Magic maintains is the concept in the urban fantasy series "Kate Daniels" by Ilona Andrews. The series is set in a world where magic and technology alternate in power, creating a constant struggle for dominance. In this world, magic is a living force that can be harnessed by skilled individuals called magic users. The main character, Kate Daniels, is a magic user with a strong connection to magic. **The main idea is that magic is a crucial element in maintaining the balance and survival of the world in "Kate Daniels" series.** Magic in this series is not predictable or controllable, and it can cause catastrophic events such as waves of unpredictable magic known as magic waves or tech failures.
** Magic in this series is not predictable or controllable, and it can cause catastrophic events such as waves of unpredictable magic known as magic waves or tech failures. These waves can disrupt technology, communications, and even resurrect ancient creatures and myths, making the world a dangerous place. However, magic also acts as a force that holds together the delicate balance between technology and the supernatural.
Harnessing the natural forces of occultism
Reading Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s encyclopedic study of magic is like stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, where toad bones boil water, witches transmit misery through optical darts, and numbers, arranged correctly, can harness the planets’ powers. Anthony Grafton explores the Renaissance polymath’s occult insights into the structure of the universe, discovering a path that leads both upward and downward: up toward complete knowledge of God, and down into every order of being on earth.
Published
October 12, 2023
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Title-page portrait of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, from a 1533 edition of his De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three books of occult philosophy) — Source.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s manual of learned magic, De occulta philosophia (1533), explicated the ways in which magicians understood and manipulated the cosmos more systematically than any of his predecessors. It was here that he mapped the entire network of forces that passed from angels and demons, stars and planets, downward into the world of matter. Agrippa laid his work out in three books, on the elementary, astrological, and celestial worlds. But he saw all of them as connected, weaving complex spider webs of influence that passed from high to low and low to high. With the zeal and learning of an encyclopedist imagined by Borges, Agrippa catalogued the parts of the soul and body, animals, minerals, and plants that came under the influence of any given planet or daemon. He then offered his readers a plethora of ways for averting evil influences and enhancing good ones. 1 Some of these were originally simple remedies, many of them passed down from Roman times in the great encyclopedic work of Pliny the Younger and less respectable sources, and lacked any deep connection to learned magic.
Magic usually required the use of objects charged with power, and Agrippa’s book also offered a massive taxonomy of magical animals, plants, and stones, with ample instructions for their preparation and use. Sufferers from sore throat read in Agrippa that they could cure themselves by touching their necks to the hand of someone who had died prematurely. Those plagued by coughs learned to put spit in the mouths of green frogs and then let them escape. 2 Reading the book resembles walking through a vast princely chamber of wonders or a grand apothecary’s shop, ceiling, walls, and shelves hung with strange and thrilling creatures.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.A fold-out engraving that is thought to be the earliest illustration of a natural history cabinet or “cabinet of curiosities”, from Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’historia Naturale (1599) — Source.
Chapter after chapter of Agrippa’s work, accordingly, turned into a magnificently encyclopedic if associatively organized mountain of material, partly drawn from written sources and partly from oral tradition and current practice, as the author applied his scissors and paste to the fruits of his vast reading and vaster curiosity. When contemporary readers opened the book at random, as they often did, they would find themselves stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, whose contents Agrippa described with energy and economy:
They say also that a stone bitten by a mad dog has the power to cause discord, if it is put in a drink, and that one who puts a dog’s tongue in his shoe, under his big toe, will not be barked at by dogs, especially if it is added to the herb of the same name, cynoglossa [dog’s tongue]. And a membrane from the afterbirth of a dog has the same effect, and dogs will shun one who has a dog’s heart. And Pliny reports that there are red toads that make their home in briars, and are full of sorcery and do wonderful things. For the small bone that is in its left side, when cast into cold water, makes it immediately become hot. It restrains the attacks of dogs. Added to a drink, it arouses love and quarrels. When tied to someone, it arouses lust. On the other hand, the little bone that is in the right side cools hot water, and it will not become hot again unless the bone is taken out. It cures quartan fevers, when tied in a fresh lamb’s skin, and prevents other fevers and love and lust. And the spleen and heart of these toads make an effective remedy against the poisons that are drawn from those animals. All this Pliny narrates. 3
Any reader could find something of interest in this paroxysm of parataxis, a good bit of it taken directly from Pliny and none of it explicitly verified by anything resembling a test. Some of the time, at least, Agrippa served his readers as little more than a source of the homeliest of anecdotes and practices — which they both appreciated and, presumably, recycled in their turn. But sometimes readers indicated that they had tested the claims made by Agrippa and his ancient sources, or seen them tested, by practitioners who knew how to manipulate powerful things. The Benedictine monk Heinrich Duden, for example, liked Pliny’s story, which he read in Agrippa, about how the bone from the left side of a toad could make water hot or inspire love. He treated it, unexpectedly, not as a factoid that had already made an illustrious career passing from notebook to notebook but as a description of a familiar process. After underlining the two relevant bits of the sentence, he wrote: “I saw this done once.” 4
Even the little toads and their littler bones, moreover, were framed in a larger explanatory system, one that led the reader upward and outward. In classificatory chapters that dealt with the elements, the temperaments, the planets, and the zodiac, Agrippa made it clear that celestial influences shaped each being and object on earth, endowing it both with its powers and with the external marks that revealed these to the skilled eye of the magus. No one could hope to master the occult philosophy, in other words, without mastering the higher studies of astronomy and astrology. The magus also had to have the personal gifts and formal training that would enable him to interpret dreams and prophecies and the knowledge of mathematics required to detect the Pythagorean number patterns that gave the universe structure. In the end, moreover, he needed asceticism and self-discipline since the consummation of his art involved communication with angels. The most graphic parts of Agrippa’s work, the sections most densely involved with the powers of particular bones and plants, provided him with opportunities to introduce larger and more abstract themes that he could then pursue in the second and third books, as he moved on to describe in detail the powers of planets, angels, and daemons.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Two diagrams from Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533) demonstrating the proportion, measure, and harmony of human bodies. The first shows a man with his feet together as a “quadrature equilateral”, whose centre is in “the bottom of his belly”. The second shows a man with limbs perfectly bordered by the sides of a square, whose centre aligns with his navel, “the girdling of the body” — Source: left, right.
