Combat Sorcery
©Robert Reeder

      As body, mind and spirit are One, thus are sword, song and spell One; herein lies the essence of Sean Ciall. The “Song” essence of “Sword” lies in the drums and pipes of the battlefield, and in songs of warfare. Volumes have been written on this, but I will leave this matter aside for now to focus instead on the use of traditional spellcraft in battle.
      The methods employed are as diverse as sorcery itself, but among the more common uses of battlefield magick are invisibility and illusion, the manipulation of weather and other elements, the use of telepathy and clairvoyance for espionage, various forms of divination to determine a battle-plan, healing one’s own troops while causing sickness in one’s enemies, and general propitiation to the gods of war to smile benevolently upon one’s own malevolence.
      Whatever method or technique of magick is to be employed, as with any skill intended to be used in combat, the technique must be practiced and tested often and assiduously. It is not enough to be able to create a thunderstorm occasionally; for weather magick to be an effective combat tool one must be able to create a thunderstorm on command, under any existing condition. It is for this reason that those who choose the role of combat magicians tend to “burn out” very quickly.  
      It should not be supposed that combat sorcery is merely a relic from an earlier, less sophisticated time, or that it is a weapon of last resort of catastrophically weaker armies. Hitler employed the counsel of astrologers, British intelligence in turn employed astrologers to learn what counsel Hitler was being given; throughout the Cold War, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact spent a great deal of time, money and effort on “ESPionage”.
      On the other hand, it should also not be supposed that superior magicks necessarily confer a meaningful tactical advantage. The invasion of the Americas illustrates this nicely, albeit tragically. If the American’s magick had been able to cure cholera and the other diseases brought by the Europeans, America would not have been successfully invaded. If the American’s magick had enabled it’s medicine people to make the necessary paradigm shift to comprehend the tactics of the Europeans, America would not have been successfully invaded. If the American’s magick had provided them with the alchemical insight necessary to effectively blend sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter, America would not have been successfully invaded.  If the American’s magick had been able to turn the weather even slightly less hospitable for the European’s ability withstand, America would not have been successfully invaded. If the American’s magick had provided them with the wisdom to unify their disparate armies against a common enemy instead of fighting amongst themselves, America would not have been successfully invaded. If the American’s magick had  successfully accomplished any single one of these things, America would not have been successfully invaded.
      There is no easy or comfortable way to rationalize the fact that the Americans fared so poorly against an invading army less than a hundredth the size of their own, operating in unfamiliar terrain with deplorable tactics and virtually non-existent supply lines, and little or no sorcery (other than prayer to the Christian god) to speak of. We must accept that either the Christian god was superior to those of the Americans and that Manifest Destiny (which did, after all, “manifest”) was His proof of this, or else that magick is simply a piss-poor substitute for technology, whatever Arthur Clarke may think.
      However, as an adjunct to technology, well-executed sorcery may be a powerful weapon; it is rumored that the battle of Yorktown, and hence the American Revolution, might have ended differently were it not for an effective deployment of weather magick. Oh, those wacky Freemasons…

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