In Kate’s last journal, she mentioned the special nature of magic in Tolkien’s work. Magic there is inherent to its users. The Maiar and Ainur who are close to Eru, able to do his will in the world, are not users of magic. Like Ursula LeGuin’s dragons, they are magic. And anyone who uses magic, who engages in Art or Making without the consent of Eru, creates only an imitation, a perversion of the real thing. The power of Melkor and Sauron is a stolen art.

LeGuin and the other high fantasist we’re studying (and the topic of discussion for this week), C.S. Lewis, have both also built this underlying moral structure into their worlds’ magic. Leguin reveals in The Other Wind that once upon a time humans—wizards—stole the domain of the dragons to make a land where their souls could be preserved, the Gilgamesh-esque dry land seen in The Farthest Shore. LeGuin also implies that wizards should not be using magic in the first place—revering the powers of the earth only, rather than borrowing the domain of the dragons. (Because men and dragon separated and took on separate realms. Even the raising of the islands seems kind of sketchy, in this light.)

C.S. Lewis similarly states in the Narnia books that only the laws written by the Emperor Over the Sea, only the creative power of Aslan, only his commands are correct. Those who try to use magic, to take on power, without him, are either misguided (the children in The Magician’s Nephew, who through misuse of magic bring evil into a virgin world), malicious (Uncle Andrew), or just plain evil (Jadis).

All three authors construct magic as the fire of the gods, the forbidden fruit (in Ursula LeGuin, the choice of mankind to live on land, to stop being dragons, even comes with the knowledge of good and evil. The dragons, who are magic, don’t comprehend morality, but humans do.)—something that should not be used, that does not rightfully belong to mankind. There is a right way and a wrong way to use it, if you use it at all.You can ask permission or not, essentially.

If magic in fantasy is creativity, or if it is creation, this follows with the idea of inspiration, that an artist’s work is not entirely her own, that she owes thanks to muses, or to some higher creative power, to a god. (See the incident of Aule and the first dwarves.) Magic-as-forbidden-knowledge also seems to be fantasy literature’s reflection of the historical European reception of magical lore. Untrustworthy at best, grounds for a witch hunt at worst.