Magicians in fantasy
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- For other uses, see Magician.
A magician, or wizard or sorcerer or several other possible names (see Names and terminology), is someone who uses or practices magic.
Magicians are most commonly found in works of fantasy, such as mythology, legends, folklore, fantasy-themed works of fiction, and role-playing games. In modern fantasy, a magician is more often seen as a practitioner of magic that derives from supernatural or occult sources, rather than the sleight-of-hand magic used by most popular magicians.
The magicians discussed in this article, as is usual in fantasy, have powers arising from their study, possibly based on innate talent, rather than have their magical abilities occur entirely spontaneously, or be granted by another source.
Historically, many writers who have written about fictional magicians, and many readers of such works, have believed that such magic is possible -- in William Shakespeare's time, witches like the Weird Sisters in Macbeth and wizards like Prospero in The Tempest (or Doctor Faustus in Christopher Marlowe's play) were widely considered to be real -- but modern writers, and readers, usually deal with magic as imaginary.
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[edit] Names and terminology
People who work magic are called by many names in works of fantasy, and the terminology differs widely from one fantasy world to another. While derived from real world vocabulary, "wizard", "witch", "warlock", "enchanter/enchantress", "sorcerer/sorceress", "magician", "mage", or "magus" have within a work of fantasy the meaning the writer invests in them. The term archmage, with "arch" indicating "pre-eminent", may be used to indicate a powerful magician, or a leader of magicians.
When a writer uses more than one term for reasons other than gender-based titles, except in the rarest of cases, it is to sharply distinguish between two types of magic. The precise nature of what the distinction is differs from writer to writer, and the usage can flip-flop between works. In the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia Wrede depicts wizards who use magic based on their staffs, and magicians who practice many kinds of magic, including the wizards'; in the Regency fantasies she and Caroline Stevermer depict magicians as identical to wizards except for being inferior in skill and training.
Steve Pemberton's The Times & Life of Lucifer Jones describes the distinction thus: "The difference between a wizard and a sorcerer is comparable to that between, say, a lion and a tiger, but wizards are acutely status-conscious, and to them, it's more like the difference between a lion and a dead kitten."
In role-playing games, the types of practioners of magic are far more clearly delineated, and named, in order that players and game masters may know the rules by which they are played. In the original edition of Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson invented the term "magic-user" as a generic term for a practioner of magic (in order to avoid cultural connotations of terms such as "wizard" or "warlock"); this lasted until the second edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, where it was replaced with "mage" (later to be
Some names, distinctions, or aspects may have more of a negative connotation, than others, depending on the setting and the context. (See also Magic and Magic and religion, for some examples.)
[edit] Gender-based titles
The term "wizard" is more often applied to a male magic-user, as in Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea, just as a "witch" is more often female, as in Andre Norton's Witch World. In Witch World, a man who, anomolously, showed the same abilities as the witches was termed a warlock. The term "warlock" is sometimes used to indicate a male witch in fiction.
However, either term may be used in a unisex manner, in which case there will be members of both sexes bearing that title. If both terms are used in the same setting, this can indicate a gender-based title for practicers of identical magic, such as in Harry Potter, or it can indicate that the two sexes practice different types of magic, as in Discworld.
"Sorceress" may be the feminine, not only of "sorcerer" but of "wizard" or "magician", which terms have no precise feminine equivalent. Piers Anthony, in the comic Xanth series, describes "sorceress" as "sexist for magician."
[edit] Types of magic
While the terms are used loosely, some patterns of naming are more common than others.
Enchanters often practice a type of magic that produces no physical effects on objects or people, but rather deceives the observer or target, creating illusions. Enchantresses, in particular, practice this form of magic, often to seduce.
Sorcerer is more frequently used when the magician in question is evil. This may derive from its use in sword and sorcery, where the hero would be the sword-wielder, leaving the sorcery for his opponent.
Hedge wizard or hedge witch is a widely used contemptuous term for a magician whose magic is unable to win him enough of a living to keep him from poverty or even vagrancy. Herb witch is less contemptuous, and generally indicates skill with plants (whether magically making them grow or using them magically), but generally also indicates a low level of skill. Such characters may also be taught informally, by another hedge wizard, rather than receive a formal apprenticeship or education at a school.
Terms derived from more specific magics, such as voodoo, alchemy, or necromancy, generally remain closer to their real-world inspirations. Fantasy necromancers often work magic that has something to do with death, although the exact connections vary widely from work to work.
[edit] Traits of Magicians
A common motif in fictional magic is that the ability to use it is innate and often rare. In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, it was limited to non-humans — even Aragorn, whose hands heal, has some elven blood — but in many writers, it is reserved to a select group of humans, as in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels, or Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy universe. This is often a secretive or persecuted group. In these settings, non-magician characters, no matter how learned, cannot actually cast spells. In such instances, magic could be inherited, or perhaps it is a random ability appearing in some children, or the result of some other unique effect or situation. Inherited powers may be a simple genetic trait -- for Katherine Kurtz's Deryni, a sex-linked trait -- or appear apparently at random in lines that have the blood, as in Patricia A. McKillip's The Riddle Master Trilogy, where the shapeshifting Earthmasters attempt to get their blood into royal houses, but fail because although one succeeds in getting the king's wife pregnant, the child's descendants rarely have the powers.
