The witches and the magic

[NightLady]

What do you think of the fact that almost everyone in the Buffyverse was able to perform spells? Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Anya, Jonathan and I'm sure others I can't remember now have done a spell at least once. It makes me feel that magic wasn't really a... big thing. I would have preferred that magic was a prerogative of witches, like Amy and Willow. What about you?

 

[EVIL UU]

Magic is like weight lifting - the more you lift the more you can lift, you know what I mean? Or like running or whatever. Personally, I love the way magic works in BtVS. I think that it creates a beautiful narrative - ordinary humans become capable of godlike acts through the power of their will, basically.

Yeah, we're all gonna make it brah.

 

[white avenger]

The way that I have always seen it is that magic exists in the Buffyverse quite similar to a martial art. Certain techniques are relatively easy to control, and just about anyone can use them, whereas other, more advanced techniques require study, conditioning, the proper instruction, and, just as important, a natural ability that can be developed. Giles, Wes, and probably Anya rank somewhere between high color belt, blue or red, and 1st degree black belt.

Willow is the magical equivalent of Chuck Norris.

 

[AnthonyCordova]

Yes, I can see what you mean @NightLady. The easy availability and access to magic (for just two examples the large magic circle/club at the college that Willow meets Tara, The magic shop and other shops selling magical items to the public, etc.) makes it seem as if magic is very accessible to anyone who is willing to try and practice. In this sense, it does seem as if magic was no "big thing" as you put it. Part of me also wishes that magic had been something a little farther from view and accessibility for the ordinary curious person. I can't really explain why, other than I feel like these types of things shouldn't come easily (even small magic tricks) and that allowing it to be too easy and accessible twists the believability of there being two different worlds: the hidden underworld of vampires, demons, slayers, magic etc. and the mundane world of ordinary people. Making magic too commonplace contributes to blurring the lines between these two worlds, and I would have preferred that not to happen. I guess by the end of S7 (e.g. the giant Sunnydale crater) and events in the comics in S8 and beyond all pretenses of an ignorant public are dropped for good; I guess it depends on which version of the world you prefer. My preference is for the early stance of BtVS (from the earlier seasons), i.e. the public not having any clue, and not having any good reasons for having clues.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

My issue, once again, is with consistency. If magic was so easy and so openly available why wasn't it used more often in the early seasons? Why wasn't Jenny Calendar teaching them magic, as she knew or at least knew of, it. In the early seasons it was portrayed as a niche power. Something not everyone could tap into. Which is why you got the impression Willow was special when she was learning. In later seasons it became routine and everyday. It should have been called deus ex magica in later seasons.. as it was either the cause or the answer for just about everything.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

If Sunnydale was a town of 38,500 people and it had the magic shop that Jenny bought the Orb of Thessalon from and there was also The Magic Box, it appeared that a number of people in Sunnydale were skilled or at least interested enough to support the existence of two magic stores. Giles bought the store in "Real Me" because he had found it to be a moneymaker for its previous (deceased) owner, Mr. Bogarty (identified by Tara, a regular customer), due to the large markups - but you have to have customers to make money. There were plenty of customers in "Life Serial", where we see a man buying a candle for a romantic interlude and a woman buying a mummy hand for a prosperity spell. When Giles had opened The Magic Box", there were plenty of customers at his grand opening. If magic was supposed to be for the few skilled practitioners, the shops dealing with magic supplies were doing more business than that could support even with mail order and international sales.

I find it hard to believe that the average magic store customer would be oblivious to the Hellmouth or the large population of vampires. And with so many customers, Sunnydale should be well aware of the threat in their midst. Maybe a vampire or other demon had cast a spell to make the population oblivious - the customers don't seem to be buying protection spell items nor is there any general angst about the population taking a nosedive due to vampire activity.

 

[Fuffy Baith]

As far as the Magic Box goes, I don't think that every customer they get actually knows how to perform magic. Much like so called magic stores that we have, it's mostly for religious things, or people looking to buy interesting decor, gifts or are looking for ingredients for so called healing potions. I don't really have a problem with how magic is portrayed in the show. We mostly follow Willow's perspective of it and later Tara's, with occasionally Giles, Anya and Amy. To me it doesn't look like the average person can just perform spells. Sure with Willow's guide they might be able to, or simple spells, like Xander speaking Latin and causing the book to goes up in flames. With Anya, she got into vengeance because she turned Olaf into a troll, which was big enough to impress D'hoffryn, so why doesn't she does more magic actually. Perhaps she relied to much on her demon powers to do the work and forgot some of the magic stuff. The only thing I think we all can agree on is the terrible magic addiction metaphor, other than that, I think it's fine, and vague enough since they don't really set up a whole lot of rules for magic.

