Stark Ravings – 8 D & D Schools of Magic for Bling & Booty (7) Necromancy

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A lich – arguably the peak of necromancy – as represented in the profile image from the D&D Beyond online resource (fair use)

 

 

(7) NECROMANCY

 

Come to the dark side of the Force or the Slytherin school of magic. Technically, necromancy is divination by talking to the dead or their spirits (hence the name). However, necromancy has accrued wider meanings of dealing with the dead or death – typically animating the dead and creating or controlling undead. Funnily enough, in the game of Dungeons & Dragons, it is generally observed that because of the mechanics of play, clerics or priests make better necromancers than wizards, which would certainly make for far more interesting church services.

Necromancy also tends to involve magic to do with souls or spirits (as in taking or trapping them) and ‘negative’ energy – blight, curse, fear, hex, paralysis, poison and just outright draining life energy like siphoning gas. So it may not be particularly versatile but it does tend to be powerful, and of course, evil – as in EEEVIL (although arguably it could be neutral, like death itself, or even a weird form of good – but where’s the fun in that?). Sauron wasn’t just the Necromancer in The Hobbit for kicks.

A supreme necromancer is a walking ground zero of zombie apocalypse or god of death – and could sit sipping cocktails in hell because the demons think he or she is cool. And old necromancers don’t retire, they become undead themselves – vampires are the popular choice, although the true necromancy geek goes lich.

 

BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL

 

Let’s face it – if you go with necromancy, you’re looking at a career in fantasy supervillainy or at least doctorate of fantasy evil, and chances are you’re in it for love of evil lulz rather than money. So while there may be other more imaginative ways of making money from necromancy, the most easy or obvious is as the fantasy equivalent of Blofeld in SPECTRE (bonus points if that involves actual spectres), stroking your mummified cat. And again, there may be more subtle nuances of necromantic villainy, you just can’t beat the fantasy classic of threatening to unleash your zombie apocalypse unless the kingdom pays you one million gold pieces – or you know, actually unleashing your zombie apocalypse as you carve out your unholy roaming empire.

Sadly however, necromancy is not the school for building your own Playboy Mansion, with the exception of the s€xier ghosts or vampires – although at least your undead minions will always be, ah, thin?

 

Top Tens – Poetry & Literature: Top 10 Poetry (Special Mention) (9) Algernon Charles Swinburne

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Portrait of Swinburne in watercolor and chalk by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1861 (public domain image used as feature image in the Wikipedia article for Swinburne)

 

 

(9) ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1837-1909)

 

“What ailed us, O gods, to desert you,

For creeds that refuse and restrain?

Come down and redeem us from virtue,

Our Lady of Pain”

 

A deliciously decadent and pagan poet, as well as one that was distinctly kinky – that Lady of Pain wasn’t just some turn of the phrase but a glimpse into the sadomasochistic dungeon in the basement of his mind.

He was best known for his debut poetry collection Poems and Ballads, which was something of his personal pagan manifesto and featured the poem Dolores that I quoted at the outset.

“The poem demonstrates most of the controversial themes for which Swinburne became notorious. It conflates the cruel yet libidinous pagan goddess figure of Dolores, the Lady of Pain with Mary, Mother of Jesus and associates the poem itself, through its parenthetical titular text (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs, i.e., “Our Lady of Seven Sorrows” with the Seven Dolours of the Virgin.”

Camille Paglia observed how much the poem resembles prayer, particularly in rhythm and recurring phrases – presumably amidst sacraments of flagellation and spanking. I’d go to that church!

That pretty much sums up Swinburne. As for which Swinburne poem to select for this entry, there’s so many from which to choose. I’ll go with Dolores – Our Lady of Pain – but it was a close call with the temptation of Faustine, which resembles Dolores in prayer-like quality.

 

“What coiled obscene

Small serpents with soft-stretching throats

Caressed Faustine?”