Agrippa, moreover, interspersed the homely segments of his work with materials of very different kinds, also drawn from diverse provinces of the country of magic. When he evoked the terrifying images of horses’ heads that certain special lamps and candles, made from the liquid exuded by copulating mares, could project, he was once again quoting Pliny, and Pliny in turn was quoting older sources. To judge from Duden’s note, however, preserved in the manuscript he began reading in 1550, Agrippa also described a contemporary magical practice: “I myself have experienced this, with great terror.” 5 When Agrippa described how witches could catch the eyes of their victim and, by projecting “darts or strokes”, induce fear, love, or misery in them, he recalled the descriptions of witches’ behavior in the book he loathed, Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum, and the normal beliefs of contemporary churchmen — as Duden noted when he wrote “a certain witch did this to the executioner at Hamburg in my time.” 6
The therapies on offer in Agrippa’s book often required the invocation of celestial or angelic powers, either to awake the slumbering, hidden forces of the magical things he wished to manipulate or to protect magus and clients against the more frightening sorts of supernatural powers. Agrippan magic, accordingly, regularly involved direct efforts to invoke the intervention of planetary daemons and other spirits. Talismans, carved from particular substances and engraved with particular signs; magic squares, which revealed the marvelous properties of numbers; and the names of angels, obtained by Christian Cabalistic methods of substitution and recombination — these, among other means too numerous to mention, would enable Agrippa’s readers to change themselves and the world for the better. 7
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.A series of illustrations of magical seals, characters, and numerical grids from James Freake’s 1651 English translation of Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia — Source.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Two diagrams from Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533) demonstrating the proportion, measure, and harmony of human bodies — Source: left, right.
Many of the practices Agrippa described in De occulta philosophia came directly from the magic that unfrocked clerics had practiced for generations. Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I has made one case in point famous. In this engraving, a magic square — the series of numbers from one to sixteen, arranged in the proper order in a square with sixteen cells — invokes the power of Jupiter, a beneficent planet, against the devastating influence of Saturn. Magic squares like this originated in the Arabic world, long before Agrippa’s time. Often they had their top row of cells filled with the letters of a divine name or with the first letters of a verse from the Koran, and the lower rows with permutations on them. Since Arabic letters, like Hebrew, have numerical values, each magic square automatically forms a mathematical figure, and it was in this form that they became most popular in the West.
The square in Melencolia I starts in the inverse way, with numbers that could turn into letters. If you take a square and enter the numbers from 1 to 16, you obtain the series that follows:
Reading Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s encyclopedic study of magic is like stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, where toad bones boil water, witches transmit misery through optical darts, and numbers, arranged correctly, can harness the planets’ powers. Anthony Grafton explores the Renaissance polymath’s occult insights into the structure of the universe, discovering a path that leads both upward and downward: up toward complete knowledge of God, and down into every order of being on earth.
In this world, magic is considered a living entity that responds to emotions and intentions. For instance, if a person has a strong will and intent to survive, magic can respond by protecting them or providing them with necessary tools. Similarly, when a person is weak or lacks conviction, magic can be unpredictable and unreliable. **Magic is vital for the survival of individuals and communities in this world.** Kate Daniels, as a magic user, has a special connection to magic. She can sense its fluctuations and tap into its power. She uses her connection to magic to protect herself, her loved ones, and the people she cares about. Magic is her ally, but it can also be her enemy if she is not careful. It requires skill, knowledge, and a symbiotic relationship with magic to maintain control and use it effectively. Throughout the series, the importance of magic in maintaining balance and survival becomes clear. The characters rely on their magical abilities to combat supernatural threats and navigate through a world constantly in flux. The understanding and control of magic are crucial for their survival and the preservation of their way of life. **In conclusion, magic maintains the delicate balance between technology and the supernatural in the "Kate Daniels" series by Ilona Andrews. It is a vital force that individuals must understand, control, and use to protect themselves and their communities. Magic is both a source of power and a potential threat, requiring a deep connection to maintain the delicate equilibrium of this world.**.
Reviews for "The Role of Urban Settings in Ilona Andrews' Magic-Filled Worlds"
1. Samantha - 2/5 - I was really disappointed with "Magic maintains" by Ilona Andrews. The story felt disjointed and hard to follow. The characters lacked depth and development, and I had a hard time connecting with any of them. The pacing was also off, with slow parts dragging on while crucial action scenes were rushed. Overall, I found this book to be a letdown and it didn't live up to my expectations.
2. Michael - 3/5 - "Magic maintains" didn't quite hit the mark for me. While the worldbuilding was impressive and the magical elements were intriguing, the plot felt convoluted and hard to follow at times. The writing style also didn't engage me as much as I had hoped, and I found myself disconnecting from the story. Additionally, some of the character motivations seemed forced and unrealistic, making it difficult to fully invest in the outcome. While it had its moments, overall, this book fell short for me.