Caster Incantations.

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

Ever wonder what the casters say as they cast a spell? Does it have any meaning? Or is it just random gibberish?

I've been doing a bit of research. Each school of magic (Conjuration, Evocation, Illusion, etc) has a different "chant" associated with it. They are all in Latin. Latin words have various interpretations/meanings, and these words are not sentences. Individually they mean something, but when put together, a coherent sentence they construct not. Neverthless, we can get a rough meaning for them. For example, "Voco" can mean to call/summon/invite, depending on the sentence you use it in.

For another example, anyone casting a Necromancy spell will say "Vita Mortis Careo," which means "I am deprived of life." (This is one of the clearer ones.)

So here are the eight schools, covered with their (approximate) meaning/meaning of words contained within the incantation:

Abjuration: "Manus, Potentis, Paro." Roughly translates to "The hand of the Mighty One is set."

Alteration: "Praeses, Alia, Vero." Roughly translates to "Protect(ing) another with certainty." (This should have been assigned to Abjuration, methinks. Nevertheless, onward we proceed...)

Conjuration: "Facio, Voco, Vere." Roughly translates to "Yes, I summon it truly."

Enchantment: "Cupio, Virtus, Licet." Roughly translates to "May I have the power I desire," or "I desire power, may I have it."

Divination: "Scio, Didici, Peto." Roughly translates to "I have learned for I have asked," or "I know for I have sought." (Very fitting.)

Illusion: "Veritas, Credo, Oculos." Roughly translates to "I believe the truth is in the eyes." (I love the irony of this.)

Evocation: "Incautus, Pulcher, Imperium." Roughly translates to "I command beautiful, uncertain/unforeseen things."

Necromancy: "Vita Mortis Careo." Roughly translates to "I am deprived of life."

Now, I do not know Latin. I merely looked up the different words/derivatives and drew my own conclusions from them. Some were easy to translate, others were not.

(Ah, very good. I have deciphered this "Latin" scroll without the unfortunate side effects of my last research project. I should be impressed with myself, but of course, this is a tiny fraction of my capabilities, and thus, nothing overly impressive for a man of my stature.)

TheGraveDigger · December 2013

This knowledge is older than Elminster's grandmother...

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

Not to me. I never looked into it before. I found it fascinating, as I'm sure many others players might.

10 points for you, though, oh so wise one. Teach us something new and interesting instead of being a snarky twat?

TheGraveDigger · December 2013

I'm sorry if I made you cry, Ed. What you wrote was very interesting(Many years ago)

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

All facts surrounding this game are old. Because this is an old game. Does this mean we shouldn't discuss them?

New players have been introduced to these games via the Enhanced Editions, and they likely do not know these things. As an old player myself, I never bothered looking into this until recently.

Thus, your point is moot.

So, unless you are opposed to sharing interesting facts simply because they happen to be old, kindly shut up.

TheGraveDigger · December 2013

Lienosus Mali Veneficus

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

Indoctum esse prae se ferens!

TheGraveDigger · December 2013

Haha

FinneousPJ · December 2013

These have been posted before... it's not new even to EE.

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

Divination is my opposition school. How was I to know?

On a serious note, are people just going to be difficult pains in the asses about this? If you already know it, move along. No need to comment and waste your time and, more importantly mine.

Kaltzor · December 2013

This forum has a strong Spell Immunity: Divination on it, finding stuff already posted can be difficult. The search feature lists every comment ever to contain any of the words you search...

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

That.. and truth be told, I didn't even look. I just simply don't recall seeing it anywhere during my time on here.

Those who find it interesting can read. Those who do not can pass it by. Everyone wins.

BelgarathMTH · December 2013

I've always been fascinated with this. Your translations are interesting and creative new variations, @Edwin_Odesseiron. As people who have struggled with Latin translation know, there is often a lot of room for interpretation and creativity in translating those ancient root words into contemporary English.

In the interest of helping out with scholarly research on the subject, let me try to compile as many threads as I can find here, so we have it all in one place.

This one is one of the oldest discussions:
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/17190-what-the-casters-say/

@Mortianna is often credited with being the first poster to bring the incantations and translations to the BG:EE forums. There is also discussion in some of these threads about the original BG1 vanilla incantations, which are different, and some people prefer the older ones - those are less clear about what real languages they come from, if any at all. Here is an old poll thread where @Mortianna posts the common translations of the newer Latin incantations:
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/111988

Here's a thread that I participated in from last summer. I posted the translations from the old shsforums, which I think @Mortianna also uses for hers, and @Dee posted a set of his own new translations of the Latin phrases. We also had a discussion about using ancient languages in general for magic in games, books, and film, and I and others tried to figure out some of the magic incantations from NWN and the original BG:
https://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/20502/spellcasting-words-translation-and-discussion/p1

Hmm, reading back through that thread, I was into teasing our old friend @God quite a bit back then. I went through a phase for a while where I tagged him and teased him in almost every post - I'm a bit embarrassed by that now, actually. I also derailed it into a discussion about the D&D stats of Stargate characters. I also made some pretty silly, goofy posts - which usually means I've been drinking and posting again.

But, it's worth linking the thread so you can see the post @Dee made with his own translations of the incantations, so I'll risk the embarrassment of reminding everybody how silly I get sometimes.