 

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Stark Ravings – 8 D&D Schools of Magic for Bling & Booty (6) Illusion

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Fraser spiral illusion (public domain image in Wikipedia article of that name)

 

 

(6) ILLUSION

 

Use your illusion – the school of magic for special effects or fantasy generated imagery. Quite simply, illusion is all about the magical control or manipulation of perception or sensation, so as to hopelessly blur the line between image and reality. And that’s just for starters – with illusion, you can effectively trap your subjects in their own head, like a drug trip or the Matrix or scientists juicing up rats through the pleasure centers of their brains.

In other words, illusion can be virtually as effective for mind control as enchantment, given the fine line between our perceptions or sensations and our emotions, thoughts or memories. You can use it to assume the appearance of a close friend, family member or lover. The supreme illusionist could sit sipping cocktails in Hell, served up by deluded demons thinking they’re serving their infernal master – or just look like they’re doing it.

Sadly, this is why illusion tends to be nerfed like enchantment in fantasy games or stories, although it is somewhat less game or story-breaking and has more potential for plot devices (as well as clichéd it-was-all-a-dream sequences). So once again, there is an abundance of protective abjuration against it (screw you, true seeing!) and anything powerful tends to be immune or resistant to it. And given that illusion is all style over substance, you’re more screwed than the Wizard of Oz if they start looking behind the curtain.

Of course, all magic in our world is ultimately only illusion – sleight of hand or smoke and mirrors. Or if we’re going to get philosophical, all our perception of reality is illusion, as in the Hindu concept of maya. (Sometimes I think my whole life has been an illusion but then I’m pretty sure my life is real because no one would make an illusion this pointless and boring.) On the other hand, the fantasy school of illusion is really just enchantment – or vice versa. Is there any real distinction between controlling perceptions or sensations and controlling emotions or thoughts, given how they each influence the other? For example, is there any real difference between turning invisible by illusion – or enchanting people that they don’t see you?

 

BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL

 

If illusion is opened up to its full potential or let loose in our world with nothing to resist it, then you could effectively use it to enchant your way to fame and fortune – especially in a world where life is essentially a beauty contest anyway. At very least, you could have a wild ride as a con artist – using ticket stubs or toilet paper as money or winning lottery tickets. Alternatively, you could use your illusion as a solid high-earning fantasy profession or business, particularly if you could mass-produce it – the fantasy equivalent of advertising (“Your ad on every dragon’s ass”), cosmetics and cosmetic surgery, entertainment or anything involving appearance or imagery. Personally, I’d use my illusion for the fantasy equivalent of internet p0rn. (“She was an innocent young paladin, pursuing her quest in the Hot Tub of Doom…”). As for your Playboy Mansion, you are the ultimate photoshopper, so you can give yourself or your housemates any appearance you or they choose…

 

Top Tens – Poetry & Literature: Top 10 Poetry (Special Mention) (8) Walt Whitman

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He even looked like Uncle Sam. Photograph of Walt Whitman by George C. Cox in 1887 in New York – public domain image

 

 

(8) WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

 

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”

Who hasn’t wanted to sound a barbaric yawp at one time or another?

Also the poet everyone knows from Dead Poet’s Society, since he wrote the poem being quoted and indeed titled as “O Captain! My Captain!”

By the way, that poem was written for the death of President Lincoln in 1865. It was also not the only Whitman reference in the film or the book on which it was based – both were obviously influenced by Whitman fandom, but then so is much of American poetry and literary culture, which brings me to my next point.

With the possible exception of another special mention, Walt Whitman is the American poet. The Great American Poet as it were, in the same vein as those books touted as the Great American Novel. Although I don’t know why there’s debate on the contenders for the Great American Novel when it’s obviously Catch-22. Search your feelings – you know it to be true.