 

[bespangeled]

My issue, once again, is with consistency. If magic was so easy and so openly available why wasn't it used more often in the early seasons? Why wasn't Jenny Calendar teaching them magic, as she knew or at least knew of, it. In the early seasons it was portrayed as a niche power. Something not everyone could tap into. Which is why you got the impression Willow was special when she was learning. In later seasons it became routine and everyday. It should have been called deus ex magica in later seasons.. as it was either the cause or the answer for just about everything.

The God in the machine - yeah. ST had that issue with the transporters. No matter where anyone went they could easily get back. So they made the transporter as fussy as a blue-haired lady at a porn mall. Magic is the easy answer in the B-verse, but it's never put me off either show. It just makes it a challenge to find ways to prevent deus ex machina, or make something else more important than the mechanics of solving such a thread.

Most of all - there has to be a cost, a reason why it can't solve some issues. Great pain, loss of life energy, there has to be a cost or magic becomes the universal answer and no one grows up. Willow is proof of that in season 6.

 

[AnthonyCordova]

Most of all - there has to be a cost, a reason why it can't solve some issues. Great pain, loss of life energy, there has to be a cost or magic becomes the universal answer and no one grows up. Willow is proof of that in season 6.

On the point of costs: Yes I like that the show clearly established some lines where magic can't be abused without real consequences. And what is interesting is that it seems to occur on both the mundane and extraordinary levels, depending on what degree the abuse occurs. Prolonged use of magic and powerful magics always comes with their consequences, and I can't recall examples from either show anymore but I think even just using simple magics will have very small consequences too. Regardless, that's how I prefer to look at it.

On Mr. Pole's point (and my point earlier) I really think that BtVS should have more clearly established a sense of difficulty with the practice of magics, especially magic of real consequence. They say that sort of thing from time to time (Giles and others saying things like "these magics are extremely difficult" etc. etc.) but it's just lip-service when after the fact all of those magics seem to be accomplished with ease. For just one example, the trio manage to perform powerful and difficult magic spells but are they supposed to be magically gifted/talented at all?!? I don't know, maybe they were supposed to be real wunderkinds of their own but really, the overall impression of magic from the shows is that it was generally too easy to do. The trio felt like your ordinary nerds on a power trip...setting to one side the deus ex machina of the absurdly advanced technologies they employed, how are they also supposed to be able to accomplish rather complicated and powerful magic of their own? It just seems like anyone who wants to can do magic of significance. The only prerequisite seemed to be a desire to be good at it, and the chief difficulty being finding the ingredients. Is that not the feeling anyone else gets from the show?

Couldn't they have shown more frequently efforts to accomplish magic failing? Like literally, the magic spell fails to be accomplished (even by more powerful magicians like late Willow or Giles etc.) and the protagonists have to find another means. Although I can't remember, that probably has happened on the show, but in my opinion not often enough. I feel like the magic issue could have been tied up a little better than it was. Like other people said, it was left vague on some points and questions inevitably begin to emerge, like the questions raised in this thread.

 

[NightLady]

On the point of costs: Yes I like that the show clearly established some lines where magic can't be abused without real consequences. And what is interesting is that it seems to occur on both the mundane and extraordinary levels, depending on what degree the abuse occurs. Prolonged use of magic and powerful magics always comes with their consequences, and I can't recall examples from either show anymore but I think even just using simple magics will have very small consequences too. Regardless, that's how I prefer to look at it.

