Wizard: A sorcerer or magician. A skilled or clever person.
Many consider the wizard as a favorite character from novels, children's books, films, and tales they were told when they were first growing up. They associate the wizard and the sorcerer with some of their earliest introductions to magical figures; whether it was Merlin from the tales of King Arthur, or Gandalf and the many other wizards from the works of Tolkien, or The Sorcerer's Apprentice from the film Fantasia and so on. Some of the more interesting character traits and abilities that belong to Wizards lie not in their wand-waving and chanting of incantations and magical spells, but in other less expected areas.
The Wizard's Soul: In the work by James Frazer, The Golden Bough, in his chapter of The Perils of the Soul, he writes of different methods that were used to deal with the soul, how to prevent its escape from the body, how to trap a soul from a recently deceased person, and how to catch souls that had wandered away from the body while asleep. The chapter reveals the many hiding places of the soul, and how different beings, magic or otherwise, had their souls concealed inside different objects, various living plants, sacred groves, and animals. In many cultures, the act of the soul's capture, or rescue of it, and nursing it back to health falls upon the role of the sorcerer;
"The sorcerers of Danger Island used to set snares for souls. The snares were made of stout cinet, about fifteen to thirty feet long, with loops on either side of different sizes, to suit the different sizes of souls; for fat souls there were large loops, for thin souls there were small ones. When a man was sick against whom the sorcerers had a grudge, they set up these soul-snares near his house and watched for the flight of his soul. If the shape of a bird or an insect it was caught in the snare, the man would infallibly die."
Frazer continues with;
"In some parts of West Africa, indeed, wizards are continually setting traps to catch souls that wander from their bodies in sleep; and when they have caught one, they tie it up over the fire, and as it shrivels in the heat, the owner sickens. This is done, not out of any grudge towards the sufferer, but purely as a matter of business. The wizard does not care whose soul he has captured, and will readily restore it to its owner, if only he is paid for doing so. Some sorcerers keep regular asylums for strayed souls, and anybody who has lost or mislaid his own soul can always have another from the asylum, on payment of the usual fee. No blame whatever is attached to men who keep these private asylums or set traps for passing souls; it is their profession, and in the exercise of it they are actuated by no harsh or unkindly feelings. But there are also wretches who from pure spite or for the sake of lucre set and bait traps with the deliberate purpose of catching the soul of a particular man; and in the bottom on the pot, hidden by the bait, are knives and sharp hooks which tear and rend the poor soul, either killing it outright or mauling it so as to impair the health of its owner when it succeeds in escaping and returning to him."
Frazer wrote of the protection of the soul through relocation, this was done through a harnessed ability achieved by a figure capable of magic. The soul was kept hidden somewhere else, and this allowed for the prolonged existence of certain beings, and it protected their own mortality and kept the soul secure. Frazer detailed a number of different stories;
"In the first place, the story of the external soul is told, in various forms, by all Aryan peoples from Hindoostan to the Hebrides" A very common form of it is this: A warlock, giant, or other fairyland being is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden far away in some secret place; but a fair princess, whom he holds enthralled in his enchanted castle, wiles his secret from him and reveals it to the hero, who seeks out the warlock's soul, heart, life, or death, (as it is variously called), and, by destroying it, simultaneously kills the warlock."
Frazer tells of the story of a wizard known as Punckin and his parrot, the pet bird was said to have harbored his soul;
"Thus a Hindoo story tells how a magician called Punchkin held a queen captive for twelve years, and would fair marry her, but she would not have him. At last the queen's son came to rescue her, and the two plotted together to kill Punchkin. So the queen spoke to the magician fair, and pretended that she had at last made up her mind to marry him. 'And do tell me,' she said, 'are you quite immortal? Can death never touch you? And are you too great an enchanter ever to feel human suffering?' 'It is true', he said, 'that I am not as others. Far, far, away, hundreds of thousands of miles from this, there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one above the other: below the sixth chattee is a small cage, which contains a little green parrot;-on the life of the parrot depends my life;-and if the parrot is killed I must die. It is, however,' he added, 'impossible that the parrot should sustain any injury, both on account of the inaccessibility of the country, and because, by my appointment, many thousand genii surround the palm trees, and kill all who approach the place.'
