Powdered Newt? Really?

[SilveredBlue]

I was re-reading the first few YW books recently, and I noticed that the first three mention wizardly 'ingredients' like fishes' breath, batteries, and *gasp* the price of powdered newt.

Aside from the obvious question "Why would wizards who serve Life use, sell, or buy a dried and powdered life-form?", there's also the question: why doesn't this turn up later?

In all of the books after the original three, there's no mention of these raw ingrediants, aside from a cameo of a moonlight-soaked rowan twig in W@W. Mostly the spell-building seems to be done with words alone, as in Nita's charm bracelet and lucid-dreaming necklace. Yet the gimbal in HW, the antenna and rowan twig in SYWTBAW, etc, were very important to the story.

So where did these ingredients go? Do older wizards no longer have a use for them? Or did DD just ditch the concept?

[estar9821]

Maybe they're spell aids to help younger wizards control their power so it doesn't get out of hand? And older wizards would be experienced enough not to need them. Or maybe it was just a phase DD went through in the first few books, and got tired of. There was definitely plenty of time for this. I mean, there are years between the books. I really don't know though, this is all just speculation.

[Deus Ira]

I cant remember which book it was in but they were talking about one of the trade offs for the losing of power as they got older was that they got better with the speech and that eventually they wouldn't need things like the wands or ingredients. Except i remember in AWAB Shaun O'Driscoll was using a Rowan wand during the timeslide wizardry when they were making the spear.

[SpacePen]

powdered dried newt is probably not any different than the rowan wand. I mean, aren't newts lizards? And if you were talking to one in the speech, might it not, uh, allow you to have its tail, in a somewhat similar fashion to how the rowan tree gives nita one of it's branches?

Neither the newt nor the tree will die, and both can grow new appendages in time.

I think there's another thread on this forum dealing with how Nita & Kit don't seem to need "things" to help the speech work in wizardry anymore.

[dorotheia]

I don't think that getting older has anything much to do with it, but experience does. I think it was in TWD that Nita mentioned that once specific big spells are done (probably requiring the use of ingredients) the spells can be redone in a shorthand form. So, for example, Kit rigged up a beam-me-up-scotty spell, lined up all the right materials, and went to the moon. But the next time he goes to the moon, he doesn't need the materials, because he's already done the "big spell."
What do you think?
Or maybe the ingredients are necessary for specific kinds of spells, like those involving world-gates and space-time. (In SYWTBAW, there's a line about why these artifacts work has to do with bending space.) But I wonder if there isn't a cultural aspect going on here too, such as certain "traditions" of wizardry. The way wizardry is done on Wellakh (or medieval earth?) is essentially the same, but slightly different from wizardry on Earth. Wellakh doesn't have powdered newt (and medieval earth doesn't have batteries), so they must use something else. [Except I think it's not cultural what I just proved, it's more like necessity. Use what's on-hand which works best for the job.]

[SilveredBlue]

Oh, very good idea, dorotheia! Like, you only need to exploit the space-bending properties of something once and afterwards the porperties are 'imprinted' on that wizard's version of a spell.

Spacepen: Good notion...but look at this quote:

Some of the kinds of matter used for [spells] can be odder even than eye of newt (which used to be used for teleportation spells until polyethylene was invented).

So yeah, they don't use newts' eyes any more, but still. Unless the newt somehow died of natural causes and the wizards were able to harvest the eyes (yuck) before something ate the newt, this seems out of character for our 'nicey-nice wizards', as the Tawalf put it.

What's next: toe of frog? Wing of bat?

(And I know I'm misquoting. Have to re-read..um..Macbeth? Or is it Hamlet? No, Hamlet has the ghost.)

[SpacePen]

double, double, toil and trouble.... No literary wizard worth his or her salt gets away without at least alluding to Macbeth!

Except the scene there depicts a magic NOT on the side of Life.

Perhaps the Newt will give you one eye, if you can make it understand the need for teleportation. Or perhaps wizards & newts had an agreement... wizard creates newt cemetery, offers morgue and cremation services, in exchange for organ donor program.

[estar9821]

Maybe more experienced wizards sometimes use them to enhance their power, since it decreases as they age.

[SilveredBlue]

wow, good ideas, Spacepen! hah, the cementary thing would be a story for Wizards, Inc. WHICH I STILL HAVEN'T READ. Grrr. I may just have to write a fanfic for that...

And I think the Macbeth quote should have 'bubble' in it somewhere...

[InkSlinger]

The powdered newt reference was in the first book, yes? Well, the whole idea of wizardry was still a little loose set then. If you ask me, the ingredient reference was meant more as an establishment of wizardry as wizardry, rather than as a significant description of practice. Not to put you guys down- making all the little pieces fit together is one of my favorite activities.

And I think the organ donation idea is cute!

[Lazy Leopard]

And I think the Macbeth quote should have 'bubble' in it somewhere...

The second line in the couplet from which the quote comes does.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

See Act IV Scene I (There's any number of oline versions. For instance, this one: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/full.html ).

[estar9821]

I think that DD just put it there for humor. We're overanalyzing that little tidbit of the book. Of course, you kinda HAVE to be good at overanalyzing writing of any kind in order to be on this forum. We're all crazies...

[SilveredBlue]

Well, yes, you kinda do. But then again, what else do the rabid fans do between now and AWoM except obssessively analyze? I predict, though, that once AWoM DOES (finally) appear, we'll be seeing a lot of oldbies come back, a lot of newbies appear, and a LOT of happy regular anylzing.

[illiriam]

There some explanation in HW, starting in the chapter Variables, which starts on pg 147 in my book.

Every wizard has favorite spells, so familiar and well used that diagrams and physical ingredients like eye of newt aren't needed for them. But most spells, and particularly the most powerful ones, need help in bending space - some specific kind of matter placed in specific relationship to the wizard and the words being used and the diagram or formula asserting the wizards intent.

and on the next couple of pages as she is getting her cache form the vacant lot:

But the configuration into which the space-time continuum bent itself around this gimbal was unique and invested with a power that the informed wizard could exploit. Everything bent spacetime, of course: Anything consisting of either matter or energy had not choice. But some things bent it in ways that produced specific physical effects... and no one, not even the wizards specializing in theoretical research, had any idea yet as to why.

Whew! That's a lot of quotes.
I feel like that last sentence is meant to tell us that it is one of those things that just is, and there is no good reason. Some spells need spacetime bent a certain way, and certain objects bend spacetime that way, and when you put the two together, then you get magic.
And it also tells us why they don't need stuff like the string and sugar and silver spoon (those were the only ones I could remember, I don't think they were used in the same spell) for the spells they have used before, and I guess also why they don't need them that often for new spells. Carl said in SYWTBAW that the worldgate spell was a particularly finicky one, so it makes sense that they needed ingredients.

[SpacePen]

Also, in AWAbroad you get Nita wondering why the Area Senior for Europe has a Rowan Wand... she notes that it's "useful" for beginners but she can't imagine why he would need it.

In other words... Spot makes ingredients mostly unneccessary, but it sounds like when you're doing something you're unfamiliar with, OR if you're doing something requiring more power or more tricky "spelling" than usual, a physical aid can help. Especially when you're not part mobile/manual like Dairine...

The gimbal doesn't seem to do anything different except allow Nita's regular spells to be more powerful, or larger...