ASTR-201 Lessons

2.5: Magical Beings and the Moon

Good evening, everyone, and welcome back to Astronomy! I have heard many positive things about last week’s lesson on magical creatures, and I hope that it has helped you to think about the ways that Astronomy can affect other disciplines such as Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology.

Today’s lecture will be very busy, but we should be able to complete everything during our class period if we stay focused. Our goal today is to touch on various magical beings whose lives are influenced by the Moon, as a counterpoint to last week’s lesson. Before I get into any more detail, I should be clear that we are using the term “beings” loosely here and counting any creature who has been offered the “being” designation, even if they have not technically accepted it. 

But enough definitions. What fascinating magical beings are influenced by the Moon? Well, first we will discuss another cross-subject topic: the relation between Astronomy and Defense Against the Dark Arts – werewolves. Obviously, werewolves have a very strong connection with the Moon, as it affects a large part of their lives, but they are not the only ones! We will also be touching on at least three other beings, depending on how much time we have today! Let’s get underway, shall we?

Werewolves

A werewolf during a full Moon  

Source: here

Werewolves are human beings affected by an illness called lycanthropy, which causes them to transform into a wolflike form during each full Moon.  They transform on two or three successive nights during the month: two if the exact moment of the full Moon is during the day and three if it’s during the night.  While in wolflike form, werewolves lose their normal thought processes and are unable to tell friend from enemy; they will attack and try to bite any human they see.  The only way for them to keep their rationality is to take Wolfsbane Potion every day for a week before and during the full Moon. Note that while the potion allows them to keep their human senses, they still experience the physical transformation. Because of this painful transformation, and its effect on the mind, many lycanthropes experience discrimination or a lack of trust from the rest of the wizarding community. While this is not necessarily fair, people do have some reasons to be concerned.

Lycanthropy is highly contagious – whenever werewolf saliva (from a werewolf in wolf form) comes into contact with someone’s blood, the being affected will contract the disease, no ifs, ands, or buts. However, saliva-to-blood contact is the only way in which the disease can be contracted.  Sitting next to a friend with lycanthropy when she or he is in human form, for example, will not cause the spread of the affliction and neither will kissing that friend. Technically, not even a bite from a lycanthrope in human form will do anything other than potentially skew your appetite towards rare steaks. So, while lycanthropy is quite contagious, it is only contagious in very specific circumstances.

So why and how exactly does the Moon cause this transformation, you might be wondering? Well, it’s important to note that while the disease is only communicable during certain days of the month, a lycanthrope is a lycanthrope every day of the month. Even on days where they do not experience physical changes, their body is always at war with this magical disease. The full Moon, as you know, causes increased magic to be reflected onto the Earth. This, in turn, affects the disease agents that cause lycanthropy by increasing their magical power. Therefore, these magical agents are powerful enough to counter the body’s desire to remain human, transforming the mind and body of the human into a wolflike form. 

Research on lycanthropy is still ongoing. There are many questions that still need to be answered. What exactly are these “disease agents”? How exactly do they act on the werewolf’s cells?  And, most importantly, how can we cure the condition?  Both lycanthropy research and political activism are excellent examples of fast-growing Astronomy-adjacent careers in the wizarding world.

Marina Dmitrievna Gagarina, former Astronomy professor

Source: here

In good news, though, some progress has been made recently in the study of werewolves’ affliction. I was lucky enough to have a chance to discuss some of the most recent findings with Marina Dmitrievna Gagarina herself, a recent rising star in the field of astronomical research and a former Astronomy professor here at Hogwarts.  To condense her absolutely fascinating findings down to their base concept, essentially, some things can interfere with a werewolf’s transformation, even when the Moon is full. Let me explain.

