The origins of blood magic have at least two potential sources with no way to confirm which one it actually originated from. Some sources say it came from demons - the forbidden ones, specifically - and others say the Old God, Dumat, taught it to the early Tevinter magisters. There's no way to confirm which source it comes from.tiernanls wrote...
i dont buy the whole "most learn it from a book" argument to debunk that blood magic does not come from demons. it is however rather obvious to me that a demon is not required to learn blood magic. still though, whos not to say the first mage that learned blood magic from a demon didnt just simply write down what he/she learned and mass produced it? sort of like a blood magic bible. taking a hard line stance either way about its origins requires a great deal of assumption and belief in heresay one way or the other.
This sounds like a correlation = causation argument. First off, blood magic is used in summoning demons, so anytime a mage intentionally summons a demon, there certainly appears to be blood magic involved. That means that just because demons start popping up around blood mages doesn't mean that the blood magic inherently attracts demons if it's not being used for that purpose.tiernanls wrote...
however that doesnt make a case for blood magic being inherently evil. what does make a case for it being inherently evil is what is attracted to blood magic. now there are spirits in the fade like justice, who in and of themselves are not evil, and there are the demons, who are inherently evil. while anders is himself a kind of abomination (as was wynn technically), his own spirit possesion did not lead him to condoning blood magic. in fact justice was just as hard set against blood magic as he was the templars. however while not every mage learns blood magic from a demon (tho a great deal do including merrill admittedly), everywhere there is a blood mage a demon follows. they are attracted to it. and all mages are suseptable to the possesion of a demon and not always is it voluntary. even the jowan argument falls to this. while jowan did not learn from a demon, it can be easily argued that the demon that took eamons boy was attracted there by the presence of a blood mage practicing magic. the evidence doesnt lie. everywhere you go in the game that you encounter a blood mage, the demon is not far behind. even in merrill's case.
As for the demon in Connor, if you speak to Connor during one conversation path he admits he found some of Jowan's books and studied them in order to try to help his father. Jowan was irresponsible with leaving such books where Connor could gain access to them, true, but it doesn't make his magic directly responsible.
There's also the assertion that demons are inherently evil. This seems to be accepted by many, but even it is a point of debate. The spirits that are referred to as 'demons' are perhaps far more predisposed toward being evil because the focuses of their beings lean more toward things considered evil, but it does not mean they are universally or inherently evil. The Grand Oak makes a good example of one who doesn't seem to have been evil, settled down and accepted what he became. There's also nothing inherent about rage, hunger, sloth, desire, or pride that is evil - every living, thinking being has each of those feelings and there's nothing wrong with them. As we see with Anders, something like justice can just as easily be twisted as well - justice, when lacking mercy, is a terrible thing to behold, after all. Mercy alone is equally dangerous, for instance, and so on. The problem with spirits in general is that they focus so completely on the one thing they can easily twist to negative expressions of their single facet.
This is an argument based purely out of hyperbole and superstition. Here's an argument that is identical to yours, essentially: "All animal life MUST consume life to exist, and THAT makes it evil." Does that make sense? Animals must consume other living things to eat - plants are able to draw their energy from light and other non-living sources, but animals are incapable of doing so, they must always eat either plants or other animals to sustain themselves, so they must consume life. If blood magic is inherently evil because it consumes life, then so is every living animal.tiernanls wrote...
but to me the most telling evidence that blood magic is inherently evil is what it requires to use it. true, it doesnt require blood from anyone other than yourself should you shoose to be selective in your source. but blood is still life. blood is the driving force of all walking talking intelligent life. every living advanced organism requires it to live. a body can still be alive without brain function so long as the blood keeps flowing through the body. the heart is the most important vital organ because of its function. to pump living blood through your body and your brain constantly. so blood in a manner of speaking, is life. you cannot be alive without. so whether its yours or someone elses blood magic MUST consume life to be practiced, and its THAT that makes it evil.
While I agree that Anders is unjustified for other reasons, this is not one of them. Did he make it worse? Maybe. But that still helps, in that only once the situation is bad enough will the mages revolt and refuse to accept it any longer. So there are times when making something worse can make it better in the long run, and it is justified - if that's part of a long term well-considered plan, which Anders did not seem to have, making him personally unjustified, but another person doing exactly the same thing with a plan to back them up perfectly justified.tiernanls wrote...
than the argument of its use comes down to the question in the original post. is any act be it evil or not, justified in order to meet an end. some would say that yes, it is depending on the end. and yes its true, that in extreme cases of oppresion sometimes a violent conflict is the only means to reach that end. but back to my earlier post on the topic i would reiterate that the second you are willing to sacrifice innocent life you lose the moral high ground. there is no justification for it. its terrorism. plain and simple. you have become in many ways worse than that you were fighting against. you want to place blame on elthina, then fine. i dont agree but i can understand the argument. but what about the mother sitting in pew 3 praying for the health of a sick child or the other innocents just around the immediate vacinity of the chantry? how is their death justified? sure elthina was the target, but what anders did was anything but a simple and sweet assasination. he took innocent life. he made more enemies. no matter how oppressed anyone feels mages were he made it WORSE. you cannot argue that. there is no justification.
Meredith was justified in clamping down, but not in the manner in which she did. She was never justified for using the rite of tranquility on harrowed mages (if you have proof that there's a blood mage the legal thing to do would have been to execute them) nor on allowing her subordinates to mistreat the mages with rape and whatever other abuses are stated or implied. Furthermore, she was committing all these crimes well before the idol, so there is no indication in the game that tells us which came first - rampant blood magic and other rule-breaking in the Circle, or Meredith's clamping down. She may have instigated the entire thing herself by squeezing completely innocent mages as soon as she got into the position of Knight-Commander, before they were doing anything at all. Or she may have been completely justified in implementing stricter policies, we may never know.tiernanls wrote...
that being said i think you can argue some justification for blood magic individually, just as the wardens justify it. if your willing to take your own life to stop an enemy, or if you have willing comrades that tell you you can take theirs to stop a horrible enemy than yeah. i can see it being justified in certain VERY particular circumstances. but that doesnt make it less evil. just like having a good reason to go to war doesnt make taking life a good thing. it just means the particpants were that desperate in their struggle. which is not the description i would use to describe 99.9% of the blood mage population in kirkwall. they were practicing well before the time of desperation. meredith may have gone mad once she got the idol, but before that, in act one she was definetly justified for clamping down in the manner in which she did. and what orsino ultimately turned out to be made her that much more right.
at the end of the day i think its much easier to argue that meredith was justified than it is to argue that anders was. but thats just me.
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