White Power

“	Now how do I explain Power? It's something that everybody has, but that humans - except genuine psychics like Bonnie - don't even recognize. Vampires definitely have Power, and they use it to Influence humans to like them, or think that things are different from reality. . .	”
	— Elena in The Return: Shadow Souls

White Power or White Magic is a form of very benevolent and powerful magical power that was first shown in the Vampire Diaries novels. It stems in the Celestial Court.

It is first shown in The Return: Nightfall when Elena Gilbert summons her Wings Powers. It is described by Bonnie McCullough as very benevolent and simply good making Elena embody goodness. The magic is extremely powerful and is the opposite of Dark Magic which is malevolent magic that stems in Hell or the Infernal Court.

The Return: Nightfall

Bonnie is invited to Stefan's house along with Meredith, Matt, and Caroline. Elena kisses Caroline full on the mouth, suddenly. Stefan (who is looking after Elena) informs them that since Elena's return to life; she kisses people intimately to identify who they are, having nothing to do with sex. But Caroline is beyond reason and is extremely angry with Elena's actions, scrubbing at her mouth furiously. Caroline heads off into the bathroom to clean herself up. Meanwhile, Bonnie notices that Elena is very unhappy with upsetting Caroline and Stefan Salvatore explains that Elena is worried about Caroline and he doesn't know why. Bonnie starts to talk badly about Caroline and Caroline (who’d purposefully left her sunglasses behind so that she could overhear everything they’d be saying about her) overhears, coming in and telling them that she now knows what her so-called ‘friends’ think of her. Bonnie begins to feel the thunderstorm feeling coming back and gets nervous, feeling a cold feeling touch her bones, she begins to shake. She feels that a darkness is coming from Caroline and that it may be coming ‘‘for’’ her. The lights then go out and they are left in the darkness. Bonnie hears Caroline scream. When Caroline’s screaming ends, Bonnie gets relieved and Matt holds her in the dark. Bonnie and her friends gasp when they see that Elena is glowing and that she has wings. Elena is talking in a language Bonnie doesn't understand. Bonnie feels tremendous benevolent Power coming from Elena as she chants in a language she doesn't believe exists on Earth and that it is casting all the darkness and things in the dark aside. Bonnie describes Elena to be as beautiful and as pale as when she was a vampire. Bonnie notices that Caroline is shouting, too, words of powerful black magic and that she is the cause of the darkness that is at work. Lizards and snakes and spiders and reptiles come out of Caroline’s mouth and cover the room, much to Bonnie’s fear. Bonnie swallows her fear and feels that she can help Elena in her Magic fight against Caroline with her witch heritage. She clasps Elena’s hand and borrows Elena her own Power. Elena’s benevolent light grows and the reptiles flee from the light as Elena overwhelms them with great amounts of White Power and Caroline’s Dark Magic is banished and Elena collapses in exhaustion of too much Power usage. Later in the book, Elena uses her White Powers to summon her Wings Powers to cure Damon Salvatore of all his sins, giving him his memories, and telling the reader that the Power had always been there in her veins and she uses it to kill the Malach inside him. Later her friends tell her that they believe in her in the battle against Shinichi and Misao and she uses her White Power and summons her Wings of the Wind and cuts off several of Misao’s tails and orders her Wings of Purification to kill all the malach in the woods of Fell's Church and temporarily stops the Kitsune’s dark magic over the Old Wood.

The Return: Shadow Souls

In the book, Elena is struggling to learn to control her new altered state and can’t control her next Wings Power. Elena and Damon travel to the Dark Dimension to find Stefan. Elena uses her 'White Power throughout the book, often visiting Stefan as a spirit and seeing her friends’ auras and talking to Damon’s soul. She also does a lot of telepathy. After finding the keys to Stefan’s jail cell, they rush against time to return to Earth. As they are being attacked by a murderous gigantic bird, they are almost killed, but Elena summons her Wings of Protection and shields them beneath her benevolent iridescent wings.

