Chapter 28: Interlude II

TRANSFIGURATION TODAY

Summer Issue (4 July 1993)

Page 7

On the use of Transfiguration to create Secrets, and the Revelation thereof

Miss Victoria Potter (Ap.) & Prof. Minerva McGonagall (Ms.)

A new phenomenon has been observed which potentially rewrites a large portion of secret theory. This phenomenon involves the use of transfigurative magic to supply the Opening Charm with a secret to be revealed. In doing so, it challenges the assumption that secrets constitute a natural kind incapable of magical genesis. The possibility of manufactured secrets also presents a number of further questions to be investigated, both practical and of scholarly interest.

First, the key features of the Opening Charm will be considered. A brief background to the theory of manufactured secrets will then be provided, before the novel magic is described in detail. This will be subjected to analysis with reference to the established body of scholarship. Finally, proposals will be made as regards further avenues of investigation.

The Mechanism of the Opening Charm

The mechanism of the Opening Charm is considered largely settled theory. Unlike the archaic Open Sesame Charm, which simply created a banishing locomotion upon a blocked opening (Chatty, 1993), the Opening Charm has its roots in the Unlocking Charm, developed in 1676 by the notorious Klepp Tomaniak. The Unlocking Charm marked a firm departure from the locomotion-based approaches which were previously dominant and instead called upon powers more commonly associated with revelation charms. In doing so, the Unlocking Charm laid the foundations for what would become the modern Opening Charm.

In common with all revelatory spells, the cornerstone to that foundation is the power of epiphany, which power is often found in physical objects such as the bath tub (Archimedes, 250 BC) or, in eastern tradition, the bodhi tree (Ananda, 445 BC). Just as the telos of an acorn is to grow into an oak tree (Aristotle, 340 BC), epiphany is the Opening Charm's telos. The seed of epiphany is contained within the charm, and, if well-planted, it will give rise to its purpose, blossoming within the human soul, which is the "orchard of epiphany" (Boot, 1843).

Linked to epiphany is the mystical object of the secret. Where epiphany is a tree, the secret is the soil in which it grows. Secrets are well known to reside in human souls, but have also been found inside closed boxes, whispers, and the sound of running water (ibidem). The secret is the mother of epiphany, since the act of discovery first requires a thing to be discovered. Yet just as a mother is insufficient, on her own, to give rise to progeny, so too is a male catalyst required for a secret to give rise to an epiphany (Lovegood, 1847).

The Opening Charm, containing the seed of epiphany, acts as that male catalyst. It is the key in the lock (ibidem), the hand lifting the wedding veil (Lovegood, 1852), or, more controversially, the wedding night itself (Evans, 1979). It has an inquisitive nature which is not wholly benign, possessing a certain violent aspect typified by the tearing of the veil in an over-eagerness to reveal the bride beneath.

It is this tendency towards the breaching of boundaries which gives the Opening Charm its particular utility in the opening of doors, locks, and all manner of protected objects, including those guarded by passwords (Chatty, 1993). It is not a charm of general revelation, but rather takes a very specific class of secret as its object: those which reside behind some form of frontier or border.

Although obscure, the use of the Opening Charm to create a tunnel through space is not new. In 1882, Venusia Crickerley documented the use of a powerful Opening Charm to create a tunnel from the British Museum to Thebes using the Door of Khonsuhotep, high priest of Amun (Crickerley, 1882). However, this example concerns the revelation of a pre-existing, naturally arising secret, limiting this application of the charm to situations where there is an established connection between two locations. It is quite another matter to force a connection between two locations with no pre-existing association. In order to explain that phenomenon, it will be necessary to look to the theory of manufactured secrets.

Manufactured Secrets

The manufacture of a secret was first proposed by Fabian Fabulist in his 1910 work 'On Making Things Up'. The theory was initially dismissed (Archambeau, 1910) on the basis that unknown secrets are considered to be one of the subsidiary exceptions to Gamp's Law: for example, a creditor cannot transfigure a parchment containing a list of their debtor's assets (Tuft, 1993).

