The Origin of Magic

Back on track. As I mentioned in the previous essay, I initially set out to compare a very specific aspect of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Susana Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but got sidetracked exploring how each writer used sensory language to describe the moment when magic springs to life.

Circling back to my original idea, I want to investigate each novelist’s approach to the grand question: where does magic come from? More specifically, is magic a learned skill or an inborn trait? This question is vital to the world-building process for the fantasy genre, high and low. It’s certainly one of the first questions I ask myself as I’m developing the macro and micro magical systems within a fictional setting.

But when I think about this topic, it’s hard for my mind to not tilt toward Dungeons and Dragons. Most of my experience with D&D comes through 3.5 and Pathfinder. I’ve played some homebrew 2nd edition and official 4th ed. campaigns, and have yet to try 5th ed. But nostalgia tugs my heart to Pathfinder so that’s my jam. Don’t @ me.

In the Pathfinder SRD, wizards are described as follows: “The works of beings beyond mortals, the legends of realms where gods and spirits tread, the lore of creations both wondrous and terrible—such mysteries call to those with the ambition and the intellect to rise above the common folk to grasp true might. Such is the path of the wizard. These shrewd magic-users seek, collect, and covet esoteric knowledge, drawing on cultic arts to work wonders beyond the abilities of mere mortals” [emphasis mine].

On the other hand, this is what the same guide has to say about sorcerers: “Scions of innately magical bloodlines, the chosen of deities, the spawn of monsters, pawns of fate and destiny, or simply flukes of fickle magic, sorcerers look within themselves for arcane prowess and draw forth might few mortals can imagine. Emboldened by lives ever threatening to be consumed by their innate powers, these magic-touched souls endlessly indulge in and refine their mysterious abilities, gradually learning how to harness their birthright and coax forth ever greater arcane feats” [emphasis mine].

Taking a step further down the nerd rabbit hole, the character creation process in the D&D/Pathfinder world requires splitting points across six stats: strength, dexterity, constitution, wisdom, intelligence, and charisma. These six stats impact almost every roll of the dice in a standard game. A fighter will likely have high STR and CON scores. STR increases the damage they can deal and CON ups their hit points, letting them absorb more damage before dying. An archer might max out DEX to help them with ranged attacks. 

Among our magical friends, wizards tend to make intelligence their highest stat. A wizard’s INT determines what spells they can learn, how many spells a day they can use, and increases the power of these spells. Alternatively, sorcerers usually go with charisma as their highest stat for the exact same reasons why wizards choose INT.

There is an important dichotomy on display here, and it neatly encapsulates my point, even if it’s perhaps not strictly D&D canon. Wizards learn magic; sorcerers are magical. One type of magic-user, a wizard, has to sit down and read books and run experiments, or find a master to apprentice under. The other, the sorcerer, is born into the magical world and hones their powers over time. The sorcerer is born of magic and the wizard captures it through study and toil. 

When I think about magic users in literature, it’s hard for me to offer examples of what we might call “pure wizards,” or beings that lack an inborn magical talent but still set out to master the arcane arts. My sense is that literature is replete with sorcerers. Every orphan that discovers their murdered parents were wizards, or that their long lost father is a god, or whatever, is a sorcerer. It’s bloodlines. It’s deities or monsters or other magical beings. There are so few characters that set out to learn magic without some kind of innate spark. 

The example that hit me in the face for being so unique is Mr. Norrell from Clarke’s novel. We learn that Mr. Norrell has spent years--decades--scouring English bookshops for magical tomes, learning and experimenting until he can, with a certainty, call himself a magician. We, the reader, never see those years of study and training. We glimpse a shadow of them in his pedantic airs and compulsive behaviors. But we really can’t say what it was like for him to learn magic from scratch on his own. My feeling, from his description, is that it might be like teaching yourself to be an astrophysicist, but all the books on rocket science are full of exaggerations, half truths, or outright fabrications. Not easy. Not fun. A task only for the driven.

I should also insert a caveat here. There are passages near the end of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell that do suggest that Mr. Norrell--indeed almost any English citizen--has an innate capacity for magic. But wanting to spoil neither the plot nor my point, I’ll bracket that for a moment. We spend most of the book convinced that Mr. Norrell’s powers stem from years of focused, determined study, and that he’s a self-taught virtuoso. 

There’s a clear reason why writers might spend more time writing about sorcerers than wizards. It’s the same reason tabletop roleplayers don’t in-game roleplay the long and arduous process of their wizards at wizard school or child sorcerers discovering their innate abilities. Everybody, players and writers alike, wants to get to blasting fireballs as soon as possible. 

But there is another lesson beyond this simple truth because both the Harry Potter series and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell are fundamentally about the learning of magic and the transmission of magical knowledge. Harry Potter, along with all of his classmates and teachers and deadly adversaries, attended a wizarding school. The non-Muggles of the Potterverse are born with magic--sorcerers in the Pathfinder sense--but they are taught how to use these abilities in prescribed, government-sanctioned ways. 