Yes – I hear your query. Wait a minute Stark After Dark – don’t you rank American poets over than Whitman in your top ten, including e.e. cummings in your top spot? Not to mention William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, and Ishmael Reed in eighth, ninth, and tenth place respectively. For that matter, you can claim T.S. Eliot as American poet, since he was born and raised in the United States, only moving to England at the age of 25 (in 1914). And there’s a few more American poets in special mentions to come.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes”

And yes – while I’m tempted to argue for e.e.cummings as the American poet or the Great American Poet, I have to admit that Whitman is more lyrical, and more fundamentally, embodies the United States in so much of his verse.

What better image of the United States than a nation sounding its barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world?

As per art historian Mary Berenson – “You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman”.

And Ezra Pound was even more blunt, calling Whitman “America’s poet… He is America.”

As for which Whitman poem to select for this entry, one is spoilt for choice. There’s the collection of poetry for which he is famed – Leaves of Grass. (To quote Homer Simpson when he finds out the grave that he thought was his mother’s was instead that of Walt Whitman – “leaves of grass, my ass!”.

There’s the most famous poem from that collection – Song of Myself, from which both that barbaric yawp and containing multitudes quotes come from – and so many others, including of course O Captain My Captain. However, I have to go with When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, another elegy written for the death of Lincoln.

 

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Stark Ravings – 8 D & D Schools of Magic for Bling & Booty (5) Evocation

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One of the most famous D & D gaming memes and the motto of the evocation school – Glasstaff I Cast Fireball D & D sticker promotional profile image for sale on Amazon

 

 

(5) EVOCATION

 

And so we come to the Michael Bay school of magic – all explosive action, but lacking in depth or versatility. Evocation is the conjuration of energy – fireballs, lightning bolts, cold blasts and various other manifestations of energy or force – so something like the misnamed enchanter Tim firing off random blasts from his staff in Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

While it would be tempting in a fantasy world of hostile monsters and magic to be able to blast fireballs from your fingertips like six-shooters, evocation is actually one of the weaker schools of magic and the first one to skip in the game of Dungeons and Dragons. Even at its full strength, it obviously lacks versatility for anything else that doesn’t involve blasting or blowing things up (although in fairness that would seem to solve most plot problems in The Lord of the Rings) – and in the game of Dungeons and Dragons, it’s severely nerfed by all types of magic resistance so that your hardcore spells fizzle into a tickle or at most a moderate spanking. In theory, however, a supreme evoker should be a walking weapon of mass destruction and could sit sipping cocktails in Hell served up by spell-shocked demons after nuking or freezing it.

Of course, evocation is just the poor man’s conjuration anyway – it’s just conjuration of energy, people! Ignoring that matter is energy (E = mc2? I conjure thee from the elemental plane of uranium…), is there any real distinction between evoking fire for example and conjuring lava or molten metal or plasma or hellfire or elemental fire or so on from the myriad planes of fantasy? The only real distinction is that the game of Dungeons and Dragons split off the conjuration of energy as evocation so that the school of conjuration didn’t become even more ridiculously overpowered…

 

BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL

 

Like abjuration (and unlike conjuration, divination or enchantment), you can’t simply evoke money and are sadly reduced to working with your magic, which kind of defeats the point of magic as wishful thinking or getting something from nothing. Fortunately, again like abjuration, evocation is the solid high-earning fantasy professional option, like the fantasy equivalent of engineers. Although that may be because I only have the vaguest idea of what engineers actually do…

 

Um, they do science to stuff? Public domain engineering logo

 

Actually, evokers are even better placed than abjurers to strike it rich as the entrepreneurs of energy in the fantasy world, particularly if they can replicate their magic in mass produced devices or items – it would be evokers who kick-start the fantasy equivalent of the Industrial Revolution, like magitek or dungeon punk. You know, like mass producing rings of power in The Lord of the Rings (“Precious?! Get over it, Gollum – they’re $39.99 a set at the Shire 7-11…”), instead of the elves hoarding all the magic.

 

One ring to rule the mall!

One ring to rule the mall! (image of the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings)

 

Don’t get me started on the elves – they showed Sauron how to make the ring in the first place, then spend their time prancing about in forests or p!ssing off ‘west’ leaving men to clean up the mess. “I have no faith in men.” Shut up, Elrond – who’s manning your frontline for you, you smug elven pr!ck?.  But I digress.

