I'd have to re-read Cold Days to comment on Demonreach's thing, but Ivy's prison used the leyline to power the circle.

The circle was keeping her cut off from magic, and all the fanciness of it, including the leyline, was to ensure she couldn't break it. It simply reinforced the circle. The circle was not needed to cast a spell, it was the spell, if that makes any sense.

 

So how can you cast anything from within a standard circle? IIRC magic is just reaching out to touch the field of emotion and life given off by every living thing in the world, and then using that power to do...Whatever. Do you just have to draw only from yourself when you're in a circle?

 

Going by what Harry says in Summer Knight, drawing off your body's own energies seems to be a death curse only kind of thing.

When you use a circle in spell casting, you seem to be limited to purely the energy contained in the circle. When Harry uses a circle in Grave Peril we get a good look at what happens.

It starts with this,

And culminates in this,

Going by the above, circles also seem to concentrate the available power, perhaps making it easier to use.

 

Dresden explicitly says that if you're able to visualize well enough, you can cast literally anything without a single prop, such as a physical circle. It's incredibly difficult and humans aren't designed well for such tasks, but it is possible.

 

What does that have to do with Ravnius's question? Unless I'm very much misunderstanding him, he was asking how wizards power their spells when they are blocked off from the Earth's magic by the circles they use in those spells.

To quote Dresden in Small Favours, "when you work a spell, you reach out into the environment around you and pull in energy. It flows in from everywhere, from the fabric of life in the whole planet. You don’t create a “hole” in the field of energy we call “magic.” It all pours in together, levels out instantly, all across the world."

Circles, whether real or imagined, block you off from that energy, hence Ravnius's question.

 

Looks like I misread it. Reading comprehension is hard.

Yea, inside a circle there's a finite amount of energy, whatever happened to be there before the circle closed. That can be the energy inside the wizard, or the energy of their surroundings, the only caveat is that magical energy cannot cross the boundary of the circle.

 

Alternatively draw in the necessary magic, then close the circle so there are no distractions.

 

Okay, another question here. What makes you exhausted when you use magic? I get the whole "running, jumping, fighting" and using magic. But if I just stood absolutely still and cast spells, why would I become exhausted? If magic is power drawn from all the life on the planet, and you're just the faucet being turned on, then why do you feel tired afterwards?

 

I always headcanon'd that as "mental exhaustion". Kinda like if you do complex calculus equations for a few hours, it gets nearly impossible to focus.

I don't remember seeing any WoJ on that particular subject though.

 

I thought of it the same way, but who knows? Maybe we'll learn more in book 15.

 

Because while you're using the energy of the world around you, you're still the one channeling it. Also, not all energy used for magic is drawn from outside the wizard--it's been said that every human being has a certain amount of magic in them, but people like Harry Dresden happen to have enough to matter.

 

The way I've always seen it is that the Wizard uses a bit of his own magic to set up the spell, then uses ambient magic to power it.

 

The way I've read it is that it wears down the caster to act as a channel.

Like, you're the person holding up the pipe to connect point A to point B. You're not really doing much, but damn you're going to get tired from keeping that thing there a while. And the bigger the pipe (more magic), the faster you get tired.

 

I like to think of it like this. The magic energy all around you is like water in a river. There’s a lot of but not really in a usable form.

In evocation, the wizard grabs a bucket, scoops up some of that water and throws it at someone, a rapid fire magical movement based mostly on the strength of your will. (In this metaphor, you will is the bucket and your ability to move it)

If you have more time, you can do ritually stuff. In this metaphor you build waterwheels, add complicated networks of pipes, stuff like that. You can make the magic itself take up much of the energy required to move it around.

 

This theory may not even impact the plot of the series but it is interesting..

I think Mother Summer and Mother Winter are basically the same being.

It occurred to me somewhere during Mother Summer's talk with HD in Cold Day's there was on offhand comment that seemed to imply they were one and the same.

Then I thought about it further: Mab and Titiana are supposed to be sisters, but each is referenced as the daughter of one of the mothers, so unless some dude knocked up both the mothers, this is a bit of an inconsistency.

Anyone else ever thought this?

Dresden wiki reference for Mother Summer and Mother Winter respectively:

http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Mother_Summer

http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Mother_Winter

 

Kinda late to the party but yeah, it is pretty clear they are two halfs of the same being. As for the rest, it is a matter of mantles. I never remember which but one of the Mothers is not the original one, that means one of the queens ascended and so while they might be the same being now they weren't before.(hell that is in the link from the link you gave)

Plus maybe it is just my memory screwing with me, it is kinda late here after all, but where you got that they were sisters from? Hell I don't even recall the mention that they were the daughters despite knowing(or at least thinking) it is true.

 

Titania said it in cold days.

 

...

That explains why I couldn't find it, was sure it was in the earlier books...

 

Given that Mother Winter answered to the name Atropos and Skuld it's more likely that they're part of a trinity. There are three Fates after all. I figure that the last of the bunch has something to do with the Fomor.

 

A trinity? Maybe, but it seems there's also some overarching, singular name to call them: "But you've only guessed the name of one of her masks, not our most powerful Name."

So something like "the Fates" wouldn't work as that name, IMO.

Just "Fate," then? Time? Mother Earth / Gaia / whatever?