Wizardly Daemonology

[steepholm]

Okay, I just watched the short anime, Little Witch Academy, a post-Potter take on the magic school genre, featuring a "Sorceror's Stone", a snobby trio of pupils and a ragamuffin trio to put up against them, including our heroine, Akko. So far, so generic.

Except... when we listen in on their lessons, the teacher begins by mentioning that their school is built on a confluence of ley lines, as advocated by Alfred Watkins (and, indeed, The Old Straight Track is mentioned on the blackboard). Rowling's magical authorities are mostly invented (Nicholas Flamel excepted), but Watkins is of course very real. Once again I'm impressed and curious at the titbits of Western magical lore that have found their way to Japan. Ley lines don't form a major part of the plot, so it's an interesting insertion.

But then the teacher reads a quotation from a book called "Wizardly Eudaemonics" by one T. S. Daniels, to the effect that those that cannot control magic will be destroyed by magic. Watkins being a real person, it seems reasonable to wonder whether Daniels is too, but I've never heard of him or her, nor does Google supply a ready answer.

Any ideas what may be being referred to here?

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Wizard" is a word that real life occultists simply don't use. On those grounds alone I'd say T.S. Daniels has to be a fiction.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to agree.

Though, I wonder why they invented a name at all? (That it's an English one is less of a surprise: Britain seems to be associated with magical knowledge.) I wonder whether it's some kind of in-joke.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, we do have a great tradition of fictional magicians- from Merlin to Potter- but there's also the fact that many of the leading figures of the magical revival of the 19th and 20th centuries were British. The Order of the Golden Dawn was founded by Brits, as was modern Wicca. And then there's Aleister Crowley...

As for it being an in-joke, do you think the Japanese are aware of Paul Daniels? Surely not...

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Eudemonics apparently has a history I didn't expect:

For men only, with a 30-day guide to looking better and feeling younger
https://books.google.com/books?id=kYUKAQAAMAAJ
Jack La Lanne, ‎Jim Allen - 1973 - ‎Snippet view
You and Eudemonics Eudemonics. The word means "the art of happiness." And the art of happiness is pretty much what this book is all about. Eudemonics. And you. What are some of the reasons you have to be happy right at this moment?

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Oh, and apparently it was a word used by Jeremy Bentham. I think I had heard that, but am not sure.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The art of happiness? I'd not have guess that, especially in a magical context!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

One of my mother's trunk novels (very misleading working title The Druid's Dragon Path) had to do with ley lines.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I had a lot of fun with ley lines and Ordnance Survey maps as a teenager.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of them, which is not conclusive. There are plenty of occultists who are still known to other occultists but not to anyone else, who they could have used.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

True. It just seems such an unspectacular and even boring name that I feel it must be real.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I think it was just "huh, academic name, like C.S. Lewis or T.S. Eliot." Maybe with a little Domdaniel thrown in?