As for booty, you will just have to rely on your skyrockets in flight for your afternoon delights…

 

 

 

Stark Ravings – 8 D & D Schools of Magic for Bling & Booty (4) Enchantment

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Preview images of two of the hypnotizers on the Hypnotizer app by SergioGF sold on Amazon – and fortuitously depicting two frequent images for hypnotism in popular culture (with the one on the left particularly being used for hypnotic or hypnotized eyes)

 

 

 

(4) ENCHANTMENT

 

There’s no nice way of saying this – enchantment is the school of magic for mindscrewing. It ranges from more benign charms for friendship or infatuation, through various forms of mind control or domination, to metaphorically riding your subjects like rodeo bulls or attaching the fuzzy dice of their testicles (or ovaries) to the rear view mirror of your mind…

 

 

Like so – in this photograph of fuzzy dice doing just that in a 1958 Ambassador photographed by CZmarlin – Wikipedia “Fuzzy Dice” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 

If your school of enchantment extends to memory, then you can up the ante from brainwashing to complete mindwiping, as you replace the previous inconvenient persona or psyche of your subject wholesale with one entirely of your own choosing – family, friend or lover who’ll do anything for you. In theory, this makes enchantment potentially the most powerful school of magic of all, as you could tell the very gods they should let you run the show.  A supreme enchanter could sit sipping cocktails in Hell served up by all the brainwashed demons.

In practice, apart from all the protective abjurations against it (screw you, mind blank!), there is the narrative need for enchantment to be severely nerfed for the sake of game or story, otherwise you’d simply mindscrew your way from one end of fantasy to the other or pilot your dragon like a drone through any dungeon. So this tends to be one of the weaker schools of magic you can skip in Dungeons and Dragons or any other fantasy, because anything powerful enough to be game or story breaking is immune or resistant to it. Otherwise, Gandalf would have just told Sauron to go jump like Gollum.

In a sense, the only real ‘magic’ is enchantment, as humanity finds a bewildering number of ways to enchant itself through religion, politics, money, fame, celebrity, love, sex…just take any cult.

 

BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL

 

Obviously, if enchantment is opened up to its full potential in fantasy – or let loose in our world with no resistance against it – then this would be the ultimate jackpot. Even if others conjured more money and divined more profit or power, you’d simply enchant them into giving it to you – just like you’d simply enchant Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Elon Musk into doing the same in this world. H. L. Mencken quipped that no one went broke or lost an election by underestimating the taste or intelligence of the average person – with enchantment, you’d just go that step further of making their taste and intelligence for them.

As for your own Playboy Mansion, you could let your enchanted fame and fortune work their own powers of enchantment, as indeed they did to fill the actual Playboy Mansion. With enchantment, however, you don’t have to wait. You could equally be able to just enchant it full of the subjects of your choice. Of course, while you’re doing all this, you may want to enchant away your own conscience as you enchant away other people’s minds.

 

Top Tens – Poetry & Literature: Top 10 Poetry (Special Mention) (7) Matthew Arnold

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Hot damn, those are some fine muttonchops! Matthew Arnold by Elliott & Fry 1883, National Portrait Gallery, London

 

 

(7) MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

 

“But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.”

 

A passage I’m fond of quoting from Arnold’s finest and best known poem, Dover Beach, for desperate last stands or holding one defensive line after another – I did it for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire because of course I did. All roads lead to Rome.

Anyway, Matthew Arnold “was an English poet, essayist, and critic from the Victorian era” – “considered one of the great Victorian poets…and one of the Victorian sages”, the latter for his essays on literary criticism and other topics.

Famously melancholic and pessimistic, particularly with respect to the decline of religious faith – that recurring source of angst and despair for Victorian poets or writers. Indeed, that melancholy, long, withdrawing roar retreating in Dover Beach is the tide going out for “the sea of faith” – that “was once, too, at the full and round earth’s shore”.

