The Way of the Wizard

The Way of the Wizard

Introduction

Wizards are dangerous and mysterious. They have mighty powers, casting spells with nothing more than a gesture and a word or conducting elaborate rituals that produce hidden results. They control the forces of the world but often stand back from it, alone and withdrawn. They are the ultimate image of mankind’s desire to control his surroundings – willpower and wisdom made human.

Magick is as old as though. It comes from the same ideas that created the earliest beginnings of religion in the minds of our earliest ancestors – the destructive power of fire, the awesome displays of fierce weather, or the exceptional luck in the hunt. It is fascinating to imagine that the forces of the universe can be controlled with either a though or a word. Many of us would love to live in a world – a mysterious and exciting world hidden behind ours, that can reach out and save us – where men and women of power can perform such supernatural marvels… It’s a tempting idea.

Of course, even within the world of the wizard, only a very special few have the potential to master the forces of magic. It takes willpower, intelligence, persistent effort and solid belief. If everyone could learn, then everyone would – wizards are rare, and that means that it is difficult to become one. Fictional and mythological wizards are usually born that way, with the power buried within. Harry Potter is a wizard by birth, and magick runs in his blood. Merlin, King Arthur’s wizard, is not entirely human, and gets his power from elsewhere. Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings is a heavenly being in disguise. Luke and Anakin in Star Wars, Garion in the Belgariad, Will Stanton in The Dark is Rising, Rand in The Wheel of Time… over and over again, wizards are born to their power and grow up knowing nothing about it until it bursts out of them.

Wizards are usually thought of as crotchety old men wearing robes and pointy hats. That isn’t always true, though. Wizardry goes beyond any simple description, and isn’t only found in fantasy – you also find it in the modern fictional settings, in science fiction, in mythology, and in all sorts of other place.

There are even real historical people who have claimed to be wizards. There are no stereotypes that you can rely on. Circe of Greek myth and Baba Yaga of Russian folklore are female wizards. Harry Potter is a child (and Hermione, his friend, is a girl too), John Dee really lived in the 16th century, Rincewind, the Discworld wizard, only knows one spell and Jedi Master Yoda isn’t even slightly human.

The nature of Magick

The most important requirement for being a wizard is the ability to use magick. Without it a wizard is nothing more than a stage magician. Magick is at the heart of a wizard’s power, but it manifests itself in many different forms, and may come from many different places. Therefore it is important to know what magick really is.

Magick is the art of causing something to happen without going through the normal process that is required to make it happen. Everything that happens normally involves a chain of events, each leading from one to the next on the way to the result. This is called ‘causality’, because each moment is physically caused by the one that happened before it. Magick cuts straight through that, providing you with a more direct way to achieve the result.

The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, “In a sufficiently advanced society, technology is indistinguishable from magick.” He meant that if our science was good enough, we would be able to achieve seemingly magickal results. That may be true, but it misses the point entirely. Magick is about causing effects by the power of your mind (or soul/spirit/faith etc) alone. If you use technology, you are not a wizard – you are a scientist.

Lets look at an example of that. Moving from place to place normally requires you to somehow travel from A to B. You have to use energy to move, or someone or something else – like a horse, a car or a plane – has to use energy to carry you. Wizardry could move you from A to B without energy being used. That is not possible in normal causality… and that is what makes it magick. If you use a scientific teleport device (like the ones in Star Trek) there is a causal explanation – and an energy source – so it’s normal causality, not magick.

Types of Magick

Magick comes in many different varieties, but spells are the most traditional form. A spell is a set of words that channels magick power and can either be spoken or written. They may be in the wizard’s own language or they may be in a foreign, forgotten or secret language, they may be in a special magickal tongue, or they may even be in no language at all. Spells can be as short as one syllable, or can be so long they take days to speak. They might be sentences, commands, rhymes or nonsense. They usually sound impressive, but even that doesn’t have to be the case. Spells work by shaping and defining the wizard’s desires and bringing them into the real world. The very sounds of the spell somehow key into the universal forces of magick and bring about the desired result. Many wizards also need to be holding a wand or a staff in order to cast a spell – they help to channel the spell’s magick into the real world.

