ANCR-701 Lessons

There are no fancy decorations today — though only the most obsessed student of Ancient Runes would call the various planks, pottery shards, and fragments of parchment that Professor Wessex usually puts on display “decorations.” Instead the normal selection of runic and cultural artefacts dot the room. Still, those average artefacts are quite impressive, hailing from every corner of the world. 

There is an obvious runestone from Scandinavia sticking out proudly, displaying a heated battle in addition to the script that winds around the rock. There are, of course, numerous ancient texts and tomes, some seemingly held together only by magic, the witchlight lamps flickering on their fragile pages. But among them, there are also countless other artefacts from scripts you haven’t learned yet. Hopefully you’ll get to uncover their secrets before you leave Hogwarts’ halls forever. 

Interrupting the silence of the room, the enormous grandfather clock tolls the late hour and the click of Professor Wessex’s heels begins as though she is just as much a part of the clockwork as the hands that tick down the minutes. She strides into the class, checking the scribbles her enchanted quill has left for her and commences, taking her place at the front of the room.

Introduction
Your last year of Ancient Runes. Do you still look around the room in wonder at its secrets? You should. You still know only a fraction of the mysteries and scripts that the world has to offer, even though you are my most knowledgeable students. However, that will change this year. No, we will not be covering every single script and magical culture that has ever existed; that would be impossible. In lieu of forcing the Ministry to make and issue you all Time Turners to allow for the thousands of hours that would require, I will simply give you the means to study all of them without my tutelage. Or, in fact, anyone’s tutelage. You will be well on your way to becoming experts in your own fields should you take the information this year to heart and apply what you have learned to your own personal study. Hopefully you have noticed the trend in that direction, what with my frequent assignments encouraging outside research, prodding you to ask your own questions, and encouragement of internship opportunities.

In this, both your last year of Ancient Runes and your N.E.W.T. year, we will be covering many theoretical topics, touching only briefly on actual scripts. In your years here, you have already covered the majority of crucial scripts that all successful sorcerers should know. To wile away the remaining time by choosing one, or even several, additional scripts to cover this year would be a waste. Instead, you will cement your knowledge of magical scripts in general and be given the tools with which to study and understand any magical script you encounter for the rest of your lives. 

During this comprehensive look at theory, some topics from previous years may repeat, as theory has naturally played a role in your studies of all scripts so far. However, your existing knowledge will be used to contextualize these difficult concepts so you can apply them to overarching themes, rather than simply reviewed. Our main focus will be how the various theories influence every single magical script in general and the study of them. Below, you can find a basic syllabus of what will be covered this year. 

Year Seven: The World Ahead   

As you can see, we have a veritable cornucopia of theoretical topics to cover. Nearly every topic will draw on scripts to use as examples, some of which you will have already heard of — whether in great detail or in passing — and some of which will be completely foreign to you. That is where this year’s textbook comes in. Spellman’s Syllabary is one of the leading runic encyclopedias in Western civilization and what it lacks in explicit detail, it makes up for in breadth of knowledge.It is an excellent reference guide for anyone wishing to know the basic facts of a script, as well as perfect for looking up a symbol you simply cannot identify. However, it is not intended as the end-all, be-all of information on any one particular script. 

On the off chance that you are a troll in Seventh Years’ clothing and you decided to ignore your Hogwarts’ supplies list in your N.E.W.T. year, the library does have a few extra copies. Though, I would warn against relying on it. When nerves start to set in towards the end of the year and everyone swarms the stacks, you may find yourself out of luck. Enough of that for now, though. There’s little need to go over each lesson of the year or section of the textbook in detail, as that will all come in due time, which neatly brings us to our topic for the lesson. 

Sign of the Times
In this lesson, we will focus on the preliminary topic of just what exactly makes a script conducive to runic magic. We know from previous years of study that ideographic meanings are a must, and we also know that in this class we primarily study ancient scripts. That is, we study scripts that existed during a specific era of history, namely from 3600 B.C.E. to roughly 500 C.E. Therein lies the hint: the passage of time. Time is the largest factor in what makes a script capable of magical effects, or, rather, how communication and human perception change over time. 

