though information on EVIL magic, such as Horcrux-making, is not.
Jodel defines the Dark Arts as an older, chaotic, undomesticated form of magic (hence its association with older Wizarding families). It entails control of magical energy with the will, mind, emotions, and sometimes body of the witch/wizard rather than the set swish-and-flick wandwork and incantation of more domesticated spells. It’s intrinsically very dangerous, for two reasons: it’s unpredictable in essence; you cannot guarantee results just by getting the pronunciation and wand-waving right. Furthermore, Jodel posits that prolonged exposure to chaotic magic has a deleterious effect upon a human’s perceptions-she thinks that continued (over)use of such magic leads to “Dark Arts Dementia,” which starts with a blunting of empathy, progresses through paranoia, and ends in full-blown insanity as the practitioner loses the ability to distinguish his/her chaos-influenced perceptions from reality. On the other hand, the Dark Arts will always remain attractive to truly creative minds, because it’s the wellspring from which most of the domesticated, safer spells are developed.
Whitehound argued that the essential characteristic of the Dark Arts is that:
At least some of it appears to do something different, on the energy level, from most magic, and to be especially suited to manipulations on some kind of spiritual level.
Possibly the best explanation is that when applied to magic … "Dark" actually means "transgressive". It includes spells which are transgressive because they break Ministry rules, ones which are chaotic, ones which break one or more of Waffling's Fundamental Laws of Magic (especially the one about meddling with the soul) and anything the speaker thinks is Not Done…. The narrowest sense is magic which breaks the Fundamental Laws of Magic and it is in this sense that Dark wounds are usually very hard to heal, because it includes both chaotic and spiritual manipulations of underlying energies.
My argument here is that Whitehound’s narrow interpretation (“chaotic and spiritual manipulations of underlying energies” which “tamper with the deepest mysteries-the source of life, the essence of self) is the discipline called the “Dark Arts.”
Both Jodel and Whitehound agree with Professor Snape that Dark Magic is “varied, ever-changing, and eternal… unfixed, mutating, indestructible.” Unlike Charms or Transfigurative spells, these spells are difficult/unreliable to cast (chaotic); specifically, they depend crucially on the caster’s will and ability to sustain a required emotional state (spiritual). But if successful, the results are often long-lasting (even permanent) or exceptionally difficult to counter. For example, wounds caused by Dark magic are difficult or impossible to heal; something amputated by Dark magic can’t be regrown; curses usually require specific countercurses, rather than being halted by a simple Finite Incantatem.
Contrast the Unforgivables, which we know to be Dark in all definitions, with other spells of our acquaintance. If I am a witch in reasonable possession of my faculties, with a wand that’s moderately cooperative, and if I know the incantation and wand motion, I can cast Lumos or a Switching Spell regardless of whether I’m calm or furious or blissful or terrified. With a Dark spell, however, we are told, “You have to really mean it.” You have to generate an appropriate emotional state and will to make them work.
Which may be a legitimate reason for considering destructive Dark spells worse than Charms or Transfigurations which are equally destructive in potentia. Deliberately wallowing in fury or hatred or thirst to hurt, even if it’s useful for powering your combat spells, is probably no healthier for witches and wizards than it is for the rest of us. On the other hand, lynn_waterfall and others have pointed out that worrying more about the effects of a hostile spell on the spellcaster than on the victim is-morally a bit odd. Moreover, there’s an equally significant moral and psychological problem with someone who can deliberately hurt others without having strong feelings about it. Consider Margaret Atwood’s “Notes Towards a Poem that can Never be Written”:
Partly it’s a job,
partly it’s a display of skill
like a concerto.
It can be done badly
or well, they tell themselves.
Partly it’s an art.
If the essential difference between torturing someone with a household spell and a Dark one is that to use the latter successfully one must be either a sadist (Bella) or filled with powerful feelings of fury, terror, or hatred (and we did see each of those emotions work: Harry, Draco, Harry again) …. Well, it’s not actually that clear-cut that being a dispassionate torturer is so much better: either morally, psychologically, or magically. Some might actually argue (radical though this might be) that “First, do no harm” might not be a bad precept to follow in magic as in medicine.
I concede that there’s no support in JKR’s canon for that position.
MAGIC NOT IDENTIFIED AS DARK WHICH DISPLAYS DARK CHARACTERISTICS:
So. The Dark Arts, compared to other branches of magic, characteristically:
are harder to cast and/or control
depend more on the will/emotional state of the caster
involve the spirit/soul/self in different ways (for example, an inanimate object which “thinks for itself” but “you can’t see where it keeps its brain”’ is “clearly filled with Dark magic”- CoS, “Dobby’s Reward”)
are more likely to have long-term or permanent effects
may involve effects that transgress normal magical boundaries/ are normally impossible to accomplish
may risk spiritual/emotional damage to the USER
Well, Harry knows a couple of spells besides the Unforgivables that won’t work unless he generates the appropriate emotional state and will, doesn’t he? In fact, Hermione (whose lowest score on her OWLs was in the subject which includes most of the Dark spells formally taught at Hogwarts) regularly finds them difficult to perform: Riddikulus and the Patronus Charm.
That’s right. Viktor Krum learned those spells as part of the Dark Arts curriculum, not in his Magical Defense course.
