Which magic-users are the least evil?

[thealmightymudworm]

Odd question, but I was idly thinking about describing a magic-user protagonist as a 'sorcerer' and wondering if that word had ever been used as a description of a non-evil character.

How would you rank the following words in terms of implying evil from most to least?

Magician, sorcerer, wizard, mage, warlock, witch, enchanter, necromancer*

Not sure whether to include 'conjurer' as that generally implies the magic isn't real – or am I wrong to think that? 'Crypt of the Conjurer' sounds a bit low-key.

I think Wiccans don't treat 'witch' as a gendered term; a male witch is a male witch, whereas a warlock is specifically evil, but that may not be universal. People usually assume witches are evil unless specified otherwise, don't they? Also, are any of the other words gendered?

*I'm sort of assuming this is the high tide mark!

[CharlesX]

Slightly interesting, because I know 'fundamentalist' so-called stronger Christians who are pro censorship. I would struggle to give any formal ranking, I would say only Necromancer sounds distinctly evil, Enchanter isn't particularly common (like illusionist, which sounds more like a naughty clown than a bad guy). Others you haven't mentioned are Druid which sounds as neutral as it is and Cleric which sounds as good as it is.
   Was Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone alternately titled Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone in the US because Americans reckon philosophers are more evil than sorcerors? Such a foreign country.

[Law]

Magician - (harmless children's party entertainer, pulls rabbits out of hats and saws assistants in half, suppose you could have an evil circus magician!) (m)

Wizard - (scholar with his nose in a book, adviser to royals or nobility, gazer of stars and crystal balls, diviner of Tarot cards) (m)

Mage - (generally a big good. A wise, powerful teacher. His opposite is an Arch Mage for me. Magess, like sorceress for the female variant? (n)

Enchanter - (getting more dangerous now, Circe and Morgana belong to the ranks of legendary morally dubious enchantresses. Really powerful) (n)

Sorcerer - (like a witch they have gained their magic by drawing upon a source or patron... Hopefully nature and white magic and not the diabolic) (m)

Warlock / Witch - (Breaker of Locks / Oaths, unless he's a DnD Battle Mage, this dude is evil! A male black witch) (m/f)

Necromancer - (a puppeteer of the dead, an individual who peverts the natural order, 99 times out of a hundred they are rotten to the core) (m)

[tyrion]

I would say mage and wizard are synonymous, representing the typical old man studying arcane tomes.

Conjurer, necromancer and enchanter I would say describes the use of magic. Conjurers could be evil - what are they conjuring?

Magician, for me, sounds like a charlatan who has strange relationships with rabbits, doves and Debbie McGee.

Interestingly, in dragon warriors, sorcerer means wizard, although the common folk would use any of the above words to describe someone who uses magic, and a warlock is a fighter/mage

[a moderator]

Nov 21, 2021 15:56:28 GMT tyrion said:

Interestingly, in dragon warriors, sorcerer means wizard, although the common folk would use any of the above words to describe someone who uses magic, and a warlock is a fighter/mage

And in Duelmaster 1, Challenge of the Magi, 'magician' refers to a magic user with no affiliation, 'wizard' is specifically a practitioner of holy magic, and a 'sorceror' avoids both good and evil and focuses on spells related to the mind. There are also druids and necromancers, but they're pretty much what you'd expect from those titles. 

Nov 21, 2021 15:28:54 GMT CharlesX said:

Was Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone alternately titled Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone in the US because Americans reckon philosophers are more evil than sorcerors? Such a foreign country.

As I understood it, the change of 'Philosopher's Stone' to 'Sorcerer's Stone' was to ensure that potential readers knew that the book involved magic rather than philosophy, the latter subject often being considered somewhat dull, or at least not child-friendly.

[schlendrian]

And where goes the demi-sorcerer in this list?

Etymologically, wizard comes from wise, so I'd see a wizard as someone who uses his powers responsibly, whereas sorcerers just use them as they see fit (which doesn't necessarily make them evil).