Alchemists are more likely the most magicians to have their powers be the result of study. For them, and most other practioners of magic that is not innate, the study is long and hard. This can produce a lack of magicians even when anyone could in theory learn the art.
Magical practicioners on the Disc (of the Discword series) are rare, and often innate (with exceptions - the eight son of an eight son must become a wizard, even if the son is a daughter), and do require some form of training (again, with exceptions - see Sourcery). Also, magical practicioners on the Disc treat the use of magic not unlike the use of nuclear weaponry - it's okay for people to know that you have it, but everyone will be in trouble if it gets used.
[edit] Education
A common trait of magicians is that, no matter how spontaneously their abilities manifest, they must learn to use them. Occasionally these terms are used for people with innate abilities, but the typical magician is surrounded by books in his tower owing to his studies.
When the magician is not the main character, this may not be visible, but magician protagonists from Ursula K. LeGuin's Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea to Harry Potter have gone to wizardry schools. Others have taken on the roles of apprentices.
Another means of learning can be books -- weighty, ancient tomes, often called grimoires. Conan the Barbarian's sorcerer foes often gained powers from such books, whose strangeness was often underscored by their strange bindings. In worlds where wizardry is not an innate trait, the scarcity of these strange books may be a factor; in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Prince Rupert seeks out the books of the magician Prospero to learn magic.
It may be impossible, in a given work, to determine whether a given practice of magic is innate, because the length of time needed for the study, the scarcity of the books or teachers, or the preciousness of the materials required mean that most characters are necessarily excluded.
[edit] Magicial materials
Historically, many magicians have required rare and precious materials for their spells. Crystals balls, rare herbs (often picked by prescribed rituals), and chemicals such as mercury are common.
This is less common in fantasy. Many magicians require nothing material at all; those that do may require only simple and easily obtained materials. Role-playing games are more likely to require such material for at least some spells, to prevent characters from casting them too easily.
One factor in this development has been the increasing tendencies of wizards to go on quests; the wizard who is merely consulted in his tower may be surrounded by useful equipment and substances, even in a fantasy work, but the questing wizard must carry what he needs.
Wands and staffs are a common piece of property. Gandalf refused to surrender his in The Lord of the Rings, and breaking Saruman's broke his power. Magical wands are used from Andre Norton's Witch World to Harry Potter.
[edit] Use of magic
Larry Niven once urged, in a twist on Clarke's third law, that "any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology," and many other writers have observed that functional magic could replace technology in many situations.
Nevertheless, many magicians live in pseudo-medieval setting in which their magic is not put to practical use; they may serve as mentors (especially if they are wise old men), or act as quest companions, or even go on a quest themselves, but their magic does not build roads or buildings, or provide immunizations, or any of the other functions that it could be put to. Their worlds are and remain at a medieval level of technology. The magicians themselves often live like hermits, isolated in their towers and often in the wilderness. In many, perhaps most, high fantasy works, this is treated as an intrinsic feature of the world, requiring no explanation.
Sometimes this is justified by the use of magic bringing about worse things than it can alleviate. In Barbara Hambley's Windrose Chronicles, the wizards are precisely pledged not to interfere because of the terrible damage they can do. In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the importance of wizards is that they do not do magic.
In other works, developing magic is difficult. In Rick Cook's Wizardry series, the extreme danger of missteps with magic and the difficulty of analyzing the magic has stymied magic, and left humanity at the mercy of the dangerous elves, until a wizard summons a computer programmer from a parallel world -- ours -- to apply the skills he learned here to magic.
At other times, a parallel development of magic does occur. This is commonest in alternate history genre. Patricia Wrede's Regency fantasies include a Royal Society of Wizards, and a technologica level equivalent to the actual Regency; Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series, Robert A. Heinlein's Magic, Incorporated, and Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos all depicted modern societies with magic equivalent to twentieth-century technology. In Harry Potter, the wizards have magic equivalent or superior to Muggle technology; sometimes they duplicate it, as in the train that brings students to Hogwarts.
[edit] In fantasy role-playing games
Because of the need for clear adjucation on rules, practioners of magic in role-playing games are more clearly defined than in many movies or works of literature.
[edit] Dungeons & Dragons
[edit] Wizard
In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, the wizard is one of the base character classes. A wizard is an arcane magic user, and weak in mêlée combat. Wizards spend several years studying magic.
The magic system--where wizards memorize spells which they then forget when they cast them--was heavily influenced by the The Dying Earth stories and novels of Jack Vance.
[edit] Other practioners of magic
Other types include:
- Sorcerer (Dungeons & Dragons)
- Beguiler (Dungeons & Dragons)
- Shadowcaster (Dungeons & Dragons)
- Warlock (Dungeons & Dragons)
[edit] Wizards, magicians, and others specific to a work
[edit] See also
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