1) Yes I am an idiot
2) Heeeere goes nothing!!!

Ok i've been thinking; magic charms have obviously existed for a very long time, but how are they updated and/or created?

It seems a wand can be used almost to emulate a physical force e.g. to pull a lever, trip a switch/muggle etc., but in terms of spells with specific effects, there seems to be no explanation

In the dept. of mysteries, are the wizards experimenting with prototype charms and new magical artefacts (e.g. the stuff in the time room) ? the veil seems to be a physical manifestation of the basic human theme of death ... yeah

on second thought it seems the charms have nontechnical effects, so possibly have all existed from the start - perhaps this will lead to a discussion on the origin of magic itself?! i guess it's as hard to explain how to make a spell as it is to explain how to write a book to someone who can't wriiite. ... .. ok terrible analogy lol i suck.....

Please start flaming me... NOW!

You know I always wondered that myself. I have no new information to give to you other than my own speculation. I assume spells and charms can be created, updated, ect. but as of how I am not so sure. I would like to know how new spells are created and also how certain bits of magic are done with out a wand.

I think wands were magical from the first moment they were created. to create new charmes, they'll probably try out other wavings with the wands, and just try out other words. then the most thinkable things will happend, and at the end they'll have the perfect spell, after very long studies and experiments.

that's my speculation.

Hmm good idea; the charms are often very literal Latin phrases (Hehe I spend my spare time researching it...) e.g. "Expecto Patronum" literally means "I am waiting for my guard/representative". "Impedio" is latin for "I impede" or "hinder" ....
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so that's the way J.K Rowling created the spells, at least on of many ways, don't you think?
do you know any other spell's meanings?

When thinking about it, I feel sort of odd, trying to make sense of something from a fictional world that the author most likely hasn't even figured out.

The creation of spells seems difficult, and must be more than just waving your wand a certain way and saying something in Latin. Hermione was able to create a spell, but who knows how she did it.

Or maybe, the spells have already been developed, its just about discovering them. Confusing...

I think that charms are partly created by the feelings and thoughts of a person. Like a patronus can only be conjured when the subject has happy thoughts and for the unforgivable curses to work the person has to really mean it

that is probably how it works, thats why the teachers are able to do magic without always speaking (or is this just the film i can't seem to remember). Maybe the words help with the feeling of the spell and also with the naming?

What do you think?

I believe that spells are created in many ways. It is not all just waving wands. I think that each aspect of casting a spell does a different thing. Think of the hovering charm in PS/SS. You swish and flick the wand and make a long incantation. Each sylable does a different thing to the magic and the wand movement does more than just direct it. I believe that creating magic is a very precise branch of magic. The slightest mistake of a complex spell can result in disaster, just like when making potions. Certain spells require wand movement, others do not. I think that most, if not all spells require an incantation though.

Awesomeness y'all! Throw some spell names at me and if they're Latin I'll translate them lol

I don't think Hermione ever created a spell. If you're talking about the protean charm, it is just a very advanced spell, not a new one. If anyone asks for Morsmodre, I know it means something like "Provided with Death." That's really the only one I know other than Expecto Patronum: Expect protector.

Mors i think means death and morde comes from eat or bite. so it would perhaps dierctly translate as bitedeath Eatdeath reversed is deatheater! or take a bite out of death? I don't know i could be completely off but I always thought that is what it meant

I think i am right in saying that, latin and french a quite close as is Italian and i wonder if the spells are different in those translations and therefore an indicator of their meaning.

Hehe I think Avada Kedavra is aderivative of Abra Cadabra lol... latin verbs don't usually end in 'a' in the present tense...or most others.... unless it's a participle...

actualy it IS. I read on a HP- english/norwagian word book, and it explained what the spells mean. Avada kedavra is aderivative of Abra Cadabra, it means something, death don't really remeber and I've lost the link. search on google nd maybe you'll find something like it.

My mistake, sorry, all I remembered from the text was "Hermione" and "Point-Me spell", and I guess I got confused. It only said she discovered it.

exactly, abra cadabra comes from somewhere too, but the word book said it was something from latin..

As I quote from 'The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter: A Treasury of Myth, Legends and Fascinating Facts' by David Colbert, it says Avada Kedavra curse derives from a phrase in ancient Middle Eastern language called Aramaic. Abhadda kedhabhra means 'disappear like this word'. The spell was however, originally used to cure illnesses like fever. There is no proof that it's been used to kill people. End quote.

I suppose JKR altered a few letters but use the meaning of it which is 'disappear' and turn it into an unforgivable curse...

well, dissapear can be treated like "dissapear-death" when someone dies you dissapear, they'r existence and all that, all though the body remains.

Hey Wednesday, I remember that part in the book and I could have sworn that it said that 'Hermione discovered a usefull little spell called the Point-me spell'. Or it went something like that. I know the word discovered was in there.
That could mean one of two things though, either she created it or just found it and showed it to Harry.

Oh, I got one for you to look up, Expelliamus. Not sure if I spelled it right. Its the spell they learn in the second year, the one they use to knock out Snape in the third book.

