Magic Circle Materials (What does and doesn't work?

[CrimsonJoker]

I'm curios what could and couldn't work to create a magic circle. My pet idea at the moment involves the user spray painting a magic circle around themselves and then dispelling the circle by hitting it with a different color of paint. How would you make one that doesn't involve chalk?

[bobjob]

I think it can be done with anything. It's mostly belief from what I've read, the better the material the more concrete the belief. I've got no quotes, but that's how I'd run it.

Chalk, a drawn circle in the dirt, spray paint. All good.

[Haru]

I think simply stepping on the spray painted circle would be enough to break it. At least temporarily. Which could be pretty powerful if used right

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Bender does this when he is calling his minions. He's got a wire circle he can fold up and pocket, but it unfolds in a split second, and he uses it to pump out his gray men like one per second, each time breaking the circle by stepping on the wire.

You can create a circle with virtually anything, provided it has the capability to represent a line in the sand type barrier. By that, I mean that it should be somewhat visible, tangible or anything along those lines, so you can distinguish "in here" from "out there". Sand, salt, glitter, sawdust, paint, people standing in a circle, a USB extension cable, an actual line in the sand/dirt, gravel, light funneled through prisms, flowers planted in a pattern, and so on. It depends on what your circle needs to do. Do you need to use a lot of energy, in which case it should be a more durable material, or is it just supposed to be quick and dirty?

Chalk is just one of those things that's often used for a reason. It's cheap, easy to carry, quick to use, etc. And it is gone with the next rain. If there's always going to be a paint circle on the ground where something has happened, people are going to get suspicious.

[PatchR]

Anything that makes a circle, even an imperfect circle can be used

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Including just a mental image of a circle, as Harry uses in Changes

[Himana]

If you read through a lot of the books, circles that are being used just for basic circle properties (such as blocking out things made of ectoplasm, separating the magic of the area inside from the magic of the outside for Thaumaturgical working, and acting as a cage for supernatural beings from summoning) can be used no matter what the circle is made of.

The issue starts cropping up because of three things. One is practicality. Circles that are made by nothing but some scratches in the ground is really easy to disrupt by just environmental problems. Harry mentions in one of the books that it would be incredibly dangerous if debris came by and brushed away the circle in the middle of a working. The second has to do with making circles more powerful on their own. When circles are made from certain materials they function better in certain circumstances. Certain objects and materials in the Dresdenverse are shown to have power independent of belief (Iron hurts the Fae with or without belief, White Vampires can't deal with objects touched by True Emotion etc). When these objects are worked into circles the circles function better against those things either protecting what's inside or trapping the beings inside.
The third is something that Harry only hints at a couple times, but it has to do with the way that the circles seem to work. (This is almost complete speculation but considering the way that the magic of the Dresdenverse seems to work more as a fundamental force like gravity and light some of this might make sense.) They function by taking the initial investment of energy and constantly running that energy on the ring of the circle. To overcome the circle, a being must be able to overcome that energy and destroy the "wiring" of the circle as it were. The energy of circles seems to function by inhibiting any supernatural or magical force from passing through its bounds. Mortals are able to break it because their free will is not impeded by the energy, but supernatural beings have no free will so they can't break the energy around the wiring. This is also why random environmental debris can mess with the circles as long as it isn't "empowered" by a supernatural force or will. At one point Harry mentions that having a circle be perfectly round helps to make it more efficient, so it also begs the question if certain materials just conduct magic better like there are certain materials that conduct electricity and kinetic force better. One big thing that comes up for me is the use of objects when Harry attempts to trap a strong being. This is about creating and using images and concepts in his own mind to reinforce the spell. However there is a specific instance in Cold Days

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where Molly uses magic to try to overcome a Sidhe spell and are able to do so through the use of iron. This has nothing to do with belief and more to do with iron's relationship to the Fae.

Of course this is all speculation and I'm somewhat rambling, but it's an interesting thing to ponder.

[solbergb]

Harry says a lot of things that are based on his training and he's not always right.  Magic circles are more efficient FOR HIM if they're round.  It isn't clear a different practitioner would see any difference between a circle or an oval.

What is clear is that the practitioner's belief is important ("Blue is for safety" says Harry in one book, and for him blue is good for that kind of thing because he sees it that way.  Another person may prefer green, or black or white).   It's also clear that the thing you're attempting to affect with the circle matters, what it cares about (eg, using iron to trap a faerie).    Gems, expensive stuff in time or money seem to bolster the raw power of the circle but don't really change what it does.   Symbols can (the Loup Garou circle seemed to have a physical ward, a purely magical circle of the typical sort and an extra layer for critters made of both, like a loup Garou.  I sometimes wonder if the physical and magical wards were to keep OUTSIDERS from releasing the beast by accident, as opposed to anything intended to stop the critter.

[Hyooz]

Materials seem to matter sometimes. For thaumaturgy, the construction of the circle seems to matter primarily for convenience and focus in various ways. Chalk serves Harry well for most of his spells, but I doubt he would even consider using chalk for something on a larger scale, like interacting with Little Chicago. Refining the circle in various ways helps the wizard build the magical construct and keep it solid. When the exact form of the construct matters in a big way (like, say, containing

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the Archive

) then you'll want as much help as you can get to build the construct.

There seems to be a point where magical creatures can break free of circles as well, since Harry seemed to struggle to keep the Erlking in his circle way back when.

Of course, that's mostly just making declarations to tag for your higher-level thaumaturgy spells. So I'd say the spraypaint idea would work well for anything quick and dirty, but you'll want to start refining that in various ways to get your tags for stronger spells.

I actually love the idea of a wizard graffiti artist refining his circle by making his art more and more complex.

[Quantus]

The thing to remember about circles is that Wizards can cheat in several ways.  For a non-magic user, say Butters, to empower a circle the options are pretty limited.  He needs an actual physical circle to contain the energy, and then he dumps a blob of said energy into it with a drop of blood.  It's a little unclear whether this is a one-time investment or setting up a link, but either way.  Different materials conduct that energy differently (Cold Iron imparts the anti-fae properties on circles and many other spells), and to varying degrees of efficiency (blood conducts more energy, perfect circles are better than rough ones, etc.) Some circles require anchor points (see Harry's talk about the three-layered circle in FM), others dont. 

But Wizards cheat.  They can impart will and energy into the circle directly, and so they can do nearly anything a physical circle could do if he imagines it hard enough, though the effort involved can be astronomical.  For tehm the physical circle is a whole lot less literally nessesary and a whole lot more mental crutch to visualize the circle and energy flows more accurately.  In SmF harry talks about how he can image basically any parts of the circle he needs to, just with more effort, and in FM he creates a circle by swinging a glowing neckalace in a circle above his head really fast.  On the flip side any time we've seen him go full ritual on a spell he was nervious about, that's him adding extra props to aid the mental construct. 

Im not sure but I think that theoretically he could even imagine Iron to get the anti-Fae properties without actually having any.  Given how the battle of wills with Mother Winter Went down, and a WOJ that states there is no upper limit to magic, I think it's possible, but I couldnt say for sure whether it could be done without Soulfire.