On the Supposed Aversion of Magic to Machinery

It has become fashionable among romantics to insist that magic and industry are natural enemies: that enchantment weakens in the presence of steam engines, telegraph coils, dynamos, and other products of modern manufacture. The notion is aesthetically pleasing, which should immediately make one suspicious.

No such universal antagonism exists. Enchanted objects function perfectly well aboard locomotives, in factories, and within electrical laboratories. What does occur is interference. Certain forms of thaumaturgic field are sensitive to heat, vibration, electromagnetic discharge, and rapidly changing pressure. A warding glyph mounted directly upon a boiler casing may fail, not because the boiler has offended the spirits, but because the idiot who installed it neglected to account for thermal expansion. The distinction is apparently too dull for poets.

I have personally observed a healing charm function without measurable degradation less than three feet from a running turbine. I have also watched an expensive protective talisman cease functioning the moment its wearer entered a telegraph exchange. The latter incident inspired three newspaper essays on “the death of magic beneath the electric age.” The talisman was subsequently found to contain a poorly insulated silver lattice acting as an accidental induction coil. Magic has many mysteries, and bad engineering need not be promoted to one of them.