Every Real-World Reference in Alpha
Frozen Shade by Douglas Shuler
We've got a lot to cover today, so I'll just cut to the quick: real-world references in Magic: The Gathering is not a new phenomenon.
Long-time players already know this. And when the Discourse™ shifted in recent years to all the outside influence on our little card game, those elder gamespeople were quick to point out that Shakespeare, Mary Shelley -- hell, even The Bible -- have existed on Magic cards since Magic cards have existed. These players aren't wrong, though I'm sure a few of them had a condescending tone that might have irked some newer players.
We are not going to take that tone today, nor in any future entry into this series. We're going to goof on the fact that there's a card with Albert Einstein on it, and we're going to do so in a way that assumes nothing about your prior knowledge of random 30-year-old cards. There's no reason anyone should have memorized all these little pop-culture Easter eggs. You gain nothing from it other than occasionally being able to spit out a card name faster than Scryfall. And in edge cases, you might end up writing articles on Commander's Herald.
Today, we're going to go over, in as exhaustive detail as I can muster, every real-world reference on Magic cards from the game's origin in Alpha, all the way up to ____. And if I missed anything, it's your job to remind me in the comments. Nicely.
Alpha
Armageddon
We're going to start by clarifying our mission statement a bit.
The word "Armageddon," originally, refers to a place, not an event. It's the location of a great final battle in Christian prophecy. Over time, the word expanded to simply be synonymous with "Cataclysm" or "Apocalypse." Normally, we'd skip over random words for things, because just being an English word is not enough to be considered a "real-world reference."
Unlike those terms, however, Armageddon's etymological origin refers to a real place, here in the real world: Tel Megiddo, in the Middle East. That's why we're not going to single out cards like Bayou or Birds of Paradise. Yes, they exist on Earth, but they're not a specific reference to a specific thing. Creating a card with a correlatable inspiration is different than making a conscious reference.
That's why Armageddon IS NOT a real-world reference for the purposes of these articles. It's highly unlikely that Richard Garfield and Co. added a card into Alpha called "Armageddon" as a direct reference to the calamitous Biblical battle that is prophesied to take place there. No, it's a cool word to describe blowing up all the lands, because in modern parlance, an Armageddon is pretty much exactly that.
Sorry for the ol' bait-and-switch right off the bat, but we have to set very clear metrics otherwise I'm going to end up writing 500 words on why the flavor text of Bog Wraith might be a subtle nod to Canadian Christmas song called the "Huron Carol," also known as "'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime." And no one wants that, especially since I'm about to write much more than that about 19th century Romantic poetry.
Dragon Whelp
We're not constrained to a few lines in the text box of a Magic card, so let's see some context:
"If I, like Solomon,...
could have my wish-
my wish...O to be a dragon
a symbol of the power of Heaven-
of silkworm
size or immense; at times invisible.
Felicitous phenomenon!"
-- Marianne Moore, 1959
Moore, if you're wondering, is an American poet, Nobel Prize in Literature nominee, and her poetry collection "O to Be a Dragon," which includes the eponymous above poem as well as 14 others, was edited by TS Eliot.
A poetry professor might tell you that "O to Be a Dragon" is not actually about being a dragon at all, but about the shifting dynamics of societal roles and gender. But I'm not a poetry professor, so I won't tell you that. I'll tell you that it's a cute little poem about a cute little dragon, as seen on the card.
Firebreathing
Unlike with the poem on Dragon Whelp, I'm not going to type out the entirety of In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, because it's 2,916 lines long, broken up into 131 cantos (not counting the prologue and epilogue). You have Google, go read it for yourself. Or just click here.
I will, however, if you're being obstinate about reading a bit of poetry, include the few cantos surrounding the lines borrowed for the flavor text of Firebreathing:
"XV
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stirThat makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloudThat rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire."
Yes, the word "fire" is in there, but this poem is not about spitting flames from one's mouth. It's a very heartfelt elegy Tennyson wrote in 1833 in honor of a very close friend, Arthur Henry Hallam (the A.H.H. in the title up there), who died suddenly.
It's foundationally mournful, and anyone who is both familiar with the work and has experienced the kind of loss that Tennyson has would see these lines on a random Magic card and be overcome with wistful remembrance -- probably not what is intended. Hell, Tennyson calls into question in a different section of the work what God can allow for such strife. Think about that next time someone uses "firebreathing" as a shorthand jargon term in Magic for "paying a mana for a point of power."
Frozen Shade
This time, we see the first few lines of a poem cribbed for flavor text:
THERE are some qualities -- some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a two-fold Silence -- sea and shore --
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,
Some human memories and tearful lore,
Render him terrorless: his name's "No More."
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
No power hath he of evil in himself;
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God!
Edgar Allan Poe's "Silence," from 1839, isn't exactly known as one of the Baltimore poet's greatest hits, but unlike Dragon Whelp and Firebreathing, it's actually a pretty apt pick for flavor text here on Frozen Shade. Yes, it still was likely chosen because it contains a word that is also present in the card's name, but at least Poe's meaning behind the poem, and his general morose and gothic vibe, fit better than the previous card.
