Sorcerer, warlock, wizard, and mage?

Cafe Society
1

This weekend as my husband a friend and I were brewing beer we got into a debate about the difference between a sorcerer, warlock, wizard, and mage. They both are gamers (Everquest for example), we are all fans of LOTR, my husband is very into Robert Jordan, and I’ve read a bit of fantasy myself. We couldn’t agree on much except:

  1. One major difference is between them is innate magical ability vs. study of spells and incantations, but we couldn’t agree which were which (or witch were witch? :smiley: )
  2. Warlock has a darker feel
  3. Mage sounds younger - an apprentice

The dictionary was not much help, because it lists them as synonyms but “they are all the same” isn’t a very satisfactory answer.

Before it came to blows (and the beer boiled over) we agreed to turn it over to the experts here to get the final word. Can anyone help out?

Twiddle

2

Historically, a warlock would be a male with—in medieval terms, one who has had congress with Satan. Mage comes from “magi” which is, IIRC, the term for Persian astrologers. Sorcerer is a medievel term for a fortune-teller or oracle. The word wizard is also of medieval origin and meant, originally, a wise man or woman and had no magical connotations until the 19th century.

Now, if you want to talk fiction, all bets are off. You can call a magic-user anything you want. :cool:

3

D’oh! Male WITCH! WITCH! Dammit.

4

As a professional writer and critic of science fiction and fantasy, I can apply 30 years of close study of the field to answer this question in the most minute, excruciating detail.

The terms mean whatever the writer wants.

Really. Always. My guarantee.

Sorry.

5

This is about denotations and connotations. The dictionary definitions for all of these words are equivalent. Distinguishing these terms, however, lies in differentiating the connotations. The difficulty in you folks reaching agreement lies in the fact that connotations are contextually-bound. IOW, “wizard” has a different connotation to the Robert Jordan reader, the D&D (or Everquest) player, and the Tolkein reader. FI, there was an article in an old issue of Dragon that analyzed Gandalf as a rather pedestrian 6th-level magic-user, or some such. Given the different contexts that each of you are using, these connotations are going to be different.
Given all that, I still say that a “mage” is an old man. :slight_smile:

6

Mage is just a short form of Magician, obviously. If it “sounds” weaker than Wizard or Witch, its just because you associate it with parlor tricks.

The terms druid (originally a Celtic mystic, but not always associated with that), sorceror, magician, mage, wizard, warlock, and witch are really differentiated only by what meaning you assign them. The only real traditions you’ll see is that Druids are nature priests (because that’s how DnD did it) and Warlocks are sinister (often having no actual effectin the story or game).

Merlin, for example, has varyingly been called a wizard, sorceror, druid, and so forth, often with no real distinction in powers, between several books.

7

Since the question is context-dependent, I’ll answer in various contexts.

First, the historical. “Magi” (is that the plural of magus?) refers to astrologers, so the term would imply learning and divination. “Warlock” means “oathbreaker”, so the term has historically had strong negative denotation and connotation. “Wizard” and “witch” both come from the same roots as “wise”. Thus, it might be more reasonable to consider “wizard” to be the male counterpart to “witch”, rather than “warlock”. “Sorcerer” I’m not sure of: It’s often equated with Hebrew words for spellcasters of a type abhorrent to God, but such translation is probably not justified.

In Tolkien’s world, a “wizard”, such as Gandalf, is not human, but rather a sort of angelic being. By no amount of study or experience can a human or other non-wizard become a wizard. A sorcerer is one who works black arts, such as the chief of the Nazgul or the Mouth of Sauron. Both of these were human, so a human can become a sorcerer, although it may have required tutelage from Sauron (himself an angelic being in origin, similar to Gandalf). The chief of the Nazgul is also referred to as the “Witch-King”, so one may suppose that in Tolkien’s works, “witch” is roughly equivalent to “sorcerer”. Many Elves (and depending on your interpretation, some dwarves and humans) can also work what would be considered to be magic, but no title is given for such persons. This generally seems to reflect a level of inherent power, rather than learning. Galadriel, one such elf, is referred to as a “witch” by the superstitious Rohirrim, but the members of the Fellowship take this as an insult and correct them. This reinforces the idea that “witch” is a negative term.

In the Harry Potter books, “witch”, “wizard”, and possibly “warlock” and “sorcerer” seem to all be used equivalently, save that witch is female and wizard is male. There is no moral judgement associated with any of these terms, as any of them can be good or evil. Magical ability in this case is a combination of inborn talent and education.

In Steven Brust’s Jhereg series, a “witch” or “warlock” (male and female, respectively) uses internal psychic energy in a rather freeform way, while a Sorcerer uses energy channeled from the Imperial Orb in certain specific, established manners. There is little overlap between what a witch and a sorcerer can do. Anyone can become a witch or sorcerer, although some are inherently better at it than others. There are also other unnamed forms of magic-use (such as that which was used to create the Imperial Orb in the first place), but these are restricted to very rare inborn ability.

In C. S. Lewis’ Narnia, there are two beings referred to as witches, and two referred to as magicians. Both witches are evil, and had their power inherently, being demons of a sort. Both magicians are good, and came to their power through study. There are also other beings capable of working “magic”, though without any other title given for them. Generalization from these four might be hasty, and it’s at least implied that evil magicians are possible.

8

Sicne we’ve moved on to cataloguing different interpretations, I’ll summarize the D&D versions, which have changed with every incarnation.

In Basic D&D and 1st Edition Advanced D&D, there were Magic-users, who were normal humans (or in AD&D, elves or 1/2 elves and the occaisional gnome) who learned magic from books.

In 2nd Edition D&D, Magic-users became Wizards and were split into 2 sub-categories: Mages (who were generalists) and specialist wizards (who chose one school of magic to focus on: necromancers, illusionists, transmuters, conjurers, evokers, abjurers, diviners and enchanters)

Witches and Warlocks weren’t part of the original rules, but cropped up later as a “kit” which is a subcategory of a class. (Thus you could be a ‘Mage(warlock)’ or a ‘Necromancer (warlock)’) All witches and warlocks were Mages or specialist wizards of some kind, but not all wizards were witches or warlocks. The disctinction was that warlocks and witches made some sort of pact with an extraplanar being in return for increased power. The distinction between warlocks and witches was simply male vs. female.

In 3rd Edition D&D, the word Mage disappeared, and generalist wizards were now simply Wizards. In adition, Sorcerors were added who are not considered wizards because they have inborn magic, rather than book-learned magic.

Witches are called out as an example of creating your own class by manipulating the spell list in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I don’t think it goes into detail about what being a witch implies, just that these are the traditional abilities a witch is associated with, and here’s how to make it work in the rules.

In the Ravenloft setting of D&D, there’s a different sort of witch/warlock that’s (supposedly) more in tune with real-world Wicca.

9

Y’know, I was awfully sure this would be about the Bard’s Tale games, going by the thread title.
[sub]See, y’wanna change class to Sorceror last, so you can use Rimefang again and again in that room fulla barbarians…[/sub]

10

Maybe not. Allatar and Pallando, the Two Blue Istari, went east and supposedly started teaching mysticism and wizardry to the people there. And men and elves and even orcs had their own spells and runes, though by the Third Age I think much had been forgotten by them. It was never clear whether the word Wizard was one applied by humans to include the Istari, or if that was what they called themselves. But I think there is enough room to suggest that there were others, non Istari, wizards.