I think about how magicians in the far future will say that one of the most commonly used magical ingredients of the late 20th and early 21st century was paper made from tree cellulose. We today would not think of it as such but it,,, is.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Why more people don’t make their own papers is beyond me. It kind of bothers me you may not know at any given time what type of tree your paper is made of.
In solomonic magic where the instructions say to write your spells on sheepskin vellum, there is a lot of modern debate about whether this is an actual spell ingredient, or just the way to say “you need to write this down” and then recommending the standard fine paper of the time.
Like is there something special about vellum, or is the instruction simply “put this on the finest & most long lasting material that you’ve got in your local area.”
I see it as the "put this on the finest material". It's this thing of value that you put your energy into acquiring, spent your money on & committed it to the purpose, you're retaining that energy in a material belonging that you now hold dear. It becomes like money & would shake you to lose it.
In researching for this post, I found to that Vellum is far more archivally preservable than papyrus was and paper is, which is a cool feature when you think about the fact that these magic objects were supposed to last a long time
I know it's less acidic and will certainly last. I know if I'm going to hand write something on Vellum, it's going to be so important to me that I'll practice my handwriting before putting pen to paper. And use the finest pen.
Comments