I want to thank the two esteemed owners of the trendiest occult magazine for having allowed me to write articles for their establishment. This article was my last one. I was initially writing it for my blog, but then I thought more people may be interested of what it proposes. It was admitted.
The theory I'm proposing refers to spells failure in relation to a certain kind of individuals. Details supporting the theory are discussed within, alongside case study examples. Nevertheless, what I had to say will only remain a good, meh, or bad read if not subjected to further testing.
My take on this is that in order to directly effect another person, your level of magical strength has to be a certain amount higher than theirs. Some people are born with very high magical strength and are just hard to influence, whether they practice or not. It seems to me that this is the explanation - nothing more complex or involved is required.
ReplyDeletePractice increases strength. If you work for a sustained period of time you may become strong enough to overcome someone born with higher strength than you. But just like with athletic ability, some natural athletes are good enough that no amount of practice will allow you to catch up. I could have trained for decades from the time I was a teenager and still could probably never run a 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. But many elite athletes can do just that.
It's really not a problem, though. When you encounter somebody like that, the workaround is to build an intelligent artificial spirit (servitor, magical child, etc. depending on your terminology and system) that leaves them alone and affects everyone and everything around them. You can even make it smart enough to go away or hide when the person is doing a banishing, or getting an exorcism, or whatever. Afterwards it just comes back. This works because even if your target is too strong to influence directly, people around them are far less likely to have that level of talent and thus resistance.