Arguably the most melancholic Victorian poet – although Alfred Lord Tennyson would give him a run for his money with Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Shortly after his death, Robert Louis Stevenson quipped about his bleak melancholy – “Poor Matt. He’s gone to heaven, no doubt – but he won’t like God”.

 

“Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

 

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Stark Ravings – 8 D & D Schools of Magic for Bling & Booty: (3) Divination

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“Lucky 8 Ball didn’t see that one coming!” – public domain image of Magic 8 Ball

 

 

(3) DIVINATION

 

And so we go from the flashy heights of conjuration to the subtle nuances of divination – this school of magic is essentially all about knowledge. As such, it rivals abjuration as one of the oldest schools of magic in actual history, as our ancestors sought magical means of knowing the unknown, from shamanic vision quests, through augurs and soothsayers, to hopelessly cryptic oracles. And like abjuration, it is the most substantial surviving into the present day, in the form of astrology, psychics and other frauds. (It’s my secret dream to walk in on a psychic, smack them in the head and say “Didn’t see that one coming!” – but I digress…)

There have been (and remains) an almost infinite variety of bewildering and surreal techniques of divination, including animal entrails, bird flights, tea leaves and basically any word ending in mancy – from dreamy oneiromancy (reading dreams or Freudian psychology) to the stuff of nightmares like arachnomancy (reading spiders – or dear God get that thing off me!).

Knowledge is power and divination is the ultimate source of magical knowledge – so much so that it is the one school of magic you can’t skip in Dungeons and Dragons, although you’d be better off blind than go without it anyway. (Indeed – there’s a long tradition of prophets and seers being blind or blindfolded for their ‘second sight’. And Odin, chief of the Nordic gods, plucked out one of his own eyes to drink from the fountain of wisdom, because the Nordic gods were hardcore – my money would be on them in an all-out smack-down brawl between pantheons).

Just knowing the past would be useful, knowing the present (particularly reading people’s minds) even more so and knowing the future would be approaching godlike power, as omniscience is next to omnipotence. A supreme diviner could walk through a pitched battle dodging everything without a scratch because he or she’s seen it all coming – or sit sipping cocktails served by demons in hell because he or she knows all their secret names and s€x tapes.

 

Clearly James Bond relies on divination for his uncanny luck in games of chance and villainous death traps

Clearly James Bond relies on divination for his uncanny luck in games of chance and villainous death traps (image of Daniel Craig as James Bond)

 

BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL

 

Divination rivals conjuration as the jackpot of magic schools, unless your school of conjuration includes time travel. Again, even just knowing the past would be lucrative (not least in all the missing or lost secrets and treasures of the world), knowing the present even more so (not least as the ultimate insider trading) but knowing the future would be your licence to make money.

Even discounting such easy options as casinos, gambling and lotteries (which presumably would be abjured to the hilt in a fantasy world), there’d be the fabulous wealth to be made through markets and other business or political fields. Through divination, you would always be in the right place at the right time and cashing in your compound interest in the present. Basically, divination lets you steal from the future, not only having your cake and eating it but doing both before it’s even baked – like plucking Microsoft from the future mind of Bill Gates, just in time to sue him for copyright as the icing on the cake.

As for booty, apart from your fabulous wealth, you would also always be in the right place at the right time – with the perfect pickup line. Otherwise, you can always hang out with the freaky drugged and fantastically gymnastic oracle groupies from 300.

Top Tens – Poetry & Literature: Top 10 Poetry (Special Mention) (6) Lord Byron

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Portrait of Lord Byron by English painter Thomas Phillips 1813 (public domain image)

 

 

(6) LORD BYRON (1788-1824)

 

Mad, bad and dangerous to know (according to Lady Caroline Lamb, who had an affair with him)

If Blake was a pioneer of the modern literary mythos, Byron was a pioneer of the modern literary hero or anti-hero – also the self-insert character, modelled on himself and thereafter named as the Byronic Hero, charismatic but deeply flawed.