On Mr. Pole's point (and my point earlier) I really think that BtVS should have more clearly established a sense of difficulty with the practice of magics, especially magic of real consequence. They say that sort of thing from time to time (Giles and others saying things like "these magics are extremely difficult" etc. etc.) but it's just lip-service when after the fact all of those magics seem to be accomplished with ease. For just one example, the trio manage to perform powerful and difficult magic spells but are they supposed to be magically gifted/talented at all?!? I don't know, maybe they were supposed to be real wunderkinds of their own but really, the overall impression of magic from the shows is that it was generally too easy to do. The trio felt like your ordinary nerds on a power trip...setting to one side the deus ex machina of the absurdly advanced technologies they employed, how are they also supposed to be able to accomplish rather complicated and powerful magic of their own? It just seems like anyone who wants to can do magic of significance. The only prerequisite seemed to be a desire to be good at it, and the chief difficulty being finding the ingredients. Is that not the feeling anyone else gets from the show?

Couldn't they have shown more frequently efforts to accomplish magic failing? Like literally, the magic spell fails to be accomplished (even by more powerful magicians like late Willow or Giles etc.) and the protagonists have to find another means. Although I can't remember, that probably has happened on the show, but in my opinion not often enough. I feel like the magic issue could have been tied up a little better than it was. Like other people said, it was left vague on some points and questions inevitably begin to emerge, like the questions raised in this thread.

I totally agree. And I also find weird that Willow, who's the most powerful witch, is the only one who has failed many spells. While others who have never used magic (Buffy in s5 for example) do them easily. And why did she never use magic again? I get that Willow was officially the scooby witch, but surely there were times when Buffy had the opportunity

 

[Mr Trick]

I'm just old fashioned when it comes these sorts of things. What I mean is that if you except that there are such things as vampires/demons etc in the show then you just have to go along with the idea that there is magic and people have axcess to it. Also there are different degrees. Giles, Willow and Tara are clearly better at it than people like Buffy and Xander for example. Giles makes sense as with being an experienced Watcher he would have had plenty of chance to perform spells and has a vast library of books to work from.

 

[EVIL UU]

On the point of costs: Yes I like that the show clearly established some lines where magic can't be abused without real consequences. And what is interesting is that it seems to occur on both the mundane and extraordinary levels, depending on what degree the abuse occurs. Prolonged use of magic and powerful magics always comes with their consequences

I disagree. Characters like Catherine, Ethan and Rack abuse magic more excessively than Willow and guess what, they are fine. Sure, they face the consequences of messing with the slayer and her friends but magic? Not an issue.

 

[AnthonyCordova]

I disagree. Characters like Catherine, Ethan and Rack abuse magic more excessively than Willow and guess what, they are fine. Sure, they face the consequences of messing with the slayer and her friends but magic? Not an issue.

you might be right, but we are not really shown background details on any of those characters. The audience knows little about them. It's possible that Ethan for instance suffers consequences for his magic abuse (if he really does habitually use and abuse magic) off screen. But you are right, we are not shown anything like that for those characters...but we are hardly shown anything at all really. Rack is a pathetic junky (maybe there is a reason for that?). It seems to me that for characters that spend more time on the show, for characters that we have better insight into, we see where prolonged magic abuse can lead. You're right about not having any tangible evidence to suggest it on the characters you mentioned, but I think saying "guess what, they are fine" is getting ahead of ourselves, especially since it is cautioned many times from many sources on the show that magic should be treated with respect and that abusing magic leads to consequences. And that is also implied a lot too, from what I remember (and not just S6).

So yeah, we don't know as much about some of those minor characters to say in what way the consequences manifest themselves for them (if at all) but it is pretty clear to me what the show tries to communicate about abusing magic from many other sources, both tacitly and explicitly said.

 

[Mr Trick]

Think the thing is that there will always be people in real life too who mess with stuff they shouldn't or use things which could be used for good for bad. But ultimately those people end up alone and very unhappy.

 

[bespangeled]

I disagree. Characters like Catherine, Ethan and Rack abuse magic more excessively than Willow and guess what, they are fine. Sure, they face the consequences of messing with the slayer and her friends but magic? Not an issue.

Ethan gets taken by the Initiative, and Rack gets sucked dry by Willow. Those are consequences directly related to magic. I'm not sure who Catherine is.

 

[Mr Trick]

Ethan gets taken by the Initiative, and Rack gets sucked dry by Willow. Those are consequences directly related to magic. I'm not sure who Catherine is.

Wasn't that the name of Amy's mother? If so then she defiently paid😉 If not then I don't know who he means either.

 

[thetopher]

Yeah, I'm pretty certain 'Catherine' is Amy's Mom.