For many wizards, though, something extra is needed. Some magick requires physical motions called gestures. This may be in addition to a spell, but sometimes just the physical action is enough on its own. Gestures like this might be long and complicated, or they might be as simple as the flick of a finger. The actions involved in a magickal gesture are thought to bring the wizard into alignment with the magick he – or she- is channelling. Magickal items and tools may also be required. A wizard may require particular clothing, candles or fires, chalices, altars, knives or daggers, a particular place or room, special herbs or other magickal substances, bells or instruments, assistants or sacrifices, or all sorts of things. These are collectively known as tools, even though as assistant is a living being, and wands and staffs are so ubiquitous that they don’t count.

A ritual is a piece of magick that requires one ore more tools. Most rituals include spells and often gestures as well. Rituals are as variable as everything else and may take months or just a moment to complete, but most last for an hour or two. They usually take place in a special or magickal location – a lonely hilltop, an underground temple, a forest glade – and require a number of different tools. They can get extremely complicated, and are usually ruined if they are disturbed. For that reason, most wizards prefer simpler spells when they are available.

Most magickal effects fall into one of five different categories. Spells that change one thing into another, or change part of something, are spells of transformation. Typical transformation spells include changing lead into gold, turning an enemy into a toad, or shifting your appearance to look and sound like someone else. When something is summoned from another place or created out of thin air, the process is called invocation. This can include calling servants, creatures or monsters from other dimensions, casting a fireball at a rival, or cloaking yourself in an illusion. When feelings, emotions and other intangibles are changed or manipulated, it is known as evocation. This covers things like love spells, making people avoid a certain area, stopping time, or cursing someone to bad luck. Playing around with physical qualities – location, speed, weight, size, health and so on – falls under manipulation. This included teleporting and moving objects around as well as curing disease or becoming invisible. Finally, divination deals with spells that look into other times and places, or ones that seek answers. This can involve making predictions, discovering who last held an object, learning someone’s history, or spying on a distant place.

Other Wizardly Powers

There is more to being a wizard than just magick, however. There are a number of powers and abilities that wizards often possess that are magickal, but do not really count as a spell that can be cast. These may be passive abilities that are always active for the wizard even if he or she is doing something else, or they may be specific skills that the wizard can use when he or she wants to. There are differentiated from spells in that they do not necessarily have a specific result – a spell that makes something happen; other powers, on the other hand, may just be.

These might include…

Psychic abilities
Many wizards are psychic in one way or another. They may get spontaneous glimpses of the future – unasked for, unexplained and sometimes even irrelevant. This can also manifest itself as knowing when they are in danger. Others can read minds or emotions, or at least feel the presence of other beings around them. A few can even tell which actions are going to give the best results, or even when something is going to prove to be a mistake. The Jedi’s mind-control ability, for example, is a spell that requires a gesture to cause a result – the Jedi gestures and tells the victim what to think – but their power of perceiving surroundings through the Force is a psychic ability, because it is like a sixth sense and it is always on.

Astral projection
This is similar to psychic ability, but there are certain differences. It is a power that allows a wizard to step out of his or her physical body into an invisible shell of consciousness. This shell can then go to other locations at the speed of thought, and perhaps even to other times and dimensions. When in an astral form, most wizards can watch and listen passively, but can take no physical action. A few can cast spells from the astral shell, which makes them immensely powerful.

Immortality
This is usually limited. The wizard may be immune to ageing and disease, but not to injury or attack – or vice versa. Even fully immortal wizards usually have one weakness or vulnerability that can be used to harm them, in the same way that a werewolf can only be harmed by silver. Ageless wizards mostly look old, but as always there are exceptions and some immortals may appear young, even child-like. Similarly, a frail old wizard may well prove completely invulnerable to physical harm. There are even some wizards who regularly change their appearance, altering their apparent age, sex, country of origin and even species on a whim. Some go so far that they even forget what they originally looked like.