What other magics have we seen that depend strongly on will and emotional state? How about Occlumency, Legilimency, and resisting (as well as casting) the Imperius? Which are rather obviously related to the Dark Lord’s (dark AND evil) ability to possess people and animals. And indeed, the only person/animal ever seen to shake off the Dark Lord’s attempt at possession is, er, Harry. Who’s also the only one we ever see cast off an Imperius as it is cast.
What about Alchemy, which is not an upper-level elective at Hogwarts? Well, what is the Philosopher’s Stone good for? For attaining eternal life and permanently transmuting metals to gold. Transgressive magic at its finest. And the Stone is almost impossible to make; in fact, no degree of technical expertise alone will guarantee success. Practicing alchemy is, among other things, a spiritual endeavor. Transgressive, chaotic, requiring the proper will and spiritual element to work, dealing with life and material identity on the most fundamental levels… yep, Alchemy is part of the Dark Arts, and Flamel is a known (beneficent, one assumes) Dark wizard. The Stone is one of the most powerful Dark artifacts ever created.
Historically alchemists were alternately lauded or persecuted as evil, and they were known for going mad.
In fact, all attempts at immortality must be considered Dark-what greater transgression of boundaries can there be than to attempt to live forever? We know of three methods in the Potterverse that have been suggested to work: making a Horcrux (dark/evil), making a Philosopher’s Stone (dark/good), and uniting the Deathly Hallows (characterized by life-long Quester Albus Dumbledore as dark/foolish).
Whitehand points out:
Note, incidentally, that Xenophilius's comment that "there is nothing Dark about the Hallows -- at least, not in that crude sense" implies that they are somewhat Dark in the less crude sense - presumably, because they transgress magical laws or deal with energy in some particular way deemed to be Dark. If he's right about that, then both Harry and Dumbledore have spent much of their magical careers leaning heavily on the use of Dark objects - the Wand and the Cloak.
One implication of this is that someone who styles himself a “Dark Lord”-i.e. a Master of Dark Magic-might almost be expected to be dabbling with methods of immortality, resurrection, and the like. And we have Luna’s dad and the Flamels as evidence that the quest itself, or even succeeding at it, need not be intrinsically evil. So if all you know about someone is that his principal magical interest is researching immortality, that’s not in itself reason to think him wicked. Though you certainly know he’s willing to tread (spiritually and physically) dangerous ground. (And information on Horcruces has been suppressed at Hogwarts-a young Hogwarts graduate doesn’t even know about the evil method.)
We saw another spell which transgresses normal magical boundaries, which filled the viewer with dark awe when the Dark Lord demonstrated it: flying without a broom.
There is one thing more transgressive than attempting to live forever: Necromancy, raising the actual dead. Making an Inferius counts as that. So does using the second Hallow, which Dumbledore both does and persuades Harry to do.
Oh, and by the way? Tom Riddle’s Diary, we were told, was ‘clearly full of Dark Magic’ because it ‘thinks for itself’ But there’s another object we saw in book 1, and every book after that, which matches Arthur’s criteria: Godric Gryffindor’s Hat, which reads the mind of each student entering Hogwarts.
And what is the merchandise offered by the prototypic Dark shop, the one where Tom Riddle himself deigned to work? ‘Evil-looking’ (to Harry) masks, bones, ‘rusty, spiked instruments,’ poisons, a Hand of Glory, a cursed necklace… ‘nothing in here was ever likely to be on a Hogwarts school list,’ right? Our first impression is that B&B traffics solely in ways to do harm. Yet the store also offers the Vanishing Cabinet whose mate is at Hogwarts, and which, we found out, was popular as a means of escaping Death Eaters.… and, we find out in Book 6, B&B more accurately ‘specializes … in objects with unusual and powerful properties.’ Such as ‘Goblin-made armor.’ And Founder’s artifacts.
The Goblin-forged Sword of Gryffindor is a Dark object. Don’t tell Harry.
USAGE OF THE TERM ‘DARK’: THE THREE GROUPS
Jodel and Whitehound both point out that the Dark Arts as a branch of magic is neither actually illegal nor uniformly socially unacceptable in the WW. Durmstang teaches the discipline openly, Hogwarts teaches parts of it without calling it that, and Knockturn Alley operates both legally and openly, though some people shun and fear it.
Which mirrors the three groups whose use of the term “Dark” or “Dark magic” I want to distinguish.
Group one comprises those who openly use and acknowledge that branch of magic and therefore are willing to CALL themselves Dark wizards. This used to be the norm in British Wizarding society and is still be the norm on parts of the Continent. Supporting the contention that Durmstang’s attitude used to be the norm in Britain is the evidence of the Black family. The Black family has obviously ALWAYS been known for producing Dark witches and wizards; their whole house is full of Dark artifacts (many of them dangerous, at least after years of neglect). And this family (get the name, Black, nudge nudge?) has been held for hundreds of years to be the very pinnacle of Wizarding society. Phineas Nigellus was deemed worthy of guiding generations of aspiring Hogwarts students; Sirius’s grandfather was awarded an Order of Merlin.
It’s still broadly (but not universally) acceptable to belong to this group, to avow an interest in the Dark Arts. Lucius Malfoy demonstrates that.
