I watch all these silly TV shows with magicians in them (okay.. I love the shows) - wizards, witches, whatever - and they use these spells all the time. Well, who wrote the spells? Someone wrote them. For that matter, what power exactly is invoked in creating a spell and what are the rules for writing them? I kind of like the idea of sorcerers who have more raw power than wizards or witches, who for whatever reason can create spells and I suppose delegate the power of those spells or crystallize .. ugh what a new age word to use! .. but anyway the sorcerers crystalize some primeaval power that they have a more raw access to, they put it into the spell and then it only has to be invoked by folks with lesser powers. I really think it would take way more power to come up with a spell and make sure it works than it would to just use one. For that matter there should probably be histories behind spells of taking things in the wrong direction and blowing stuff up or people dying or whatever.

The idea of sorcerers is so arrogant. That anyone could even concieve of invoking any powers of heaven or hell for any reason just because they want to? What if it’s not God’s will that the person for whom a healing spell is cast be healed? What if God wills it that they die? What if the spells only work if it’s the will of the Force or whatever we might call the mystical energy that powers all life, if we are going to beat around the bush and say that energies are anything other than from God?

Which is another point I’d like to rant on. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spinoff Angel, they make no outright declarations of there being any God or Utlimate Good Authority, but they will briskly and easily make references to “The First Evil”, usually just as “The First”, who is incorporeal.

Is this where we are? That we can say anything and everything we want to about the ultimate evil, but nothing about God or higher powers? And in these shows there are all kinds of demons but no angels. In another show, CHARMED, there are quasi-angels who are really just humans with superpowers and all kinds of vices and unseemly agendas. Yuck! Back to Buffy, the higher or saving powers in the world are only vague saving powers that are either derived entirely of the good guys or weilded by them without tribute to any higher power from whence they come. Meanwhile, the bad guys make all kinds of outright demonic invocations and sometimes worship, and, by the way, it’s not always clear whether the good guys aren’t calling on the same powers, and weapons and objects with dark supernatural power can be weilded by both parties but without evil consequence when the good guys use them.

This should all make people who hate Harry Potter throw a fit.

A long side note I went into that should be added here: as for the name Buffy gives the ultimate evil, “The First” is a genericized term. Okay, your audience is composed of different religions or athiests. But really, can’t we even come out and say ever that one of the ideas of this evil we are talking about is a sort of Judeo-Christian concept of Satan? Or a Destroyer (isn’t that name identified in various religions)? Come on, that’s what we’re talking about - or at least SAY the different names that different religions have for him.. WHOA, realization: this is like Voldemort in Harry Potter; we don’t come right out and say just who it is exactly because we don’t fully understand it.. we fear the very thing we so briskly talk about, so that we call it by a different name, because we FEAR that thing more than we fear GOD: think upon this how the Jews fear God more than the devil or anyone else, so that they denote God by a different name in scripture, so as to not defile his name should they use the name casually or “in vain”. This protection of God’s true identity in name shows an ultimate reverence for him: we end up being confused about our allegiance if we do likewise for the devil. The name of the devil is itself vain; it is befouled already and so impossible to befoul by casual use. So why call Satan by any other name? Identifying a source of evil does not worship it, on the contrary, it helps us to see evil for what it really is, empowering us over and against it, preventing our fall to it. In A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, to call employ the proper name of things is to have power over them. We do not call upon God by His true name because we have no power over Him.