To me, the term sorcerer is mostly connected with the genre "Sword and Sorcery", where sorcerers tend to be evil, so I'd be with mudworm in hesitating to use the description for a good character.

[nathanh]

Necromancer > Warlock > Witch > Sorcerer > (Wizard, Mage, Enchanter) > Magician

[thealmightymudworm]

This seemed like a relevant contribution to the discussion:

Of course I had to bust through a warning about bumping this thread – which is sort of a shame as it was quite relevant in this case:

[Pete Byrdie]

BUMP

Sorry for resurrecting this thread again. I was looking for somewhere to post a new thread and happened on this one, which i found interesting.

The responses to this thread seem a mixture of gaming traditions and historical traditions. Many of the different terms for magic-users are historically interchangeable, or have been at various times in the past. This even goes for what we might consider the best defined term, necromancer. This term has nothing to do with zombies and skeleton armies, but simply the summoning of the spirits of the dead, often for purposes of prognostication. This wasn't a practice performed by a particular class of magic-user, but simply something that magic-users did. Thus, at various times, 'necromancer' has been used as a general term for magic-users. When you consider even Victorian table-turners and spirit board users could be said to be practicing a form of this, it's not surprising that it's not the sinister magical discipline RPGs would have you imagine. (By these standards, I've been a necromancer, although I'd never given that much thought before.)

By the early medieval period, in Europe at least, discussions about what constituted magic and what practices were simply using the natural properties of plants, gemstones and the like were well underway. Some among the clergy considered all use of healing practice beyond bandaging a wound and praying to be magic, and the work of demons. Some didn't have a problem with that; demons were still under the power of God. Others considered it bad. It was made trickier when words from the Bible were included in magical practices, including those practiced by ordinary folk according to their own traditions. Fundamentally, we've never even agreed upon what magic is, let alone specific definitions of different kinds of magic-user.

A note about wiccans. I've known male wiccans who like to be called warlocks. Whether that's to do with it sounding cool (I suspect) or to do with machismo, I wouldn't like to say. I've also known male wiccans who are happy with witch. The word is specifically derogatory, and why someone should want to be referred to by a word originally used as an insult is beyond me.

So, although RPG worlds like to strictly define different words to create different types of magic-users (looking at you, D&D), such distinctions are rare in the past, although some words do describe specific kinds of practices and come to be applied to magic-users in general. In your fantasy worlds, if you don't want to go through every word applied to magic-users and give them specific meanings, then it's more about feel. It would seem wrong to call a twenty-five year old female magic-user a wizard, or a grizzled, long bearded old magic-user a witch.

If you want a magic-user who is specifically evil, perhaps something like maleficus, or some derivative thereof, which has been used to denote those practicing malevolent magic; or diabolist, which refers to a worshipper of the Devil or demons, which in a fantasy world containing actual evil demons that can be summoned would definitely count as evil magic.

[schlendrian]

Speaking of witches, if we include those, doesn't it rather become a matter of material science than alignment?

After all, witches are made out of wood and there exist clear empirical protocols as to how to ascertain this fact (if she weighs as much as a duck... ) So, probably different magic users are differentiated by the material they consist of and one ought to test their density.

[CharlesX]

Dec 6, 2023 18:41:12 GMT schlendrian said:

Speaking of witches, if we include those, doesn't it rather become a matter of material science than alignment?

After all, witches are made out of wood and there exist clear empirical protocols as to how to ascertain this fact (if she weighs as much as a duck... ) So, probably different magic users are differentiated by the material they consist of and one ought to test their density.

Who invited Matthew Hopkins ?

   It wouldn't surprise me if medieval people believed that, they believed that if you cut yourself it was the Devil coming out of you. Diseases were caused by an imbalance of the humours. And a number of other deeply superstitious things that do not have any basis in fact at all.

   Like the Monty Python skit my understanding is they didn't bother with things like science and evidence at most witch trials, they would go ahead and find most 'witches' guilty except in very rare cases, regardless of whether they were devout christians, had a good reputation around town, actually didn't have birthmarks or pets etc.