The History of Spells

[verses]

Given I have basically no life given the fun of Lockdown™ , I have had a lot of time to waste consider the history of the magical world. Maybe for a fic, maybe not, depends how desperate for something to do I get lol. Anyway, here is something I've been thinking about that I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on:

Nearly all spells in used Harry Potter are derived from Latin; if we get over the obvious reasons (JKR was a classicist so was able to think up some Good Latin Spells), this is interesting because it implies that spells are highly linguistically influenced. If we went to Eastern Europe/Middle East/Africa/wherever, we might find different spells. JKR actually says on Pottermore that Wands are a European invention, and that African Wizards cast many spells "simply by pointing a finger or through hand gesture" (I have some... questions... about why Africans are waving their hands about when European Wizards have lovely wands and Latin spells but lets Ignore that :-/). I think there's probably a pretty interesting discussion to be had around what different cultures would do to cast spells/what language they'd use, but tbh I do not have the background knowledge to even begin to consider that in depth (I wish), so I have to content myself with thinking about influence & importation of spells from different countries and the way in which that might've influenced the history of magic. 

So! Almost all spells in HP come from Latin, except two: JKR said Alohomora was brought back to England from Africa by a travelling wizard in the 18th C., and Avada Kedavra, which according to Harry Potter Wiki (if they say it, it must be true) was described in The Tales of Beedle the Bard as being "invented" in the early Middle Ages. The more I think about this the more I think that JKR did not mean the early Middle Ages when she said that. I just really don't think she was thinking about the Lombards or the Franks or whoever coming up with it. I think she probably meant the start of the high Middle Ages, i.e. knights in shining armour and castle times, purely because that just seems to make more sense, and JKR is not a historian, and she is also -ahem- not very consistent with her timelines anyway. So, I've built that into my assumptions. I also came across a video game that was made where JKR released stuff about the origins of spells which I literally had no idea existed in my browsing of Harry Potter Wiki (as I said, I am Very Bored in Lockdown) where she described various spells as being invented in roughly the period between the 15th C. and the 18th C. 

I think it makes a lot of sense for spells invented in Europe in that period to be in Latin, because Latin was still largely the lingua franca  of the academic world- someone might name a spell in Latin for much the same reason that Thomas More wrote Utopia in Latin, and made the title a Greek pun, and that Carl Linnaeus called the Tiger  Panthera tigris in 1758; "thinking" people really rated the classical world, and wrote in Latin. I still thinks this begs some questions, though:
 

• Clearly, if Avada Kedavra was around in the early Middle Ages, they had spells before the Renaissance/Enlightenment. What spells did people use? Were they still all in Latin? 
• If they were mostly in Latin, that assumes that they all came from the Latin-influenced World, which includes most of Catholic Europe by the high Medieval period on and off so by 1200/1300 we can say everybody running around using Latin influenced spells is a fairly safe assumption, but what about before that?

My big question in this vein is about the founders of Hogwarts. Hogwarts is, in canon, founded in around 900 AD. That was before the Norman invasion of England (Hogwarts is obvs in Scotland but JKR's construction of Hogwarts is very ~~British Isles as England+ ~~ based so clearly who is running England is important) which I think would be when Latin spells were brought in- lets say Roman era Latin spell-making was handed down much like Classical texts (your Cicero/Virgil/Ovid etc.), then you could trace them from late antiquity into the copy-making of the Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th Century and then into French magical (rather than academic) culture, and then across the channel. That leaves us with my problem: what spells did the founders use? What language did their magical culture revolve around?

10th century Britain and Ireland was a cultural melting pot, with Celtic culture in Wales/Ireland/Scotland/Cornwall etc, as well as Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and probably more I don't know about. Godric is an Old English name which died out after the Norman conquest, so we can assume Gryffindor is meant to be (roughly) an Anglo-Saxon of some sort, and Helga sounds a bit Viking/Germanic but Hufflepuff seems to have been described as coming from valleys, i.e. Wales, and Slytherin and Ravenclaw are described as coming from Fen (East of England?) and Glen (Scotland- although both "Raven" and "Claw" come from Old English words, and Rowena is a Welsh name so who knows). We kind of circle back  here to the fact that it is very clear that JKR did not know much about medieval history and tbh why should she, she was writing a children's book not expecting me, an adult, to spend a good three days thinking really hard about how spells travel, but here we are. But if we take her canon, we can assume the founders are pretty geographically, and therefore linguistically and culturally, diverse. Even if Wizards travel round meeting each other more than other Medieval British people did, I do still wonder if there is a whole world of Lost Spells influenced by Old English- after all, isn't the Sword of Gryffindor a bit like the magic sword in Beowulf? 

