(no subject)

And in dark of night I am not free to cry out, for now there are others listening and the partitions are thin. If I were at home I would listen to my Mozart and let my madness flow out into the music. But I'm not and there is no use wishing. I'm in my parent's home now, and it isn't home to me.

Priests and Wizards: A False Dichotomy

One of the few ways in which I would fault Barbara Hambly's fantasy is that she almost always has priests after magicians as priests in the western christian church opposed and persecuted witches at times. To my mind the natural evolution of magic users, in worlds where magic is real, is to become first shaman to a tribe and later on to become the established priestly cast. Either by fooling themselves, deceiving their followers, or honestly find it to be the case they would attribute their powers to a higher source. Certainly there would be those in the service of evil (read magicians not part of the monopoly), but those able to work mysterious cures or to tame the dangers of a threatening world would be greatly respected.

And eventually the public would gradually figure it out, if there isn't a god or if his blessings haven't got anything to do with the priestly class, and then you'd get a reformation or age of enlightenment.

I think where this idea of wizardly persecution, even though they've got the mysterious powers and the public doesn't, comes from the troubled history of christianity and science. There is this idea that the church didn't like science, and that isn't true. They just didn't like science that threatened their theological monopoly. Part of the reason, besides going counter to the teachings of the time, Galileo got in trouble was that he was the classic impolitic sort of genius. He published a book that seemed to make fun of the pope in the common tongue (Italian) of ordinary people so anyone could read it, and well right as he was that's just asking for trouble. Kepler didn't get in trouble for saying the earth went around the sun near the same time because he published it in a mathematical book that had no mass-market leanings. It was all about mathematics and so had no political implications.

So I could see magicians getting in trouble. For saying things like, "Hey I can perform the same 'miracles' the priests can, like healing the sick, does that make you wonder about the existence of god?" But probably not as a class. And if all magicians have to be priests, by order of the church, there will probably be slightly less toe the party line orders or whatever.