Frazer goes on to write of the horrible death that befell the wizard;
"But the queen's young son overcame all difficulties, and got possession of the parrot. He brought it to the door of the magician's palace, and began playing with it. Punchkin, the magician, saw him, and, coming out, tried to persuade the boy to give him the parrot. 'Give me my parrot!' cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the parrot and tore off one of his wings; and as he did so the magician's right arm fell off. Punchkin then stretched out his left arm, crying, 'Give me my parrot!' The prince pulled off the parrot's second wing, and, the magician's left arm tumbled off. 'Give me my parrot!' he cried, and fell on his knees. The prince pulled off the parrot's right leg, the magician's right leg fell off; the prince pulled off the parrot's left leg, down fell the magician's left. Nothing remained of him except the trunk and the head; but still he rolled his eyes, and cried, 'Give me back my parrot!' 'Take your parrot, then,' cried the boy; and with that he wrung the bird's neck, and threw it at the magician; and as he did so, Punchkin's head twisted round, and, with a fearful groan, he died!"
A similar story is told of a warlock and a woman, where he cannot help but reveal the secure location of his soul;
"Stories of the same sort are current among Slavonic peoples. In some of them, as in the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, the warlock is questioned by a treacherous woman as to the place where his strength resides or his life or death is stowed away; and his suspicions being roused by her curiosity, he at first puts her off with false answers, but is at last beguiled into telling her the truth, thereby incurring his doom through her treachery."
Frazer writes of a Russian tale of a warlock who kept his soul hidden in a far-off land, sealed inside of an egg;
"Thus a Russian story tells how a warlock called Kashtei or Koshchei the Deathless carried off a princess and kept her prisoner in his golden castle. However, a prince made up to her one day as she was walking alone and disconsolate in the castle garden, and cheered by the prospect of escaping with him she went to the warlock and coaxed him with false and flattering words, saying, 'My dearest friend, tell me, I pray you, will you never die?' 'Certainly not,' says he. 'Well,' says she, 'and where is your death? is it in your dwelling?' 'To be sure it is,' says he, 'it is in the broom under the threshold,' Thereupon the princess seized the broom and threw it on the fire, but although the broom burned, the deathless Koshchei remained alive; indeed not so much as a hair of him was singed. Balked in her first attempt, the artful hussy pouted and said, 'You do not love me true, for you have not told me where your death is; yet I am not angry, love you with all my heart.' With these fawning words, she besought the warlock to tell her truly where his death was. So he laughed and said, 'Why do you wish to know? Well then, out of love I will tell you where it lies. In a certain field there stand three green oaks, and under the roots of the largest oak is a worm, and if ever this worm is found and crushed, that instant I shall die.' When the princess heard these words, she went straight to her lover and told him; and he searched till he found the oaks and dug up the worm and crushed it. Then he hurried to the warlock's castle, but only to learn from the princess that the warlock was still alive."
He goes on to write of the relentlessness of the princess and the demise of the warlock;
"Then she fell to wheedling and coaxing Koshschei once more, and this time, overcome by her wiles, he opened his heart to her and told her the truth. 'My death,' said he, 'is far from here and hard to find, on the wide ocean. In that sea is an island, and on that island grows a green oak, and beneath the oak is an iron chest, and in the chest is a small basket, and in the basket is a hare, and in the hare is a duck, and in the duck is an egg; and he who finds the egg and breaks it, kills me at the same time.' The prince naturally procured the fateful egg and with it in his hands confronted the deathless warlock. The monster would have killed him, but the prince began to squeeze the egg. At that the warlocks shrieked with pain, and smiling, 'Was it not out of love for you,' he said, 'that I told you where my death was? And this is the return you make to me?' With that he grabbed his sword which hung from a peg on the wall; but before he could reach it, the prince had crushed the egg, and sure enough, the deathless warlock found his death at the same moment."