I always thought it was strange that the Scooby's weren't at least a little bit warier of magic since the second type of 'monster' they faced on the show was a Witch, and a pretty vicious one at that.
Maybe one of them should've thought 'maybe this magic stuff is bad news', but that pov never really comes up until S6.

 

[EVIL UU]

Ethan gets taken by the Initiative, and Rack gets sucked dry by Willow. Those are consequences directly related to magic.

No, they're not. Addiction, headaches, nosebleeds - those are the consequences of abusing magic. Ethan, Rack and Catherine have been abusing magic for years and nothing like that happens to them - if they had not crossed paths with the Scoobies they would have simply continued to abuse magic consequence free.

Maybe one of them should've thought 'maybe this magic stuff is bad news'

But that's the thing - it's not bad news, the whole thing is much more nuanced. In theory magic is all about intentions - there's no dark magic or light magic only dark intents and actions. You can use dark magic to do good.

Here's where things get complicated. Willow curses Angelus with a soul? Good. Willow conjures balloons for a friend's birthday? Bad. Willow activates potentials? Good. Willow gets high with magic? Bad. Willow brings back Buffy? Bad. Willow brings back Dawn? Good.

Alright, so when is it OK to use magic and when is it not OK? When is it abuse? Where do we draw the line? I have officially no idea.

 

[Mr Trick]

No, they're not. Addiction, headaches, nosebleeds - those are the consequences of abusing magic. Ethan, Rack and Catherine have been abusing magic for years and nothing like that happens to them - if they had not crossed paths with the Scoobies they would have simply continued to abuse magic consequence free.



But that's the thing - it's not bad news, the whole thing is much more nuanced. In theory magic is all about intentions - there's no dark magic or light magic only dark intents and actions. You can use dark magic to do good.

Here's where things get complicated. Willow curses Angelus with a soul? Good. Willow conjures balloons for a friend's birthday? Bad. Willow activates potentials? Good. Willow gets high with magic? Bad. Willow brings back Buffy? Bad. Willow brings back Dawn? Good.

Alright, so when is it OK to use magic and when is it not OK? When is it abuse? Where do we draw the line? I have officially no idea.

But you can say that about any TV show that the bad guys/girls don't get punished until they come into contact with the good characters. How is that a flaw in the show? And like I said before someone like Rack is just going to end up unhappy and alone. I do think that at some point his obsession with magic would cost him something because that is just the way greed works.

 

[bespangeled]

No, they're not. Addiction, headaches, nosebleeds - those are the consequences of abusing magic. Ethan, Rack and Catherine have been abusing magic for years and nothing like that happens to them - if they had not crossed paths with the Scoobies they would have simply continued to abuse magic consequence free.

Those are more the consequences of doing a spell that is beyond you capabilities from what I see. Spike said that magic always has consequences - and the only time we see him do a spell he ends up under a burning church organ with a broken spine. Ethan did a spell and ended up in the Initiative. Had he not met the good guys and done the spell he wouldn't be part of the universe. Same goes with Rack, Amy, Catherine - and what they all had in common (along with Willow) is an addiction toward using magic to achieve ends which can be otherwise achieved.

But that's the thing - it's not bad news, the whole thing is much more nuanced. In theory magic is all about intentions - there's no dark magic or light magic only dark intents and actions. You can use dark magic to do good.

Here's where things get complicated. Willow curses Angelus with a soul? Good. Willow conjures balloons for a friend's birthday? Bad. Willow activates potentials? Good. Willow gets high with magic? Bad. Willow brings back Buffy? Bad. Willow brings back Dawn? Good.

Alright, so when is it OK to use magic and when is it not OK? When is it abuse? Where do we draw the line? I have officially no idea.

Willow's intent across the board was to achieve something good. Her first real spell - reensouling Angel - was a spell that unlocked a door to dark magic that she couldn't close (as Giles warned her). I have very strong feelings about the fact that Giles, who was summoning demons at Willow's age, used her powers but didn't take the time to train her. But after Willow did her first spell, her spells became increasingly selfish. From 'my will be done' to using magic to close a curtain, she had no respect for the forces that we consider magic. So even if the intent is pure - decorating a room - that doesn't make using magic safe. Part of the problem is that using magic, at least for Willow, kept her from having to grow up, make mistakes, and learn.