We are aware that the Moon can still be full during the day, of course? I assume you’ve seen the moon in the sky in the morning or in the very late afternoon. But why, then, do not all werewolves transform at seven in the evening? We know cloud cover does not protect them, nor would even the thick stone walls at Hogwarts. This is because the Moon’s reflected magic can pass undiminished through clouds and through the walls of a building.  However, the magic is diminished when it's just before sunrise or just after sunset.  How?  Well, the atmosphere scatters sunlight, which is why the sky isn’t totally dark from sunset to sunrise.  As a result, the Sun’s magic can still interfere with the Moon’s. You may recall that two bodies interfere with each other destructively if they appear more than 90 degrees apart in the sky. Well, the Sun and the full Moon are nearly 180 degrees apart, which makes for the greatest destructive interference possible.   Even a slight amount of destructive interference is enough to prevent the full Moon’s magic from transforming werewolves. After all, the magic reflected from a Moon that’s only two days away from full is only slightly less powerful than that reflected from the actual full Moon, but it’s still enough of a difference not to trigger a werewolf’s transformation.  It takes about an hour or more - more in the summer than in the winter and more far from the equator than close to it - for the Sun to sink far enough below the horizon to allow enough magic reflected by the full Moon through. This discovery, while slightly difficult to conceptualise, is key in understanding how to one day potentially block the negative effects of the full Moon for lycanthropes.

On a similar topic, another thing that diminishes the full Moon’s reflected magic is a lunar eclipse, but that makes werewolves more rather than less dangerous, as the following story will illustrate.  

Once upon a time, before the invention of Wolfsbane Potion, a boy named Pierre, who lived and studied at Beauxbatons, was attacked by a werewolf.  Through a combination of magical and physical combat, he managed to beat it off, but not before he had been bitten once.  He attended to his wound, and the next morning he told the headmaster what had happened and begged to be allowed to continue attending classes. The headmaster arranged for a small building to be built for him in a nearby forest and told him to enter it before each full Moon and to lock the door magically from the inside.  While in wolflike form, he would be unable to unlock it, so he’d have to stay inside until he had transformed back into a human.  One violation would result in his immediate expulsion.  Pierre thanked the headmaster and vowed to obey his instructions, which he did.  He told nobody else about his lycanthropy, but he asked his girlfriend Marie, the best Astronomy student in his year, to take notes for him on those evenings when he was absent from class.  She did so every time he was absent except once, when she too was sick. However, she did make sure to speak to the professor to learn that the lesson they missed was on eclipses, and advised Pierre to review the chapter in their textbook that covered the topic. He did indeed begin to review the chapter, but being a less than studious student, failed to finish it, missing a bright red box of information at the end that looked to be important. Alas, the information in that box could have spared them both the tragic fate that befell them.

One full Moon in early June, while he was in his designated building, Pierre was surprised to find that he didn’t transform.  Cautiously, he unlocked the door and returned to the clearing surrounding the school.  There he saw a large number of students looking up at the sky, some of them through Muggle telescopes.  Marie had set up her five-inch refractor, and all the students were taking turns looking through it.  Pierre looked up to see what was so interesting that students were prepared to sacrifice sleep to stare at it, and he saw a blood-red Moon.  "Interesting! Exposure to a lunar eclipse must cure lycanthropy! This must have been what the rest of that eclipse chapter was on." Pierre thought. Thinking that he was no longer a werewolf, he concluded that he could stop self-isolating during every full Moon without having to fear being expelled. Ecstatically, he joined the other students lining up to look through Marie’s telescope.  Soon a small but growing part of the Moon returned to its original colour.  One by one the students returned to their dormitories to get some sleep - all but Marie, who had turned her telescope towards other celestial bodies, and Pierre, who had turned his gaze to Marie.  She was so absorbed in watching Io’s shadow creep across Jupiter that she didn’t notice the change in his appearance.  Suffice it to say that once the Moon set, expulsion was the least of his concerns… Yes, I know. It’s quite a chilling ending that could have been easily avoided, which is one of the reasons why I’m sharing with you information about magical astronomy that has real world importance.