There is said to be more than one version of this tale, and in one story, the warlock falsely reveals to the inquisitive princess that his soul is tied up inside a fence, and so the princess has the fence gilded in gold to prove her love to the warlock. In another version, the soul of the warlock is inside the yolk of the egg, and in another, the warlock is struck on the head with the egg and in this way he perishes.
Physical Characteristics: Many Wizards and Sorcerers are known for their longs locks and shaggy beards that hang well below their shoulder blades. Apart from being a physical descriptor, and for many magical figures a defining characteristic, the long hair of the wizard served as a source for their magic. Provided from The Golden Bough, Frazer writes of the superstitions held by some that included the act of shearing and shoring locks of hair and shaving whole heads to ensure that magic was cut off from the source of the magician or witch. Many people can associate the act of shaving the head as a form of punishment and humiliation given to criminals or traitorous co-conspirators. As was the case during the war where women who colluded with the Nazis and worked for them in secret, publicly had their heads shaved. It was used as a way to degrade others, such as shaving prisoners and workers. Even centuries before that, according to Frazer, it was believed that the strength of warlocks and other magical beings was bound up within their hair, and different precautions were taken to remove the hair;
"Here in Europe, it used to be thought that the maleficent powers of witches and wizards resided in their hair, and that nothing could make any impression on these miscreants so long as they kept their hair on. Hence in France, it was customary to shave the whole bodies of persons charged with sorcery before handing them over to the torturer. Millaeus witnessed the torture of some persons at Toulouse, from whom no confession could be wrung until they were stripped and completely shaven, when they readily acknowledged the truth of the charge. A woman also, who apparently led a pious life, was put to the torture of suspicion of witchcraft, and bore her agonies with incredible constancy, until complete depilation drove her to admit her guilt. The noted inquisitor Sprenger contented himself with shaving the head of the suspected witch or wizard; but his more thoroughgoing colleague Cumanus shaved the whole bodies of forty-one women before committing them all to the flames."
Blood Unions: In addition to finding crafty hiding places to store the soul of the Sorcerer, such as strange objects and inaccessible locations, the Wizard also found various animals and creatures to develop a blood pact with. The blood union served as another clever method
and way to prolong the life of the Wizard to ensure his survival:
Frazer writes of the blood union that existed between wizards and witches and their chosen animals:
"Henceforth, such an intimate union is established between the two that the death of one entails the death of the other. The alliance is thought to bring to the wizard or sorcerer a great accession of power, which can turn to his advantage in various ways. In the first place, like the warlock in the fairy tales who has deposited his life outside of himself in some safe place, the Fan wizard now deems himself invulnerable. Moreover, the animal with which he has exchanged blood has become his familiar, and will obey any orders he may choose to give it; so he makes use of it to injure and kill his enemies. For that reason, the creature with whom he establishes the relation of blood-brotherhood is never a tame or domestic animal, but always a ferocious and dangerous wild beast, such as a leopard, a black serpent, a crocodile, a hippopotamus, a wild boar, or a vulture.
Of all these creatures the leopard is by far the commonest familiar of Fan wizards, and next to it comes the black serpent; the vulture is the rarest. Witches as well as wizards have their familiars; but the animals with which the lives of the women are thus bound up generally differ from those to which men commit their external souls. A witch never has a panther for her familiar, but often a venomous species of serpent, sometimes a green one that lives in banana-trees; or it may be a vulture, an owl, or other bird of night. In every case the beast or bird with which the witch or wizard has contracted this mystical alliance is an individual, never a species; and when the individual animal dies the alliance is naturally at an end, since the death of the animal is supposed to entail the death of the man."
The Natural World: The Wizard also acted as a mediator between man and the natural world. They could harness the powers of nature to help or to harm human-kind given each situation.In the written work The Forest in Folklore and Mythology, Alexander Porteous writes of the wizard and their different commands over nature;
"Mr. W.W. Skeat mentions a grove of Durian trees near Jugra in Selangor in the Malay Peninsular, in which the villagers assemble on a certain day. One of the local wizards strikes the most fruitless tree, and says: 'Will you now bear fruit or not? If you do not, I shall fell you.' Another man who has climbed a Mangosteen tree, replies for the Durian, saying: 'Yes, I will now bear fruit. I beg you not to fell me."
