Willow and Tara's Magic

[Sheridan]

I have to say that when Willow or Tara do things that seem to go against the laws of physics, be it levitation, transformation or teleportation I take the view that they are doing things that science simply hasn't caught up with yet. Magic is a way for the human mind, at least of those with the proper talent, to tap into these undefined areas, perhaps tapping into the world of quantum mechanics where some of the things they do are within the bounds of possibility.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[Garner]

TromdeGrey, I have always said that I don't feel that Willow is a Wiccan and that any appellation that says so is wrong. Now I am not a Wiccan myself, but I have known several and read a lot on it. I just don't see Willow following Wicca as a religion. Now Tara, that's a different story. We didn't really see her following Wicca traditions exactly. No specifics of observances or whatnot, but I sure got the sense she did. I always like to say Willow is a witch, Tara a Wiccan.



As for religion motivating people to do bad things, well, history is full of that from all sides. It is too bad, but then love also makes people do very bad things to. Any deeply held belief or emotion that is called into question or assaulted in one manner or another can lead to some pretty extreme behaviors. Too bad too.



Sheridan, I have this question for you and everyone else: Do you think that science can, or should, be able to explain magic? I am not exactly asking if they are compatible, but if magic is rationalizable.



For my own part I tend to come out on the side of NO. Magic is something beyone science. It is like trying to prove the existence of the soul. You can't. Magic is an act of faith as much as anything else. It is accessing parts of us like our soul that interacts with the universe in a manner that just cannot be measured or duplicated. Again I come back to if magic can be quantified, studied and dissected, than it isn't magic but just some form of science, say quantam physics. For me at least, magic is like god, unknowable to the fullest extent because we aren't equipped to know it now.



Garner

[chilled monkey]

Personally I thought that Willow did seem to be like a Wiccan in Season Four. She did invoke several goddessess and in one episode when Xander accuses her of using magick in a card game, she replies "I was praying". Please don't be offended, TromdeGrey, if I say anything wrong. I don't mean to, I have nothing but respect for Wicca.



The point is that in S4, Willow did seem to see witchcraft as a faith. The whole 'Willow only cares about magick for power' stuff didn't appear until late S5.



I agree that magick is an act of faith, not something that can be explained by science.



And I hope your migraine is better now.

Edited by: chilled monkey at: 6/24/03 2:38 pm

[LostWithoutTara]

I think ME's biggest failure with Buffy was their inconsistency with magic and its usage.



Firstly, I'd like to say how much it annoys me that all males practising witchcraft were called warlocks. Doesn't that imply that only women are capable of using magic for beneficial purposes? Blech.



Up until S6, the magic was handled okay (in my opinion). Tara and Willow's different approaches and beliefs contrasted nicely. I never really considered Willow a Wiccan (stupid ME just used it as a synonym for 'witch' - remember that stupid promo on UPN: 'Hell hath no fury like a Wiccan scorned'. .).



S6 just screwed up everything by destroying Willow's character. The *notion* of a magic addiction is acceptable, but the execution was appalling (hence my nice piece slagging 'Wrecked' off in the other thread ). Why bother creating such a crude parallel between magic and drugs when a far superior story had already been set up? Stupid Marti and her baseball bat of anti-metaphor.

[Sheridan]

Quote:

---

Sheridan, I have this question for you and everyone else: Do you think that science can, or should, be able to explain magic? I am not exactly asking if they are compatible, but if magic is rationalizable.

---

Garner I tend to agree that magic in itself is not ratinalizablev except wihin its own logical framework. The results of magic are a different matter. Thus I don't think you could program a comupter to do a spell but you could create a machine that could replicate the effect of a spell.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[darkmagicwillow]

I'm not sure if the dividing line between science and magic, science fiction and fantasy, is easy to draw. What's apparently science can be treated magically, while what's apparently magic can be treated scientifically.



Star Trek has the mood of science fiction, but its setting is fantastical in nature: I still crack up every time I see the "baryon sweep" of the ship, where Enterprise has apparently accreted baryons so they have to do the SF equivalent of scraping the barnacles off their ship. For the non-physics inclined, protons and neutrons are the most common examples of baryons, so you really don't want to get rid of them. Warp drive, while vaguely possible under general relativity, cannot provide faster than light travel without relativistic effects, so that's hardly scientific either.



