"Thou Shalt Not Open the Outer Gates"

[Fcrate]

But I think the tingle only comes if there is significant power present.. I bet if Harry shook hands with Butters in Dead Beat there would be no tingle either, yet under Harry's instructions he could draw a chalk circle, and it had the power to protect him from zombies as he sat in it.  It goes along with the warnings about screwing around with the occult, vanilla humans following a recipe can call up some dangerous beings, like demons and Outsiders, no magical talent needed.

According to Harry, all vanilla mortals can do the circle thing. They can also call outsiders with a ritual (cult of porn star actresses?) only one of them had power, but they all took turns preforming it. Lidia (?) in grave peril only had Cassandra's Tears and she still tingled when they shook hands.

[g33k]

quote author=Mira link=topic=54659.msg2354850#msg2354850 date=1657850613] I think someone, I think Thomas said everyone has "some" magical ability, and in a lot of ways it is like following a recipe. [/quote]

Thomas IIRC was reporting on something Harry had told him.  Thomas does have a small bit of genuine magical ability.  More than most Whamps have, because most Whamps have none.  There are Whamps with more, but none are terribly strong with magic.

I suspect either Thomas was misunderstanding / misreporting, or Harry lied to Thomas in order to boost Thomas' spellcasting abilities (because self-confidence is a huge issue in order to cast spells).

Now, it's also true that there are some rituals that need zero "magical talent" to perform.  They've been described as "vending machines" -- you go through the correct steps of the ritual, and your result pops out; zero "magocal talent" needed, the most pure-muggle people can perform these rituals successfully (creating a circle/ward is one of those rituals; so (evidently) is the HHWB-summoning by the porn-star sorceresses (or at least, parts of it)).  So -- from that POV -- it's also true that "everybody has some magical ability."  Harry could have spoken in this sense; again, that presumably would have been to boost Thomas' self-confidence (but without technically lying to him ("Darth Vader betrayed and killed your father, Luke!" -- "From a certain point of view..." ) ), so Harry could teach Thomas a few small spells (specifically, for that short-story, IIRC Thomas used the tracking spell).