In The Golden Bough Frazer writes of the wizards in Argentinian tribes, whose advanced standing of such a position could be determined through the ability of foresight granted from specific trees;
"The wizards or conjurers, called 'Keebet,' of the Abipones, a South American tribe of Argentina, were believed to have unparalleled powers over the forces of Nature, as well as over all animals, and even over the spirits of the dead. These powers were imparted to them through diabolical agency, and Mr. Tylor says the Father Dobrizhoffen, in his 'Account of the Abipones (1822)' thus described their method of obtaining these powers: 'Those who aspire to the office of juggler are said to sit upon an aged Willow, overhanging some lake, and to abstain from food for several days, until they begin to see into futurity.'
A Wizard in New Zealand was said to have erected a shrine from a palm tree native to the land having used a lock of his enchanted hair:
"A New Zealand legend given Mr. Cowan in connection with a semi-deified wizard or high priest of the Arawa tribe called Ngatoro-i-rangi, mentions the Ti-Palms of the Kaingarao Plains: 'Some of these Ti it was said were originally women, and were changed by enchantment into trees, which forever kept moving about the plains in the strange days of old, so that the traveler might set his course towards them, but never reach them.' One of them, however, could be readily approached. The Maoris say that when the wizard was passing this spot he plucked a hair from his head, muttered a charm over it, and threw it down. Immediately a Ti-Palm sprang up which became a shrine in after years where pious Maoris were accustomed to propitiate the genii of the plains."
Porteous writes of a vengeful wizard who blighted the appearance of a church through his control over the wind;
"Nork mentions that once at Ahorn, near Cobourg, a wizard sent a terrible wind which bent the steeple of the church. Everyone laughed at its appearance until a shepherd fastened it by a rope to a Pine tree, and by using magic invocations and imprecations, succeeded in straightening it."
Porteous writes of a life-giving tree known as the Alder used by a group of sorcerers;
"In Tyrol, the Alder tree was a favourite with sorcerers, and a Tyrolean legend tells that a boy once climbed a tree and saw a number or sorcerers at the foot who cut up a woman's corpse, and threw the pieces into the air. The boy caught one, and when the sorcerers counted the bits and found one missing, they replaced it by a piece of Alder wood, whereupon the dead came back to life."
Celtic Mythology: In the work Celtic, Myths and Legends by T.W. Rolleston, a passage of the famed wizard Merlin is written, the explanation links Merlin as he is known today with the Celtic figure understood as Myrddin and their origins with stone henge.
The wizard known as Clan Calatin is also written about, the wizard who fought alongside Queen Maev and her war host in their advance upon Ulster, the wizard was described with the ability to take the shape of multiple forms, and he is mentioned in the passage where he fought the warrior Cuchulain;
Myrddin, or Merlin
"A deity named Myrddin holds in Arthur's mythological cyle the place of the Sky-and Sun-god, Nudd. One of the Welsh Triads tells us that Britain, before it was inhabited, was called Clas Myrddin, Myrddin's Enclosure. One is reminded of the Irish fashion of the name is applied by Deidre to her beloved Scottish home in Glen Etive. Professor Rhys suggests that Myrddin was the deity specifically worshipped at Stone-henge, which, according to British tradition as reported by Geoffrey Monmouth, was erected by 'Merlin,' the enchanter who represents the form into which Myrddin had dwindled under Christian influences. We are told that the abode of Merlin was a house of glass, or a bush of whitethorn laden with bloom, or a sort of smoke or mist in the air, or 'a close neither of iron nor steel nor timber nor stone, but of the air without any other thing, by enchantment so strong that it may never be undone while the world still endureth.'Finally he descended off Bardsey Island, 'off the extreme westernmost point of Carnavonshire..into it he went with nine attendant bards, taking with him the 'Thirteen Treasures of Britain,' thenceforth lost to men.' Professor Rhys points out that a Greek traveller named Demetrius, who is described as having visited Britain in the first century A.D., mentions an island in the west where 'Kronos' was supposed to be imprisoned with his attendant deities, and Briareus keeping watch over him as he slept, 'for sleep was the bond forged for him.' Doubtless, we have here a vision, Hellenised as was the wont of the descent of the Sun-God into the western sea, and his imprisonment there by the powers of darkness, with the possessions and magical potencies belonging to Light and Life."