Let us discuss that period mentioned a moment ago, as well as in Lesson Two of your Fifth Year. The lower limit of 3600 B.C.E. roughly aligns with the beginning of the Bronze Age. While the rest of the characteristics of the Bronze Age are not terribly interesting unless you are a magiarchaeologist, it does mark the beginning of the written word. It was the start of what was called “proto-writing,” the earliest known form of written expression. Proto-writing is incredibly important to the field of ancient runes, as this early system of writing was used to capture a set inventory of ideas and concepts rather than as a method for representing specific sounds. This is something that most modern scripts and languages have left in the past.

Think of our own English language, for example. Does the letter “R” have a personality or flavor? Certain connotations or nuances? Is it a bad letter or a good letter? Does it evoke hope, or fear, or contentment when you think of it or use it in a word? I would expect not, as it was not designed to. That is not its purpose. Its function is purely phonetic, similar to the letters of most modern scripts and languages around the world. As human history has progressed, we have generally moved farther and farther away from using symbols that represent whole ideas, concepts, or even words, as this can often be very limiting. Instead, many civilizations have opted for phonetic alphabets, so that there is no limit to the amount of concepts that can be conveyed. Both options have their distinct benefits and disadvantages, but the latter phonetic approach is particularly useful in times of great change and discovery. A set inventory of symbols that represent concepts are difficult to manage when new concepts are discovered daily. For example, what runic character from the Elder Futhark would have been used to represent the idea of indoor plumbing? 

Ideographic and logographic scripts can overcome this limitation by simply adding more characters to their inventory, but this often feels unwieldy and is difficult to commit to memory. Thus, the current preference for phonetic alphabets. It makes it possible to represent new ideas without having to change one’s set of symbols.

That is not to say that all new scripts have moved away from this practice. Most notably we have Chinese characters, which are a logographic script. Many magilinguists have their eye on this mundane script as the most likely candidate to “become” the next form of magic runic writing, particularly as the Chinese Hanzi have been around in one form or another since the Bronze Age.

If You Will It
So what is it about time that is so crucial? Obviously we can’t have a magical script from earlier than 3600 B.C.E. as, to the best of our knowledge, there aren’t any scripts from before that time. And, as discussed, it’s unusual to have a magical script after 500 C.E., as humankind moved away from the use of logograms and ideograms. However, that leaves us with the example of Chinese characters. They represent words and are only a short step away from becoming ideograms. Why haven’t these symbols yet morphed into a magical runic script?¹ They have certainly had enough time, as they have been in circulation since roughly 3600 B.C.E. 

The missing piece of the puzzle lies with us, the humans that use the script. To become magical, the meanings must become so deeply ingrained, so automatic, and such a core belief of the user, that they can become focus points to direct their magic. As an example, in the height of its use (and still today by those of us who study the script), the rune Othala was synonymous with the concepts of home, including homeland, heritage, ownership, safety and more. Those meanings could be mentally called upon in an instant. This level of association requires the people that use the script to truly and deeply believe the meaning. It must be completely internalized. It is difficult to predict when or if this “X factor” will ever occur. It only takes a small group of witches or wizards to start, and once that first barrier is overcome, the script can flourish magically. You could say there is a bit of a snowball effect. Seeing other witches and wizards use the characters to perform magic cements the runes’ meanings in other witches’ minds as inherently powerful and magical. 

This is currently the main component that Chinese characters are missing.² Typically, the more time a script is in use (as long as it has ideographic or at least logographic meanings), the more likely it is to become magical, as many generations have worked to establish the meanings. It’s all about belief, similar to what you may have talked about in your Divination classes. While you may not have ever thought about spell-casting components in Ancient Runes class, you’ve been using them all the same. The shapes of the symbols themselves are like wand movements. Additionally, you need to keep the meaning of the runes in your head and focus on the correct one, like the concentration you put into a spell. Most importantly, you need to believe it will work; you need the willpower. If you wave your wand when casting Lumos, but doubt that anything will happen, I can assure you your spell will not work. Similarly, you must truly believe in the runes you are using on a fundamental level. This is impossible to force or fabricate.

Other Impediments
In addition to the tried and true recipe of time and belief, there are a few things that many magilinguists feel stand in the way (or speed the process) of a script becoming magical. One theory proposed is that scripts’ progress towards willpower and belief can be impeded by an excessively large number of symbols. In the case of Chinese characters (which have no single official number, but often are estimated in the tens of thousands) this may very well be true. In essence, magilinguists feel that the “belief” is diluted in some fashion by the sheer number of runes. 

