Or looking for tampering is a grey area that is OK according to the captain of the wardens and Morgan is a zealot and Harry is over concerned because Molly is a warlock and he is tutored by Ebenezer who wanted to instill the fear for black magic into him for obvious reasons.
I feel like there is some point in the books where it's pointed out that Luccio allowed a breakage of law, but I don't know where. I could also argue that Luccio was under Peabody's influence at this point. But until I find that bit, I'll let this point go.
Lucio was pretty clear about it. The laws are there to regulate the use of wizard power and nothing else. Black magic may have been one of the reasons for doing so but to confuse the cosmic laws invented on this forum with the real laws maintained by the council is wrong.
They are two different things and people can easily switch between them in one sentence and confuse everything.
She does not say "and nothing else," she just says they're not based on conventional morality. And the cosmic laws were not invented here. Harry's clear from the start that breaking one of the law has a tangible effect on the wizard that casts it, and we've seen that borne out again and again, both in Harry and in Molly and in random warlocks like the Korean kid at the start of PG. Harry is able to recognize the "feel" of black magic.
So the idea that there is a higher version of the laws that doesn't care what the Council says was not created on the forums, it's something that comes from the text of the books.
The cosmic laws are not codified, the council laws are. For the council laws invitation makes a huge difference and we know that for a lot of things in the dresdenverse invitation makes a difference so if you have an invitation it is OK according to the laws of magic.
Is it OK according to these "cosmic laws"? Who knows. Is there a double blind experiment with soul blackness meters measured before and after with a lot of wizards?
Because otherwise we can only say something about the laws of magic and not about those "cosmic laws". And for all we know invitation seems to matter for the soul blackness as well. seems logical to me because an invitation means no violation of free will and so on.
Given that Harry has a tangible mark on his soul (several other wizards mention seeing it, plus that rando in Storm Front), as does Molly (Harry sees it himself), and Harry can detect the taint of black magic in other practitioners, I think it's pretty fair to say there is definitely something there.
Heck, Jim Butcher has even said that how the Council enforces the Laws doesn't match up to the cosmic laws.
Look at the "self defense" exemption. Harry's breaking the law to kill Justin is considered OK by the council (...
eventually), and Harry repeatedly mentions that there's allowances for saving your own life. And yet, he still bears the mark of black magic
and the tangible temptation to kill again.
It is nowhere said that they changed the laws. A far simpler explanation involving less earth shattering is that they simply adapted their practices.
Changing how you enforce the laws
is changing the laws. The laws presumably include their enforcement -- that's how mundane laws work, they lay out what you can't do
and what happens to you if you do it anyway (or, at the least, refer to someplace else in the code about it).
So, presumably, the codified law was along the lines of, "Don't go into someone else's brain, or we'll cut your head off," and now is, "Don't go into someone else's brain*, or we'll cut your head off" with "*Unless you're practicing defense against mind magic with your apprentice" at the bottom of the page.
And why is it bad? It can be needed to heal people and is used that way by the senior council. There is no case in the books of someone invited in someones mind who got a blacker soul or was beheaded by the wardens. The whole idea that entering someones mind is always wrong is based on an interpretation of the law that is not supported by the text and contradicts the words used.
Even if a scalpel is only used to heal someone, it still means they have to be stitched up, have to not do anything strenuous for a few weeks and will carry a scar for the rest of their lives as a result.
We don't see everyone's soul who's looked into a mind. But I would wager that Molly's looks blacker after Turn Coat than it did before that book.
Perhaps "wrong" is the wrong word. Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that entering someone's mind is always
damaging. It may be consensual, it may be with the gentlest touch, and it may be intended only to heal, but I still posit that you have to get
in to somewhere that you normally can't go
into, only
out of.
Harry does not want to encourage Molly seeking in the grey area's. He is trying to protect her.
At that point in the conversation, it's too late to "protect" her and Harry knows it. He tells her to run if she wants, because he considers by that point that the Wardens
will kill her. So little point in trying to discourage or protect her at that point.
They do like wiggle room, just not for everyone.
Their zero-tolerance policy kind of belies that.
And nobody changed the wording of the laws so nobody changed the laws. If it is allowed now it was allowed in the past.
We haven't seen any rulebook; all we have is a pithy, poetic-sounding one-liner for each law. And the idea that they don't change and have never changed just goes against human nature and the nature of all such man-made laws.
Skin game. Molly was needed to do the spirits delivery. She talked with IdHarry. She knows how to handle spirits. She even used the wooden skull to give bonnie a home.
The distinction between these things is fuzzy.
A spirit of
intellect, so I'd wager it's as much "mind" as it is "soul." It was in Harry's brain, after all. Plus, Molly's the Winter Lady and had already visited Harry in his dream -- the same kind of dreamy unconsciousness that IdHarry shows up in.
Or maybe Spirits are weird and different from how people normally work. I'm not sure we can use them as evidence for how human-to-human mind/soul magic works.
Which is exactly the point. You need extra power if you do not have an invitation. Because it is different if you do not have an invitation.
That's still to do with souls, though.
What I'm positing is:
Souls can be and are merged and shared -- that's how the True Love protection works, Harry has some of Murphy's soul on him from hugging her, etc. They're a malleable part of yourself that you can freely exchange with others and which moves with you when you move on ("You are a soul. You
have a body.")
Minds, however, are internalized and behind barriers that normally are not a two-way street. It's not a "natural" process to have someone else in your mind the way you might have someone in your soul. The soul is meant to be shared, but your mind is yours and yours alone. Ergo, I posit that for someone to get into your mind, they must by definition go against that natural order and get through natural barriers in your mind.
That's why I call it a violation -- even if you're doing it with the noblest intentions, even if you're doing it exclusively to heal mental tampering, the patient can't "hold the door open" any more than they could open up their bellybutton for you to reach in and pluck out their appendix -- you still have to force your way into someplace you're not meant to be to do the job.
