Wandless magic -- is is Dark in here or is it me?

[porphyria_ash]

No: HPFGUIDX 43035

Thanks, everyone, for the cool feedback on my wandless magic post. 
I'll reply to some replies.

Phyllis retrieved this quote for me:

<<
BBC: "Now, can I ask you: are there any special wizarding powers in 
your world that depend on the wizard using their eyes to do 
something? Bit like
"
JKR: "Why do you want to know this?"
BBC: "I just vaguely wondered."
JKR: "Why?"
BBC: "Well because everyone always goes on about how Harry's got Lily 
Potter's eyes?"
JKR: "Aren't you smart? There is something, maybe, coming about that. 
I'm going to say no more. Very clever."
>>

Phyllis, thank you so much. I remembered the part about green eyes 
being important, but not the context in which it was said. 

Well, that provides us with some speculation fodder, especially since 
the color green is so heavily associated with Slytherin and general 
HP sinisterness. Perhaps if, according to my theory, there is some 
kind of connection between the Dark Arts and wandless spells 
requiring eye contact, then maybe Lily was dabbling in a little Dark 
magic herself. Those of you who like to imagine a Snape/Lily 
relationship of some type can envision him giving her some Dark Arts 
tutoring on the sly during their teen years. Her green eyes could be 
a direct physical result of her experimentation -- and indicate a 
power that she could have found a way to transmit to Harry. This 
would provide Lily with much needed Edge, seeing as we've ruled out 
that she was either a member of House Slytherin or related to Salazar 
(sorry, I believe she was Just Plain Muggle). 

As I compose this post, Richelle is hard at work working out the 
significance of green. She writes:

<<
Perhaps green isn't for Slytherin at all. Perhaps green is the color 
of
power. And Salazar Slytherin would've chosen green because of that.
>>

Intriguing idea. There sure is a lot of green in the books; it must 
mean something. If I can come up with anything to add to this, I'll 
post it. Richelle also asked:

<<
When *does* Dumbledore use a wand?
>>

Aside from what you mentioned, he also uses a wand when he summons 
the purple squashy sleeping bags in PoA. But we really don't see him 
use magic a whole lot, do we? I know he seems to be in charge of when 
the food appears on the plates at feasts, but I'd assumed that he 
simply signals the House Elves to banish the food from the kitchens 
to the tables with their own magic. I'll skim the books again and see 
what more I can come up with. 

Elkins said:

<<
My gut feeling here (admittedly on the basis of very little in the
way of canonical proof) is that the sort of magic that does not
require a wand is primarily *old* magic, magic that predates the
ritualized formulae developed by the Wizarding World. 
<...>
...these are the magics of myth and of fairy tale. They are *old* 
magics, older than the spell-casting of the ceremonial magician, with 
his Latinate incantations and his carefully formulated gestures. Old 
magics may well be suspect within the WW simply by virtue of being 
less controllable, less predictable -- and far less well-understood.
>>

I agree that we can make a useful distinction between the formalized 
sort of spells taught at Hogwarts and the ancient, as you say, 
mythopoetic kind. In fact, I wonder if the amount of power it 
requires to, say for instance, become an Animagus, i.e. to 
understand, control and predict old magic in a way the average wizard 
can't, renders the user of this kind of magic suspect just because it 
shows them to be so very powerful.

It also makes we wonder if the sort of magic formally taught at 
Hogwarts might be limited to the more unsuspicious kind, i.e. the 
newer, Latinate kind because that's the most trusted kind. I'll use 
this space to develop my theory a bit more: I had imagined that 
wandless magic was analogous to the Real World equivalent of picking 
locks, hotwiring cars, hacking into computer systems and so forth. 
There might be some legitimate uses for these talents -- people 
accidentally lock themselves out of their homes and need a locksmith 
to get them back in -- but for the most part, even knowing how to do 
these things makes someone look suspicious since they lend themselves 
to criminal behavior so easily. Likewise, if using a wand makes magic 
so much easier, then why would someone want to cast a spell without 
one unless they had a sneaky reason. And because of this, these 
skills are not commonly taught. I took Driver's Ed. in high school 
and they never taught us to hotwire cars. :-) So I'm wondering if 
Hogwarts is the same way: there is more wandless magic than what 
Harry sees in class but they don't talk about it at school since 
Hogwarts sticks to the more controllable and "legitimate" kind.

Elkins also made some very interesting remarks on Dark Magic items 
and Nova reminded me about Dumbledore using the Put-Outer in PS/SS. 
Just to clarify, I didn't originally have in mind enchanted objects 
or magical tools other than a wand, but you both make excellent 
points. I do agree with Elkins when she says:

<<
The Weasley admonition against seemingly self-aware magical items
strikes me as highly significant here.
>>

Yes, and I think both Arthur and Snape may have a "Dark until proven 
Not-Dark" attitude towards self-aware objects for a good reason: 
their use by criminal wizards. After all, Arthur works for the Misuse 
of Muggle Artifacts Department, so he sees a lot of cursed objects, 
and Snape might have cursed a few himself in the old days. Of course 
a lot of these Dark Objects are used for Muggle-baiting, and so 
obviously they would need to act "automatically" with no further 
direction from the wizard or knowing participation from the Muggle. 
In fact if Dumbledore's Put-Outer is merely a device for putting out 
street lights, perhaps it's a bit of a contraband Muggle-baiting 
object too. :-) (Or not -- BTW, Nova, I do love Cindy's theory about 
the Put-Outer and hope it's true.)

Then sydpad said:

<<
Just what makes the the Dark Arts dark? To cut straight to the 
chase, they're parasitic. If clean magic involves focusing the 
casters inherent power, dirty magic involves stealing it from 
someone else.
>>

Not a bad theory. I had been imagining wandless magic being "dark" 
because it was suspicious and therefore considered "dark," but I'm 
all in favor of a unified theory of what exactly are the Dark Arts. I 
think there really ought to be a particular quality that makes a 
spell inherently "Dark," something other than intent, which is too 
vague, otherwise the Dark Arts would not be a separate category of 
spells. I'll buy the "parasitic" idea. This is compatible with what 
some other posters have speculated, that Dark Arts might involve 
input from a demonic force, such as what Elkins suggests in her post 
about Divination (#35373) and Marina in #40578. In other words, 
perhaps any spell that begs, borrows or steals power from someone 
other than the caster is Dark. 

BTW, sydpad, flattery will get you everywhere with me and you can 
bring on the shameless Wand vs. Cauldron symbol analysis anytime you 
like. I love that sort of thing. >:-)

~~Porphyria