Magic in Once Upon a Time

After watching Desperate Souls I realized that Once Upon A Time approaches magic in a very interesting way. [Beware lots of OUAT  spoilers] Through out the series magic is pretty much universally bad and "always comes with a price." Rather early on we are introduced to Rumplestiltskin (though how evil Gold/Rumple is rather that enabling and clever is debatable) and Regina, a time later we meet Cora who also has magic and is Regina's mother. In all circumstances magic is used for evil purposes*. All the "good" characters cannot perform magic; however they do use magic through enchanted potions and objects they get from Gold/Rumple "for a price." It is not until later seasons that magic is wielded by a good character.

Often when "good" characters use magic to get what they want they are often shown to have been corrupted, sometimes rather literally. Snow uses magic to kill Cora and we are shown that her heart has begun to blacken. We have seen other characters who have killed with arrows and otherwise, and their hearts have not been blackened (the huntsmen killed people for Regina and yet his heart was pure when it was eventually crushed).

In the current season of Once Upon a Time we are seeing developments in the way that magic is being portrayed. As Rumple and Regina begin to become more caring and "nice" characters that don't only care about themselves and their power we seen this reflected in the portrayal of magic. Magic is becoming a more and more neutral subject that is really just a tool to be used for either good or bad.  Emma Swan, a relatively un-magical character joins forces with Regina and Gold to try and get their son back from Peter Pan (yeah Peter Pan is a bad guy in this show, long story short he essentially wants eternal youth and all that jazz). During their journey to retrieve Henry Regina helps Emma use the magic that she seems to have inside of her. Together they use magic to help save Henry, however to use magic rage is the easiest source. This again steeps magic in angry evil thoughts even though they are doing good with it. More and more frequently in this season we are seeing magic do good, we see Regina try and sacrifice herself to save the city, Rumple aid in the journey to save Henry, and Emma using magic periodically through the season.

Another interesting part of magic in Once Upon a Time is how Fairies get their magic. Like most stories fairies have dust and wands and such that let them do magic. A lot of this magic has to do with "love," "purity," and "good." When Pinocchio was turning into wood the fairy could only turn him back again if essentially repented and was turned into a young boy full of innocence. Fairy dust also has the power to show you the path to your true love. In many of the stories that we read by the Grimm Brothers it was not magic but rather fate and destiny that brought them together. I felt like this was an important difference considering that they are using a lot of the same stories, and that Once Upon a Time was adding magic into many other facets of the stories.

I think that this is not only relevant to our class because it has to do with magic but because we've been looking at the context that magic has been placed in. In once upon a time we see the transition from all magic is bad to only some magic wielders are bad, while in history we see the opposite. We also see a lot of the "bad" magic wielder in many fairy tales as typically you have the witches and fairies that either help or hinder you.


* Fairies do seem to have some magical powers however they seem to hinge on their wands and dust rather than being able to conjure all the time

The Supernatural and Satan

Whenever I try and come up with a topic for these posts I always get stumped between magic and supernatural (don't worry I'm not going to talk about the TV show). So I figured I’d write a post about my thoughts on the differences so far.

Whenever I think of the supernatural I think of vampires and werewolves. From that assumption I had figured we weren’t going to encounter any people with shape-shifting abilities…and then I read Bernardino’s sermon (I seem to really like talking about this guy, I apologize for bringing him up yet again). In Bernardino’s speech he talks about how they found potions and pastes that smelt horrible and made the witches turn into cats (or thought that they had turned into cats, that part confused me just a tad). This would suggest that people thought other witches also had the ability to turn into different things. This is idea was solidified in my mind as at the end of this chapter there is a picture of people like animals riding on broomsticks and doing other “witchy” things. I think another thing that Bernardino was talking about was either a hallucinogenic or possibly a mental illness. Though it hasn't come up a lot in our readings I'm curious to know how many of these witches ended up having some type of mental illness that would explain the cities rejection of them.  

After realizing this I remembered that we had discussed how some thought that all magic was just an illusion created by magicians or Satan. This brought me to the conclusion that maybe all things in the realm of supernatural beings were just an illusion created by Satan. We discussed this in class and how it would probably not have been very well received by the public and by many of those that dealt out the punishments. If all the supernatural beings and all those that practiced magic were just creations and illusions from Satan then they had done some pretty horrific stuff to many innocent people. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience either. In a way I understand their dismissal of the idea because it would mean that they had killed innocent people and sinned and were therefore not going to heaven.

I think that if I had been living in this time where everyone was scared of witches I would probably have believed that this was all committed by the devil more easily. Just the belief that people are in the image of God would make me believe that this is all Satan's work. I think this because I think it might have been difficult to believe that the people that live around you and that you’ve known your entire life were actually buddies with Satan and like going around eating babies.