The Return: Midnight

In this book, Elena, Bonnie, Stefan and Damon travel to the Dark Dimension to find a Starball that’ll help them defeat Shinichi and Misao once and for all. They travel past the Dark Dimension into the Nether World to find it. In the Nether World, they discover the Seven Kitsune Gates, doors to certain rewards, but they can only chose one door. Elena aches for the Gate that leads to the Fountain of Eternal Youth and Life, but decides that it is best she and her friends continue on the quest at hand. They take the Gate that leads to the Nether World’s moon where a worldly tree grows almost as big as the moon. Shinichi appeared to Elena, Bonnie, Stefan and Damon. He reveals (after a failed attempt at killing them) that Misao has died and that he regrets ever coming into the protagonists’ lives. As a Kitsune, he is not allowed to regret anything, regret for a Kitsune would mean death in their laws. Realizing this, Shinichi, panicked, says he takes it back, but Elena feels a powerful force coming and it kills Shinichi. Elena and her friends then find the Starball on a branch on the worldly tree. The tree takes a life of its own, trying to kill Bonnie by stabbing her with a branch, but Damon moves Bonnie out of the way and takes the fatal blow himself. Elena realizes that Damon is dying and tries to talk to him telepathically. She then enters his aura and natures his soul in the form of Damon as a young boy, holding him in her hands and telling him to sleep. Elena, heartbroken with Damon’s death, summons her Wings of Destruction with her White Powers and burns the whole tree down, almost destroying her friends and the moon in the process. When she awakens, Sage is feeding her his rich blood and she realizes that Damon truly is dead when Sage bursts into tears. Sage, being the Keeper of the Seven Gates, tells them that they can get the attention of the Celestial Guardians (the police or keepers of order in the Dark Dimension) by raiding through all the doors and returning to them the Radika Flower which once belonged to them and it is in one of the Gates, he tells them that a ransom to return the flower will get them to help with the crisis in Fell’s Church. The Guardians arrive to arrest them for raiding the Gates and breaking the rules by taking individual things in the Seven Gates. Elena and her friends are delivered to the Celestial Court and the main Guardians, Idola, Ryannen and Susurre tell them that they would gladly help change all the events that had happened in Fell’s Church. The Guardians reveal that Elena was meant to be one of them, which is why she has her aura of White Power and that they were the ones who caused the events that led to their parents’ deaths. The Guardians had come to Earth to collect Elena to join them when Elena broke her father’s driving concentration when she saw them flying by. The Guardians will change reality back on Earth as an apology and a ransom for the Radika Flower and most of the stuff taken from the Seven Gates. Elena wishes for her life in Fell’s Church to be as if she’d never died and as if Klaus had not come to the town. She demands that Vicki and Sue get their lives back and to go have a scholarship in a college called Delcrest and she wishes for the town to accept Stefan as her boyfriend. The Guardians agree to this with no problem until Elena asks for Damon to return, too. Elena, angry that they refuse to revive Damon, summons her Wings of Destruction, threatening to destroy the Celestial Court. A Guard is quick enough to close her mouth before she mutters the spell and the Court cuts her wings off and strips her of her Powers for her threats, but they let her keep the aura of her blood because she had previously lost a lot of blood and pulling all her Guardian Powered blood out of her would kill her. The Guardians then send them back to Earth and Elena wakes up back in her old room, unable to use telepathy or any of her other previous Powers, but is glad that she is back in her Aunt Judith’s house.

The Hunters: Phantom

Elena does not use her Powers in this book because of being stripped of her Power in the book before.

She and her friends fend off the power and strength of their own emotions incarnate as the Original Phantom.

The Hunters: Moonsong

In the book, Elena and her friends go to college in the reality created for them by the Guardians. The college is called Delcrest and it is the college where Elena’s parents met. She seeks out closer about them and to found out more about their lives. A teacher, James, was Elena’s parents’ friend and he notices her when she comes to his class now that he is a teacher at Delcrest. He invites Elena to his office and he tells her about her parents and how they were all friends at Delcrest. Later, when Elena is investigating a secret coven called the Vitale Society (which had been joined by her friend, Matt), she asks the teacher what connection he and her parents had to them. James tells her that they were a secret coven that practiced light and natural magic, and that the three of them, James, Elizabeth (Elena’s mother) and Thomas (Elena’s dad) were part one of the coven. James explains that one day, a male Guardian, made out of true benevolence. The Guardian had come on Earth to choose the parents of the future Earthly Guardian who would be a protector of the world and they would return to get the child when it turned twelve years old to be trained into her Power. Elizabeth and Thomas were the happy volunteers to be the parents of such a being and to give her away when she turned twelve – the child being Elena. Elena is heartbroken that her parents, who she’d known to love her, were intended on giving her away. Elena is also horrified that the Guardians may be determined to make her one of them. She tells herself that maybe an Earthly Guardian would be different from a Celestial Guardian. James tells her that there is another Earthly Guardian in Costa Rica and after a few days, the other Earthly Guardian arrives on campus and Elena is reluctant to meet him. Andrés, the other Earthly Guardian, is very human and kind to Elena, leading her to believe that Earthly Guardians are much more different than the cruel and cold Guards she had met. She learns that Earthly Guardians are Guardians meant to be protectors of earth on earth and that she has always had Power in her, waiting to be used even before her death. Andrés teaches her to open her mind and access her White Power, and tells her that once she is ready, a Principle Guardian from the Court will come and assign her to her first duty as an Earthly Guardian. With her Powers growing, Elena learns to read and sense people’s auras and read minds again.