So if we think that there were lots of Old English spells which got replaced by Latin ones that Franco-Norman Wizards brought with them, then spells are mobile, and that brings me to my next question/point of discussion/whatever: Avada Kedavra. Avada Kedavra is derived from/is a variation of "Abracadabra" which is an incantation that sort of got around everywhere, but originally comes from aramaic. JKR says it was "invented in the early Middle Ages" but as I've already said I really think she means c. 1000-1200 by that. Why would European Wizards, who are, pre-statute of secrecy, write in Aramaic, a language which is, according to Wikipedia, a Semitic language from the near-East? Some of the bible was written in Aramaic, and there were Jewish people around in Europe in that era who maybe would've spoken some Aramaic? I am really not sure so anyone who is clearer on that I would be very interested to know lol! However my thoughts are... the first Crusade took place between 1095 and 1103. Lots of Europeans went to fight in the Levant, where there was lots of Aramaic going around, so why not Wizards too? Crusaders bought loads of stuff back to Western Europe, from knives and forks to Aristotle, so why not the Killing Curse? I think this is quite a neat explanation and I also like the fact that in the Tale of the Three Brothers, the eldest brother, who gets the elder wand is called Antioch- one of the first cities that the crusaders conquered. Obviously me liking that and letting it convince me that I am Right really contradicts my earlier accusations of JKR simply being Wrong about what she thinks the early Middle Ages is, but oh well! 

Anyway, that was Extremely Long so if anyone actually bothered to read it all then wow! But yeah! Thoughts! Answers to my questions! I'd love them all! I'm particularly interested in the last para about Avada Kedavra because if I do write about anything from this missive it will be that, but I really do want to know all of your thoughts on all of it! Thank you xxxx

[Lost_Robin]

This is a really interesting look at it, and I always thought that they tried to use older languages (like Latin, Ancient Greek, and such) when writing incantations (which don't necessarily correlate with when the spell was invented, in my opinion). There is one spell, I think, that is in English: Point Me. It could be that other places have their own incantations for the same spells, which is my theory, and it would be interesting to see what languages other countries use for their incantations.

I am no historian, but what you said makes sense. This was very interesting to read, and thank you for writing it!

[facingthenorthwind]

HELLO. Okay, so avada kedavra is a play on abra kadabra, and she's definitely using the Aramaic folk etymology, so let's assume that's true. Abra Kadabra in Aramaic is אברא כדברא, which is probably only useful to me, but it made it make a lot more sense in my head once I saw it properly written in Hebrew characters. In Hebrew the phrase would be similar, with the first word being the same but the second one being... a bit different, depending on exactly what you want it to mean in terms of tense stuff? But that's not important, I got distracted.

anyway so אברא, the first word in abra kadabra means "I will create". It's actually the verb in the very first sentence of the Bible! "In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth." (בראשית ברא אלוהים את השמים ואת הארץ.) And the second word כדברא, means "as I speak", although for that bit I'm less certain on the tenses because my Aramaic is not very good, I've only encountered the occasional word that was then translated in Hebrew for us to analyse. But it's definitely about speaking, I promise. So if we go back to thinking about the ol' avada kedavra, we see a lot is very similar! kedavra and kadabra are actually the same word, because vowels aren't written down in Aramaic/Hebrew, and I... I know that there are Rules about what they are when but I'm very sleepy and I do not know much Aramaic. But in terms of meaning, we can absolutely ignore them. "Emma," you might say "there is a whole different consonant in there, though." But no! B/V is the same letter in the Hebrew alphabet! In Hebrew, it should absolutely be a v sound according to where it is in the word, but Aramaic got weird and turned a lot of Vs into Bs, so things get... muddled. Again, it's not important for meaning, it's just a cool fact.

HOWEVER, that whole first word is definitely a completely different word, which is for the best because it would be weird as hell for a spell that means "I create as I speak" to do a murder. אבדא means destruction, according to my friend and yours, Marcus Jastrow.

In terms of why on earth an Aramaic spell -- the ONLY Aramaic spell of note that's used in Anglophone wizarding society -- is the Worst Possible Most Unforgivable Murder Spell... Look I'm not saying it's antisemitism because I don't think JK Rowling was thinking that hard when she did it, but it sure does have some deeply unfortunate implications. Jews were definitely still speaking Aramaic in the "Middle Ages", but only the ones in the Middle East, generally -- although technically Chad Gadya was published in Aramaic in 16th century Bohemia, which is...... wacky as hell. I'm pretty sure that by then it was almost entirely a scholarly language outside of the Middle East -- but still definitely an important language, a bit like Latin, I suppose? So it's not out of the realm of possibility that Jews DID invent this spell in the Middle Ages and deliberately use Aramaic because it's a scholarly language (although arguably if you wanted to make spells I would do it in Hebrew, because why not use the holiest language you have? but then AGAIN, do you want murder to be an act carried out in a holy tongue? So I take it back, the Aramaic here makes sense). The thing is, how the hell did a Jewish-created spell become the standard Murder Spell. We just don't know. I do like your Crusades explanation, though! That feels to me the most likely answer.