“I awoke one morning and found myself famous”.

The original Byronic hero was the titular character of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – the same epic poem that made that fame and paid for his vices. Although as his longer narrative poems go, I prefer his Don Juan, in which he recast the infamous womanizing Spanish folk legend of Don Juan as more a male ingenue tossed between impulse and circumstance.

Perhaps the best example of a poet who truly lived (and died) their art – the Romantic poet and revolutionary who died fighting for the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence. And by died fighting I mean sadly from the medicine of the day being bled to death from fever rather than, you know, in combat or the more dashing death he might have expected, albeit he still died young.

And yes – he was an actual Lord, “who gave two memorable speeches in the House of Lords”, one for Catholic emancipation.

 

“She walks in beauty like the night”.

While he made his fame from his longer poems, his short lyric poems appeal to me more to represent him here for this entry – and what else but She Walks in Beauty?

 

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Stark Ravings – 8 D & D Schools of Magic for Bling & Booty (2) Conjuration

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The archetypal conjuration of the hat trick – Zan Zig performing with rabbits and roses, magician poster 1899, Wikipedia “Hat trick (magic trick)” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

 

 

(2) CONJURATION

 

Now we’re playing with power – conjuration is such a ridiculously overpowered school of magic in the game of Dungeons and Dragons that you’d be better off cutting off your own hands than skipping it (as you could always conjure new or better hands anyway). It’s not hard to see why – conjuration is like pulling a rabbit out of a hat for real (or putting it back for that matter), if by rabbit you mean potentially any material thing or any being to do your bidding, and if by hat you mean potentially anywhere in space and time. And in fantasy, space and time can mean any fantasy ‘plane’ of existence – all the heavens or hells, spirit worlds, classical elemental planes (earth, air, fire, water) and so on.

Conjuration is one of the archetypal schools of magic in literature. Faust conjured Mephistopheles from hell and Aladdin conjured the genie from the lamp – those beings in turn pretty much conjured up their masters’ every desire or wish. Conjuration would be ridiculously powerful enough even just in our own space and time – imagine wizards plucking dinosaurs out of the past and throwing them at each other (which actually sounds like another interesting premise for magic in fantasy). Throw in other fantasy planes of existence and the multiverse is your oyster – a supreme conjurer could simply conjure up all the demons of hell to serve him or her cocktails…

Of course, ultimately all magic is a form of conjuration, in that you’re pulling something out of your own, or the universe’s, ass.

 

BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL

 

Not surprisingly, this school of magic is a licence to literally print money – in that you can actually conjure money, or something to get it for you. Take gold for example – you could conjure it up from the earth’s crust or anywhere in the universe, the vaults of heaven or hell, the elemental plane of earth or for those familiar with the actual periodic table of elements, the elemental plane of gold. Or you could conjure up beings – earth elementals for example – to find and mine it for you.

Naturally the rules of Dungeons and Dragons try to place limits on their school of conjuration to avoid these shenanigans so, you know, players actually have to go into the eponymous dungeons to loot the eponymous dragons for gold (you know, like burglars and robbers) instead of conjuring it themselves (or something to go into the dungeons for them – or just conjure water to flood the dungeons and then stroll through them at leisure).

However, this is magic after all and the only real limit is your imagination – that and the massive inflation that would result from everyone conjuring their own money. Probably the major problem is that conjuring is kind of a cosmic borrowing, so that when the demons or otherworldly beings come knocking at your door to collect the debt, they’ll make your average knee-capping loan-shark goon look like a birthday strippergram. (Note to self – organize strippergram for birthday).

As for your own Playboy Mansion, you could literally conjure up your own mansion (or something to build it for you) – and then conjure up whatever angels or heavenly nymphs, succubi or incubi and otherworldly babes and hunks your heart desired. Of course, after a certain point, you could just rely on whatever fabulous wealth you’ve already conjured, as actual money has a power of conjuration all of its own…