The title might be a tad misleading. It might sound like I’m wanting to discuss whether or not its wise to fling a fireball at a gasoline tank, or the common sense behind enchanting yourself with a breathing spell before swimming down to Atlantis. Not “common sense” but the “uncommon senses” of magic is what I want to toss out today.
When it comes to magic, whether in urban fantasy, epic fantasy, etc., it often seems that the way in which magic is sensed and/or enacted is limited to two or three of our human senses. Magic is often seen in colorful ways, perhaps heard through a crackle of energy, or felt through pain or euphoria. Sometimes, the author of a magical system goes so far as to create an entirely new sense for interaction with magic…a “sixth sense” that requires a “third eye” or otherwise.
But what about taste and smell? Why, at first glance, do these two senses take a back seat to forms of magic based on sight, touch and hearing? And hearing itself seems a lesser of these three. While magic can be heard, are there many types of magic that rely entirely on one’s hearing or deafness? More likely, a magic user’s hearing is enhanced by magic, but rarely the source of it.
The main example I can come up of an author employing a true variety of sense-magic is Andre Norton’s Five Senses series, which includes Scent of Magic and Taste of Magic. But beyond these, sense magic appears limited in its application. Is it because we don’t think of the nose, tongue or ears as sources of power or strength? Are they more peripheral senses, versus our hands and eyes? Do touch and sight root us more firmly in reality, and so we consider them first when creating an altered reality?
I ask this partly out of my own curiosity on the topic, and partly to inspire some thought on what fantasy worlds might be like if they were based on taste and smell versus touch and sight. What if a magician had to eat particular foods to generate power? (Would you get a lot of fat magic-users, as a potential consequence?) What if smells acted as magical triggers? (Would the perfume business be one of the most important in the kingdom?) What if a magician could only tap into her ability when blinded?
Do you know of any fantasy novels or short stories where magic is found within one or more of the less-popular senses? Am I simply overlooking these instances? What are your thoughts on why certain senses take precedence over others?
Hi Josh,
I recall one of Alan Dean Foster's science fiction novels (Nor Crystal Tears) in which he endowed an arthropod species (thranx) with a sense called “faz.” As I recall, it was some kind of electrical-field sensing akin to that provided by a fish's lateral line, but one which operated in a gaseous environment. I don't think that answers your question, but it's the first thing that popped into my head.
I think richer vocabulary is one reason writers focus on sight more than the other senses. This is particularly true with scent. I can look, see, watch, view, observe, visualize, picture, image, witness, peep, peek, behold, gawk, ogle, scan, etc., etc., etc., with my eyes, but what can I do with my nose? Smell, scent, whiff, breathe, sniff, um… detect? The verbs available that ONLY describe what I can do with my nose are few, and once they're exhausted I have to use verbs that describe what I'm doing with my nose in terms that just as easily apply to other senses or sensibilities. “The skunk tang assaulted my nose,” “her perfume lulled me into a false sense of security,” “the smell of sun-dried linen awakened my inner four year-old.” Further, I'm betting that as compared to what's available for vision, fewer nouns specify stimuli that can ONLY be detected by my nose: smell, odor, stink, stench, aroma, perfume, bouquet, tang, miasma. I could be wrong on this last point, but I do remember having written a story about a fox whose primary interface with the world was his nose, and I RAPIDLY ran out of ways to describe what he was perceiving.
You're definitely on to something here especially as concerns popular notions of the primacy of scent over vision in the order of evolutionary brain development. I don't know if an evolutionary biologist would agree that smell has a more primal effect on the human consciousness than sight, but how many times have you smelled crayons or garden hoses or something and been INSTANTLY transported in your memory back to some earlier manifestation of yourself? And how many times has that happened because you SAW something? For me, the ratio is much higher for smell than sight. And how often have you heard somebody refer to their “reptilian” brain as consisting of the structures that evolution produced first, as the part of themselves least susceptible to the interference generated by mind, and as the part of themselves that founds their interest in personal survival? Again, I've heard (and said) that one many times, and I usually associate it with smell or taste or other sensations I can't describe very well. What I'm saying is that a magic system based on the most primal of senses would indeed be one that I, as a reader, if properly indoctrinated as to the “theory,” would readily accept as having rawer potency than one with an intellectual basis. This might be related to the Enlightenment's concept of a “noble-savage” in that I would ascribe more purity and efficiency to a primal sense than I would to the constructions of a rational system. Another way of looking at this is to say that reflexes based in the spinal cord of a healthy individual don't lead her astray nearly as often as do those based in the cerebral cortex — every unconscious yanking of her finger away from a hot plate is the result of the plate ACTUALLY being hot, whereas every conscious investment of her money into a hot stock tip is NOT the result of the stock's actual earning potential. What I'm saying, in my lamentably garrulous manner, is that for raw tank-busting effects, a magic system based on the “more” primal senses would be very easy to believe in.
Also… A magic system that had some connection to the autonomous reflexes could provide some interesting plot twists, especially if the readers were aware of some fact or trigger that the character had long forgotten (or never knew existed). Hmm… Tasty!
Thanks for such an indepth response, Michael! You make a great point with how some senses simply have less descriptives attached to them, so it can be rougher to write about over time. I think that could definitely be part of the issue.
I also remembered that in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, you have Perrin, a character who [minor spoilers for anyone who hasn't read the series] begins to manifest wolfish characteristics. His hearing and smell are incredibly enhanced…but again, they're smaller elements within an overall magical structure.
I also like how you point out a generally stronger memory association with smell vs. sight. Often true. And smell and taste are strongly interlinked senses. Lots of potential there for magical hijinks.
In one of the Diana Wynne Jones books I just read, they could smell residual magic after a spell had been cast. Is that like what you mean?
Eugenia: Partly. I do appreciate when systems of magic bring in more than one sense like that. Though what I'm thinking of is magic where the sense of smell is the basis of the spells. Where if you lopped off someone's nose, they'd no longer have the ability to perform magic because they couldn't smell. Same thing for taste. If the tongue was the basis of a person's magical power, what would that look like?
I just remembered a good book for going deep into smell. Suskind's Perfume. It's also quite a fine read.
Is that the one they made a French movie out of? I remember seeing something like it a few years back.