Monday 16 July 2007

Pic of the day: White magic, from the anime Kamisama Kazoku.

"When white magic fails"

I use gmail, and I find it perfectly reasonable that they display ads they think may be relevant alongside my mail. I have mentioned this before: I am a staunch defender of Internet advertising. While Internet access is more or less taken for granted now, someone has to pay for all the hardware and software and power for the servers whirring and buzzing and all the work that goes into it. The more that is paid by advertisers, the less is paid by us. If the ads are relevant, so much the better. Google does try. It is hardly their fault that I am so unusual that even context-sensitive advertising bounces off me. It is rubbish and I'm not glue; ads don't work if you have a clue.

Still, I look at the ads from time to time, in the always vain hope that there might be something relevant. Actually, a couple times I have followed ads and found some interesting free online information. I still don't think I have bought anything based on them. Well, technically I bought "One Cosmos Under God" by clicking on an advertisement on a web site. But by then I was looking to buy it, and the web site in question was by the writer of the book...

"When white magic fails
Then we will help you. Powerful
Unique Black magic spells"

That was the message of the ad. The mail in question was about my dream where I had to transform into a girl each morning to go to school and back to boy after school was out. So I guess an advertisement about magic would have been relevant, if it were not a dream. Of course, if it were not a dream, I would have been in deep trouble. And probably heavily sedated on a mental hospital. Anyway, "when white magic fails"...

My first impulse (which I followed in my LiveJournal) was to mock. Uhm. Yeah. Because, obviously if the angels won't help you, you just move your business to the devils. >_<;; THAT WILL SHOW THEM!

Another barrier to taking it seriously is the wonderful and crazy lesbian writer of gay smut and much more, Tsaiko, who has lately been working on a story about forbidden love between paladins. I haven't read those stories. Paladins have a special place in my heart, and I would rather not have that mixed up with gay smut. But I can certainly see "When white magic fails" as a title for one of her stories, after the paladins fail at some harebrained scheme to ward off their mutual attraction.

This was on Friday. Friday 13th, actually. My reaction has mellowed over time. I am starting to think of other situations. What if you have a child that is slowly dying from an incurable disease? Parents are known to chase the most disturbing snake oil in such cases, and believe in it with commendable faith. I have witnessed this fairly close up, although not in my blood family. I doubt a pious parent would resort to dark magic even so, but perhaps the less entrenched soul, resorting to magic when science has forsaken them... It is hard to judge such a person. If life had taken many enough different twists and turns, how sure am I that I would not have done the same?

Very much not sure, because I have in a manner of speaking done so for much less. My excuse is that I was just a child. I had a bike, but as with much physical exercise, I was none too skilled with it. I fell and struck my leg - a knee, I think, or a calf? It flared with sudden pain. Now I had few restriction on me from home, but one that was absolute was to not curse. And a curse, my parents told me, was any word I did not understand. This may have contributed to my extensive vocabulary at a young age. But in this case, I knew full well what the word meant, as I called upon the Adversary in a firm voice, the way godless men do when they suffer. No doubt I had learned this from observing the locals. But I had not expected the effect. Immediately the pain was gone. Just like that. Even now the hairs rise up when I think of it. Was it a variant of the placebo effect? And yet I had not believed it that strongly. It shocked myself as much as anyone. To this day I do not know who or what erased my pain in the span of a single breath. But I know that I was filled with fear and have taken great care never to call upon the Dark One by name ever again.

I prefer to live in a world where magic does not work, except the occasional prayer. And prayer is not quite magic. It can be very insistent at times, but there is always an implicit "if it be thy will" when we address our requests to the Lord rather than to the universe directly. For those who don't believe, it is simple: They take no interest in neither white nor black magic. In practice, I tend to act like this for the most part. But for those who believe in magic, it may well be real, as it was to me that day forty years ago. And if so, surely as real will be the price they pay, whether it is collected by angels, demons or their own subconscious. I hope the market for these spells is small indeed.