Ancient Magic vs. Dark Magic (was ancient magic)

corinthum kkearney at students.miami.edu
Wed Oct 1 20:19:15 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 82021

Nineve wrote:

> There are ancient and new spells in both Dark and normal magic.

Okay, this I agree with.

> Some Dark magic dates from as far as the Egiptiams, some forgoten, 
> some found, some kept all along, some completely lost.
> In my view, ancient magic doesn't have to relate to emotions and/or 
> primitive forms of spells, but in fact could mean that the 
> tribe/comunity/country etc... who created the spell is long gone, 
and 
> there are no records, but it is history passed along, but not 
widely 
> known. Some others could be from the beggining of the world, and 
> still being used and well known, but people don't know the origin 
for 
> sure.

I think our difference in opinion here arises from the use of the 
term "ancient".  I was using it to describe a particular kind of 
magic, the vague sort that Dumbledore refers to with the specific 
words "ancient magic" (namely, the protection Harry recieves against 
Quirrelmort and arguabley Pettigrew's life-debt to Harry).  The fact 
that this magic is indeed ancient is simply one of its 
characteristics (although the other characteristics are purely 
hypothesis).  Whereas you are looking at it in terms of the practical 
definition of the word, i.e. any magic that is very old. Am I 
correct?  I agree that there are probably countless spells whose 
origins have been forgotten, but I don't think all these spells are 
the same brand of magic that Dubledore was referring to.


> Dark magic is ancient magic, but not all ancient magic is dark 
magic. 

Why must Dark Magic be ancient?  The morsmordre incantation is 
probably a recent Voldemort creation, yet I would classify it as Dark 
magic.

I agree that not allancient magic is Dark.  As a matter of fact, the 
only magic referred to in these terms in canon is deciseively un-Dark.

> And in both there are new spells.

Officially confused.  :)  Are you saying that ancient magic isn't 
necessarily ancient?  I thought that was the only thing we knew for 
certain.

-Corinth





More information about the HPforGrownups archive