Magic and spells walk hand in hand, you can’t have one without the other. In the fictional world of Harry Potter, the magical language of spells is given to us by the famous J.K. Rowling. She gave her characters wonderful and exotic sounding words in which to cast their spells. But many of the famous phrases such as Expelliarmus (used to disarm another wizard) and Expecto Patronum used to cast the Patronus Charm, a manifestation of the characters most positive feelings, have roots in Latin. When Hermonie Granger teaches us the correct pronunciation of Wingardium Leviosa (a spell to make things levitate) we’re reminded again of the power of words, and how correct pronunciation expresses their meaning.
As a writer researching spells for my own magical book, I found myself drawn to the importance of how speech and spells might bring about physical changes in the world around us. How the science of it might work. I started by trying to define magic and speech and discovered that even the Scholarly community had difficulty defining magic, in a similar way to defining religion. One thing I can say with some certainty is that language is the foundation, and some of the earliest spells date back to Egyptian times.
As a former scientist, I also liked the idea that knowledge of higher speech may be a representation of knowledge and access to abilities that is outside the realm of the many, rather like the heroes of the Marvel world. Hence, when I wrote the spells in The Westwood Witches, I thought of it as a form of higher speech, where this knowledge gave access to the Shadow Realm, and granted the witch abilities beyond those available in the normal spectrum. It is up to the witch to use these spells correctly and wisely. As once quoted in a Spiderman movie, with great power comes great responsibility.
Sarah Northwood is a weaver of fiction stories for children and adults. She is an Amazon and Goodreads Author and you can follow her on Facebook to get all the latest updates: www.facebook.com/SarahNorthwoodAuthor
You can also discover more about Sarah here: www.sarahnorthwood-author.com
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