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armchairaleck · 9 months

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Dark Magic Dreams

Okay, this will be part one of a series of things I would like to look at regarding the possible purpose of, and various meanings and imagery contained within the dark magic dreams we see in TDP.

Now a lot of what I am going to write about regarding these are ideas that I’ve either heard or read about in relation to Twin Peaks, a fandom I am deeply fascinated by, but honestly way too dumb to write about. As such you will have to accept that I am not an expert on any of the stuff I am going to cover, they are just things that intrigue me and so I will probably extrapolate completely wrongly, but you know, maybe there’s something of interest.

Also please feel free to correct any incorrect assumptions I make, I really don’t feel like I’m a great reader of this sort of stuff anyway, but… I’ll give it a go.

So first an overview of some of the knowns and unknowns (mostly unknowns) about dark magic dreams:

Claudia states to Terry that everyone has one dark magic dream on their path to becoming a mage. Just one, after the first use, and then pretty much you’re good to go. Now I’m going to presume that Viren is the first person who has gone to the somewhat extreme lengths of dying, being resurrected, and then doing dark magic AGAIN to get a second shot at that fever dream. I admire both his commitment to the cause and his err.. foolhardiness here, but that’s Viren I guess.

In the show we see two dark magic dreams. Callum’s first in s2 and Viren’s second in s5 (with a mirror image of his first also imbedded within it, for extra time/space/fate/freedom mind fuckery here I guess).

The dream of time and space... (yeah sorry I will be peppering these captions with lots of Twin Peaks quotes)

Both these dreams seem to contain similar themes –

There is an emphasis on echoes of the past and future - Callum sees a possible corrupted future self that he rejects before he sees a lot of wind/sky imagery that surely points to his unlocking of the sky arcanum (interestingly this segment is also set at sea, a possible foreshadowing of the ocean arcanum to come?)

Viren mostly sees the shadows of his past mistakes - training with Kpp’Ar, himself crowned as the king of Katolis, Harrow on the night of the assassination and healing young Soren, presumably the point where things started to go drastically wrong for him… and then he also sees the future echo of Claudia’s path following his own. Ouch.

The dream of suffering and pain…

There is the image of the double self, Callum sees himself corrupted, Viren sees his younger uncorrupted self in the mirror, while his younger uncorrupted self would have seen a vision of future Viren, looking mighty fine I must say.

Yes, look in the mirror. What do you see?

Is it a dream, or a nightmare?

Both Callum and Viren also meet the spirit/ghost or subconscious projection of people who have been important, influential or close to them. Callum gets Harrow and Sarai and erm... Villads, while Viren sees Kpp’Ar, Harrow, baby Soren and erm… Sir Sparklepuff and Opeli (okay still figuring those two out precisely, but Sir Sparks I guess holds a whole new bond for Viren now...)

It's like I'm having the most beautiful dream...

And the most terrible nightmare, all at once.

Finally there is a very strong emphasis on the path you follow - fate versus free choice, destiny being preordained or something you write yourself, which is muddied somewhat by the fact that we know both Callum and young Viren clearly rejected the path of dark magic in their dreams annnd then went on to do more dark magic. Now Callum we know has only taken a step so far on what we presume is a slippery slope, while Viren has leapt off the mountain so to speak.

So those are the similarities between the dreams. I’ve also been thinking about the possible reasons for the dark magic dream existing in the first place.

They could be simply a side effect, something baked into the creation of dark magic itself, if Aaravos created dark magic it is possible that his connection to the stars has simply left these echoes and visions of past and future in the dream somehow. This could be accidental, an unforeseen consequence, in which case it might play to the advantage of the dark mage, or it could be something placed there on purpose, to accentuate the power that dark magic holds over the wielder – this path is already written, you have no choice.

It could be a warning, the subconscious urging the mage to turn back - the path you are about to follow is filled with certain danger. It would be interesting to know how many, if any, dark mages do turn back at the dream stage.

Or it could be a physical side effect, the body having to sweat or dream out the corruption/toxins from their first use, in which case it is interesting that this particular side effect only ever happens the one time.

One other factor seems to be that dark magic can also help the caster unlock an Arcanum as well, we see Callum connect to sky after his first dream, filled with keys, so the dream space might also channel certain energies. This might have some interesting potential for Viren, providing he doesn’t expire on the cold, hard ground, but I’ll park that thought here for now.

I awoke from that dream realizing that I had subconsciously gained knowledge of a deductive magical technique.

Anyway to finish this first post, I was interested in a couple of images that occur within Viren’s dream.