This dismissal may have been somewhat premature. It is without question that one may only conjure secrets already known to the caster, such as a statement of the contents of the caster's Gringotts vault (ibidem), but this is nothing to the point as regards manufactured secrets. In the Gringotts example, the secret being conjured already exists and is properly possessed by the caster; the caster is simply relocating it to the parchment in front of them. A true manufactured secret, on the other hand, is not a relocated secret but rather the magical genesis of an entirely new secret.

Manufactured secrets have found some renewed interest in modern scholarship. Most notably, Feinberg demonstrated that the Doubling Charm could be used to duplicate an unknown secret through an experiment involving two closed Pandoras (Feinberg, 1927). Importantly, this experiment results in two separate secrets whose existence diverges, not merely a single secret held in two distinct locations. This is demonstrated by the fact that opening one Pandora in public view does not result in the secret vanishing from the other; if the experiment only created two instances of the same secret, then the opposite would be bound to occur (as by definition once a secret has become public, it is no longer a secret at all).

However, while widely held to be a seminal work of secret theory, Feinberg considered this case to be sui generis, arising out of the unique properties of the Doubling Charm. The scholarly community was therefore unanimous in its view that Feinberg's experiment was fascinating but ultimately constituted an isolated exception, not the statement of a new rule. This position may now need to be reconsidered.

The creation of a Secret with Transfiguration

A manufactured secret has now been observed in a setting of far more general application. The procedure was simple. Firstly, a combination of Transubstantiation and Shaping Spells were used to create a door in the boundary substrate of the extended space. The door was realised to a high degree of detail and embellishment, including all functional features usually encountered in doors. Secondly, the Opening Charm was applied to the door. The result was a portal which passed out of the extended space and into the real world.

From the above description of the Opening Charm it should be clear that this approach would only succeed if certain propositions were true. Firstly, the opening of the door must have achieved the Opening Charm's telos, namely epiphany. Secondly, this in turn requires that the ingredients of epiphany were present. A priori, since the charm succeeded, a secret must have existed behind the door. And yet, prior to the door's creation, there was only bare rock with no natural connection to the outside world.

It follows that the transfiguration of the door must have manufactured a secret of sufficient reality that it constituted a valid object for the Opening Charm. This has profound implications for our understanding of secrets, the origin of which remains a subject of substantial debate.

Secrets are generally considered to constitute a natural kind, an order unto itself not unlike love, loyalty, or will. While these mystical objects undoubtedly have magical properties, and can be powerful sources of magical power in the hands of a wizard, they arise not through the exercise of magic but rather emergent to the human spirit (Boot, 1843). One cannot create love with magic, nor can true loyalty be forced by any spell, nor can magic bolster a weak will. It has long been assumed that secrets are similar in nature: magic may move them, alter them, or hide them, but it cannot create one ab initio. If that were possible, then enforcing the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy would be a substantially easier task: the ministries of the world could simply render the existence of magic a secret directly.

The use of magic to create a secret, no matter how minor, disturbs this neat categorisation. It would appear that secrets in fact occupy a related but distinct category: those mystical objects which may be created with magic, but whose magical origins must mirror their natural genesis. Beauty is the prime example of such a mystical object: it is undoubtedly possible to produce art with magic, but the artisan must use magic as but a medium to express their craft; it does not subvert the need for skill (Carver, 1565). Similarly, the manufacture of a secret requires one to go to the effort of using magic to create mystery; one cannot conjure a secret directly as one might a chair.

It is thus highly relevant that the observed features of the transfigured door were particularly fine: hinges which worked, a handle worn by the touch of many hands, aged wooden planks, and iron studs (of which one was missing). These features all go to authenticity; no mystically minded person would see such a door without wondering what was behind it. The door frame, too, played its part: a grand archway of stone, it spoke not of a small secret but of one worth discovering, of importance, age, and of solid certainty. Without these features, the Opening Charm would likely have failed, just as a magical portrait will never come to life if it is so poor a likeness that it would be ashamed to live (ibidem).