It is my personal headcanon that spells in Semitic languages don't require wands -- that the language of the spell actually determines what you need to cast it. That would explain why African wizards don't use them (but I am also side-eyeing that decision for the same reasons you are). I also think that spells in different languages are like...subtly different, even if they achieve the same thing, e.g. a Latinate or Germanic spell for waterproofing would be way more effective than a spell with the same purpose but in a Semitic language. On the other hand, conjuring water works better in a Semitic language! This makes things real fun in my head when you think about places like Israel, where lots of different language groups come together -- those trendy Tel Aviv youths using Latin on their umbrellas, while the old man grumbles underneath his leaky umbrella which he enchanted with A Good Old Semitic Spell.

[VaguelyCreativeName]

This is such an interesting topic! I can totally get behind the idea that magic users in different cultures use different techniques, semantics and languages for spellcasting, and also that the specific ways in which JKR describes those differences are horribly problematic - then again, she's not exactly known for cultural sensitivity, so I'd be happy to disregard anything she's ever said about non-European spellcasting to try and find some hopefully less racially loaded (and more culturally accurate and significant) alternatives. 

It's also super valid to consider the history of colonisation of Britain when trying to envision how magic or the channeling of it differed throughout the times, although JKR as you said seems to think 'England' despite having located Hogwarts in Scotland - if you consider the times of the Founders specifically, being from so distinct cultural backgrounds, there's so much potential to have them wield magic in vastly different ways, which is super fascinating! Although, of course, JKR is unhelpfully ambiguous and inconsistent in her naming conventions/where she says the Founders are actually from. 
I'd also wager that there needn't necessarily be one language that spellcasting needs to revolve around - as you've said, England (sorry @ the rest of the British Isles, but my knowledge on that is very limited) was very multicultural, and I think, with many people being mulitlingual, they'd borrow freely from different cultures and techniques; maybe some people preferred to use only a certain culture's methods, but I'd guess that with intermarrriages and such, most people would use some sort of blend.

While the vocabulary of Old English at that time was mostly (West) Germanic, there are a tonne of loans coming from that time period (that we still use today!) that are derived from Old Norse, plus loads of language changes that strongly suggest that Nordic and Anglo-Saxon cultures (especially in the area of the Danelaw, so eastern England) where heavily linked, so you can totally make that same connection for the magical world as well, particularly if we assume that prior to the International Statute of Secrecy in 16whatever, muggle and magical culture wasn't as strictly divided.  

I also really like Emma's idea of variants of the same spell being more or less effective - it makes a lot of sense that, if you live in a wet and cold climate, you'd put a lot more effort into making sure your waterproofing and insulating spells work properly than if you're only going to use them, like, twice a year - with that in mind, I think it's feasible that I'd use different cultures' spellcasting methods for different purposes, because they just work better. Like, I might always use a West Germanic spell for, idk, baking bread because that's how my mother always did it, but I might use a Nordic spell for repairing/building a ship, because I'll end up with a better result. 

 

 

On a side note, the way magic seems to 'work' in the books never made sense to me - in the early years, the students are told again and again how pronunciation and wand movement seem to matter, only to later be told to do it non-verbally (and in some cases, without a wand), which is in itself inconsistent and makes especially little sense with Latinate spells, when noone in Rome had ever heard of fixed word order. It'd also never made sense to me how spells seemed to be so hyper-specific (literally why would I need a specific incantation to transform a porcupine into a pincushion? when am I ever going to be in a situation where that's useful? (Don't get me started on Gamp's Laws and their exceptions)), and I'm now imagining a group of prescriptivist Renaissance wizards who are very intent on there only being one way in which any spell can be cast, and subsequently screwing everyone over for centuries.

[Lost_Robin]

On 4/13/2020 at 6:27 AM, VaguelyCreativeName said:

It'd also never made sense to me how spells seemed to be so hyper-specific (literally why would I need a specific incantation to transform a porcupine into a pincushion? when am I ever going to be in a situation where that's useful? (Don't get me started on Gamp's Laws and their exceptions)), and I'm now imagining a group of prescriptivist Renaissance wizards who are very intent on there only being one way in which any spell can be cast, and subsequently screwing everyone over for centuries.

Thank you for putting into words what I always found a bit annoying about magic. I'm going with your theory of prescriptivists because it would make sense that they would try to 'standardize' magic, for lack of a better word, despite the fact that some spells work better than others for the same thing. I do have a small theory for this: they put the 'official' spells into Latin because it was seen as the lingua franca for a while, especially for liturgical/academic texts. Maybe that's where the Standard Book of Spells came from: an attempt to 'standardize' magic so people only used the 'proper' spell for each bit of magic. Maybe it's similar to how spelling and grammar became formalized, and the highly specific spells we see in canon are the result of that?