The mirror of Aaravos

So when corrupted Viren looks at young Viren and young Viren looks at his future self, and the bounds of space and time do that little weird wobble thing that hurts my head, they are looking at each other through the mirror of Aaravos. Now this could imply several things, but it has to be a deliberate choice for that mirror to be the window between them.

Was Viren’s path always somewhat predestined? His younger self would have no knowledge of that mirror having not yet reached the point of finding it in the storm spire, that future is still years away, so it can't be imbedded in his memory, or can it?

Why does he already see his future self through that particular mirror? This element of the dream has been confirmed to be the same experience at two different points in time. Now of course young Viren always had the choice to step away from the path he was following at any point, but it interesting to me that the image of that mirror was already baked into his personal dream space as if the path is already written.

Or perhaps the mirror just has some symbolic reference to imprisonment… in which case?

The cursed coin

Next is the image on the back of the coin, this sorta weird symbol often with a central circle which we see several times:

These are the ones I could easily find, there could be others..

The pattern is not quite the same, but we've been informed it can be associated with a different sort of magic - old magic, deep magic. Due to the nature of the cursed coins I’m loosely wondering if this could be a type of magic that has something to do with the soul or spirit of a person. I don’t feel personally that this has to be incompatible with the ideas and theories of it also being blood magic, because ideas surrounding blood and the soul/life spark are often linked.

What seems possible in these cases is the mage is paying a soul cost that is greater than usual, whether this is symbolised through the spilling of blood, as in the two spells Aaravos proposes to Viren, or by doing something heinous to the detriment of your principles, such as trapping others in the cursed coins. This could also track with the two spells that Claudia does that change her hair colour.

It might be a stretch, but I don’t personally feel Lissa would have left Viren for casting a dark magic spell to save Soren. Now there might have had to be some sort of terrible sacrifice involved but we’ve seen a deer heal full body paralysis, so I’m not really convinced Viren had to slaughter a baby elf at the alter to save his son (not saying he didn’t either of course, but there’s the possibility that isn’t actually the cost). So there might have been something else that Lissa and possibly Kpp’Ar had a problem with. Well having seen Kpp’Ar in action I feel he’d be more adverse to potential outside control rather than delving into the depths of blood magic.. so not sure quite what went on there...

Honestly, mostly I just like the idea of selling your soul for something, and the consequences of that, and possibly it could link to Aaravos/Lucifer comparisons. Every time someone does dark magic they seem to be making an unknowing pact with him and perhaps it's possible deep magic err.. deepens it.

This could also track with the coin spell being "Your soul is my treasure", and Harrow’s dream use of the spell on Viren. Be interesting to know where Viren acquired those coins, because no shade on Viren, but I’m not sure he’s capable of making them… I guess maybe Kpp’Ar has a treasure hoard of illicit artefacts in his basement or something…

So in that case we would have dark magic as being the gateway to Aaravos and some sort of deep/blood/soul magic as being the next step along that path, but one that not many are willing to make.

This might explain why Aaravos has been hanging around in prison for 300 years, if a certain amount of influence was needed to steer someone towards his prison, perhaps Viren is the only person desperate enough to have gone this far down the path. I don’t know, very hard to tell with the paucity of dark mages on the show tbh.

So we look closely at the eyes to see the nature of the soul

In this case I think the dark magic dream could be seen as something of a spiritual journey, the dark night of the soul, and possibly a chance to integrate the light and the dark that coexists within us. It’s clear there is a path to choose, but it also seems that it might not be quite as simple as choosing the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ but all of these choices carry within them moral dilemmas and complexities - what are the things we are willing to do and by extension possibly lose for love.

I feel that Callum and Viren mirror quite strongly in both the theme of sacrificing for love and the desire for power. Why else would you really become a mage primal or otherwise unless you are seeking power over things and mastery of them? Where does this leave Viren now (if he’s not exhaling his last breath on the beach, and I can’t make up my mind about that)? I will hopefully explore some of these possibilities in other posts and yes they will feature a lot of Twin Peaks ideas cos it’s practically the only other show I watch. As such I have not seen Mad Men, but Twin Peaks has very close links to the nature of the soul, the ability to navigate between the black and the white and to the catastrophic consequences for both yourself and others if you are not able to do this, and we've all seen some of those in TDP.

Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see..

Am I gonna read way too much into literally everything? You betcha…

Full disclaimer here, I am not really trying to read the show or work out what it's going to do with some of this stuff, I am just looking at ideas that interest me. What interests me certainly isn't looking at it through a straight up lens of morality, which is why a lot of my thoughts will doubtless be wrong.

#tdp s5 spoilers #the dragon prince spoilers #tdp viren #dream baby dream #thoughts

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