Knowledge
This is perhaps the greatest of wizardly powers. Most are well learned, with access to all sort of information that those around them do not have. The term “wizard” itself comes from the derivative “wise”. Often a wizard will have a knowledge of certain chemical or physical processes that give him access to entirely natural powers – how to mix explosive powders for example, or which plants can be used to poison or promote natural healing.

In the hands of someone intelligent and dedicated, almost any knowledge can be a powerful tool or weapon, whether it is the knowledge to bring about magickal changes in the world, or the knowledge to bring about physical changes. To the unenlightened, there may seem to be no difference between the two – what does it matter if the wizard mixes two powders or waves a wand, if a ball of fire is the result? Sometimes, a wizard may be a scientist as well.

Masters of Magick

Wizards are not the only people with access to the forces of magick. Although a wizard needs some sort of access to magickal abilities to be a wizard, the reverse doesn’t automatically hold true – having access to magick doesn’t automatically make you a wizard. In fact, it is really all a matter of style. Wizards impose their will on reality and force it to conform to their spells and rituals. Other types of magickally-empowered people approach the universe in a rather different way, particularly witches, shamans and mystics.

It is common to assume that wizards and witches are just male and female versions of the same thing. The pointy hats that they both wear go a long way to making that an obvious assumption. It is not actually correct though. The Harry Potter books aside witches are not female wizards. Although most wizards are men, and most witches are women, they approach magick – and the rest of life – in very different ways. Witches work with nature and the spirits of the earth. Their magick comes from long rituals that usually have several participants, and it works by summoning, persuading, or controlling natural spirits and energies. Old wisdom – herb lore, the power of fire, knots and candles, minor curses and cures, the rhythm of the cycles and the natural times of power – form the basis of their power, which is useful for everyday things. A witch can tell your future, make someone fall in love, dry up your cows, or go flying on a broomstick. A lot of witches’ magick has to be done at specific times or in specific places: when the moon is full; at midnight on a Friday; naked around a bonfire; in a sacred grove at dawn; and so on. If you want to strike a bargain with the spirit of a forest, learn the future or have an enemy become ill and die, you need to go to a witch. The correct term for a male witch is a warlock (according to historical definitions) while the female version of wizard is still actually wizard.

A shaman is another nature based spell caster. Unlike witches, shamen work alone, usually on behalf of one tribe or village. Their power comes from being able to access a special realm where spirits live, using a power a bit like astral projection. The first time a shaman enters the spirit world, he or she is adopted by one of a number of powerful spirits called totems. These totems usually represent a certain species of animal, and are named after it – Bear is strong and slow to anger; Raven is clever; and Spider is wise and patient. A shaman’s totem reflects his or her true personality. Different parts of the world have different totem animals, but almost any living species can have a totem. Once the totem has accepted the shaman, the spirit real is open. The totem acts as a protector, guide and teacher. The shaman can read the future by calling on the totem to guide a particular type of divination, and can heal the sick by journeying into the spirit real and correcting whatever is wrong with the patient’s soul. He or she can also tell the village’s hunters where to find food, and advise the chief on the things that are going to be important to the people.

Mystics gain access to magickal powers through physical and mental exercises. These exercises are often extremely difficult, dangerous or uncomfortable and it can take years and years of work to start gaining powers. Mystics normally have control over their own bodies, and also acquire a range of impressive psychic powers, but rarely have any skill at directly influencing others. Common feats include being able to slow ageing and stop disease, ignore poisons, the ability to harden the body to resist weapons or punch through stone, holding their breath for days on end, becoming blindingly fast in combat or climbing seemingly impossible surfaces – all of which would be immensely dangerous tricks without magickal powers. Some mystics are peaceful, and focus their powers into mental abilities and passive skills, while others like the legendary monks of China’s Shaolin temple, are devastatingly dangerous martial artists.