I think it's spelled Expelliarmus.
hmm, I have no Idea of what it could meen, probably somehting dissarm or somethink, cus thats what the spell do isn't it?

where did you read that? in the books I have never read anything like doing magiv without a wand, (well, harry said the lumos spell in OoTP, his wand lay on the ground next to his hand) but exept for that.. no..

Could be wrong but no-one seems to use their wands to apperate or disapperate, the just seem to.... well vanish!

And they don't seems to need a wand to change to their animagus form either. Well, McGonagall don't need it. I know that Peter use one in PoA but they thought it could be because he's not that good a wizard to change to his animagus form together with his clothes, which is why he needed a wand, but he did change nonetheless without a wand and without his clothes!

But of course, that is in another thread...

and of course changing from animagi to human would have to be done without a wand

Whoa! Are we getting into the origins of magic or just charms? Animagi magic usually goes under Transfiguration. Charms is influencing the environment around you to do strange and obscure things that could be useful later on in life. Or is this just going where the wind blows?

Unfortunately, going "where the wind blows" is off topic-ness, and is frowned upon by our team of hyper-efficient moderators...

I'm sure I read in one of the Potter books that certain powerful magi can use magic without a wand... but not necessarily ones that affect the world around them. However when Harry falls off his broom in the PoA movie, Dumbledore mutters something obscure in Latin (something to do with memory erasing from what I heard) and the world blacks out. However this is the movie; perhaps the more subtle details of magic have been overlooked.

Well...I think that a lot of things in the movies, such as Dumbledore using a spell to break Harry's fall without a wand (I think the spell was something like "Arresto Momento" - "stop movement) were made up for effect, and are not canon. Only things in the books that things that are on JKR's site or were said by JKR in an interview are canon. From these sources, we don't really know if wandless magic is possible, but we do know that uncontrolled wandless magic can occur. For example, Harry inflates Aunt Marge without a wand. There is also some more controlled "wandless" magic that can occur - such as Harry saying "Lumos" and his wand tip lighting up from several inches away (that's in OotP). However, I don't know if there's any real wandless magic that occurs in the canon world (the movies and fanfiction are entirely different, though...)

Anyway, back to the original topic, we know that many things are studied in the Department of Mysteries, and I think that the creation of charms and spells might be one of these things. We also know that Luna's mother liked to experiment with spells - perhaps it was her job to try to devise new spells. After all, Luna used the word "experiment," implying that it was a bit of a hobby, but Luna was only nine, so she might not have known if her mother was doing top-secret work in the Department of Mysteries. I definately think that the creation of new spells is something that would be studied in the Department of Mysteries, though.

that's cool. Arresto Momento makes more sense than Arresto Momento, although it could've been either. I guess Dumbledore would've been more concerned about Harry not dying a quick but painful death, than covering up the incident... lol My bad.

Yeah Sally-Anne i forgot about Mrs. Lovegood's "experiments". Perhaps they study ancient books on it and discover 'new' spells - documented but forgotten - and try them out. As we saw with Ron's slug episode in CoS and Luna's mom, spells can definitely go awry if not performed properly (or *ahem* with a solid wand... )

Hi everyone!!
Well, my guess is that they probably just want to invent, so they start trying things out, I don´t know, maybe even foolish things(what do you tell me about the Bat-Boggey hex??? Not somethng a grown up wizard would do, right?? ). So I guess it´s just experimenting and seeing if it works. Maybe they think they want to give wings to a tree and they start trying, mostly words in latin, and then something happens.

Vie ste tapi!Vlastelina rulz

When Rowling talks about charmers, she uses words like inventor, discover, experiment; meaning spellwork is not necessarily created, but exhibited as a unique expression.
So charming acts like chemistry, discovering elements which have various properties and react depending on whatever it comes in contact with.
Yet charms; and magic spells are also like art, as in it developed from creativity, ideals, or lack there of.

We can speculate that Mrs. Lovegood was experimenting on specific magic phenomenon, trying to develop a practical use for it. Unfortunetly, her experiments back-fired causing her to die. So was Mrs. Lovegood endowing herself with the spell she was working on?

i've tried not to think about things like that very in-depth. it makes my head hurt. well, the only thing i could think of is that primative wizards didnt really know how they could do it, they just concentrated on something and it happened, then like in the middleages, maybe some wizard sages started experimenting and developing new and more complicated magic(i.e. the enchantments dombledore put on harry before he went to the dursley's). modern spell updates and new charms are also done by the ministry, but not in the department of mysteries, they only reserch more weighty topics. before the world cup at the campsite, mr weasly says "and theres *my mind is blank on this guy's name, but i remember the rest of the quote* form the commity on experimental charems(he's had those horns for a while now)". some inquizative witches and wizards however; do independnet reserch, i.e. luna's mom liked to experiment, and died when one of her spells went rather badly wrong.

Is there a difference between the different types of magic? i.e. charms, enchantments? jinx's hex's curses?