This poem was written roughly 10 years before he was dead at 40 from rabies. Or maybe it was acute alcohol poisoning. Or murder by ghosts? No one really knows, since the official cause of death was "acute congestion of the brain." I hate when that happens.
Oh, and it's actually a myth that he was found dead in a ditch; he was actually found in a gutter.
He wasn't dead yet when he was found there in that gutter, either, I just inserted a paragraph break there for dramatic effect. He died in the hospital four days afterward, but that isn't as punchy of a story.
"Silence" is a sonnet, which you may remember from English Lit as a 14-line poem structured in three quatrains with a couplet stapled to the end. Sonnets always follow the rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. All these facts are actually lies.
There's more than one kind of sonnet, but most English Lit classes only teach the Shakespearean version, which is what the above example describes. "Silence" is actually a Petrarchan sonnet, because Poe was if nothing else a hipster. "Silence" contains an octave and a sestet back-to-back, following an ABBAABBA rhyme scheme, but Poe deviates from the normal CDECDE scheme in the sestet, because, again, hipster.
It's likely that none of this interests you, and you probably already skipped over it to see the next card on the list. But if you haven't, I'll add that my favorite Poe poem is also on a card, and I'll give you a sneak peek before we get to it in more detail in a later article.
Hypnotic Specter
Ah, finally a classic. Everyone knows Hypnotic Specter, despite it seeing its last true reprint going on 15 years ago. Once upon a time, it was one of the best creatures in Magic, full stop. Those days are long gone, but for many players, Hippie still holds a special place in their hearts. And for perhaps some of those players, the flavor text added to the mystique:
All look and likeness caught from earth
All accident of kin and birth,
Had pass'd away. There was no trace
Of aught on that illumined face,
Uprais'd beneath the rifted stone
But of one spirit all her own;--
She, she herself, and only she,
Shone through her body visibly.
Another short poem, with a cherry-picked line lifted to help illustrate Hypnotic Specter's spooky ghostliness. Much of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's body of work deals with similar levels of spooky, and most have at least heard the Iron Maiden song based on his most famous work.
This poem, however, isn't about a malevolent armored ghost that makes you forget things at random. Written in 1805, it's about Coleridge falling asleep and seeing a vision of his crush Sara Hutchinson, the sister of William Wordsworth's wife, in a dream. Five years after he wrote this, Sara dumped him. Oh, what tragedy be fleeting love.
Pearled Unicorn
With Pearled Unicorn, we get our first example of a Magic card using real-world prose, not poetry, for flavor text. In this case, it's Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. Here's a slightly expanded look at the passage chosen:
"The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said "Talk, child."
Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: "Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!"
"Well, now that we have seen each other," said the Unicorn, "If you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?"
This is one of my personal favorite passages from that book, and I'm not ashamed to say that I read it on this Magic card before I ever read it in Through the Looking-Glass. Again, it's an example of a piece of flavor text chosen because it has the word in common with the card's name, but we should also remember that we're talking about 1992-3 here, it's not like they could have just Googled "Copyright-free literature with the word 'Unicorn' in it." Someone in the design process had to know their shit, or at least had a well-worn library card.
It wasn't until much later that I learned the Unicorn we see quoted here is actually a metaphor for Scotland. In the book, the Unicorn is locked in perpetual battle with the Lion over the crown of the White King -- the liege of both of them, which makes the conflict that much more ridiculous. It's all based on an English nursery rhyme:
The Lion and the Unicorn
Were fighting for the crown
The lion beat the unicorn
All around the town.Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
and drummed them out of town
Through the Looking-Glass was written in 1871, but the nursery rhyme predates it by somewhere around a good century or so. So next time you see Pearled Unicorn, tell your friends that it's not just a vanilla three-mana 2/2, but that it draws a literary lineage where, if you squint, could call William Wallace a progenitor.
Phantom Monster
It stands to reason that the poem actually called "Phantom" would have been a better choice for "Phantom Monster," while Hypnotic Specter suits better a poem called "The Haunted Palace."
But what we have is a vanilla blue creature with memorably cosmic art and another Poe excerpt:
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn! -- for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh -- but smile no more.
I've included the last two stanzas for a bit of added context, though the full poem features another four that precedes this. Unlike the flavor text examples we've seen thus far, this one is a little more abstract, in that the words "phantom" or "monster" do not actually appear in the selection. This particular poem has myriad interpretations; you could poll five poetry teachers and get five explanations, from a descent into madness to a reflection on loss, to the intersection of beauty and death or grander, the fall of a once-great civilization.
If you're familiar with The Fall of the House of Usher, you may recognize this poem, as it's recited in that story by Roderick Usher. We're far from done with Poe's influence on early Magic flavor, but let's move on.
Plague Rats
We get a two-fer with this one, in that it mentions both "plague" and "rat" in the selected lines. You can't be more on the nose if you were a butterfly flitting around a truth-averse Pinocchio.