Magickal powers can be found with other types of person as well. Demigods are the mightiest heroes and villains, either the child of a union between a god and a mortal, or a fraction of a larger god crammed into human form. Their powers are a natural result of their divine blood, and need no spell or concentration to activate. Their abilities, while often spell-like, are not linked to magick in any way, and they dedicate themselves to furthering their divine interests. Occultists are normal humans who use complicated traditional spells and rituals to bring about fairly minor effects, such as luck in business or gambling, or to heighten someone’s affection. Magick is not natural, instinctive or a core part of identity for an occultist; its more like a job or hobby. Some of the legendary occult rituals offer incredible abilities – the power to become invisible, to change shape, or to control the mind of another person – but many of these rituals are long lost. There are lots of types of occultist, and many people actually try using occultism to solve their problems.

Different Strokes

Just as there are many types of people with access to magical powers who are not wizards, there are also several different categories that wizards can fall into. Different spell-casters have different interests, or channel their abilities into separate lines. They all share a common ground of wizardry – using the power of magic to force reality into doing unnatural or unusual things – but they have different skills. Some are so specialised that they cannot do anything outside of one narrow field, while for others, their specialisation is more a question of style than of actual ability.

The main division of wizarding style is between sorcerers and ritualists. Sorcerers are wizards who use their power almost spontaneously, with no ritual and almost nothing in the way of spell or gesture. Their magic tends to be strong, sudden and showy, rather than subtle or gradual. Sorecrers tend to be good at invocation and manipulation. It a wizard is frequently using magic without actually speaking a spell, or spends a lot of time on flash magic such as casting fireballs, collapsing walls, flying or changing shape, he or she is likely to be a sorcerer. They often neglect the usual trappings of wizardly life, and may appear to be a completelty normal person, perhaps not even carrying a wand of a staff. Despire the staff he carries, Gandalf is a typical sorcerer.

Ritualists are the opposite. These are the wizards who wear robes and hats, carry wands, and devote time and energy to each spell that they cast. Their powers are less immediate than those of sorcerers, but they make up for it in other ways. Ritual wizards can only cast spells that they know while some sorcerers can make it up as they go along. On the other hand, a ritualit’s spell can create extremely complicated results, and may have several subtle, long-lasting effects. It takes a ritual to create a portable manor house, filled with lavish rooms, dedicated servants and delicious foodstuffs, in which you can accommodate 20 people overnight when you are travelling and still fold up to the size of a matchbox and put in your pocket the next morning. For complex stuff, ritual is a must. Ritualists are particularly good at evocation and divination. Harry Potter is a ritualist, although most of his rituals are quite short (unlike the growing length of the books )

There are various kinds of wizard who specialise in certain areas, known as domains. Necromancers specialise in the dead. They can create zombies, skeletons and other undead, talk to people who have passed away, predict the future or learn about the past, and use magic to destroy things and kill people.

Alchemists work with equipment and ritual to create transformations, turning one thing into another. Their traditional aims are to turn lead into gold, and to gain eternal life.

Demonologists are skilled at summoning and controlling demons and other powerful beings. Their power usually consists of commanding other beings to perform magical acts for them, and they may actually be powerless away from their magical slaves. Recently, the term has been applied less to the magical side of the wizard and more to the knowledge side of those who study demons. Buffy the Vampire Slayer can claim to have shown us two regular characters that are demonologists (the Watchers Rupert Giles and Wesley Wyndam-Price), along with several recurring characters who also claim this role.

Traditional demonologists and necromancers are typically seen as evil.

Elementalists specialise in the control and manipulation of one or more physical substances. These are often the Greek classical elements of air, fire, water and earth, but can also be Chinese elements such as wood, stone or metal, or just about any other broad class of substance. Elementalists can make their particular element do just about anything, and can often summon their element as well – a water wizard could make it rain, part the sea, breathe water, or make a lake lash out at a boat.

High mages, finally, are concerned with the universe as a whole. Their magic is abstract and difficult to understand, and often relates to other magic, or to the balance of good and evil in the world. They can be immensely powerful, but do not usually stoop to interfere in day-to-day affairs.

COMING SOON - An indepth look at some famous wizards