Is looking back in time a violation of the 6th Law?

[LordBorsti]

It may be possible that in the next few scenarios one of my players will try to look back in time using divination magic. What do you think? Is this a violation of the 6th Law?

[Taran]

Nope.  You can do the same thing with a history text book.  As long as he doesn't go back in time and change what happened.

My 2 cents

[Haru]

I'd say it's a gray area. The Wardens will probably still get uneasy about this, but I think they would not actually chop your head off for it.

From the metaphysical standpoint, I think you're totally in the clear. You don't swim against the currents of time, you are simply looking down the river with a telescope.

[Tedronai]

Heck, if you get some good teleportation magic going, you can look back in time with a powerful enough telescope (just teleport yourself far enough away that the light coming from your subject of interest has take the requisite time to reach your new destination).

[Taran]

I'd say it's a gray area. The Wardens will probably still get uneasy about this, but I think they would not actually chop your head off for it.

I don't really see it as grey at all.

While there is some overlap with Time magic and divination, divination is more about taking knowledge . That knowledge can come from the Past/present/future, but no matter what, you're acting on and aquiring that knowledge in the Present.

Time manipulation is more about acting on knowledge in different times.  Or actually moving through or changing time. 

Knowledge is useful in doing this, but I think they can be mutually exclusive.  You can use divination to find something out in the past, but if you'd need time magic to go into the past and change that event.

[Tedronai]

If necessary, you could probably pull off my trick, above, using sufficiently advanced scrying spells (still functioning entirely in the present).

[Sanctaphrax]

It could be a 6th Law violation if the caster wanted it to be one. But it wouldn't have to be.

[madvogon]

It really depends on whether or not you think Heisenberg was right.  Of course, the Wardens being as conservative as they are, it would probably be a Bad Thing.  But then again, so was Sue.

[Haru]

I don't really see it as grey at all.

It could be a 6th Law violation if the caster wanted it to be one. But it wouldn't have to be.

Like this. On the metaphysical, you are absolutely fine, no lawbreaker, no warping of your mind, everything is fine, but the Wardens are a paranoid bunch, and they would probably at least investigate, if they knew about it. If you actually think this would be important enough to incorporate into your game is another story.

[LordBorsti]

It really depends on whether or not you think Heisenberg was right.

Could you elaborate that a bit further? (I got some lectures on physics at university so you don't need to explain the basics)

@All: Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Now I'm going to be the devil's advocate:

In the novels when Harry observes Cowl using Little Chicago he gets noticed by Cowl and is attacked via magic. In Your Story on page 297 this "Extended Divination" spell is described causing "a mostly-invisible, spectral projection of the caster appearing in the location of the monitoring’s point of view". Modeling a "looking back in time" spell as an extended divination one could argue that a spectral projection would appear in the "past" and could therefore influence the past and present.
Is this lawbreaking stuff? Is it only lawbreaking if the caster willingly influenced the past? What if he accidently changes things in the past? What do you think?

(This thread is meant as a brainstorming and search for story/drama opportunities and not to shut down my player)

[Taran]

On the other hand, the caster may be only looking at an echo or shadow or representation/replay of the past...or, instead of sending an image of himself to the past, he's sending an image of the past to the present.  Personally, I think the biggest hang-up the caster is going to have is a vauge representation of what happened.  I think that's the nature of divinations.

Looking back in time would give you a better picture, since it's set in stone (mostly), but looking into the future would probably only give vague answers since any action can change the outcome.

Consider this also:    There are lots of entities that probably know what happened.  The information is "out there".  He could use divination to just tap into the "collective memory" of the universe..the akashic memory.

None of this comes close to 6th law.

On that note, why use divination when you can use conjuration?  There are entities that know what happened and they could give the information for a price.

[Haru]

In the novels when Harry observes Cowl using Little Chicago he gets noticed by Cowl and is attacked via magic. In Your Story on page 297 this "Extended Divination" spell is described causing "a mostly-invisible, spectral projection of the caster appearing in the location of the monitoring’s point of view". Modeling a "looking back in time" spell as an extended divination one could argue that a spectral projection would appear in the "past" and could therefore influence the past and present.
Is this lawbreaking stuff? Is it only lawbreaking if the caster willingly influenced the past? What if he accidentally changes things in the past? What do you think?