Put another way, one person may very firmly believe in the meaning of one character, but one person by themselves is unlikely to try to use that symbol for magical purposes. Meanwhile, a different person might have internalized the meanings of another character, but not the same one. This cycle could theoretically continue, and it’s statistically possible to get through the whole script before you repeated. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that those two or three people who have started to internalize the same meaning live near each other, or will ever interact to be able to share ideas. With a large enough population and over enough time, eventually, one symbol will be internalized by a sufficient amount of people that it could be used for magic with regularity. However, this must still be done naturally. There have been recorded instances of witches and wizards coming together to “make” a symbol mean this or that, but rarely does this result in success. As I mentioned, “forcing” a meaning is not enough. It largely results in failure, though as you’ll see as we progress through the year it is possible for particularly determined or skilled individuals to “create” a magical meaning.  

Obviously that is much more quickly and easily achieved when there are only 20 signs in a script, rather than 50,000. The probability or odds that enough people have internalized one particular meaning goes up drastically. This is further supported by the fact that magical scripts with thousands of glyphs are a rare oddity and seem to be an exception to the rule, with Koto-Kanji and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics being the most notable of these.

Others point to the fact that if a script is too widely used by Muggles, or for many purely Muggle concepts, that this may subconsciously impede the script’s ability to take on magical significance in the minds of witches and wizards. After all, with technology’s inability to mix with magic (or their unpredictability when mixed), having a character for the word “computer,” “automobile,” and “telephone” could easily and naturally make a script seem less magical overall. Whatever the case, the exact perfect storm to take a script and make it magical still eludes us, though we are making progress in understanding the process. 

Closing
With that in mind, we will wrap up our discussion. Before we close for the day, I will stress one key issue that is often initially confused. Just because a script doesn’t have runic magical meanings does not mean the corresponding language can’t be used for magic. As an example, while there is nothing particularly magical or mysterious about the letter “C” from the Latin alphabet, Latin remains one of the most prominent spell-casting languages in the Western world. 

Next week, we will continue looking at the topic of how Muggles impact the development of magical scripts in a different light. For now, I would highly recommend that you read up on the various scripts mentioned in the lesson today, particularly Koto-Kanji if you have not taken Professor Morgan’s Ancient Studies class. You can find all of them in your textbook, Spellman's Syllabary. By that same token, be sure to read up on the Elder Futhark and the Alphabet of the Magi as well, as they will be discussed next week. One would hope that you retained at least some of the foundational information about the Elder Futhark, but if your mind is more like a leaky cauldron than a steel trap, I suggest you refresh yourself. Additionally, those of you who have not taken Alchemy may not be at all familiar with the Alphabet of the Magi, and those of you who have may require some review.

You have a number of assignments to complete as well, including a quiz on general lesson information, and an essay on two of the mentioned exceptions to the “rule” about scripts with fewer symbols being more likely to be magical. There are also two extra credit assignments regarding the number of characters in each of the scripts from Spellman’s Syllabary if you have already read ahead and are looking for something to challenge you. For the second extra credit assignment, those of you who participated in Hogwarts’ internship program last summer are encouraged to submit the findings you presented to your project leader as a way to receive Hogwarts’ course credit.

Finally, as in your O.W.L. year, in addition to your normal studies, there will be an assignment meant to prepare you for your N.E.W.T.s at the end of this year. As before, these review assignments are not mandatory. They are simply available for those that would like to brush up on older topics and stay fresh on newer ones. It matters not to me what you choose to do, but should you leave all your studying for later in the year, I will not be held responsible for your mental breakdowns. 

Footnotes

1. We are ignoring, for the moment, that some modified Chinese characters actually have become magical runes (specifically the Koto-Kanji, part of the Kanji system that was adopted by the Japanese from Chinese characters), since these have not technically been a part of the same script for centuries.
2. The secondary component that is missing is that Chinese characters are still only viewed as logograms, and have not been pushed over the edge to represent an entire set of related concepts or ideas. It’s possible for a logogram to become a rune, but much less likely.

Original lesson written by Professor Venita Wessex
Image credits here, here, here, and here