The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter (44 page)

This typical tale of leprechaun ingenuity has been told in Ireland for generations:

A farmer was laboring in his fields when he spied a tiny man hiding under a leaf. Knowing this must be a leprechaun, the farmer quickly scooped the man up in his hands and asked him where his gold was. The leprechaun seemed eager to get away and quickly revealed that his treasure was buried under a nearby bush. Carefully holding on to his tiny captive, the farmer set off to find the spot. As it turned out, the bush was one in a field of hundreds of identical shrubs. Having no digging tool at hand, the farmer removed one of his red socks and tied it to a branch to mark the bush the leprechaun had indicated. As he headed home to get a shovel, the leprechaun pointed out that his own services were no longer required and asked to be freed. The farmer agreed, but not before making the leprechaun promise not to move the sock or dig up the gold. Clever thinking, but not clever enough. When the farmer returned to the field just a few minutes later, every bush in the field was marked with an identical red sock!

t age eleven, Harry Potter receives the greatest surprise of his life. Unlike Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, unlike horrible cousin Dudley and everyone else he’s ever known, Harry can do magic. He can grow out a bad haircut overnight, make a plate glass window disappear at the zoo, and shrink an ugly sweater without the aid of a dryer. And as Hagrid is happy to inform him, a little training at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will enable him to do much, much more.

In the wizarding world, magic is a way of accomplishing things that are impossible by the natural laws that bind the rest of us.
Wizards
can use magical Floo powder to get from one place to another, while muggles are forced to walk or take the bus. Albus Dumbledore can point his
magic wand
and utter a few
magic words
to fill the Hogwarts hall with sleeping bags, while an ordinary person would have to drive to a store, buy the sleeping bags, load them in a van, drive them back to the school, and carry them inside. Sirius Black can use magic to turn himself into a dog, while a non-wizard can do nothing more than put on a costume.

Much as we delight in reading about the exploits of these fictional wizards, in the modern world most people don’t believe in magic. We enjoy the performances of theatrical
magicians
who give us the experience of magic, but we don’t really expect them to make the impossible occur. Nor do many of us believe in another once-common conception of magic—that the world is controlled by supernatural beings, whose powers may be harnessed and used by humans to achieve their goals.

Throughout most of Western history, however, people did believe in magic, and they did look to invisible, supernatural forces to exercise power over others or control the natural world. People practiced magic to gain knowledge, love, and wealth, to heal illness and ward off danger, to harm or deceive enemies, to guarantee success or productivity, and to learn about the future. Magical practices involved many of the techniques taught at Hogwarts, such as
spells, potions, charms
, and
divination
, as well as elaborate rituals and ceremonies designed to summon gods,
demons
, and
ghosts
. Practicing magic helped people to relieve their anxieties and to feel they were doing something to control the course of their lives.

The English word “magic” is derived from the name of the high priests of ancient Persia (modern-day Iran), who were called
magi
. In the sixth century
B.C.
, the
magi
were known for their profound learning and gifts of
prophecy
. Followers of the religious leader Zoroaster, they interpreted
dreams
, practiced
astrology
, and advised rulers on important matters. When the
magi
became known in the Greek and Roman worlds, they were regarded as deeply mysterious figures who possessed profound secrets and supernatural powers. Exactly what these secrets were was unclear (after all, they were secrets), but for a long time anything regarded as supernatural was deemed to be a creation of the
magi
and became known as “magic.” Indeed, Zoroaster himself was often called the inventor of magic.

Of course, no single individual or culture actually invented magic. The magical practices that have been handed down over the centuries originated in many civilizations, including those of the ancient Persians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. The Western magical tradition as we know it today owes much to the exchange of ideas between members of different cultures. Such contact occurred with increasing frequency after the third century
B.C.
, when the Greek general Alexander the Great conquered Syria, Babylonia, Egypt, and Persia and established the city of Alexandria, Egypt, as the intellectual crossroads of the ancient world.

In all early societies, magic and religion were intertwined. A multitude of gods and lesser spirits, both good and bad, were believed to control most aspects of life, causing both sunshine and rain, prosperity and poverty, sickness and good health. Magic was designed to appeal to or control these spirits. Like religious practices, magical practices involved rituals and ceremonies that called upon the gods, and, like priests, magicians were believed to have special access to the gods. But rather than worshipping these deities, magicians requested or even demanded favors from them.

Sometimes, magicians simply called upon the gods for assistance when they cast spells, or uttered
curses
. But often they also tried to make the deities appear “in person.” After performing a special ceremony to summon, or invoke, a spirit, a magician of ancient Babylonia or Egypt might command the spirit to drive away disease, strike down an enemy, or ensure a political victory. A minor deity would typically be threatened with punishment by other, more powerful, spirits if the magician’s demands were not met. Then the magician would dismiss the deity, sending it back to the spirit world. Hundreds of documents from antiquity confirm that attempting to raise spirits was a common, if often disappointing, activity in early Greece and Rome.

Nearly all forms of ancient magic depended upon knowing the secret names of the gods. Many deities were thought to have two sets of names, the common names everyone knew, and the secret names known only to those who studied the magical arts. In a sense, these secret names were the first magic words. Whether spoken or written, they were believed to possess great power, since knowing a god’s true name was believed to enable a magician to summon all the powers that god represented. Egyptian priests gave their deities long, complex, often unpronounceable names so that they could not be easily learned by outsiders. It was said that Moses parted the Red Sea by speaking the secret seventy-two-syllable name of God known only to himself. And according to the Greek writer Plutarch, the name of Rome’s guardian deity was kept secret after the city’s founding, and it was forbidden to ask anything about the god—even whether it was male or female—lest the enemies of Rome discover the name and appeal to the god for their own purposes.

As ancient civilizations came into contact with one another, it was common for the magicians of one culture to “try out” the names of the gods of another land. Some of the earliest known scrolls recording magical practices, written during the third and fourth centuries, contain long lists of the names of gods of many religions, which could be inscribed on
amulets
or
talismans
or incorporated into spells and incantations. One of the most famous incantations of third-century Greek and Egyptian magicians, which was alleged to be so powerful that “the sun and the earth cringe when they hear it; rivers, seas, swamps, and springs freeze when they hear it; [and] rocks burst when they hear it,” was composed of the names of a hundred different deities strung together.