Magician (fantasy)
A magician, also known as an archmage, mage, magus, magic-user, spellcaster, enchanter/enchantress, sorcerer/sorceress, warlock, witch, or wizard, is someone who uses or practices magic derived from supernatural, occult, or arcane sources.
While derived from real-world vocabulary, the terms: magician, mage, magus, enchanter/enchantress, sorcerer/sorceress, warlock, witch, and wizard, each have different meanings depending upon context and the story in question.
[3]: 1027 Enchanters typically practice a type of imbued magic that produces no permanent effects on objects or people and are temporary, or of an indefinite duration, or which may require some item or act, to nullify or reverse.
In The Marvelous Land of Oz, he dubbed her "Glinda the Good," and from that point forward and in subsequent books, Baum referred to her as a sorceress rather than a witch to avoid the term that was more regarded as evil.
In medieval chivalric romance, the wizard often appears as a wise old man and acts as a mentor, with Merlin from the King Arthur stories being a prime example.
[2]: 140–141 Even comical magicians are often capable of great feats, such as those of Miracle Max in The Princess Bride; although he is a washed-up wizard fired by the villain, he saves the dying hero.
[13] Warlocks are distinguished from wizards as creating forbidden "pacts" with powerful creatures to harness their innate magical gifts, similarly to clerics and paladins, who are empowered through divine and deific sources to perform thaumaturgical feats, while druids and rangers draw power from nature and the elements.
Bards, on the other hand, are similar to wizards in learning magical abilities as scholarly practices, but differ in their power being tied to artistic expression rather than arcane knowledge.
[16] In the Dragonlance campaign setting of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, wizards show their moral alignment by the colour of their robes.
The same occurs in the Dungeons and Dragons-based novel series Dragonlance Chronicles, wherein Raistlin Majere seeks out the books of the sorcerer Fistandantilus.
Fred and George Weasley from Harry Potter invent new magical items and sell them as legitimate defense items, new spells and potions can be made in the Harry Potter Universe; Severus Snape invented a variety of jinxes and hexes as well as substantial improvements in the process of making potions; Albus Dumbledore, along with Nicolas Flamel, is credited with discovering the twelve uses of dragon's blood.
To introduce conflict, writers of fantasy fiction often place limits on the magical abilities of magicians to prevent them from solving problems too easily.
[3]: 616 A common motif in fiction is that the ability to use magic is innate and often rare, or gained through a large amount of study and practice.
A common limit invented by Jack Vance in his The Dying Earth series, and later popularized in role-playing games is that a wizard can only cast a specific number of spells in a day.
[19] In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the Law of Conservation of Reality is a principle imposed by forces wanting wizards to not destroy the world, and works to limit how much power it is humanly possible to wield.
Nevertheless, many magicians live in pseudo-medieval settings in which their magic is not put to practical use in society; they may serve as mentors, act as quest companions, or even go on a quest themselves,[3]: 1027 but their magic does not build roads or buildings, provide immunizations, construct indoor plumbing, or do any of the other functions served by machinery; their worlds remain at a medieval level of technology.
[citation needed] Patricia Wrede's Regency fantasies include a Royal Society of Wizards and a technological 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 depict modern societies with magic equivalent to twentieth-century technology.
In Harry Potter, wizards have magical equivalents to non-magical inventions; sometimes they duplicate them, as with the Hogwarts Express train.
In practical terms, their powers may give them authority; magicians may advise kings, such as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Belgarath and Polgara the Sorceress in David Eddings's The Belgariad.
Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, where both the heroes and the villains, although kings and lords, supplement their physical power with magical knowledge, or as in Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy, where magicians are the governing class.
[3]: 745 In the magic-noir world of the Dresden Files, wizards generally keep a low profile, though there is no explicit prohibition against interacting openly with non-magical humanity.
Dresden primarily uses his magic to make a living finding lost items and people, performing exorcisms, and providing protection against the supernatural.