I've wondered how they made spells...somehow I can't imagine them just happening to say something like "Wingardium Leviosa" and such. There has to be a more systematic way of going about it. Maybe there is a spell structure that we don't know about. Certain elements that can all go together, like the "simple" machines that we have. Pulleys, levers, gears, wedges....all simple on their own, but put them together in certain ways and you get wonders. Could there be "simple" elements that are included in each spell?

well obviosly charms are very powerful and also very useful but all charms are not ancient becauselike that one to make teacups sprout legs. they didnt have teacups in medievel times so some can be quite recent but they are very very powerful. i honestly dont know how they did it

i think it started like most thing, somebody stuffed a leaf into a wand, waved it and yelled "DUCKS AWAY" and it began to rain rubber ducks. This was the beginning of magic. All the rubber ducks were melted into rubber wands and the rubber wands magically produced seeds. These seeds made the wand trees and magical creatures! I think that is how it began!!!!!!!!!
Graemedaulby

Lol I love your idea, graeme. It sound so... legendary, like s real legend... Good idea!!

oh! good idea mate!
but you know most of the charms JKR use in her books
is Latin! yup! that's right and i saw that here in VTM!

but in terms of magical world, maybe charms are just done
by wizards and witches...... powerful ones maybe!
that's just an opinion of mine! i think that's the only way on how
charms are created!

note:
hey mate, you know how to play the electric guitar?
if you know how, i also know how to play it!
i really love playing my guitar! it rocks!
take care!

well yhey shouted "RUBBER DUCKS" in latin, for no reason. English is way easier...

This post below is made by Albus-wan in a topic that has been closed. Any reply should refer to them instead. Thanks.
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As has been pointed out multiple times, a lot of the spells in the books have latin roots. Some of the spells, however, are straight from English (e.g. stupefy), and some are probably just made up words.

Where do they come from? Is there some source of magic spells and people just have to experiment until they find one? Do people make them up along with a ritual to canonize them so that other people can use the spell as well?

It might make sense that people could create new spells in the future, since the words used in spells could represent a history of when the spells were invented (meaning most of the spells were invented when latin was the primary language, but some have been added since).

One reason I thought of the question is the spell to create the Dark Mark. Did Voldemort just discover that the spell existed and decide to use it as a symbol for his people, or did he or someone like him create the spell to instill fear in others.

This is definitely a question that only JKR could answer definitively (and I wonder if she would even have an answer), but I would be interested to hear other people's theories. What do you think?

^Albus-wan makes some very good observations, and it has been discussed here at length the language used in spells and how most magic is probably passed down.

Also some have suggested that spells are being continually developed, and the books do suggest that too. But one thing which hasn't been touched on yet, and this is something that I think could possibly be rather important in performing powerful magic, is the emotions behind certain spells.

I'm not sure you need emotions to do charms or tranfiguration however, they do seem to be a straight forward manipulation of elemental forces. But we've been shown that it emotion is very necessary in a lot of DADA spell work. Which leads me to believe that a great deal of a wizards power comes from within. For example, underage wizards are prone to do magic driven by their emotions, even when they dont mean to. And of course, Harry had to think 'happy thoughts' to pull off a successful patronus. And Fake-Moody and Bellatrix enlightened us that the unforgivable curses were driven by emotion (you have to mean it when you want to crucio or AK some one)

The same could work with lesser curses like bat-bogey and the full body bind. I would imagine all curses, whether small or large, would ultimately be driven by emotion. That would mean the wand is a channeller of power, rather than a giver of power. I dont know though, any other thoughts?

It seems to me that if a new spell is going to be created, someone would have to be able to perform that magic without the spell or a wand (e.g. Harry regrowing his hair or removing the glass from the snake's cage, or Neville bouncing). Perhaps there is some way to capture that magic and associate it with certain spells.

I don't mean to kill discussion by talking about computer programming, but it could work in a similar way. The spell would be like software. Software requires some input to work, so some parts of a spell would be like the input (e.g. a flick of the wrist with wingardium leviosa tells an object where to go).

Sometimes software requires authentication, like a code or a password, in order to work. Certain emotions, like razzberry2 reminds us, are required to make a spell work. The emotions might be used as a sort of password. For example, suppose the inventor of AK decided that he only wanted people to be able to use the curse if they had an appropriate level of hate. Adding emotions to a curse would add a level of security to the more powerful magic, so not just anyone could use the magic.

i think it has everything to do with emotions...harry couldnt perform an unforgivable curse because he really didnt mean it in OotP...i think when a witch or wizard has a really powerful emotion, the magic lets loose and does what it will...it is then up to the skills of the witch or wizard to learn to control that effect and be able to make it happen with the proper incantation...just my thoughts...

yaa its kind of like non-verbal spells are like when they are first created, using your emotions and the expected or wished for outcome to make something happen from your wand

i have a good theory (if anyone has mentioned one similar to mine, sorry, but i skimmed the thread). it stems from the Chris Paolini book, Eragon. he says that everything on earth has a real name, in the Elvan language, and once said in an incantation, that thing could be controlled. maybe the same rule exists (or close to it0 for the Hogwarts world?

what do you guys think?

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