The phenomenon also serves as a reminder of the fundamental nature of transfigurative magic, so often misunderstood. There are some who consider the art of transfiguration to be in some sense unmagical, given that it is concerned with physical rather than magical change. This is fundamentally misguided; the fact that transfiguration is capable of manufacturing a secret is an object lesson in the powerful magic at play in physical change. As the Dumbledore Consensus holds, there is only one substance, and that substance is magic. It should therefore be no surprise that profound magical genesis is possible through the magic of transfiguration.

Further Investigations

Further study shall be necessary to fully explore this phenomenon, in respect of which many questions remain. Principal among them is how the exit place of such a door is determined, given that there is no pre-existing association in order to naturally link the opening and exit places. It is likely that the features of the door itself play a role, in addition to the intent of the caster and the nature of the space in which the door is located. In particular, the applicability of the procedure outside of extended space is yet to be proven. It is not expected that the presence of extended space plays a substantial role in the mechanism of action, given that Crickerly achieved a similar tunnel in the real world. However, it may be that the presence of extended space makes it easier to associate an opening and exit place: the natural exit place is wherever the door would lead, were the extended space real.

An additional line of enquiry concerns the range of possible locations to which such a door may lead. This has important practical implications for security: if it is possible to create a tunnel to anywhere the caster likes, then Anti-Opening Charms (part of the Notice-Me-Not family) will become even more essential when protecting a location from trespassers. A natural conclusion might be that the possible range of locations will reflect those places reachable with the Parting Charm, a relatively limited list. However, given the dramatic difference in mechanism of action between the Parting and Opening Charms, it is not at all inevitable that this will be the case. Indeed, it would be quite remarkable if the two ranges coincided, as it would suggest some universal element which was present in two distinct spells.

More fundamentally, confirmation will be required that the observed procedure in fact gives rise to a manufactured secret. Although difficult to envisage, a possible alternative explanation might invoke some manner of Confounding effect wherein the door tricks the Opening Charm into identifying a secret when no secret is present. However, this would be a revolutionary theory indeed, for never before has a transfiguration been observed to give rise to a Confounding effect, or indeed any Charm-like effect at all.

Assuming that the Confundus theory is rejected, the existence of manufactured secrets will no doubt inspire a wide range of reconsiderations as regards a number of fundamental propositions of magic. This will not be limited to those spells in which the secret plays a role, but may also extend to renewed examination of other mystical objects which might be similarly miscategorised, perhaps even casting doubt on the First Proposition that magic cannot create love.

References

Ananda (445 BC), 'Bodhi Sutra', Suvaloka Scrolls

Archambeau (1910) 'Letter to the Editor', Challenges in Charming, Summer 1910 Issue

Archimedes (250 BC), 'On Bath Tubs', Archimedes Palimpsest

Aristotle (340 BC), 'Unnatural Philosophy', Library of Alexandria

Boot (1843), 'Secrets of the Soul', Paranormal Press

Carver (1565) 'A Treatise on Transfigurative Beauty', Paranormal Press

Chatty (1993) 'Chatty on Charms, 64th Edition', Obscurus Books

Crickerly (1882) 'Extreme Diplomacy, or How I Got to Egypt', Blott & Sons

Evans (1979), 'Opening Revisited', Challenges in Charming, Winter 1979 Issue

Fabulist, (1910) 'On Making Things Up', Challenges in Charming, Spring 1910 Issue

Feinberg (1927) 'Ueber den centralen Inhalt der geheimen Kinemagie und Mechanick', Journal of the Vienna Institute of Magical Theory, 156th Issue

Lovegood (1847), 'New Developments in Unlocking', Proceedings of the 94th Conference on Challenges in Charming

Lovegood (1852), 'Even More Developments in Unlocking' from Waffling (Ed.) (1870) 'The Evolution of the Opening Charm - A Compendium', Obscurus Books

Tuft (1993) 'Tuft on Transfiguration, 205th Edition', Obscurus Books