The Hunters: Destiny Rising

After saving Matt and Stefan from the deadly vampire coven of the Vitale Society, the new vampires fled, while the older members of the Vitale Society are all killed by Damon and Meredith. Ethan, the leader of the Vitale Society (and only older survivor) is intent on raising Klaus back from with the blood of his descendants and a spell that is to be done on the Equinox. The gang finds out and finds him at a bonfire with the remaining members of the Vitale Society. He spills the blood that he has gathered from vampires sired by Klaus’ line into the flames before the protagonists can interfere. Klaus comes from the flames naked and kills Ethan. He holds Elena and tells her he will kill her before kissing her and disappearing. Elena is shaken up and decides she has to learn more about her Celestial Guardian Powers. Andrés tries to teach her more without much luck, she can just sense and see auras. Elena gets a visit from a Principle Guardian named Mylea and Mylea gives her her first task. Her first task would be to kill an old evil vampire who is back and killing again. Expecting it to be Klaus, Elena is horrified when Mylea reveals that her task is to kill Damon. Elena feels a pull to her task, a cold voice often telling her to kill Damon. Later, Elena finds Klaus and his gathered vampire army by using her White Power to track Klaus’ aura. The protagonists fight against Klaus’ army and Elena sees Katherine von Swartzschild among Klaus’ war enforcement as Katherine fights Stefan. Klaus holds everyone in place and walks up to Elena. Elena is held in place by Klaus’ Power and she can’t move. He takes out a silver dagger and cuts her across the neck. Blood flows out, but Elena feels it soon stop flowing and realizes that the wound has healed oddly. Klaus tries to cut her again, but she heals rapidly once more. Klaus thinks that Bonnie (who is a druid priestess and a psychic witch) has cast a protection spell on her and he vows that he will find out how she did and leaves with his army. The protagonists are once again spared. Andrés tells them that Elena’s healing is a Guardian Power that she was blesses with: she cannot be killed by supernatural cause, but any other human causes like being hit by a car, etc. can kill her just as it would any human. They all vow to keep this secret. Throughout the next days, Elena refuses to kill Damon even if it will mean altering her Powers to help in the battle against Klaus. Elena later goes to James’ and finds that Klaus has killed him and that James had told him everything about her through a note left behind by Klaus. Elena feels sickly thinking about their now revealed secret and she tells her friends. Later, she and Andrés are in an elevator when Klaus attacks them from above, happily claiming that he would cut the lines holding the box and that it would be a mortal death and not a supernatural one. Damon (who was informed by Katherine that Klaus would do this) arrives and Andrés holds Klaus off as Damon takes Elena. Klaus, enraged, kidnaps Andrés and Elena wants to save him. The protagonists decide to confront Klaus. Elena tracks his dark aura off campus and Klaus awaits them with his vampire army. Damon, Stefan, Meredith, Matt, Chloe (Matt’s new vampire girlfriend) and the Original Pack fight in hand-to-hand battle against the antagonists, while Bonnie and Alaric K. Saltzman cast protection spells. Elena remembers Andrés telling her that the assignments given to them by the Guardians access more of their Power when they try to complete them. Elena tells Damon to fight her and Damon understands. He punches her, barely hurting her, but her Power responds to it and she feels it grow in her. She focuses it on Klaus and a fire starts. The fire threatens to burn her friends, and Klaus is threatening to attack now. Elena uses her psyche/mind to control the flames and they go in Klaus’s direction. And Elena blacks out from over usage of Power. When she regains consciousness, she is in the tunnels underground with Klaus and he comments that her friends will never find her. Klaus then wonders aloud how a Guardians’ blood tastes and bites her, keeping his fangs in her flesh so the blood can continue to move into his mouth. Elena reminds herself reluctantly that he can’t kill her like that (because of her protection against supernatural forces), but feels like she is dying anyway. Klaus rises from Elena’s neck just in tune with the arrival of the other protagonists. He smiles, then he shudders and falls blankly on the floor and Stefan can tell that he is dead. Andrés comments that Elena is the One and tells them about a prophecy about a child of a Principle Guardian and a human with blood that would bring death to the Old Ones – the oldest, evilest demons, vampires, werewolves, etc. that have been alive since the dawn of human civilization. Elena faints from loss of blood, but soon wakes up in bed with Stefan seated next to her. Andrés visits and gives her a journal that he has found among James’ things. Once alone, Elena reads the journal and notices that it is her mother’s journal. Her mother has written that the deal that she and Elena’s father was that they would come and collect Elena and her little sister when she is old enough to decide if she wants to be a Guardian or not. Elizabeth writes that her former sisters the Guardians were calling on her and were breaking their deal and wanted to take a Elena sooner. Elizabeth also writes that she had had Katherine as her child and the Guardians had abandoned her because she was a sickly child and she did not get a chance to come into her Powers because she was turned into a vampire by Klaus and corrupted. Elizabeth was a Guardian and she had watched over Katherine her first daughter, yearning to be her mother. But she would not do the same mistakes with Elena and Margaret (Elena’s younger sister) and that she would die happily to protect her children from harm. She says that her children will have very strong Powers they themselves won’t know about. Elizabeth hopes that somehow, Katherine could step back into the light, and that her three daughters can unite. Elena closes the book and goes to Damon’s house and finds that Katherine is there. Elena asks her if she knew before, when she’d attacked the first time, that they were sisters and Katherine shakes her head, telling her that she’d learned a lot in death and says she will leave town should stay out of her way from then on and Elena agrees and bids her farewell. Elena, Andrés and Bonnie come up with a plan to summon the Principle Guardian who assigned her to kill Damon. Bonnie gives Damon a mixture that slows his heart and puts him in a deathlike sleeping zone. After Elena uses her aura and White Powers to summon Mylea, Mylea arrives and immediately notices that Damon is not dead yet. Elena refuses to kill him even though a voice tells her that she can snap his neck with her psyche. Mylea tells Elena that her insolence and her refusing to kill him will go unharmed and that she will finish the job. Elena starts to gamble and tells Mylea that, should she been assigned to kill him any longer, she will not use her Powers to help save humanity from the Old Ones. Elena tells Mylea that she would die for Damon, and, after awakening him, Mylea asks him if he would do the same for her. Damon agrees and Mylea destroys the assignment, replacing it with a linking Elena to him; making her feel his emotions and him hers. Mylea explains that should Damon kill a human being, Elena will die, should he feed on an unwilling donating human, Elena will suffer, and should they break the link somehow, Damon will be eliminated immediately by the Celestial Court. Later, Elena excepts her duties as an Earthly Guardian completely and is happy to be with Stefan forever.