Centaurs

Centaur

Source: here

I know that was a lot to cover, but I hope you still have some attention span left for the rest of the beings we’ve yet to discuss. The famous (or infamous) werewolves are not the only beings bound to the ever-changing wheel of moon phases. Many magical creatures are affected by its constant phasing, the next most obvious of which are our neighbours in the forest, the centaurs!

As you hopefully know based on our visit from Firenze, centaurs are highly in tune with the many celestial bodies, and the Moon is no exception.  In particular, they are exquisitely sensitive to how much magic is reflected by each of these celestial bodies at any given time, which enables them to make predictions about earthly events.  When Dr. Mansour’s development of the A.M.E. became known to the wizarding community, some members of that community quite naturally wanted to be able to know the A.M.E. of one or more celestial bodies so that they could plan their activities accordingly.  Most of them did not have the necessary mathematical skill to calculate it from the formula, but some of them knew that centaurs could estimate it intuitively, so they would venture into the centaurs’ territory to ask for information.  Most of the time they were ignored or told to leave the territory, but one young witch had the good fortune of meeting a human-friendly centaur who enjoyed showing off.  Aside from answering her questions, he explained to her the effect of an eclipse on lunar magic.  She too liked to show off, so she shared this information with her astronomy professor.  He realised that this was new information that ought to be shared, so he taught it to all his students, and it quickly spread to other members of the wizarding community, in particular other astronomy professors, who immediately inserted it into their courses, including this one.

Giants

Giant carrying deer

Source: here

While giants are – by and large – unable to control magic, they do have extraordinary magical properties, such as their strength and magical resistance. As your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher could tell you, many creatures (and beings) have resistance to magic, such as dragons, trolls, and especially giants. Felling a full-grown giant with, say, a Stunning Spell would require quite a large team of wizards casting in unison. This brings us to an interesting effect that the Moon has on giants.

While of course I do not recommend you go around casting spells willy-nilly at giants, there are particular times where it has been noted that giants’ natural protection is at its lowest. As you’ll recall from Lesson Two of this year, I noted that the new Moon (owing to the fact that it reflects none of the Sun’s magic back to us) is a time when magic is the most diminished. So too are giants’ natural magical properties! Of course, this is only a minor advantage, since our spells would be similarly un-amplified, but it’s interesting information nonetheless. In fact, a few key battles during the giant wars were won close to or during a new Moon, meaning our celestial neighbour has had quite the influence on them over the years.

Goblins

Goblin

Source: here

Goblins, as you may have gathered, are not often terribly friendly with humans, owing to some disagreements in the past, so they are not particularly open about their traditions. However, we know that goblins have some amount of reverence for the Moon. While they have not shared this information with us, we can glean this through a few different methods. First of all, it was very common practice in centuries past for goblin-run businesses to close during the new Moon, be they blacksmiths or banks. This indicates that the new Moon was not necessarily inconvenient for their particular business, but instead something that all goblins observed. In more modern times, as newer generations of goblins have taken over ownership of businesses, this practice is less and less common, but still happens far more than among human-run businesses.

Additionally, while we understand even less about their metalworking secrets than we do about their society as a whole, goblins do seem to incorporate the phases of the Moon into their blacksmithing and silversmithing practices.  Not only do they incorporate moonstones, but there is some evidence to suggest that the magic of the Moon is somehow harnessed in the metalworking process in order to amplify the overall quality of the pieces, or even imbue them with incredibly complex enchantments.

Concluding Remarks

Phew, that was quite the barrage of beings! Thank you again for your time.  There will be the usual ten-question quiz as well as a 20-question midterm exam on the material in Lessons One to Five.  Good luck, everyone!  There is also an optional essay in which you will argue for or against a law prohibiting all wizarding institutions from discriminating against werewolves.

The original lesson was written by Professor Turing.

Part of this lesson was written by Professor Plumb.