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Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 06:50 pm
I've seen many stories where the source of magic is tied to inner purity, ie. Healers have White Magic and thus are Pacifist and Good whereas Mages have Black Magic and Destory stuff and are Evil.

Well, see, that don't much make sense to me completely. It might be too much reading of the Devil's Fairytales (or some such title along those lines) where a painter was brilliant and nice and painted these eeeeeevil pictures. So Hell really really wanted the painter to go to hell so he could work for them; and they set about corrupting him. Well, what do you know? The painter became corrupt and wretched and mean but could only paint these highly religious pictures, so in the end the painter went to Hell and his latter paintings were admired in Heaven.

Along those lines, why aren't there more stories where, to be able to produce Good Magic you become mean-spirited? Like, by creating light, you become not-light to offset the balance? Conversely, by creating dark magic, you become more not-dark?
Thursday, February 9th, 2006 07:57 am (UTC)
eastern culture tends to view world-dichotomy as yin v. yang, where there has to be balance of the two at once

Eh, if you go to Taoism. I think classical Buddhism says that neither good nor evil really exists, but are both illusions created by the senses to deceive us. Confucianism (which isn't really a religion, methinks) definitely believes that good should strive to improve itself, and in doing so, constantly improve the world around itself till everything's good.

I'm actually not sure which has the stronger influence in terms of the common people. The more I learn about the philosophy behind the Asian three, the more I realize that it doesn't really match up with how it's practiced in everyday life by most people.
Sunday, February 12th, 2006 07:09 pm (UTC)
Buddhism's "desire nothing" aspect

Erk. It's funny how even a religion based on moderation can be distorted, isn't it?