FinneousPJ · December 2013

@belgarathmth Nice. I would have posted those but I'm at my mom's place on my cell ;p

GemHound · December 2013

This is very interesting, yet just throwing this random comment out that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.
Magic is just illusion and parlor tricks, except in the Forgotten Realms, illusions can kill you.

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

@belgarathmth Thanks for those links. I notice we all have different translations for them. I also notice on these threads that, mine and Dee's translations aside, the rest of them seem to be regurgitated from that SHS forum.

I'm happy I put a bit of effort into studying this. It was fun exploring what the different sentences could be using only a few words.

So there you go, naysayers. An old topic this may be, but I've brought something new to it.

As for your harassment of that "God" user, out of curiosity, did you ever get pulled up for it? A warning, a ban? Anything?

nano · December 2013

Calvo turpius est nihil comato.

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

Nihil aliud commentarium.

BelgarathMTH · December 2013

Nah, he was a cool theologian "playing the part", and I'm pretty sure we both enjoyed our back and forth playing along with each other. I just kind of overdid it sometimes. He was very kind in indulging me, as one might expect from God.

He was often quite funny, and I think a lot of the forum enjoyed reading his posts.

Also, I could be wrong, but I think "God" might have been Dee. He left us all a goodbye message a couple of months ago, and hasn't been back since. He never broke character, not even once. He liked to play out some pretty consistent ideas about what "God" is like, and he made many interesting and fascinating posts, including the one about how "he created language" in the thread I linked about the incantations.

It was very fun while it lasted, and I deeply appreciate his kindness and patience with me.

ReadingRambo · December 2013

I thought you post and links was very interesting, I wasn't even aware the sprites said different phrases depending on the spells school.

meagloth · December 2013

I put these into google translate in hope of some comic translations, and boy did I get them:

Incautus, Pulcher, Imperium: precautions fair control

Faisco, voco,vere: I do invite spring

Praeses, Alia, Vero: President Other

Vita, motis, careo: life will not die

Cupio, Virtus, Licet: I want to power, albeit

That last one almost made me laugh out loud.

BelgarathMTH · December 2013

@Meagloth, a lot of your spellings are wrong.

It's not "Incautus", it's "Incertus". Google translate goes for "Uncertain, handsome (confusing grammatical gender with actual gender - "beautiful" is better), government. In the context of magic spells "powerful things" is better than "government".

It's not "Faisco", it's Facio. " Facio voce vere" typed in letter for letter comes up "I sound really". Google is trying to translate idiomatically. The root words are better typed in separately. "I do voice truth" would be closer in this case. "Facio" is the first person of "I do" or "I make".

It's no accident that the English verb "to spell", meaning "to arrange letters in the correct order for words in a written language" is the same as the English noun "spell", meaning "magical incantation."

Also, when working with Latin on Google translate, make sure to look under the big "into English" box where Google makes its best guess, and look at all the alternate meanings of the Latin root. "Praeses" lists "chairman, patron, protector, defender, guardian, curator, keeper." It can mean any of those things.

Just putting commas between praeses, alia, vere, alleviates Google's confusion of "vere", "the truth", with "ver", "green, the Spring."

It's not "motis", it's "mortis". Typing "vita mortis careo" into Google translate gives "I am deprived of life". That one actually makes some sense for a heal spell, and some sense for an undead summoning spell.

"Cupio virtus licet" yields "I want power, though".

Putting in commas between the roots yields "I hope, strength, although." Still pretty bad with that one. "Licet" is obviously the problematic word that Google can't handle in this context, so, "licet" alone gives choices of "although, granting, granted, it is allowed, it is permitted, be it so." That last is pretty obviously the best choice, and I would even paraphrase it as "Make it so!"

"I desire power, make it so!" Now, I have an image in my head of Captain Picard pointing at the viewscreen of the Enterprise and shouting, "Warp factor two, Mister Data, LICET!"

You are much better off to type the magic Latin words separately into Google translate, (*spelling* them correctly!), and look underneath the box at all the many choices of meaning in the fine print. Then, choose the best pick for each Latin word that fits the context of a magic spell.

meagloth · December 2013

@belgaramthmth, remember, I wasn't looking for serious results. I said I expected comic results, not the actual tranlations. I think at least half of the typos are only in my post, I copy-pasted into google translate, but not as well into my post. The thing with spell, spelling was interesting though, I'd never thought about that.

Edwin_Odesseiron · December 2013

Off topic though this may be, what I am interested in is that you never got pulled up for harassment of this "God" character, even though you actively sought him out to berate him. Whereas I've been warned, banned, and jailed for essentially defending my ideas/posts from trolling, naysaying, snarky morons. Ironically, they alsp get nothing.

BG Forums, Justice be not thy name.

[Deleted User] · December 2013

I'm actually glad this was posted, even though the topic has come up before. Especially if the thread is older than a month or two, new people may never see it. And as has been observed, Latin translations can be tricky due to multiple meanings.

I think it would have been really awesome if the Conjuration phrase had been a Latin version of Lovecraft's 'Do not call up any that you cannot put down'. Maybe too complex a phrase, but still.

Joey · December 2013

Very cool...thanks for these. I knew the incantations were some form of Latin (I assumed pig Latin or pseudo-Latin), no idea they were actual coherant phrases.