And likewise, much of Clarke’s novel focuses on the education the older Mr. Norrell imparts to the young magician, Jonathan Strange. Strange, unlike Norrell, is written on the page more like a Pathfinder sorcerer. Early in the novel, when the two title characters are introduced, Jonathan Strange demonstrates his abilities to Mr. Norrell by placing a book in front of a mirror and swapping it with its reflection. The book ends up through the looking glass, leaving only an insubstantial reflection in the real world. 

Norrell asks Strange how he did it, and Strange replies, “To own the truth . . . I have only the haziest notion of what I did. I dare say it is just the same with you, sir, one has a sensation like music playing at the back of one’s head--one simply knows what the next note will be” (p. 233). That sounds like a sorcerer to me. 

But I’m still left with the question: why are there more sorcerers than wizards in fiction? And again, we know everyone wants to get to the part where stuff explodes. I’d hazard a wager that Rowling spends more pages describing Quidditch matches than actual Hogwarts classes. But I think the sorcerer/wizard split goes beyond reader-boredom avoidance. I believe it’s a statement about what we want out of our characters, and, by extension, what we want for ourselves.

Very often, protagonists in film and literature are neutral masks. The much missed Cracked After Hours series explores that idea in this video. If you’re unable to watch that, a neutral mask is a main character with relatively little individual personality--down to their facial expressions--that the reader or viewer is able to map themselves onto, a character in which to see themselves. The video mentions Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Neo, and Bella Swan. Each of these characters are relatively bland individuals surrounded by a Hero’s Journey collection of mentors, villains, love interests, sassy sidekicks, a vast and assorted motley crew who drag them along through the plot. The protagonist is almost a non-character. A neutral mask exists solely as an avatar the reader/viewer can climb into and ride the plot roller coaster. 

When we apply this concept to our Pathfinder magical archetypes, we can see that one of them naturally cleaves to the neutral mask characterization. The sorcerer is born special. The wizard works. The sorcerer is thrust into a world of adventure and excitement by the circumstances of their birth. A wizard chooses a path, studies, likely sacrifices time and relationships all for a goal that may never be realized. The sorcerer won the lottery. The wizard got a small business loan from their local credit union and turned that into a successful car dealership chain. The sorcerer is a superhero given the super soldier serum or bitten by a radioactive spider or born with mutant powers. The wizard is Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, learning--failing--at mopping floors before casting spells. 

Much like the neutral mask, the wizard/sorcerer dichotomy represents the way in which we the reader desire to enter into the magical world. There is no magical academy with open enrollment for us here in the real world. There is no Mr. Norrell, with his vast library, at whose feet we may learn the esoteric arts. If we, in our humdrum lives, are to come to magic, seemingly the only way for that to happen would be if it hit us like a bolt of lightning, jumpstarting our destinies. It is the sorcerer, a protagonist with innate abilities and a mysterious destiny, that more neatly fits into the Hero’s Journey cycle and thus, I suspect, ends up with more ink on the page and screen time in the theaters. It’s a shorter leap for our imaginations to make.

I, too, am guilty of this myopic view on magic, favoring the sorcerer over the wizard. In every fantasy story I’ve written, magic is an inborn trait whose appearance often kickstarts the plot. I’ve used it, unconsciously, as the Hero’s Call to Adventure. But as I think about future novels, I do think that giving the wizard a shot at the title might provide an interesting avenue of exploration. What if the Hero’s Journey is the arduous path toward magical competency in a world that grants the protagonist absolutely nothing? What if the main character sets out on a long journey of revenge which requires a few decades of intense magical study? 

So, what do we gain by eschewing the sorcerer cum neutral mask? I don’t think a wizard in this sense is or could be a neutral mask; in a saga solely focused on an individual's growth and development, there’s nowhere for that character’s personality to hide. The average sorcerer is a tool of the plot; everything from their abilities, motives, and thoughts are likely driven by what the plot requires. They are bland by design and necessity. 

But a story about a “pure wizard” and their long road to magical mastery becomes a study in character, a fictional hagiography. The stories that follow a period of study could call back to those long nights in the eldritch tome library, training for duels, and crafting concoctions that blow up in their face. Exploring those experiences makes what comes after so much sweeter because they weren’t gifts of fate or plot necessities; a wizard is driven, determined, and earned every firebolt they cast.

It’s important to note that there’s nothing wrong with the sorcerer, or even the neutral mask. One of literature’s great pleasures is the ability for a reader to lose themselves in a book, and a neutral mask is one of the best tools to help a wide audience feel connected to a story. But the adventure that comes to us shouldn’t be the only kind of adventure we have. A wizard makes an intentional choice; they work at their passion. And I believe we need to consume fiction that sends a similar message. Who we are, and who we want to be, isn’t all about who we are at birth. We build our identities through our decisions, through action and inaction. We can choose to work hard at the things we’re passionate about, to grow and improve. And we can bring our dreams to life. We might never be able to perform “the works of beings beyond mortals” or explore the “realms of gods and spirits.” But I do think there is a great power in each of us, regardless of the station of our birth and the barriers society throws at us. We can do wonderous things if we try, fail, and try again.