Wands and Magical Ability, Part One

[linman6868 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 24121

Since "Wands and Magical Ability" is a perennial topic on this list, it 
follows that I probably won't be presenting anything new.  So for better or 
worse, here is what I've gathered on the subject from my readings on and off 
list, from the obvious to the not-so-obvious....

W H A T  M A G I C A L  A B I L I T Y  I S

"I am much, much more than a man...." -- CANON EXAMPLES

What is magical ability?  The wizards in HP take the answer to this question 
for granted, but, being Muggles, we don't.  What wizards do say, however, 
gives us a few clues.

Most wizards speak of magical ability as an inherent talent that appears in 
humans in various degrees.  We find this out for the first time when Hagrid 
informs Harry that he is a wizard:

**
"I'm a *what*?" gasped Harry.
"A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which 
groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good'un, I'd say, once yeh've 
been trained up a bit.  With a mum and dad like yours, what else would yeh 
be?...." (PS/SS, Ch. 4)
**

Which gives us two more clues to the puzzle, that magical ability is 
genetically linked, and that the talent can be cultivated to focus the power 
of the wizard.

This is supported by Ron's explanation of the terms "Mudblood" and "Squib" in 
CoS.  Ron, spouting slugs and indignation, explains Malfoy's insult to 
Hermione:

**
"It's about the most insulting thing he could think of....Mudblood's a really 
foul name for someone who is Muggle-born -- you know, non-magic parents.  
There are some wizards -- like Malfoy's family -- who think they're better 
than everyone else because they're what people call pure-blood....I mean, the 
rest of us know it doesn't make any difference at all.  Look at Neville 
Longbottom -- he's pure-blood and he can hardly stand a cauldron the right 
way up."
"And they haven't invented a spell our Hermione can' do," said Hagrid....
"It's a disgusting thing to call someone," said Ron, wiping his sweaty brow 
with a shaking hand.  "Dirty blood, see.  Common blood.  It's ridiculous.  
Most wizards these days are half-blood anyway.  If we hadn't married Muggles 
we'd've died out."  (CoS, Ch. 7)
**

And similarly, Ron explains what makes Argus Filch a Squib:

**
"Well -- it's not funny really -- but as it's Filch," he said.  "A Squib is 
someone who was born into a wizarding family but hasn't got any magic powers. 
 Kind of the opposite of Muggle-born wizards, but Squibs are quite unusual.  
If Filch's trying to learn magic from a Kwikspell course, I reckon he must be 
a Squib.  It would explain a lot.  Like why he hates students so much."  Ron 
gave a satisfied smile.  "He's bitter."  (CoS, Ch. 9)
**

This would suggest that the wizarding talent gene is dominant, if apparently 
magic-less people produce a wizard and wizards rarely produce anything but 
more wizards.  According to Ron, Squibs and near-Squibs use such things as 
Kwikspell courses in the attempt to make up for what powers they lack, 
probably not with much results.  Which suggests again that training is meant 
to focus and polish magical people's powers, not bring them into being where 
they did not exist before.  On the other end of the scale, sometimes great 
respect is afforded a wizard merely for having a high degree of magical 
power, as Sirius explains:

**
"He was tipped for the next Minister of Magic," said Sirius.  "He's a great 
wizard, Barty Crouch [Sr.], powerfully magical -- and power-hungry. Oh never 
a Voldemort supporter," he said, reading the look on Harry's face.  "No, 
Barty Crouch was always very outspoken against the Dark Side...." (GoF, Ch 
27).
**

In fact, wizards often place so much more emphasis on the existing power than 
the training that many of them consider Muggles a separate species 
altogether:  "We are all familiar with the extremists who campaign for the 
classification of Muggles as 'beasts'," writes Newt Scamander (FB xiii).  