On the other hand, Zelazny's brilliant classic Lord of Light creates a world where people experience the legends of Hinduism as a normal part of life. Despite how the average person sees the world as magic, reincarnation is accomplished by the transfer of minds through advanced machinery, the Trident of Shiva and Thunder Chariot are technological artifacts, and the Asuras (demons) are energy-based alien lifeforms. There's still a kernel of ineffability about the gods, who are humans, but while their Attributes (essentially psychic powers) may be explainable and enhanced by techology, their Aspects (identification as gods) can be more than a claim to impress the people for some of them.



In BtVS, magic and science are at odds in season four, with Willow, Tara, Giles, and Buffy approaching slaying through mystical means and Riley and the Initiative approaching it through scientific means. Adam's evil suggests that mixing the two approaches is a bad thing to do. In season 6, magic and science are mixed by the Nerds, demonstrating that great power can be attained through that mixture only to be misused again (more through stupidity than evil.) I always thought that Willow's path to power should have occurred through scientific means, if only as a way to obtain knowledge. However, magic is never consistent enough to be scientific or given a scientific explanation.





p.s.: Trom, I'll write a "Religion and Magic" post next.

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

Edited by: darkmagicwillow at: 6/24/03 5:28 pm

[daddykat]

Garner, chilled monkey , TromDeGray; Willow certainly investiagted the religious aspect of it but I just don't think that really "clicked" with her, so she ended up doing the spells for their own sake, perhaps not inevitably bad in itself but had negative consequences for her and others starting with "Forever". As I've said elsewhere Tara is the True Believer in the couple. (I followed that in a fic I wrote where the gang, in their 40s, stil go out to vamp-hunt once in a while. Tara is using magic to keep an overview on things, much like Willow was doing in "Bargaining";I ahve Willow sittinga t a console directing everyone thru wlakie-talkies.)



darkmagicwillow; To engage in my personal favorite sport, nit-picking, relativistice effects strictly speaking only apply as sub-light speeds get higher and higher. Anything that produces the result of FTL travel, well, the side effects are anybody's guess since relativity doesn't allow it in the first palce.

[Garner]

DMW, I love all of Zelazny's work, but Lord of Light is about the best. The mix of fantasy and SF so that they are almost indistinguishable is awesome. But then didn't Arthur C. Clarke say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? That seems to be definitely the case given that machines can do some amazing things. So replicating a magical effect in a different, technological way, is not beyond reason, for some things. I think a computer that could summon demons or something like that might be a bit much.



I remember Willow passing off her little chant as merely praying, but I never really got the sense of belief from her in season 4. Maybe in season 3 a bit, but she seemed more into the technical aspects of the art and that was it. Still, the writers changed their minds enough about so many things that it is hard to tell what they may have meant. Again a firm idea what magic was would have helped. I also agree that it was season sux when magic was totally ruined.



Garner

[darkmagicwillow]

Religion and Magic



It's interesting that Tara is subjected to two forms of religious influence in her upbringing, both of which certainly formed her moral character. The first is from her Wiccan mother who certainly taught Tara about the Wiccan Rede: "An ye harm none, do what you will." The second is from her father who taught her that she had a demon inside her, harking back to some of the nasty forms of fundamentalist Christianity. This use of fear to ensure moral behavior had to have an impact on her, causing her to be more careful than she would've been otherwise up until Family when the imminent arrival of the demon turned fear into action in the form of her mind-altering spell on the Scoobies.



I disgress heavily into physics below, and non-science oriented readers may want to skip this section.



Too Much Science



Actually, there are no nits to pick. As I pointed out, general relativity does allow for Warp drives, but there are relativistic consequences. Since I'm probably only physicist here, I checked for more readable references and found the Star Trek FTL FAQ, which looks to be an insightful analysis of the possibilities and problems of FTL travel and posited new physics in the form of a special frame of reference in subspace to solve relativistic causality paradoxes in ST.



