Monday 5 August 2002

Pic of the day: Air mastery - walking on air. Screenshot from Morrowind.

Thu'um and breath magic

What's the connection between the Elder Scrolls, Dark Age of Camelot, yoga and Christian spirituality? The magic of breath.

Yesterday I found a web site about the Elder Scrolls, and it quoted the Pocket Guide to the Empire of Tamriel. There was some further explanation of the concept of Thu'um, a magic mentioned in passing in one or two in-game books in Morrowind. (There are bookstores in the game with short books, which can give the curious gamer background information and some other benefits, but let us stay on topic a little longer here.)

The Thu'um or Storm Voice is a magic shout that can do damage at a distance. But according to this Pocket Guide, it can do more than that. It is a flexible system of magic, used by the Nords. They believe that a person's vital essence is in his breath and in his voice. By cultivating this essence, their shouts can sharpen weapons, call out to a specific person across immense distances, or even move the shouter to where his shout was directed. These are certainly just examples. It seems we have a truly original magic system just waiting for a game to use it.

Or perhaps not so original after all. My first association was to another role playing game, Dark Age of Camelot. This massive multiplayer game also has shout magic: My minstrel could do direct damage with a shout, while my Champion did more subtle harm too, weakening and slowing the enemy.

According to the Pocket Guide, some Tongues became so powerful that they could no longer even speak without causing mass destruction. They had to use signs, or write runes. (This is an ironic reversal from the Nords of our world, the Vikings. They believed runes to have great power, and nothing must be carelessly written.)

***

Next I imagined how a teacher would address a group of hopeful young boys and girls who were interested in learning the use of Thu'um. Perhaps some of them thought of it as a shortcut, a cheat. Why train hard to keep your sword arm strong, when you can just shout your enemy down, literally? Why run fast, when you can just cast your voice and immediately be where it lands? Why aren't all Tongues?

The answer, I thought, would be the self-control needed. If the vital essence is contained in your breath, then you would have to consciously control your breath to control your magic. And then suddenly I remembered yoga. While the most famous part of yoga may be the weird positions, breath control is really closer to the center of yoga. By controlling your breath you control your mind. By controlling your mind you control your breath. Even simple forms of meditation often include observing your breath or counting your breath.

(I personally had a problem with this. Because of my childhood asthma I had fears connected to breathing, or rather to not breathing. To some extent I still have. So at first I approached meditation from a different direction, counting slowly with no regards to my breathing. But over time I found that the two converged. I know at least one other person has had a similar problem, so I thought I would mention it. After a while meditation is no longer strange and scary, but familiar and comforting. The problem dissolves by itself, so it is not worth fighting.)

Yoga may be an Oriental thing, but meditation is not. Meditation has been a part of Christian mysticism for centuries. And perhaps not by coincidence, Christian thinkers have pointed out that the original word for spirit meant breath or wind. As a matter of fact, the Jesus whom we call Christ compared the reborn Christian to the wind. To the Christian mystic there was often a connection between the movement of air and the movement of mind.

It is true that neither yoga nor Christian mysticism are schools of magic at their hearts. While miracles are reported now and then, spiritual development is the name of the game. So I won't recommend that you devote yourself to these activities in the hope of mastering the magic shout. Though I guess it happens that Christians try to shout each other down ... but there is nothing mystic about that!