A political operator trying to expand his influence (and curtail Dumbledore’s) throughout books two to four is NOT going to publicly espouse attitudes detrimental to his image, whatever his private beliefs. Consider that Imperius defense: Lucius had to pretend never to have supported You-Know-Who to remain socially acceptable. Yet Lucius NEVER tried to hide that he was a Dark wizard and was raising his heir to be the same. He openly visited Knockturn Alley; he took his twelve-year-old son there! Lucius hid that he possessed particular artifacts and poisons, yes; that he had ever supported Voldemort, yes; that he was an unrepentant Dark wizard, no.
So Lucius was completely confident that being known to be Dark wouldn’t harm his or Draco’s reputation with anyone who mattered: i.e. the members of his group (Dark=a Discipline) and of the next. Indeed, Fudge ended by trusting Lucius above Dumbledore-right up until Harry was proved right about Lucius being a Death Eater.
Group two comprises those who recognize and sometimes use the Dark Arts, but reserve their own use of the term “dark” for things they consider dodgy or dangerous. For members of this group, calling magic Dark indicates either that they personally disapprove or have reservations about it, or that they’re talking about magic which is formally illegal or against some rule. This attitude seems to have become something of the norm in Wizarding Britain. Dark=Disapproved.
Consider the Hogwarts curriculum, which teaches curses and Dark Arts spells without labeling them as Dark. Consider how the term “Dark” is applied to creatures: if we look at Lupin’s coursework, a Dark creature is apparently any magical creature which is a) potentially dangerous to humans and b) not considered attractive to the speaker (so Grindylows are Dark, dragons aren’t, because dragons are macho and cool).
Consider the Ministry. Their usage seems to be more precisely that “Dark” is used as a synonym for “illegal.” When the Dark Mark went up at the World Cup and Crouch’s house elf was implicated, Barty Sr. ranted about the many proofs he had given that “I despise and detest the Dark Arts and those who practice them.” This from the man who authorized his Aurors to use Unforgivables against suspects and who threw alleged criminals to the Dementors. And no one laughed in his face when he said this. But he was speaking the truth (as his audience thought) if, to him, “Dark” simply equalled illegal. Aurors using the Cruciatus weren’t breaking the law; DE’s using it were.
The third group thinks that “dark” is synonymous with evil, that there’s a type of magic that’s de facto wicked to use, regardless either of one’s intent or actual effect. It’s clear, for instance, that Lily really thought that accusing Mulciber of using Dark Magic to try to prank Mary would have made Severus recoil in horror if Sev had a proper way of thinking. The questions of whether Mary would have been worse hurt or humiliated than, say, Sev had been by countless pranks of the Marauders, or whether Mulciber, like Gryffindor jokesters, had been just doing it for “a laugh,” were irrelevant. “It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny-” Lily insisted. (DH, “The Prince’s Tale”) Nothing more need be said to establish that Mulciber was EVIL to have attempted whatever it was.
Whereas for group one, calling a spell Dark is simply diagnostic, like saying it’s a Charm; for group two, calling it Dark is a shorthand way of saying you think it crosses the line of what’s permissible.
The Dark=a Discipline group considers group two to be hypocrites and group three to be lunatics or ignorami. The Dark=Disapproved group considers group one to be politically incorrect and group three to be a little extreme. The Dark=Evil group considers group one to be deliberately wicked (they’re openly Dark!) and may not always realize group two uses the term differently from them (since anytime group two does use the term “Dark,” it’s disparagingly).
A analogy that might clarify the distinction-I’m American, and I grew up in a rural small town where hunting was THE main sport/hobby for adult men. Nearly every home had guns. I now live in a major city, and for most of my neighbors, guns are associated with violence and crime. For the most extreme of these, firearms are evil and incite people to violence: giving a little boy a cap pistol would practically rank as child abuse (group 3). [There was a real incident of a five-year-old suspended from school for bringing a toy pistol.] Whereas rural hunter fathers (group 1) bring their sons to gun shows as a male-bonding ritual, and agree that “Sure, guns are dangerous, that’s why you teach the kids young to respect ‘em.” While the middle group says, “Isn’t hunting a bit, well, bloody?” And if one heard that a friend was buying a pistol for self-defense, one might regale the friend with statistics about firearm accidents, but not think the friend evil. But the term “gun nut” is reserved for someone whom one worries is, well, interested in firearms. Creepily so.
WHO’S IN EACH GROUP?
Group one consists in contemporary Britain mostly of scions of the old Pureblood Dark families, who grew up studying the Dark Arts from their family libraries. Since many of these sort as children to Slytherin, others of their housemates (particularly among the most creative and ambitious) pick up this attitude. And depending on when the trend to reserve the term “dark” for disapproved magic started, it may include much of the older generation. Outside Britain, it certainly includes all the Durmstrang graduates, including that virtuous champion Viktor Krum-a Quidditch star who openly dated a Muggleborn, whose family had vehemently opposed Grindelwald and suffered for it, the fellow victim with Fleur, Cedric, and Harry himself of Barty in the Third Task. (I mention Viktor because he’s Jo’s only canon acknowledgement that studying the Dark Arts formally for years need have absolutely no corrupting effect-and also has no logical correlation to Pureblood supremacism. Most of Jo’s “good” characters deny or downplay their study of the Dark Arts, and most of the open Dark Arts practitioners are presented as both prejudiced and generally wicked.)