While I'm talking physics, I should say a few brief words on quantum mechanics (QM) and magic. Despite what many people writing about psychics, magic, and so forth say about QM, there is nothing in the theory or experiment of QM that supports the idea of human consciousness altering reality. This misconception comes from the Copenhagan Interpretation of QM, which states that a measurement must be made to get a definite value from a quantum system. The Many Worlds interpretation avoids this problem entirely by positing that all possiblities result, each in its own universe.



However, when you look at quantum computers and see that they have to be kept near absolute zero to perform even a single calculation before a "measurement" is made by the random thermal motion of atoms, it's clear that people are not required for the measurement process.

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

Edited by: darkmagicwillow at: 6/25/03 5:10 pm

[Sheridan]

Quote:

---

While I'm talking physics, I should say a few brief words on quantum mechanics (QM) and magic. Despite what many people writing about psychics, magic, and so forth say about QM, there is nothing in the theory or experiment of QM that supports the idea of human consciousness altering reality. This misconception comes from the Copenhagan Interpretation of QM, which states that a measurement must be made to get a definite value from a quantum system.

---

Well DMW in our world your right but I suspect the opposite is true in The Buffyverse. A variety of things from the 'Invisble Girl' onwards suggests that the human, and inhuman, mind can indeed reshape the universe. For magic to exist the universe must be more 'malleable' than our own with the more counter intuitive quantum effects extending on to the macro level.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[darkmagicwillow]

No question about it. The Buffyverse does not obey the laws of physics. Appropriate officers of the physics police should be by to ticket them once they're done with Star Trek. (-;



More seriously, Invisible Girl is a great window into the magic of the Buffyverse as was Nightmares. Reality near the Hellmouth is soft, malleable to the unconscious thoughts of the human mind. Would Willow be a powerful witch outside of Sunnydale?

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

Edited by: darkmagicwillow at: 6/27/03 4:32 pm

[Sheridan]

Soft is the right word DMW. If you think about it if the quantum world did extend in to our everyday world more directly teleportation would be possible, telepathy might represent tapping into parallel worlds and even transmutaions could represent material being shunted from one reality to another. On Saturday I watched a documentary about a physicist trying to use QM effects to build an honest to god time machine.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[Garner]

I always thought the point of magic was to get around, or break, the natural laws. That's why it's supernatural. But that may just be my own interpretation. I may have said before, that part of magical theory is to allow the human mind, and perhaps soul, to alter reality. It has nothing to do with Physics, chemistry or any other science.



I do like the idea of the Hellmouth making reality a bit more "soft" around it. That would explain some of the unnatural things that occur in the area, and perhaps allow for greater jumps in sciencefantasy constructs (Warren's robots for example) as well as monsters and magic. Still, I would say that Willow or Tara would still be powerful witches away from the Hellmouth. One could almost make a case for their being stronger. The Hellmouth is evil, it leaks energy into this dimension from a hell area. That has to alter the natural flow of the world. W/T deal with natural magic and if away from the Hellmouth's corrupting influence would be stronger as the natural magic would be less corrupted, more pure and stronger.



It really all comes down to your base definitions of how things work. Something that was never done on BtVS with regards to magic, hence anything is possible and nothing really makes sense. Why try and give an irrational writer's tool any semblance of meaning when none was given or intended? It's an exercise in futility.



Garner

[Sheridan]

There are things which happen around the Hellmouth that while not strictly magical do seem to involve stretching or distorting science as we know it. As you say Garner there were Warrens robots and Darryl Epps would seem to fall into that category, not to mention the Jekyll and Hyde juice that Scott Hope's friend used and Marcie the Invisible girl.

Willow: ...I have to tell you....

Tara: No, I understand you have to be with the person you l-love

Willow: I am

[darkmagicwillow]

Some of the science has a bit of magic mixed with it, like the Jekyll/Hyde formula or the Invisbility Ray and I still think this would've been an interesting path for Willow to follow, but the robots don't appear to have any of that. I have read a few authors who deal with different places having different physical laws, most notably Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, where the speed of light and the ease of building AI's both increase as you move away from the center of the galaxy.

