I would like to sell my soul in exchange for dominion over the Earth!
"Sorry dude... not with that soul.
Best I can do is assistant manager at the Arby's down the street. I'll even throw in some heroin, you're gonna need it."
A doll's house and a goat isn't far off, keep it up
This is such a pet peeve of mine.
Why are anglo writers obsessed with using latin as some ancient, mystical language? Why would Latin be tied to magic in any way? Do they realize that Latin was spoken all through Europe for millenia and its vulgar form evolved into tons of current languages? Or that people were using latin in churches, courtrooms and universtities all the way up to the 20th century? Latin was an optional in my high school. I took two years.
If random Latin words could do magic all of Europe would have been constantly exploding. Newspapers would be covering the latest magic volcano to pop up in Southern France. World War II movies would include accidental summonings.
Also, for us romance language speakers it sounds vaguely understandable, so the weird things they use for spells sound goofy as hell. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than using fake Latin-sounding made up stuff as in Harry Potter.
Latin was the lingua franca for the educated western world for centuries. Texts on alchemy, mysticism, and religion were all written in Latin. Church rituals were performed in Latin.
Most magic in fiction has its roots in the past. What language would be more fitting?
No, wait, it was not "lingua franca in the educated western world", vulgar latin was just... the language a lot of Europe spoke for centuries.
People think of Latin as this highbrow educated thing, because that's what was left of it after the development of romance languages from vulgar Latin, but Latin was just what normal people used to talk to each other for a long time.
And yes, sure, texts on alchemy, mysticism and religion were written on it.
Also texts on food recipes, tax collection, how the tree from your neighbour's yard was blocking the sun to your oranges and the rude graffitti in the tables of the pub.
Honestly, I don't see why the chosen language would have to matter to your fictitious magic system. Surely if you have to say words and words mean things, the language doesn't affect what the words mean. I tend to like it when people still manage to tap into magical thinking without the crutch of pulling what they think sounds old-timey from somewhere. Neil Gaiman, Jim Henson or Grant Morrison were/are really good at it.
Or, you know, if you're a meganerd like Tolkien you can always just... make a whole new language for it. That also works.
Well that's just the thing though. People (allegedly) used to do loads of magic, now they dont. Makes sense the spells and rituals would be in the language of the time.
Also lots of the books and grimoires we still have access to are in Latin or translated from Latin. So there's a connection there too.
Wait, are these last couple of comments supposed to be in-universe or in real life? Because it's confusing either way.
Alastair Crowley? Gardener? Eta: The Catholic Church?
Weren't both of those people English?
Do English people think the Catholic Church is magic? I know they sometimes wear dresses, but their hats are round, not pointy. Completely different thing.
And yeah, they say they are turning wafers into human flesh, but I've had the wafers and trust me, they don't taste like chicken at all.
Fuck you.
Love,
Black Phillip
I mean... we've just met, buy me a drink first?
Genuinely don't know where this is coming from.
Oh, hey, I Googled it. It's a goat thing. Still don't get it because I haven't seen the thing. But yeah, okay. Goat.
haha
In many cases you don't need an obscure language to do magic. Latin is merely the language in which the sorcery books were written. And they were written because it was the language of the scholars, which magic practitioners pretended to be.
This is such a pet peeve of mine.
It's not a peeve, it's a goat.
Actually, Europe wouldn’t have stopped exploding to this very day.
It would have gone from constant explosions every day with particularly intense bouts of Sunday explosions to a school or university exploding every couple of weeks.
The Vatican would be a smoldering crater basically all the time, though.
harry potter in today's world: "electro petroleum!"
Maybe the revival in a few centuries will try to do the same with English-sounding fake words because in the future they sound magical, too.
"Flyare alting!"
Permanently Deleted
I mean, the original Catholic texts weren't even written in Latin.
I want to know how much anger and moaning was felt among demons when they got the memo that they were supposed to switch languages now.
"But my entire summoning circle is already engraved in Hebrew! Can we at least do Greek or Aramaic? I already have prints in those!"
"It's not even the same alphabet! I have to transliterate all my curses now?"
Well, at least abracadabra is Hebrew... In English it's "i create that which I speak".
Romanes eunt domus
People called 'Romanes' they go the house?
Domus? Nominative?
Don’t say Cardi B’s real name out loud unless you want to meet Black Phillip.
"oh, shit" 😐
SATANAS DIABOLICA
I prefer Pig Latin for all the pork
So this is a you summoned a demon reference but instead it's just a plain old goat, right?
Not some linguistic thing where a lot of Latin has Baaaa~?
Yeah, but I'm failing to see the difference between a goat and a demon.
I can eat and milk a goat...
I'd be hesitant on doing either to a demon... unless we're talking certain anime here...