Group two probably includes most of the Ministry and Prophet staff and readers-Rita’s articles and books are slanted this way. This means it’s the current majority, or at least plurality, view. Rita herself and Barty Sr. are in this group, as is Fudge. They’ll use the Dark Arts, they’ll associate with Dark witches and wizards, but if they call something or someone “dark” it’s meant as condemnation.
As is Bill Weasley, by the way-he’s a cursebreaker by profession, but he doesn’t call himself a Dark wizard even though clearly he must be an expert in the Dark Arts.
Who’s in group three? Who seem sincerely to believe that the Dark Arts are innately evil? Lily, obviously. Sirius ended up in this group, and he claimed that James always was: “Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James-whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry-always hated the Dark Arts.” (OotP, “Career Advice”) (Sirius, who hated his family, probably enjoyed having an excuse to think poorly of them for being so evidently Dark.) The senior Weasleys seem honestly to fear and abhor Knockturn Alley, so they may belong to this group. The Trio, certainly. Crouch Jr. as Moody reflected the rhetoric of this group, warning Harry against Krum on the grounds that Durmstrang teaches the Dark Arts openly, but it’s not clear whether the real Moody belonged in group two or three. Because people in group three, like everyone else in the WW, do sometimes consider themselves justified in using spells that they acknowledge to be Dark or Evil.
The distinction is that group three members consider the two terms to be strictly synonymous.
In fact, it’s almost starting to look like there’s considerable overlap between the group of those who hold Slytherin to be obviously the House of Evil, and those who hold Dark Magic to be self-evidently Evil.
There may in fact be identity between the groups.
And the common factor was, they were all devoted acolytes of Albus Dumbledore.
And just as we saw that Dumbledore deliberately encouraged Harry to misidentify Sorting into Slytherin with choosing to be evil, so canon shows us Dumbledore encouraging among his followers the misperception that the Dark Arts themselves are intrinsically evil.
In CoS, “Dobby’s Reward,” Albus told the Weasleys and Harry, “Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle…. He disappeared after leaving the school… traveled far and wide… sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable.”
Note that Albus here is using the language of the Dark=Evil group: “sank” into the Dark Arts? Really! When one considers that Albus was himself a master of Alchemy, blood protection spells, and combat magic, it’s as jarring as though Filius had claimed that Tom “sank deeply into Charms research…”
But it’s even more evident in what Albus said to Harry in HBP, “Horcruxes”: “Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world…, you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!”
“Of course I haven’t!” said Harry indignantly. “He killed my mum and dad!”
Note how neatly Albus slid in equating being ‘seduced’ [way to use a value-neutral term, Albus!] by the Dark Arts with becoming “one of Voldemort’s follower’s.”
Now, whatever Harry’s use or avoidance of the Dark Arts, Harry was hardly likely ever to be best buds with the guy who killed his parents and has repeatedly tried to kill him. But---Dumbledore gushes here, “you’ve NEVER been seduced” to a boy who has, in fact, cast the Cruciatus with partial if not resounding success and who has spent months entertaining himself by using the Half-Blood Prince’s imaginative little nasties against a Squib and Slytherins.
So it is simply not true that Harry has shown himself unwilling to use magic that Harry knows to be Dark or malicious. Moreover, Harry goes on to almost kill Draco with a Dark curse and to enjoy using the Imperius and Cruciatus-yet at King’s Cross, Albus’s shade continues to praise Harry for being incorruptible (the only one worthy to unite the Hallows).
So using the Cruciatus against a moronic and unsuspecting enemy is not being “seduced by the Dark Arts”? No, Albus assured Harry. Being ‘seduced by the Dark Arts” IS THE SAME AS becoming ‘one of Voldemort’s followers.’ Using the most horrific possible Dark curses AGAINST Voldemort’s followers is therefore, logically, entirely different.
Joining Riddle is actually the one Evil (or stupid, if one prefers) decision, which in any rational universe Harry Potter is effectually protected from. (Yes, I have read those AU’s in which Harry joins forces with Voldemort. And they have to really twist to get him there, don’t they?) Any normal view of the situation has Harry unalterably opposed to Riddle, regardless of whether either uses Dark Magic, or The Power of Love, or tactical nukes, against the other.
So by any reasonable reading, Albus conflating “interest in the Dark Arts” with “joining Voldemort” is a propaganda device. Not something Albus believes, but a useful lie to manipulate Harry.
Better minds than mine have talked about inconsistencies in the use of the term “Dark” as applied to magic in the Potterverse. Part of the problem is that the adjective seems to be used, variously, of magic that is evil, dangerous, formally illegal, or that transgresses the speaker’s code in some other way.
But then there is also a discipline or branch of magic called “the Dark Arts”, which is considered by some witches and wizards to be evil, by most to be somewhat dangerous, and some spells and artifacts of which are illegal, but which as a whole is both legal and (in some circles) socially acceptable.
Jodel and Whitehound have great essays on “the Dark Arts.” Jodel: “The History of Magic” http://www.redhen-publications.com/HistoryofMagic.html
Whitehound, “Sectumsempra and the Nature of Curses” http://members.madasafish.com/~cj_whitehound/Fanfic/Sectumsempra.htm
And there’s been some great discussion on my lj associating “Dark” magic with will, particularly interfering with will; and why that would seem particularly terrible (from the viewpoint of Gryffindors) because will is associated with fire, and fire with Gryffindor.
But that’s accepting a Gryffindor view of Dark magic.
My contention here is that part of the confusion can be resolved if we conclude that different groups in the Wizarding World use the adjective “Dark” in different ways, but that each group is largely internally consistent.
Part one contains:
Characteristics of Dark Magic
Magic not Identified as Dark which Displays Dark Characteristics
Uses of the Term ‘Dark’: the Three Groups
Who’s in Each Group?
CHARACTERISTICS OF DARK MAGIC
A branch of Magic called “the Dark Arts” is taught as an academic discipline at Durmstrang and not at Hogwarts. (I’m ignoring that last year at Hogwarts because I think we can assume that Riddle’s innovative curriculum had nothing to do with rounding out the students’ education and everything to do with cowing children and producing thugs for Riddle’s use.)
Yet if Durmstrang were teaching its students to become torturer/killers, it would hardly be welcome to participate in an international competition.
Whitehound amasses evidence that some magic taught at Durmstrang as Dark Arts is taught at Hogwarts in other classes (primarily combat magic in DADA), and that information on this branch of magic is available in the Hogwarts library-though information on EVIL magic, such as Horcrux-making, is not.
Jodel defines the Dark Arts as an older, chaotic, undomesticated form of magic (hence its association with older Wizarding families). It entails control of magical energy with the will, mind, emotions, and sometimes body of the witch/wizard rather than the set swish-and-flick wandwork and incantation of more domesticated spells. It’s intrinsically very dangerous, for two reasons: it’s unpredictable in essence; you cannot guarantee results just by getting the pronunciation and wand-waving right. Furthermore, Jodel posits that prolonged exposure to chaotic magic has a deleterious effect upon a human’s perceptions-she thinks that continued (over)use of such magic leads to “Dark Arts Dementia,” which starts with a blunting of empathy, progresses through paranoia, and ends in full-blown insanity as the practitioner loses the ability to distinguish his/her chaos-influenced perceptions from reality. On the other hand, the Dark Arts will always remain attractive to truly creative minds, because it’s the wellspring from which most of the domesticated, safer spells are developed.
Whitehound argued that the essential characteristic of the Dark Arts is that:
At least some of it appears to do something different, on the energy level, from most magic, and to be especially suited to manipulations on some kind of spiritual level.
Possibly the best explanation is that when applied to magic … "Dark" actually means "transgressive". It includes spells which are transgressive because they break Ministry rules, ones which are chaotic, ones which break one or more of Waffling's Fundamental Laws of Magic (especially the one about meddling with the soul) and anything the speaker thinks is Not Done…. The narrowest sense is magic which breaks the Fundamental Laws of Magic and it is in this sense that Dark wounds are usually very hard to heal, because it includes both chaotic and spiritual manipulations of underlying energies.
My argument here is that Whitehound’s narrow interpretation (“chaotic and spiritual manipulations of underlying energies” which “tamper with the deepest mysteries-the source of life, the essence of self) is the discipline called the “Dark Arts.”
Both Jodel and Whitehound agree with Professor Snape that Dark Magic is “varied, ever-changing, and eternal… unfixed, mutating, indestructible.” Unlike Charms or Transfigurative spells, these spells are difficult/unreliable to cast (chaotic); specifically, they depend crucially on the caster’s will and ability to sustain a required emotional state (spiritual). But if successful, the results are often long-lasting (even permanent) or exceptionally difficult to counter. For example, wounds caused by Dark magic are difficult or impossible to heal; something amputated by Dark magic can’t be regrown; curses usually require specific countercurses, rather than being halted by a simple Finite Incantatem.
Contrast the Unforgivables, which we know to be Dark in all definitions, with other spells of our acquaintance. If I am a witch in reasonable possession of my faculties, with a wand that’s moderately cooperative, and if I know the incantation and wand motion, I can cast Lumos or a Switching Spell regardless of whether I’m calm or furious or blissful or terrified. With a Dark spell, however, we are told, “You have to really mean it.” You have to generate an appropriate emotional state and will to make them work.
Which may be a legitimate reason for considering destructive Dark spells worse than Charms or Transfigurations which are equally destructive in potentia. Deliberately wallowing in fury or hatred or thirst to hurt, even if it’s useful for powering your combat spells, is probably no healthier for witches and wizards than it is for the rest of us. On the other hand, lynn_waterfall and others have pointed out that worrying more about the effects of a hostile spell on the spellcaster than on the victim is-morally a bit odd. Moreover, there’s an equally significant moral and psychological problem with someone who can deliberately hurt others without having strong feelings about it. Consider Margaret Atwood’s “Notes Towards a Poem that can Never be Written”:
Partly it’s a job,
partly it’s a display of skill
like a concerto.
It can be done badly
or well, they tell themselves.
Partly it’s an art.
If the essential difference between torturing someone with a household spell and a Dark one is that to use the latter successfully one must be either a sadist (Bella) or filled with powerful feelings of fury, terror, or hatred (and we did see each of those emotions work: Harry, Draco, Harry again) …. Well, it’s not actually that clear-cut that being a dispassionate torturer is so much better: either morally, psychologically, or magically. Some might actually argue (radical though this might be) that “First, do no harm” might not be a bad precept to follow in magic as in medicine.
I concede that there’s no support in JKR’s canon for that position.
MAGIC NOT IDENTIFIED AS DARK WHICH DISPLAYS DARK CHARACTERISTICS:
So. The Dark Arts, compared to other branches of magic, characteristically:
are harder to cast and/or control
depend more on the will/emotional state of the caster
involve the spirit/soul/self in different ways (for example, an inanimate object which “thinks for itself” but “you can’t see where it keeps its brain”’ is “clearly filled with Dark magic”- CoS, “Dobby’s Reward”)
are more likely to have long-term or permanent effects
may involve effects that transgress normal magical boundaries/ are normally impossible to accomplish
may risk spiritual/emotional damage to the USER
Well, Harry knows a couple of spells besides the Unforgivables that won’t work unless he generates the appropriate emotional state and will, doesn’t he? In fact, Hermione (whose lowest score on her OWLs was in the subject which includes most of the Dark spells formally taught at Hogwarts) regularly finds them difficult to perform: Riddikulus and the Patronus Charm.
That’s right. Viktor Krum learned those spells as part of the Dark Arts curriculum, not in his Magical Defense course.
What other magics have we seen that depend strongly on will and emotional state? How about Occlumency, Legilimency, and resisting (as well as casting) the Imperius? Which are rather obviously related to the Dark Lord’s (dark AND evil) ability to possess people and animals. And indeed, the only person/animal ever seen to shake off the Dark Lord’s attempt at possession is, er, Harry. Who’s also the only one we ever see cast off an Imperius as it is cast.
What about Alchemy, which is not an upper-level elective at Hogwarts? Well, what is the Philosopher’s Stone good for? For attaining eternal life and permanently transmuting metals to gold. Transgressive magic at its finest. And the Stone is almost impossible to make; in fact, no degree of technical expertise alone will guarantee success. Practicing alchemy is, among other things, a spiritual endeavor. Transgressive, chaotic, requiring the proper will and spiritual element to work, dealing with life and material identity on the most fundamental levels… yep, Alchemy is part of the Dark Arts, and Flamel is a known (beneficent, one assumes) Dark wizard. The Stone is one of the most powerful Dark artifacts ever created.
Historically alchemists were alternately lauded or persecuted as evil, and they were known for going mad.
In fact, all attempts at immortality must be considered Dark-what greater transgression of boundaries can there be than to attempt to live forever? We know of three methods in the Potterverse that have been suggested to work: making a Horcrux (dark/evil), making a Philosopher’s Stone (dark/good), and uniting the Deathly Hallows (characterized by life-long Quester Albus Dumbledore as dark/foolish).
Whitehand points out:
Note, incidentally, that Xenophilius's comment that "there is nothing Dark about the Hallows -- at least, not in that crude sense" implies that they are somewhat Dark in the less crude sense - presumably, because they transgress magical laws or deal with energy in some particular way deemed to be Dark. If he's right about that, then both Harry and Dumbledore have spent much of their magical careers leaning heavily on the use of Dark objects - the Wand and the Cloak.
One implication of this is that someone who styles himself a “Dark Lord”-i.e. a Master of Dark Magic-might almost be expected to be dabbling with methods of immortality, resurrection, and the like. And we have Luna’s dad and the Flamels as evidence that the quest itself, or even succeeding at it, need not be intrinsically evil. So if all you know about someone is that his principal magical interest is researching immortality, that’s not in itself reason to think him wicked. Though you certainly know he’s willing to tread (spiritually and physically) dangerous ground. (And information on Horcruces has been suppressed at Hogwarts-a young Hogwarts graduate doesn’t even know about the evil method.)
We saw another spell which transgresses normal magical boundaries, which filled the viewer with dark awe when the Dark Lord demonstrated it: flying without a broom.
There is one thing more transgressive than attempting to live forever: Necromancy, raising the actual dead. Making an Inferius counts as that. So does using the second Hallow, which Dumbledore both does and persuades Harry to do.
Oh, and by the way? Tom Riddle’s Diary, we were told, was ‘clearly full of Dark Magic’ because it ‘thinks for itself’ But there’s another object we saw in book 1, and every book after that, which matches Arthur’s criteria: Godric Gryffindor’s Hat, which reads the mind of each student entering Hogwarts.
And what is the merchandise offered by the prototypic Dark shop, the one where Tom Riddle himself deigned to work? ‘Evil-looking’ (to Harry) masks, bones, ‘rusty, spiked instruments,’ poisons, a Hand of Glory, a cursed necklace… ‘nothing in here was ever likely to be on a Hogwarts school list,’ right? Our first impression is that B&B traffics solely in ways to do harm. Yet the store also offers the Vanishing Cabinet whose mate is at Hogwarts, and which, we found out, was popular as a means of escaping Death Eaters.… and, we find out in Book 6, B&B more accurately ‘specializes … in objects with unusual and powerful properties.’ Such as ‘Goblin-made armor.’ And Founder’s artifacts.
The Goblin-forged Sword of Gryffindor is a Dark object. Don’t tell Harry.
USAGE OF THE TERM ‘DARK’: THE THREE GROUPS
Jodel and Whitehound both point out that the Dark Arts as a branch of magic is neither actually illegal nor uniformly socially unacceptable in the WW. Durmstang teaches the discipline openly, Hogwarts teaches parts of it without calling it that, and Knockturn Alley operates both legally and openly, though some people shun and fear it.
Which mirrors the three groups whose use of the term “Dark” or “Dark magic” I want to distinguish.
Group one comprises those who openly use and acknowledge that branch of magic and therefore are willing to CALL themselves Dark wizards. This used to be the norm in British Wizarding society and is still be the norm on parts of the Continent. Supporting the contention that Durmstang’s attitude used to be the norm in Britain is the evidence of the Black family. The Black family has obviously ALWAYS been known for producing Dark witches and wizards; their whole house is full of Dark artifacts (many of them dangerous, at least after years of neglect). And this family (get the name, Black, nudge nudge?) has been held for hundreds of years to be the very pinnacle of Wizarding society. Phineas Nigellus was deemed worthy of guiding generations of aspiring Hogwarts students; Sirius’s grandfather was awarded an Order of Merlin.
It’s still broadly (but not universally) acceptable to belong to this group, to avow an interest in the Dark Arts. Lucius Malfoy demonstrates that.
A political operator trying to expand his influence (and curtail Dumbledore’s) throughout books two to four is NOT going to publicly espouse attitudes detrimental to his image, whatever his private beliefs. Consider that Imperius defense: Lucius had to pretend never to have supported You-Know-Who to remain socially acceptable. Yet Lucius NEVER tried to hide that he was a Dark wizard and was raising his heir to be the same. He openly visited Knockturn Alley; he took his twelve-year-old son there! Lucius hid that he possessed particular artifacts and poisons, yes; that he had ever supported Voldemort, yes; that he was an unrepentant Dark wizard, no.
So Lucius was completely confident that being known to be Dark wouldn’t harm his or Draco’s reputation with anyone who mattered: i.e. the members of his group (Dark=a Discipline) and of the next. Indeed, Fudge ended by trusting Lucius above Dumbledore-right up until Harry was proved right about Lucius being a Death Eater.
Group two comprises those who recognize and sometimes use the Dark Arts, but reserve their own use of the term “dark” for things they consider dodgy or dangerous. For members of this group, calling magic Dark indicates either that they personally disapprove or have reservations about it, or that they’re talking about magic which is formally illegal or against some rule. This attitude seems to have become something of the norm in Wizarding Britain. Dark=Disapproved.
Consider the Hogwarts curriculum, which teaches curses and Dark Arts spells without labeling them as Dark. Consider how the term “Dark” is applied to creatures: if we look at Lupin’s coursework, a Dark creature is apparently any magical creature which is a) potentially dangerous to humans and b) not considered attractive to the speaker (so Grindylows are Dark, dragons aren’t, because dragons are macho and cool).
Consider the Ministry. Their usage seems to be more precisely that “Dark” is used as a synonym for “illegal.” When the Dark Mark went up at the World Cup and Crouch’s house elf was implicated, Barty Sr. ranted about the many proofs he had given that “I despise and detest the Dark Arts and those who practice them.” This from the man who authorized his Aurors to use Unforgivables against suspects and who threw alleged criminals to the Dementors. And no one laughed in his face when he said this. But he was speaking the truth (as his audience thought) if, to him, “Dark” simply equalled illegal. Aurors using the Cruciatus weren’t breaking the law; DE’s using it were.
The third group thinks that “dark” is synonymous with evil, that there’s a type of magic that’s de facto wicked to use, regardless either of one’s intent or actual effect. It’s clear, for instance, that Lily really thought that accusing Mulciber of using Dark Magic to try to prank Mary would have made Severus recoil in horror if Sev had a proper way of thinking. The questions of whether Mary would have been worse hurt or humiliated than, say, Sev had been by countless pranks of the Marauders, or whether Mulciber, like Gryffindor jokesters, had been just doing it for “a laugh,” were irrelevant. “It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny-” Lily insisted. (DH, “The Prince’s Tale”) Nothing more need be said to establish that Mulciber was EVIL to have attempted whatever it was.
Whereas for group one, calling a spell Dark is simply diagnostic, like saying it’s a Charm; for group two, calling it Dark is a shorthand way of saying you think it crosses the line of what’s permissible.
The Dark=a Discipline group considers group two to be hypocrites and group three to be lunatics or ignorami. The Dark=Disapproved group considers group one to be politically incorrect and group three to be a little extreme. The Dark=Evil group considers group one to be deliberately wicked (they’re openly Dark!) and may not always realize group two uses the term differently from them (since anytime group two does use the term “Dark,” it’s disparagingly).
A analogy that might clarify the distinction-I’m American, and I grew up in a rural small town where hunting was THE main sport/hobby for adult men. Nearly every home had guns. I now live in a major city, and for most of my neighbors, guns are associated with violence and crime. For the most extreme of these, firearms are evil and incite people to violence: giving a little boy a cap pistol would practically rank as child abuse (group 3). [There was a real incident of a five-year-old suspended from school for bringing a toy pistol.] Whereas rural hunter fathers (group 1) bring their sons to gun shows as a male-bonding ritual, and agree that “Sure, guns are dangerous, that’s why you teach the kids young to respect ‘em.” While the middle group says, “Isn’t hunting a bit, well, bloody?” And if one heard that a friend was buying a pistol for self-defense, one might regale the friend with statistics about firearm accidents, but not think the friend evil. But the term “gun nut” is reserved for someone whom one worries is, well, interested in firearms. Creepily so.
WHO’S IN EACH GROUP?
Group one consists in contemporary Britain mostly of scions of the old Pureblood Dark families, who grew up studying the Dark Arts from their family libraries. Since many of these sort as children to Slytherin, others of their housemates (particularly among the most creative and ambitious) pick up this attitude. And depending on when the trend to reserve the term “dark” for disapproved magic started, it may include much of the older generation. Outside Britain, it certainly includes all the Durmstrang graduates, including that virtuous champion Viktor Krum-a Quidditch star who openly dated a Muggleborn, whose family had vehemently opposed Grindelwald and suffered for it, the fellow victim with Fleur, Cedric, and Harry himself of Barty in the Third Task. (I mention Viktor because he’s Jo’s only canon acknowledgement that studying the Dark Arts formally for years need have absolutely no corrupting effect-and also has no logical correlation to Pureblood supremacism. Most of Jo’s “good” characters deny or downplay their study of the Dark Arts, and most of the open Dark Arts practitioners are presented as both prejudiced and generally wicked.)
Group two probably includes most of the Ministry and Prophet staff and readers-Rita’s articles and books are slanted this way. This means it’s the current majority, or at least plurality, view. Rita herself and Barty Sr. are in this group, as is Fudge. They’ll use the Dark Arts, they’ll associate with Dark witches and wizards, but if they call something or someone “dark” it’s meant as condemnation.
As is Bill Weasley, by the way-he’s a cursebreaker by profession, but he doesn’t call himself a Dark wizard even though clearly he must be an expert in the Dark Arts.
Who’s in group three? Who seem sincerely to believe that the Dark Arts are innately evil? Lily, obviously. Sirius ended up in this group, and he claimed that James always was: “Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James-whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry-always hated the Dark Arts.” (OotP, “Career Advice”) (Sirius, who hated his family, probably enjoyed having an excuse to think poorly of them for being so evidently Dark.) The senior Weasleys seem honestly to fear and abhor Knockturn Alley, so they may belong to this group. The Trio, certainly. Crouch Jr. as Moody reflected the rhetoric of this group, warning Harry against Krum on the grounds that Durmstrang teaches the Dark Arts openly, but it’s not clear whether the real Moody belonged in group two or three. Because people in group three, like everyone else in the WW, do sometimes consider themselves justified in using spells that they acknowledge to be Dark or Evil.
The distinction is that group three members consider the two terms to be strictly synonymous.
In fact, it’s almost starting to look like there’s considerable overlap between the group of those who hold Slytherin to be obviously the House of Evil, and those who hold Dark Magic to be self-evidently Evil.
There may in fact be identity between the groups.
And the common factor was, they were all devoted acolytes of Albus Dumbledore.
And just as we saw that Dumbledore deliberately encouraged Harry to misidentify Sorting into Slytherin with choosing to be evil, so canon shows us Dumbledore encouraging among his followers the misperception that the Dark Arts themselves are intrinsically evil.
In CoS, “Dobby’s Reward,” Albus told the Weasleys and Harry, “Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle…. He disappeared after leaving the school… traveled far and wide… sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable.”
Note that Albus here is using the language of the Dark=Evil group: “sank” into the Dark Arts? Really! When one considers that Albus was himself a master of Alchemy, blood protection spells, and combat magic, it’s as jarring as though Filius had claimed that Tom “sank deeply into Charms research…”
But it’s even more evident in what Albus said to Harry in HBP, “Horcruxes”: “Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world…, you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!”
“Of course I haven’t!” said Harry indignantly. “He killed my mum and dad!”
Note how neatly Albus slid in equating being ‘seduced’ [way to use a value-neutral term, Albus!] by the Dark Arts with becoming “one of Voldemort’s follower’s.”
Now, whatever Harry’s use or avoidance of the Dark Arts, Harry was hardly likely ever to be best buds with the guy who killed his parents and has repeatedly tried to kill him. But---Dumbledore gushes here, “you’ve NEVER been seduced” to a boy who has, in fact, cast the Cruciatus with partial if not resounding success and who has spent months entertaining himself by using the Half-Blood Prince’s imaginative little nasties against a Squib and Slytherins.
So it is simply not true that Harry has shown himself unwilling to use magic that Harry knows to be Dark or malicious. Moreover, Harry goes on to almost kill Draco with a Dark curse and to enjoy using the Imperius and Cruciatus-yet at King’s Cross, Albus’s shade continues to praise Harry for being incorruptible (the only one worthy to unite the Hallows).
So using the Cruciatus against a moronic and unsuspecting enemy is not being “seduced by the Dark Arts”? No, Albus assured Harry. Being ‘seduced by the Dark Arts” IS THE SAME AS becoming ‘one of Voldemort’s followers.’ Using the most horrific possible Dark curses AGAINST Voldemort’s followers is therefore, logically, entirely different.
Joining Riddle is actually the one Evil (or stupid, if one prefers) decision, which in any rational universe Harry Potter is effectually protected from. (Yes, I have read those AU’s in which Harry joins forces with Voldemort. And they have to really twist to get him there, don’t they?) Any normal view of the situation has Harry unalterably opposed to Riddle, regardless of whether either uses Dark Magic, or The Power of Love, or tactical nukes, against the other.
So by any reasonable reading, Albus conflating “interest in the Dark Arts” with “joining Voldemort” is a propaganda device. Not something Albus believes, but a useful lie to manipulate Harry.