I now realize that this post jumped off topic from the original statement…Oh well I like where it ended anyway.

More about Bernardino's Sermon

I really liked reading the sermon by Bernardino; and didn’t really get a chance to expand upon this particular section in class so I figured here was the next best place.

Just in case people have forgotten Bernardino was a preacher who liked to preach about sins that would affect communities as a whole. Obviously in this sermon he was talking about the repercussions of letting a witch continue to practice.

One of the consequences that Bernardino mentioned was that the area that you lived in would be ravaged by enemies, deserted, and severely damaged and disgraced. He goes on to further state that: “Wild beasts dwelled there as is there had always been a forest there. Where once lived so many men of high estate, now there lived wild beasts. (134)” In this section Bernardino suggests that if the people of Siena don’t act on the knowledge that there are witches in your town then it will not only be reduced but it will return to the wild.

This poses interesting concepts; because witch craft is already closely linked with mysticism and the unknown and the uncontrollable the idea that Witchcraft perpetuates that throughout an entire area is no doubt scary. The comparison of “men of high estate” and “wild beasts” also paints a rather vivid picture. I might suggest that these people were run out by wild beasts, eaten by wild beats or that they turned into wild beast. I think that this really drives home the idea that magic and those who wield it are wild, untamable beasts.  This is furthered by the idea that witches can turn themselves (and potentially others) into animals. Later in his sermon Bernardino talks about creams that he found that made the women think that they were cats which I think helped fuel the fire that witches and magic were primal and uncivilized.  The fact that magic is uncivilized also makes it easier to fear and dismiss as turning to the devil. The foul stench he speaks about may also promote the idea that magic was evil and a terrible, wild thing, as it seems to him just as repulsive as the idea of Siena becoming wild again.

One last thing that I think really solidifies the idea that witchcraft and magic where considered wild and animalistic; even though all the preachers were saying that even if they only do “good magic” they are still in league with demons we’ve rarely read about a witch being burned at the stake for making a potion that actually cured someone. I think that this had a lot to do with the fact that they didnt understand how these plants were helping them get better so there must be something helping them. Since God hadnt done anything it must be demons or Satan working in some unknown way.

The Connotation Discussion

This is a rather late reaction to our discussion about connotations but this has stuck with me since that class.

As a class we took a poll of what connotations we associated with witch and wizard; resulting is the majority thinking of witch with a negative connotation and wizard with a neutral if not positive connotation. What I found really interesting is that as an explanation for the results for wizard the Harry Potter series was provided.  I loved the Harry Potter series so I completely understand that jump to the positive; however I’m still surprised that this series hasn't impacted our views of witches (assuming of course we are restricting it to only female magicians).  We also seem to forget that the vast majority of the “evil” characters in Harry Potter are in fact male. There are a few females in Voldemort’s following, most notably Bellatrix and Alecto Carrow; and then there is Umbridge.  If you look at the “good” witches the list goes on for ages, Hermione, Professor McGonagall, Professor Sprout, Luna, Cho, Fleur, Molly, Ginny, Tonks, Madame Pomfrey,  Lily, even Narcissa can arguably be considered a “good” witch (these are just off the top of my head). Given that Harry Potter has had such an enormous impact on this generation one would think that all the “good” witches would have changed our view of witches as a whole. Even if we came to a conclusion that both wizard and witch were neutral terms would be better as there were both fighting on either side at the Battle of Hogwarts. Especially in the case of Harry Potter the number of named male participants on the "evil" side far exceeds the number of females; Voldemort, Fenrir Greyback, Amycus Carrow, Dolohov, the rest of the Lestranges.  I know personally that I still think of witches with a negative connotation but after thinking about this I think that I seriously need to re-think it.

[edit] This is just a thought that came to me after reading Ariels post that mentioned Kiki's Delivery Service. Growing up I loved watching Kiki, I wanted to be her so badly (still might do). This movie doesn't have any bad witches and Kiki is a fantastic role model. For those of you who don't know Kiki is a young witch who must become independent so she leaves home on her broom with her adorable cat Jiji to find her way in the world. She hits a few bumps but eventually creates a life for herself. I think that movie like this could continue to change the view of witches. In the movie they are just incredibly independent, sufficient women who are witches. We even see them readily excepted by society in this film.

Completely oppositely there is magic in Once Upon a Time. This show often shows evil magic being significantly more powerful than that of good magic. These opposite views of witchcraft show the conflicting ideas of whether or not magic is positive or negative in the media.