On the other hand, compare Hermione, hugging Harry before his showdown with 
Voldemort in PS/SS:

**
"Harry -- you're a great wizard, you know."
"I'm not as good as you," said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him.
"Me!" said Hermione.  "Books!  And cleverness!  There are more important 
things -- friendship and bravery and -- oh Harry -- be *careful*!"  (PS/SS, 
Ch. 16)
**

According to Hermione, the most important thing about being a great wizard is 
not the training or even the power but the sort of person one is in the first 
place.  Which brings me to the next issue.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S LABYRINTH

C.S. Lewis, in arguing that the philosophical battle-lines were drawn 
differently in the sixteenth century than they are now, spends a few pages on 
the sixteenth-century concept of magic.  I quote here not because I consider 
Lewis the last word on the subject, but because I find the argument useful to 
stimulate my own thoughts on magical ability.  I do, however, highly 
recommend the essay in its own right; it can be found as the Introduction to 
Lewis's ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, EXCLUDING DRAMA (Oxford 
UP, 1954).

**
This conflict between the magician and the astrologer seems very surprising 
to those who want to impose our modern grouping on the men of the past; for 
by our grouping magic and astrology go together as 'superstitions'.  But the 
moment we drop our grouping (which is from the historical point of view 
irrelevant and accidental) and try to see the two arts as they appeared to 
their exponents, the thing becomes perfectly simple.  Magic and astrology, 
though of course often mixed in practice, are in tendency opposed.  The 
magician asserts human onmipotence; the astrologer, human impotence.  The 
common emotion (whether of repulsion or whimsical curiosity) which unites 
them in our minds is modern: something on the lens of the glass we look 
through, not something in the historical object.  

[snip more on the literary history of magic -- very interesting]

But in Spenser, Marlowe, Chapman, and Shakespeare the subject [of magic] is 
treated quite differently.  'He to his studie goes'; books are opened, 
terrible words pronounced, souls imperilled.  The medieval author seems to 
write for a public to whom magic, like knight-errantry, is part of the 
furniture of romance: the Elizabethan, for a public who feel that it might be 
going on in the next street.
**

According to Lewis, the scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
were attempting to teach themselves power via magic; as that failed, they 
turned to technology, and the connotation of technology has taken over the 
meaning of our word science.  Astrologers, on whose heels followed the 
Calvinists, were determinists who denied the power that the 
scientist/scholar/magicians were seeking.

What does this have to do with the Potterverse, and magical ability?  I'm 
thinking about alchemy, which had its heyday of study during the period Lewis 
describes.  It's been said on the list more than once that the Philosopher's 
Stone was meant to be a by-product of the whole alchemic process; that is, 
that the goal was not the Stone itself but being a person worthy of the 
Stone.  That's why it was called the *Philosopher's* Stone -- the stone of 
the person who loves wisdom.  Reaching that goal meant reaching higher and 
higher levels of personal transformation and power -- something which the 
people of the Renaissance still believed possible.

Thus when Dumbledore turns Harry's mind away from the reason Voldemort wanted 
to kill him in PS/SS; when he explains to Harry that one's choices are more 
important than one's abilities, at the end of CoS; when he lambasts Fudge at 
the end of GoF about the relative unimportance of pedigree in the face of 
"what [a person] grows to be", he is explaining that inward personal 
transformation is the highest use (if not the only real use) to which magical 
ability should be put -- and never mind power-hungry maniacs, Muggle-borns, 
and the status-quo of magical culture.

I find it telling that the foil to the alchemic process is Dumbledore's 
description of Tom Riddle's philosophic transformation:

**
"Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle.  I 
taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts.  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.  Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, 
handsome boy who was once Head Boy here." (CoS, Ch. 18)
**

Thus magical ability is a complex component of a human being that is 
genetically derived, varying in intensity, and in need of training and focus 
like other talents.  It commands respect, but according to the wisest heads 
ought to be the means to wise living, rather than the end.

My next post will deal with the subject of Wands and with Harry as the lens 
through which we view this subject.  I'm also deferring the discussion 
questions to that post, but feel free to slice and dice this up too.

To be continued....

Lisa I.


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