[Raspberry_cordelia]

Oh my gosh, this thread was made for me.  I adore languages, and I love all of the ideas here.

On 4/11/2020 at 9:54 AM, facingthenorthwind said:

(although arguably if you wanted to make spells I would do it in Hebrew, because why not use the holiest language you have? but then AGAIN, do you want murder to be an act carried out in a holy tongue? So I take it back, the Aramaic here makes sense)

I was thinking about that, and if Aramaic was a holy tongue, maybe it was a spell invented by the Assyrians?  Or the Syriac Christians?  Because both of those groups have a dialect of Aramaic as their liturgical language, so it could make sense there.  I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with Semitic languages though (all I know is that they are awesome and I should be more familiar), and I don't know how it would change according to dialect, because from what I've heard Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Syriac are only marginally mutually intelligible?  I don't know, someone with more linguistics knowledge than I should definitely step in right now and tell me to stop.

Another thing I was discussing on the Discord a few days back is tonality in languages.  I have this headcanon that a Wizard learning a foreign tonal language (and by extension, foreign tonal magic) would have a hecka lot of difficulty summoning things, because tonality is just so hard to get right.  I personally speak a tonal language, and even then, when listening to Navajo, another tonal language, I could not get the tones right if I wanted to.  Unrelated, but I have so much respect for people who write tonal music, because you have to match the lyrics tonally with the notes and I can't even begin to wrap my mind around it.

Edit: oh my gosh now I have to write something about a Magical linguist

[facingthenorthwind]

11 hours ago, Raspberry_cordelia said:

I was thinking about that, and if Aramaic was a holy tongue, maybe it was a spell invented by the Assyrians?  Or the Syriac Christians?  Because both of those groups have a dialect of Aramaic as their liturgical language, so it could make sense there.  I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with Semitic languages though (all I know is that they are awesome and I should be more familiar), and I don't know how it would change according to dialect, because from what I've heard Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Syriac are only marginally mutually intelligible?  I don't know, someone with more linguistics knowledge than I should definitely step in right now and tell me to stop.

The aramaic that I used (and almost certainly that JKR used) is talmudic aramaic; I sadly cannot read syriac because I don't know the alphabet  so I can't conjugate it at all but there is a word with a similar meaning that shares the same root: ܐܵܒܹܕ

(I thought syriac was written in the Arabic script but it looks like Hebrew and Arabic had a baby, haha! Phoenician strikes again. You can see the similarities if you know what to look for.) 

I have nothing else to add I just have the tiniest of syriac-adjacent knowledge. 

[tinyporcelainehorses]

Oh hey, something I have a lot of thoughts on.  (I'm actually writing a fic now about Hogwarts in the late eleventh century, shortly after the Norman conquest, and the different ways that that shaped British magic - so this is really relevant to me!)

To my mind, latin spells themselves came a little earlier, with the Romans.  Magical Britain has multiple different spell traditions:

• Celtic magic.  I don't have particularly strong ideas about this yet, to be honest - might involve more music-as-magic?
• Roman magic - wands (since they seem to first appear in greek myth, they may be something the Romans picked up from there), latin incantations.  Spread mostly with the Catholic church, which is how it's become so ubiquitous throughout Europe.  I have the Ollivander family as Romans, originally greeks - they've been selling wands since 382 BC, but they certainly haven't been selling them in London for that long.  For the most part regardless of culture, by the time of the founders and later, this is the magic of the aristocracy.
• Anglo-Saxon magic: for a long time, the Saxon church was considered too separate from the Catholic church (much like the celtic church!), so it makes sense to me that they have a different magical paradigm, particularly among the 'common folk'.  I'm writing this as being a wandless tradition, with Old English spells and occasional borrowed celtic words.  There's a lot of emphasis on practical magic for peasant life, as well: modified versions of legilmency for making an animal do what you want, or ways of easing pain, healing.  A strong herbal tradition, as well.
• Norse magic: this isn't at all relevant to my story but I bet it's out there.  Probably pretty similar to Saxon magic, maybe with a bit of a fun emphasis on blood magic and ritual to go along with it?  This might be the school of magic that, say, horcruxes come from.

Of course, as time goes on, all the non-Roman traditions are more or less entirely supplanted by the latinised 'orthodox' version of magic, although I see a few elements of each being absorbed into standard magical practice.

As for the specifics of avada kedavra, I think that it may have entered Europe during the middle ages, but it's probably somewhat older.  I think it's likely, especially with the aramaic origin, that it came from the jewish or arabic communities in spain: either a translation of an older greek text (who knows how spell translation works!) or just something that was already in use and made its way from there into Europe as a whole.