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

[sam7777]

Garner: Agreed. ME just used magic a plot device when they couldn't think of what to do IMHO. If they had established some rules on how magic worked, they could have avoided making Willow more powerful than Buffy and painting themselves into a corner where they felt they had to break down Willow's character. Still many fanfic author's found better ways to resolve the Willow arc. ME is really missing the pulse of the nation. After 911, when folks wanted heroes, they gave us unpleasant and self centered jerks. When Harry Potter made magic a big draw, they gave us an afterschool special addiction and took all the magic out of the magic. Willow was the perfect person to combine magic and science which could have made for some interesting plots. I always wanted to see Willow expolit some magic tech like the invisibility ray which was introduced and then dropped.

_____________________

I see dead lesbian cliches

[Garner]

There are very few stories or worlds where magic and tech get to mix. As we mentioned before, Roger Zelazny does it the most, be it from Amber, Lord or Light or Road Marks (which also handles time travel very well). The comic Dreadstar by Jim Starlin did quite a bit with magic and tech too. It would have been interesting to see Willow become more of an alchemist, or perhaps artificer is a better description, and blending the science with technology. They did a bit of that with her magically accessing he internet which was both cool and poorly done too. The effect was a bit too strong for what little work was done. Still, the idea was neat and there are a lot of things that could have been done to allow Willow to aid or prop up Buffy and not be the big gun by herself.



But then all that would have demanded a much higher level of imagination and world building than I think Josswad and ME were ever capable of. Their forte seems to have been the 90210 horror soap opera rather than true adventure or world building. Which might explain the problem he had the longer the show was around.



Garner

[darkmagicwillow]

Garner, I've actually thought about Willow as an alchemist too, both because it fits her character and because one of the explanatory ideas I have about the Key is that it's the philospher's stone, in a universal rather than a personal sense. Btw, if anyone has any recommendations of good books on alchemy, let me know.



I agree about the lack of imagination and depth in the creation of the Buffyverse. The vampire slayer concept is a neat idea, but there's not much beyond that which is original or well thought out, and that unfortunately hurt the development of both Willow and Tara since they were witches or sorceresses, not slayers. I think you're right about the long term consequences of not thinking through these ideas; you get a soap opera with a thin veneer of magic.





Edited to add: If anyone has any recommendations on books of Celtic myth and legend, I'd appreciate them.

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

Edited by: darkmagicwillow at: 7/9/03 7:23 pm

[Garner]

DMW, that might be why with the end of season 5 they ran out of ideas. They really didn't have a good sense of the different schools or theories of magic, didn't want to draw on other myths or cultures and the possible collision of American/European/and Asian legends which could have easily fit in Sunnydale being in Calif. There were so many things they could have done if they had looked up and thought bigger picture and issues a bit not just what should we have this character do next? Or how can we mess with the fans?



Tim should have some good ideas for Celtic stuff, that is one area I have always been weak on. I will say though, that Raymond Feist has written a really good modern faeire horror book which is about 18 years old, but worth trying to find. The name escapes me. Also Emma Bull's War for the Oaks is pretty neat too.



Garner

[Triscuit7]

Do you perhaps mean Feist's "Faerie Tale"? That is a good one and I concur with the choice of Emma Bull too. Something else that springs to mind is a four volume retelling of the Welsh Mabinogion by Evangeline Walton -- absolutely wonderful.



Ciao, Melissa

******************



I brought marshmallows!

[darkmagicwillow]

War for the Oaks is great; it's my favorite urban fantasy story. I haven't read the Feist or Walton books though. Thanks to both of your for the recommendations. I like the idea of California being the meeting place of American, European, and Asian magicks which could make Sunnydale such an interesting mystical place beyond the simplicity of the Hellmouth.



My interest in Celtic magic, besides it being one of the old legends of our culture, comes from the fact that I suspect Tara's magical upbringing was Celtic in nature, whereas Willow has learned more from the less mythical and emotional alchemical or sorcery approach. What do you think? How does Celtic myth and alchemy mix anyway?

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

[brs1255]

tara is like a godess

[sweettara]

Tara did not want too use her powers for selfish reasons

[Pinocchio1940]

I agree with all the posts here. Using the characters' powers as plot devices allowed the show to fail. I don't see Tara ever doing what she did in cannon. When Willow crashed the car, I'd have had Buffy deal with Dawn and Tara with Willow. ME never placed rules on magic, they did on vampires, but not magic.