Is This Good Latin? CAOS Edition #5: Protection Spell
Here I am again. This post was a draft for about three months now. It was torture, I didn’t want to look at it again. But hey, now I have to wrap up a semester and magic my thesis out of thin air, so of course this post is the one thing I shall finish. Here we go… Protection spell.
(Beware: This turned out to be more of an effort to decipher the Latin than a simple answer to the titular question. You might be bored. I’m posting anyway.)
A spell that is used multiple times by multiple people in the show, a protection spell that can presumably save you even from certain death. The spell goes like this: Qui affecto protego, mixtisque iubas serpentibus et posteris meis stirpiqu. Oh my. Because of stirpiqu which doesn’t make sense I googled more and found out the spell is longer:
Qui affecto protego, mixtisque iubas serpentibus et posteris meis stirpique meae domum meam, et deducet me ruunt momenta ut potest iactare servate innoxias.
This version can be found all over the internet and it is supposedly used by real witches (I don’t really believe in that, but to each their own, I love you, witches, don’t jinx me), however, it is not used in the show so I will not analyse it. At least not now. Moving on back to the short version…
Qui affecto protego, mixtisque iubas serpentibus et posteris meis stirpiqu(e). As with most of the spells in CAOS, this one doesn’t have a direct English translation and even though I have found the full spell all over the internet, not one source gives the translation either. Which is problematic as I must admit I spent hours looking at it and not understanding what is going on.
The beginning is simple enough: (I) who affect (but also seize or desire), protect. So far so good. The next part is tricky. There is one word in accusative, e.g. object case: iubas (hair or mane; plural), therefore I would expect it to belong to a verb. Protego (I protect) seems like a good candidate. So I, who affect, protect hair. Okay…
serpentibus mixtis(que) means “with or by snakes mixed (presumably) with the hair”. I, who affect, protect hair mixed with snakes / I protect hair with mixed snakes. This just brings me to Medusa but doesn’t explain anything.
posteris meis means “with or by my descendants” (basically, posterus means “following, coming after, next”). We could potentially connect it all together as so: I, who affect, protect hair mixed with snakes with my descendants OR I protect hair with my descendants mixed with snakes. I don’t know about you but this just got more confusing.
The last piece of the puzzle is stirpiqu(e). stirps can mean “rootstock”, “plant”, “lineage”, “family”, “offspring” or “source”. The form of this noun is dative (stirpī), que just means and. So “and to family”. It should be noted that both mixtis serpentibus and posteris meis are both ablative (as I translated them before) and dative, but I just don’t see how this could mean anything if they indeed are all dative. I would possibly translate everything as so: I, who affect, protect hair with my descendants mixed with snakes to my family (= my family’s hair). Huh.
Before I leave you hopefully as confused as I am, I’ll give you one more version. The verb protego has to objects, one in accusative (the object of your protection) and one with ablative (the thing you are protecting from). So the snakes could actually be the attacker. But why are they mixed? And with what or whom? What do the descendants and the family have to do with anything? And what the hell is with the hair? Is this a good Latin? Might be. I would have no idea.
If you have any idea, please reblog this with your attempt to decipher it, or message me. Whatever you want. See you again when I recover from this absolute mess of a spell.
Bonus gif for your patience.
