Here's the direction I'd like to take Occlumency in a story of mine:*

Occlumency isn't really a magical technique. Muggles can do it just as well with proper training. There is no BS "imagine a stone wall" or magical defense of the mind involved. All magical defenses of the mind are non-Occlumentic and inherently not a process involving the mind itself i.e. maybe some enchanted amulet deflects any Legilimency, but that's not Occlumency.

Instead, Occulmency traces its roots to meditation and mental control. It involves supreme mastery of the mind and so requires often years of training to employ successfully. Examples of this would include Zen Buddhist monks in meditation, with their minds quite "empty" - or as Snape says, "clear your mind."

Besides clearing one's mind, another technique includes intense focus on a single image, word, sound, memory or something, which can keep a Legilimens stuck in a mundane set of memories, rather than more important ones. Appropriately Zen, it involves thinking without thinking in that you cannot remotely consider what you are attempting to defend or hiding, because you would begin to think about it in the first place.

At higher levels, extremely skilled Occlumens can advance to the point of creating false memories and even learning to condition themselves to believe it to the extent that they can resist Veritaserum. Occlumency isn't a fancy magical technique. It's just an extremely difficult mental technique, on the scale of an order of years before developing even basic skill.

Thoughts?

 

Dude, that's plain stupid. No, muggles can't do it. No, you can't buy an amulet against Legilimency. No, Occlumency is the defense of the mind.

Try again.

 

Pretty cliche. Although, I'm sure that all forms of occlumency are cliche now. Try something original?

 

Harry, who has a somewhat stubborn to strong will, one of his few redeeming qualities in canon, just plain out sucks at Occlumency. Draco Malfoy, who isn't know for great emotional control or zen like qualities, is quite skilled at it. If you want to stick to canon, your approach doesn't work, at all.

Also, unless you plan to include some protection against all forms of attacks and manipulation of the mind, your method dies to the first confundus charm. (Or someone creating one of those fun books, that Ron told us about in CoS. Just replace 'speaks in limericks' with 'can't concentrate on any single thought'. Or, for that matter, just outright casts the spell on the target.)

If you insist on making it such a non-magical technique, then you have to explain how a) Draco Malfoy learnt it by HBP, and b) wizards are managing to stay undetected in areas where such practices are far more widely spread. (A Buddhist temple isn't suddenly exempt from them Statute of Secrecy, after all.)

Ultimately, it would depend on how this is used in a story. Personally, it smacks of the wizarding world being incapable of wiping their own asses, yet again, and needing the Muggles to bail them out. If you want a story like that, sure, but if not... *shrugs*

 

I'm sure JK was looking in that direction for guidance, but in order to be able to stop a magical connection i.e. Legillimency, it must be magical.

No amount of meditation could have stopped the magiuc behind Harry's scar, and yet Voldemort employed Occlumency against it. In a world where people can make their will manifest by thought, mere mental control must then also be a matter of magic, or it would be obsolete, like a muggle versus a wizard.

 

I disagree. Harry learns to block out Voldemort on his own in DH. He's defending his own mind against a strong magical intrusion, the very definition of Occlumency -- except he never "clears his mind" to do it.

"Clearing your mind" obviously doesn't work for everyone; it certainly doesn't for Harry, although he probably wasn't helped by the fact that Snape was his teacher... You know, the guy who loathes him because he looks like his dad? Yeah, not the best person to teach him to let go of his emotions and trust him to look around in his brain.

Maybe "clearing your mind" is the Occlumenses' standard technique. It might be the one Malfoy learnt. It also might be the only one to work against magical intrusion while you're asleep and defenceless. When you're awake, however, it is apparently possible to block it out of pure determination, as Harry does in DH.

Which both redeems Harry and shoots down Rayndeon's idea.

 

In all fairness to Harry, fifth year sucked balls. Even disregarding the fact that he had Snape snooping through his head, (and Dumbledore, despite everything, was an idiot for pairing those two together) he had way too much shit on his plate - guy was having trouble staying on this side of sane, let alone clearing his mind and having absolute control over his emotions.

Anyway, Imperius Curse and Legilimency aren't the same thing. Yeah, I suppose they both deal with mind magic, but then the tickling charm and the Cruciatus curse both deal with sensory input... Imperius Curse tries to break the actual will of a person, and Harry proves to be one strong willed stubborn son of a bitch, enough that he can deflect it from a very experienced Death Eater. Legilimency, on the other hand, requires total control over ones emotional output, as well as an awareness of just what is going on, and ability to control one's memories... not the same thing.

All that being said, I like it when Dumbledore or Snape tries to reach into Harry's mind, and hits an Obsidian shield. Harry then ejects him, throws him across a room, and snarls 'Don't mess with me, you old goat/bat!"

 

Did he truly learn Occlumency? The initial purpose for it was to block the visions and connection, and he still has those throughout DH. Going by that metric, he still fails at it horribly. But then, I probably just missed the part where he finally gets it, sometime in 1998.

The whole thing always kind of read like a plot hole to me. Harry still admits to never having gotten the hang of it, early in the book, yet his mind seems at no further risk from the ubiquitous Dark Lord Vision of DH.

But it doesn't really matter, something must have changed when Voldemort was kicked out of Harry's mind back during the possession attempt at the Ministry in Book 5, since the vision and connection aspect never had any impact during HBP. DH would just be an extension of that anyway. If that is an instinctive grasp of Occlumency, or something else, is kind of irrelevant.

 

At the beginning, yes. And when he actually wants to have those visions, he still has them. But sometime halfway through the book he does learn to block completely the foreign visions and emotions.

Never once in DH does JKR confirm that it is Occlumency, and Harry never has to deal with a proper Legilimency spell either; but since the result is precisely what Snape wanted to teach him in OotP, it's a fair bet he's performing Occlumency -- a probably crude form of it, but it's effective enough.

On a side note, I don't believe it has anything to do with what happened at the Ministry: Legilimency is vastly different from possession.

 

My view on the art is that Occlumency is indeed a magical skill needed to develop. Meditation and good mental control would help one to actually execute the needed shields, sort of wandlessly and then maintain them for a longer time while performing various tasks. The strong mind is required to keep your shields up and yet be able to do other things, sort of writing with both of your arms type of activity.

Strogn willed people, monks or whoever you'd like to pick being a muggle should be able to hold on a particular image or memory thus successfully guarding himself against weak attack but anyone with strong magic should be able to brake that simple and crude way of defending someone's mind. It's Magic... only other counter should be magic...

Another thing is that the magic shields do help to fend off attacks or literally kick somebody out of your brain but they don't help you reign your emotions or developing the skill of holding a "poker face" in certain trying situations... for that is something developed by strong characters with a lot of life experience and strong backbone.

One last thing - if it's not crucial for your plot line do try to avoid any Occlumency training(for that matter quidditch try outs or over long description of magical training as well) because those are paragraphs which people tend to skip through since there is very small possibility for them to have anything new or interesting.

 

Occlumency is not a mental shield. Its Latin root occulto means to hide, conceal, cover not defend or protect. It is the ability to obscure your mind, to prevent another from learning your purpose or read your next move. It is poker face. How else would Snape be able to spy on Voldemort for all these years? When people know your hiding something they are going to find out what. An evil Dark Lord like Voldemort would most certainly have asked Snape to lower his shields in order to allow the master to see if he was still pure. Voldemort doesn’t trust or love anyone that means he constantly scans his Death eaters’ mind for traces of treason. After all having one betray him wouldn’t do at all.
Let’s take a look at what an Occlumens can do:
He can lie to a Legimens without looking suspicious like avoiding eye-contact. This means that the memories/emotions that the Legimens “reads” in their head are faked. (Thus one, make fake memories) He can make Dementors have less influence on him (or completely none if you’re really good explains how Voldemort and Dumbledore stand them) this is done by harry when he managed to overcome Snape with the use of Occlumency, in Order of the Phoenix. During the lesson, Harry notices that the Dementors become fainter and Snape becomes clearer. (This means an Occlumens can hide emotions even from dementors, who feed on bad/good emotions; I don’t remember which one it was.)
The key to good Occlumency, as described by J. K. Rowling, is to be capable of hiding or suppressing one's emotions. This is why Snape and Dumbledore are accomplished Occlumens, because they are able to hide what they are truly feeling, and Draco, like his parents, is able to suppress his emotions. Harry had trouble mastering Occlumency because he embraced his emotions. Maturing allowed him to control them.Legilimency and Occlumency are not part of the normal curriculum at Hogwarts, and most students would graduate without learning them. They seem to be considered a more advanced form of magic.
Occlumency is obviously magical, but in what way is hard to say. It’s just one of those things holes in the HP universe, it’s right there with “why can’t muggles brew potions?” (and they can’t remember that)
Also, whoever said that Zen monks aren’t wizards? They could just as well be, the pope could be, Jezus could be. I mean it would explain a lot wouldn’t it? Witch burnings= Dark Lord pope ridding the world of muggles, or women (who knows?)
*It was not my intention to insult anyone’s religion, don’t declare a Jihad on me, ok?

 

Ah, fuck it.... JIHAD!!!!!

 

Apart from the multitude of fail in your post, the Salem Witch trials people weren't Catholic...

Maybe Queen Mary was a Dark Lady

 

I was actually referring to the practices of the Spanish Inquisition but that works too.
Could you please kindly point out the multitude of fail in my previous post, I fail to see it.

 

The Spanish Inquisition wasn't nearly as bad as its reputation makes it out to be. They were actually very logical in their methods and made absolutely sure that a person was guilty of heresy (or what have you) before bringing out the anal pears and iron maidens.

 

I suppose...although accrediting logic to a group of people who tortured/killed others in the name of religion is pretty shaky ground if you're trying to make the witch burnings seem savage by comparison.

OP: you lost me at "Occlumency is not a magical art.

 

Oh I'm not defending their actions, just that they were very methodical in making sure they got the right people... As strange as that sounds when referring to witches.

They even did paperwork. They were like Renaissance Bureaucrats ¬_¬.

 

This is what I found exception with. While some of your analysis I found agreeable. Occulmency is not simply poker face. If it was then why was Harry practicing it? It was to close off Voldemort to his dreams. Which, leaping to a conclusion, is a mental shield of sorts. You can rename it "closing your mind", but then you would be arguing semantics.

Man, I really need to go back and reread my history books. I could have sworn that they tortured a number of confessions out of "heretics". Maybe the History Channel and my school had an agenda or something.

Those Catholics (of the time) weren't such bad guys after all. Go figure.

 

Or maybe the name gives it away and he's actually hiding his mind from Voldemort, rather than directly confronting him. After all, Voldemort is a highly accomplished legilimens, and had he not been deathly allergic to everything Harry he would likely have been able to walk all over him in a contest of mind magics.

I was taught what you were in school... Then learned otherwise in college >_>. Plus, the History Channel is notoriously inaccurate with its information.