"Recantation" is a fascinating poem and worth a full read, but it's not exactly short at 21 stanzas. I'll just include the few surrounding the clipped lines on the card:
Should you a Rat to madness tease
Why ev'n a Rat may plague you:
There's no Philosopher but sees
That Rage and Fear are one disease--
Though that may burn, and this may freeze,
They're both alike the Ague.And so this Ox, in frantic mood,
Fac'd round like any Bull!
The mob turn'd tail, and he pursued,
Till they with heat and fright were stew'd,
And not a chick of all this brood
But had his belly full!
As you might assume from this selection, the full title of this poem is "Recantation: Illustrated in the Story of the Mad Ox." In Coleridge's full poem, we follow an ox enjoying new-found freedom as its released into a beautiful spring meadow. It's overjoyed, a state never seen in the ox by its human masters, who misinterpret it as madness. In other words, fear escalates a benign situation into a threatening one, fomenting suspicion, hysteria and violence. Where have we seen that before (and continue to see daily)?
Rage and fear are one disease, after all, a theme that also runs thread through a different Plague Rats flavor text excerpt. I don't read French, though, so you're on your own.
Wall of Brambles
With Wall of Brambles, we get a single line of poetry attributed to a poet, but we don't actually get the name of the poem itself on the card, which is a strange choice.
I'd be lying if I said I could have identified this one right off the dome, so I won't say that but instead let you assume it. It's from a poem called "The Room" by Conrad Aiken.
Through that window -- all else being extinct
Except itself and me -- I saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, diving downward. Then I saw
How order might -- if chaos wished -- become:
And saw the darkness crush upon itself,
Contracting powerfully; it was as if
It killed itself slowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain.What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
To shape a single leaf?...
For the leaf came
Alone and shining in the empty room;
After a while the twig shot downward from it;
And from the twig a bough; and then the trunk,
Massive and coarse; and last the one black root.
The black root cracked the walls. Boughs burst the window:
The great tree took possession.Tree of trees!
Remember(when time comes)how chaos died
To shape the shining leaf. Then turn, have courage,
Wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
With grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
I will be watching then as I watch now.
I will praise darkness now, but then the leaf.
The poem was first published in 1930, in an era rife with poetic works centered around uncertainty, injustice, and global instability. "The Room" is about the pursuit of order out of chaos, the organic from the derelict. I personally see the plant life mentioned in the poem as a positive influence, which is a counterpoint to the uninviting and prickly brambles in the card's art. But hey, plants have leaves, and plants have brambles, so it's basically all the same.
Scathe Zombies
Wall of Ice
Will-o'-the-Wisp
We'll wrap up today with three cards all quoting Coleridge's 1798 masterpiece Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a narrative poem that you already know because you clicked on the link to the Iron Maiden video I included in the entry for Hypnotic Specter. You may have also heard about it in high school.
It's one of the best and most famous poems in the English language, and it's much, much too long to include here. Here are the flavor text snippets by themselves, in case you can't read them on the cards themselves; Alpha isn't known for its legibility, after all. I'll put them in the order in which they appear in the poem itself, though the first two excerpts are toward the beginning, while the third is much later:
And through the drifts the snowy cliffs
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--
The ice was all between. (Wall of Ice)About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white. (Will-o'-the-Wisp)They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise. (Scathe Zombies)
All told, Rime of the Ancient Mariner is 625 lines long, broken up into seven distinct parts. In case you somehow avoided reading it as a teen, it's about a guy who crashes a wedding to tell a rambling story of the time he killed a bird with a crossbow.
It's old hat by now, but again, the connections between the lines of poetry and the card's flavor text on which they appear is superficial. Wall of Ice lifts a couplet about ice, while Scathe Zombies sees a few lines about risen dead men. As for Will-o'-the-Wisp, it's a bit more tenuous of a connection, but "death-fires" could be considered an analog to the swamp-light phenomenon's mythos.
Bonus card: Elvish Archers
The flavor text on this one isn't attributed to anyone, but it might seem familiar to you.
Stop me if this feels ripped straight out of a movie or something: During the Second Persian Invasion of Greece, the innumerable Persian army let loose a volley of arrows that blotted out the sky. The impossibly outnumbered Spartan resistance was the target of this wave of arrows at the dawn of the Battle of Thermopylae, and the Spartan soldier Dieneces uttered that famous "the we shall fight in the shade" quip.
This example of anti access and area denial was depicted in a little indie film you may have heard of. That arthouse drama was released in 2006, so this card is not a reference to it, but rather the movie's source material, i.e. real life. Kinda.
Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink
That'll do it for Alpha. We've got a long way to go, and a meandering road to get there. But we'll get there. Eventually.
Just remember that everything has context, and everything has history. No problem is new, and there's nothing unique under the sun. This includes real-life references on Magic: The Gathering cards. Keep this in mind when you're at Aetherdrift prerelease and someone complains about destruction of their immersion thanks to Spikeshell Harrier.
Be sure to check back every day in case the second entry in this series coalesces. And let me know below: did I miss anything? Do you have anything to add?