(This thread is meant as a brainstorming and search for story/drama opportunities and not to shut down my player)

Accidentally changing the past can pretty easily lead to a good story. The Gatekeeper notices the disturbance in time and finds the player character. Since the Gatekeeper is way more powerful and knowledgeable when it comes to time travel, he sends the player (and his allies) back to the point where the disturbance took place, in order for them to make things right. Where they determine, that it wasn't really an accident, but a warlock tapping into the spell to make him change the past. Depending on how long you want to run something like this, you could have them return to a different present multiple times, and there is something wrong they need to fix now. I assume that the point in time he wants to get at has some personal connection to his character?

I highly recommend "The strange affair of Spring Heeled Jack" (oder "Der kuriose Fall des Spring Heeled Jack" auf Deutsch ) for a pretty well done story of that kind of time travel shenanigans.

[Tedronai]

In the novels when Harry observes Cowl using Little Chicago he gets noticed by Cowl and is attacked via magic. In Your Story on page 297 this "Extended Divination" spell is described causing "a mostly-invisible, spectral projection of the caster appearing in the location of the monitoring’s point of view". Modeling a "looking back in time" spell as an extended divination one could argue that a spectral projection would appear in the "past" and could therefore influence the past and present.

I don't think that's so much inherent to divinations in general as it is likely another instance of Harry being powerful but sloppy.  I rather suspect that it would, in fact, have been a Compel for Harry's character based on his 'magical style' aspect.  Other practitioners likely would have executed an equivalent spell substantially differently, and at least some of them would manage to avoid that particular issue.

Is this lawbreaking stuff? Is it only lawbreaking if the caster willingly influenced the past? What if he accidently changes things in the past? What do you think?

(This thread is meant as a brainstorming and search for story/drama opportunities and not to shut down my player)

The Law (in the metaphysical truth sense that produces the Lawbreaker power) does not care about intent.  Screwing up because you were stupid and careless is just as bad, metaphysically speaking, as purposefully meddling with the timestream.  This was addressed quite recently (again) in the "'official' perspective on lawbreaking" stickied thread by way of a Word of Jim.
The Council, on the other hand, is slightly less consistent, but on average, even less forgiving.  If it even looks like Lawbreaking, there's a chance that you'll get a chopping.

[Quantus]

As long as you are not actually projecting anything into the past I think you are safe.  This is no more a violation of the laws than looking into the future, in my mind, which the Gatekeeper and that Paranetter with the dog are guilty of on a regular basis.  On the other hand, if the player wanted to to be a violation, or at least carry the possibility of it, you could spin it that way with proper description (as other have described).  Otherwise Id call it looking at the echos of the past, tapping the Universal Memory, or some such and be done with it.  Then you are not actually touching the past, just a recording of it, and thus have no ability to change it.

[madvogon]

<snip>Since the Gatekeeper is way more powerful and knowledgeable when it comes to time travel, he sends the player (and his allies) back to the point where the disturbance took place, in order for them to make things right. <snip>

So, Lucas Priest, Finn Delaney, and Andre de la Croix as Dresden File RPG  characters?  (See Simon Hawke's Time Wars.)

I don't think that's so much inherent to divinations in general as it is likely another instance of Harry being powerful but sloppy.  I rather suspect that it would, in fact, have been a Compel for Harry's character based on his 'magical style' aspect.  Other practitioners likely would have executed an equivalent spell substantially differently, and at least some of them would manage to avoid that particular issue.

Since the stated purpose of any focus is to improve precision and fine control, I would think that a focus as impressive as Little Chicago would drastically decrease Harry's sloppiness.  This is yet again an indication of Cowl's fundamental might and ability.

Further explaining my Heisenberg comment: If the act of observation does indeed affect the observed, we end up with your standard time travel nightmare.  Were the changes always intended to happen or did you actually impact the time flow?  For a beautiful example of this Ouroborous, I refer you to Marvel Comics "The Starbrand."

As far as using divination vs. conjuration and the 6th law, a non-problem solution to this would be the ectoplasmic reconstructions from the Sookie Stackhouse books where the caster creates an ectoplasmic "ghost" of the entire event, limited to the locus where cast.

I again thank you for an intriguing thread and dredging up some fond memories.