Powers and Abilities

White Power has a variety of uses for the user, it is capable of doing a handful of different calibers including the following:

As a human returned from the afterlife, Elena was given special abilities that power her aura. All supernatural beings can see it, so has Damon taught her how to control it and circulate it around her system. Her powers have made her blood irresistible to vampires and other supernatural creatures. Later on in the series, it was revealed that Elena possesses these special powers is because she is an Earthly Guardian/Angel.

• Superhuman Senses: Elena has learned to control her senses of hearing, vision, and smell at her own will.
• Telepathy: Elena can communicate with Stefan, Damon and Bonnie non verbally, using her mental senses. She can sense and feel Stefan and Damon's emotions as if they were her own when sharing blood with either (mainly Stefan) one of the two brothers.
• Telekinesis: White Power allows the user to certain kinetic Powers, including:
  1. Pyrokinesis is the ability to control and create fire with the mind, Elena used this Power when fighting Klaus.
  2. Geokinesis is the ability to control the earth, such as cause flowers to blood, or chasms that could be used to swallow the user's foe.
• Wings of Power: Elena has several different wings, all powers given to her from the afterlife. These are her different kinds of wings:
  1. Wings Of Protection are strong and, like the name, very useful for Elena to protect herself and whoever is there with her.
  2. Wings Of Purification are white in coloring and can remove all sins of a person and their memories
  3. Wings Of Remembrance are violet-blue in color and can return someone's memories.
  4. Wings Of Redemption are rainbow-colored and can redeem people of their sins.
  5. Wings Of The Wind which are gold in color, were used to create wind and these wings helped her to fly.
  6. Wings Of Destruction are used to destroy things which are obstacles or are possible dangers. Elena Gilbert is the only one to have them.
• Time Manipulation: Elena, like other guardians, can go back in time, causing the resurrection of the dead, memory loss, and physical restoration of the damage.
• Sacred Blood: Elena's blood is the ultimate weapon to destroy all the evil creatures of the universe. It's the only thing that can destroy the Old Ones, and prevent their resurrection. She is the only one that possesses it.
• Sacred Act of Sharing Blood: When sharing blood with a vampire, Elena feels their ultimate love for her and it has been stated that for supernatural entities, it is a spiritual replacement for sex.

Trivia

• Elena Gilbert is apparently the only Guardian known to possess Wings of Destruction because the Elder Guards: Idola, Ryannen and Susurre claim that they have never seen anything as dangerous and as destructive before cutting off all Elena's Wings.

References

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