Arithmancy
Mar. 15th, 2004 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_the_blueOn my role-play board, one of the characters asked Sirius what Arithmancy was.
Talk about flying by the seat of your pants!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sff_corgi beseeched me to share it with everyone (and really, I would never not do something she asked me to do so nicely), so all interested parties are invited to step behind the veil and find out what I came up with.
Sirius looked startled--he couldn't imagine someone not knowing what Arithmancy was. 'Arithmancy is... well, it's based on standard mathematics; it combines that and numerology and archaeological and geographical distance mapping, and stellar cartography and algebraic calculations. It's complex but it's fascinating. I liked it. In fact, when I was in prison I used to do Arithmancy calculations to try to maintain my sanity. Since it wasn't a particularly emotional thing, I could do it all I wanted. It's very logical and very precise. One of its main tenets is that numbers give off vibrations; Arithmancy is largely the study of those vibrations and how they affect the world around us over great distances. And of course, it's all interrelated, because all the sciences are interrelated.'
He took in the entirely baffled look on Sunny's face and smiled. Perhaps it was a case of giving far too much information, or perhaps it was just a disconnect between something as supposedly intuitive as Divination with something as logical as mathematics. But really, all magic could be described mathematically at its base, if one were really to go that far.
Of course, most of the time it was just easier to say 'it's magic!' and explain things that way.
Hmm. I wonder how I can be a word-whore and reuse this explanation in my latest Draco fic?
Talk about flying by the seat of your pants!
sff_corgi beseeched me to share it with everyone (and really, I would never not do something she asked me to do so nicely), so all interested parties are invited to step behind the veil and find out what I came up with. Sirius looked startled--he couldn't imagine someone not knowing what Arithmancy was. 'Arithmancy is... well, it's based on standard mathematics; it combines that and numerology and archaeological and geographical distance mapping, and stellar cartography and algebraic calculations. It's complex but it's fascinating. I liked it. In fact, when I was in prison I used to do Arithmancy calculations to try to maintain my sanity. Since it wasn't a particularly emotional thing, I could do it all I wanted. It's very logical and very precise. One of its main tenets is that numbers give off vibrations; Arithmancy is largely the study of those vibrations and how they affect the world around us over great distances. And of course, it's all interrelated, because all the sciences are interrelated.'
He took in the entirely baffled look on Sunny's face and smiled. Perhaps it was a case of giving far too much information, or perhaps it was just a disconnect between something as supposedly intuitive as Divination with something as logical as mathematics. But really, all magic could be described mathematically at its base, if one were really to go that far.
Of course, most of the time it was just easier to say 'it's magic!' and explain things that way.
Hmm. I wonder how I can be a word-whore and reuse this explanation in my latest Draco fic?
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-15 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-16 01:05 am (UTC)You might have to actually click on the link (http://pub152.ezboard.com/bdogstaracademy) and find out for yourself.