Clan Calatin
"Next the men of Erin resolved to send against Cuchulain, in single combat, the Clan Calatin. Now Calatin was a wizard, and he and his seven-and-twenty sons formed, as it were, but one being, the sons being organs of their father, and what any one of them did, they all did alike. They were all poisonous so that any weapon which one of them used would kill in nine days the man who was grazed by it. When this multiform creature met Cuchulain each hand of it hurled a spear at once, but Chuchulain caught twenty-eight spears on his shield and not one of them drew blood. Then he drew his sword to lop off the spears that bristled his shield but has he did so, the Clan Calatin rushed upon him and flung him down, thrusting his face into the gravel. At this Chuchulain gave a great cry of distress at the unequal combat, and one of the Ulster exiles, Fiacha son of Firaba, who was with the host of Maev, and was looking on at the fight, could not endure to see the plight of the champion, and he drew his sword and with one stroke he lopped off the eight-and-twenty hands that were grinding the face of Chuchulain into the gravel of the Ford. Then Chuchulain arose and hacked the Clan Calatin into fragments, so that none survived to tell Maev what Fiacha had done, else had he and his thirty hundred followers of Clan Rury been given by Maev to the edge of the sword."
Indigenous Myth: In the work by Lewis Spence, The Myths of North American Indians, there is written of a legend that belonged to Algonquin myth. Spence describes one of the twin deity brothers Glooskap, opposite his brother Malsum, and his battle over a sorcerer known as Win-pe;
"When Glooskap had completed the world he made man and the smaller supernatural beings, such as fairies and dwarfs. He formed man from the trunk of an ash-tree, and he elves from its bark. Like Odin, he trained two birds to bring him the news of the world, but their absences were so prolonged that he selected a black and white wold as his attendants. He waged a strenuous and exterminating warfare on the evil monsters which then infested the world, and on the sorcerers and witched who were harmful to man. He leveled the hills and restrained the forces of nature in his mighty struggles, in which he towered to giant stature, his head and shoulders rising high above the clouds. Yet in his dealings with men he was gentle and quietly humorous, not to say ingenuous.
On one occasion he sought out a giant sorcerer named Win-pe, one of the most powerful of the evil influences then dwelling upon the earth. Win-pe shot upward till his head was above the tallest pine of the forest, but Glooskap, with a god-like laugh, grew till his head reached the stars, and tapped the wizard gently with the butt of his bow, so that he fell dead at his feet."
Poetry:
Merlin's Song
Of Merlin wise I learned a song,
Sing it low or sing it loud,
It is mightier than the strong,
And punishes the proud.
I sing it to the surging crowd,
Good men it will calm and cheer,
Bad men it will chain and cage-
In the heart of the music peals a strain,
Which only angels hear,
Whether it waken jor or rage
Hushed myriads hark in vain,
Yet they who hear it shed their age,
And take their youth again.
Hear what British Merlin sung,
Of keenest eye and truest tongue.
Say not, the chiefs who first arrive
Usurp the seats for which all strive;
The forefathers this land who found
Failed to plant the vantage-ground;
Ever from one who comes to-morrow
Men wait their good and truth to borrow.
But wilt thou measure all thy road,
See who lift the lightest load.
Who has little, to him who has less, can spare,
And thou, Cyndyllan's son! beware
Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear,
To falter ere thou thy task fulfull,
Only the light-armed climb the hill.
The richest of all lords is Use,
And ruddy Heath, the loftiest Muse.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
Drink the wild air's salubrity:
When the star Canope shines in May,
Shepherds are thankful and nations gay.
The music that can deepest reach,
And cure all ill, is cordial speech:
Mask thy wisdom and delight,
Toy with the bow, yet hit the white,
Of all wit's uses, the main one
Is to live well with who has none.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson