The Decline of Pagan Magic

[sunnyskywalker]

Though the movies contradict the books too often for me to consider them canon, occasionally, a background detail is useful. One is Bathilda Bagshot’s book On the Decline of Pagan Magic, a movie prop in Deathly Hallows Part I. The existence of this book (should we choose to accept it) suggests that Bathilda didn’t only write propaganda for children

Comments

sheermiracle

[sheermiracle01]

good

[dorea_ysleen]

Very interesting! I agree that the circumstances around the founding of Hogwarts would make that a good time for the transition from pagan to Christian magic, as Christianity was an ever greater influence on ever more aspects of ever more people's lives and wizards and witches were still very entangled in the muggle world.

I wonder though, if after segregation, when the wizarding world was trying to build its own separate culture, the old traditions (or at least a romanticised version of them) would have been revived. (We know of at least the Yule ball as part of the Triwizard Tournament.) Then it would be interesting to know how and how recently secularized muggle holidays have made it to Hogwarts.

[sunnyskywalker]

There are so many possible ways it could have played out! I know I've run across fics where wizards stayed pagan for a long time (many of them up to the present day), because the idea was that the pagans were so much more wizard-friendly. But I wondered whether that was necessarily the case. If wizards were challenging traditional links between certain magical practices and the various religions, they might have angered pagans too.

Not to mention, based on the Founders' names and dispersed geographical origins, Hogwarts was originally a multi-national, multi-ethnic school, so even if the teachers and students were all pagans, they were probably from a number of different pagan religions. And while those often played nicely together better than with Christianity, that wasn't always the case. I seem to remember the Romans complaining that the Gauls and the Carthaginians were doing religion wrong. Of course they had political reasons to say those peoples were doing everything wrong--but that would be the case at Hogwarts too, where the

[dorea_ysleen]

I wish I knew what to think about Halloween. Sure it's an important old pagan holiday, but the way they're celebrating it reminds me very much of our worldly meaningless muggle way, which seems to be rather recent in England. So did it get that watered down naturally while being celebrated more or less continually in the wizarding world (as seems to be the fate of religious holidays in our secularised world), or is it a more recent adaptation or (re-)addition. That could make the difference between it being a point of unity or another point of strife

[sunnyskywalker]

Good question. If it's an important wizarding holiday which has been watered down over time, are some of "our" Halloween traditions really leakage from the wizarding world? If enough Muggle siblings went, "All the bats and pumpkins and candy sound pretty cool" and wanted to do it too, that might at least accelerate the growth in the popularity of the holiday even if Muggles were also getting more into it on our own.

Marriage would be a factor too. The wizarding community is so small that purebloods wouldn't be able to avoid marrying purebloods who followed other traditions. Even if they started out intending to keep them separate, you'd probably expect some mingling over time.

[chantaldormand]

I always had problems with the magic system in HP series- we have those clean point-and-say spells Harry learns, and then suddenly we get "your mother's love saved you" and the ritual from the GOF.

I can totally get behind the Founders teaching a little "cleaner" magic than it was common back then. As time went on, headmasters kept pulling back the more controversial subjects/materials. Up to Albus' time where he closed down the Alchemy department ;P
It would also explain a LOT about the main conflict in the books. The "Old Ways" are probably passed down in pureblood families, so it isn't per se about muggles. It's about the systematic erasure of culture and traditions. Which would fly over Harry's head since he lacks the context.

As for how this book was published? I imagine that unless you are in the known, the text looks innocent enough to pass through the censorship. And there might have been an exchange of certain goods with certain people

[sunnyskywalker]

The magic Harry learns does look like the result of a long process. So many of the old spells we have records of were multi-step spells with lots of words. Very much like the final steps we see of Voldemort's rebirthday potion, in fact--it seems that Peter has to say the words, not just dump stuff into the cauldron. I could see Step 1 being the Founders comparing notes, finding some commonalities, and paring a few spells down to those commonalities. (Makes it easier for beginners, if nothing else.) With Hogwarts being a multi-national school for so long, this sort of comparison-and-paring-down would continue probably for at least a few centuries

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, also, I really love this bit from the fic A Short History of Magic on the origin of wand-cast spells with short incantations.

"He had his stylus to inscribe symbols, and he had his incantations to cast his spells, but what he didn't have was any time.

"So, using Frazier's first principle of dark magic, the part may stand for the whole, he used his stylus to inscribe one symbol in the air, and he spoke one word of the incantation, and it worked.

I don't think I agree with the historical timing proposed for the invention of wands in the fic, even if it makes a good story. Ollivander's has supposedly been operating since way before the sixteenth century, and we have legends of magic-users with wands and staffs from much earlier. (Including Circe, I think.) But I could definitely see this period as giving a really big push toward simplifying as many spells as possible and using wands all the time and making them more magically conductive. Things might have been more varied earlier.

[dorea_ysleen]

I like this scenario. I agree that Hogwarts would teach the simpler shortened spells if they were already known and worked for most witches and wizards, as they avoided the potentially controversial extraneous stuff. Maybe that's how "enough magic for Hogwarts" is measured - weaker witches and wizards would need the full ritual (which might even work for squibs in the right circumstances and/or with a whole crowd), while the stronger ones could use the more practical short versions. Maybe they still taught the ritual stuff to the older years, as it was probably still needed for the really powerful stuff, like strong lasting wards, and also had the historical connotations