The Magic Folk

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A brief history of sorcerers, wizards, and witches in literature
By Jeff Ives
llusionists have amazed audiences v^th linking
rings and scarves up their sleeves for centuries.
Their sleight of hand, however, is no match
for the true sorcerers—the magicians who live in
fiction! The wizards and witches read about by
candlelight and whispered about in school yards
open the imagination to the possibilities of magic.
If it weren't for legends of fairies and genies,
nobody would believe something as ludicrous as a
magician pulling a rabbit out of an empty top hat.
True magic comes from mystery, and nothing is
more mysterious than a well-told story. Throughout
history, storytellers from around the world have
created the most powerful masters of magic to
ever spring from human imagination. Nearly every
culture has aspects of magic in its folklore, or traditional storytelling. Although each culture's interpretation of magic is different, the stories all have one
thing in common: They are meant to amaze. These
are the magic folk.
I
Ancient Egyptian Magicians
Once upon a time, there was a powerful Egyptian
magician named Deda. At the ripe old age of 110.
Deda ate 500 loaves of bread and an entire side of
beef and drank 100 jars of beer every day. When
Deda was called upon to share his magical abilities
with the pharaoh, he began his act by cutting off
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the heads of a goose, a duck, and an ox and then
reattaching the heads so that the animals lived
again. Deda was also said to be able to look into
the future, but in at least one instance, his predictions turned out to be false. Perhaps Deda might
have been more accurate if he'd had a healthier
diet.
Deda is not an unusual character in stories of
ancient Egypt. Magic was everywhere in Egyptian
culture. Like many ancient people, the Egyptians
were polytheistic, which means they believed in
many gods. One of their most powerful gods was
Heka, the god of magic. Heka is often portrayed as
a combination of all the gods because magic was
part of the religion of ancient Egypt,
Today, the people of ancient Egypt are best
known for making mummies and writing The Book
of the Dead, which describes the rites and rituals
needed to send a soul to the afterlife. However, the
inhabitants of ancient Egypt weren't completely
obsessed with death. Many surviving folktales of
Egyptian magicians are playful and amusing stories
that have nothing to do with ghosts or dying.
For example, one of the typical powers available
to Egyptian magicians was the ability to tum wax
3 vocab
SLEIGHT OF HAND: a trick involving unseen,
quick and clever hand movements
Statues into living beings that would do their nefarious, or evil, bidding. In one story, a meddling
magician from Ethiopia creates four wax servants
that spring to life, capture the Egyptian pharaoh,
and beat him up. The next morning the pharaoh
calls for Horus, his most powerful magician, and
displays the bruises on his back. Enraged. Horus
makes his own wax servants, who journey to
Ethiopia and beat up the Ethiopian king.
After that, the two sorcerers stop beating up
each other's kings and face off in a magical duel.
Horus wins hands down. As a result, the Ethiopian
magician and his mother are forced to stay out of
Egypt for 1,500 years. Sorcerers in ancient times
were able not only to bring wax to life but also—
along with their mothers—to live for a long time.
Sorceress of an Ancient Greek Epic Poem
Gandalf
Tolkien's master sorccL
Of all the ancient cultures, the Greeks may have
been the most successful at preserving their great
stories. For centuries, such epic poems as 77je Iliad
and The Odyssey were passed fi-om generation to
generation through an oral tradition. Those poems
conjure a world of vengefijl gods, heroic warriors,
and an army of magical beings. The Odyssey
follows the Greek warrior Odysseus on his long
journey home after fighting in the Trojan War
Along the way. Odysseus faces a human-eating
Cyclops and the ship-wrecking Sirens. He also has
a chance to get to know one of the most powerful
magicians in Greek mythology—Circe.
Odysseus starts out on the wrong foot with Circe
vrtien his soldiers ask her for food. She then slips a
magic drug into their meal that tums the men into
pigs. Understandably, this makes Odysseus a bit
angry, but he doesn't know vvtiat to do about it.
Fortunately, the Greek god Hermes appears to
Odysseus and suggests that he pick an herb called
moly that will protect him against the pig potion.
(By the way, some people think this is where the
expression "Holy moly!" comes from.)
Thanks to Hermes's advice, Odysseus shows up
at Circe's table, eats her food, and doesn't tum into
a pig. The sorceress is so impressed that she stops
trying to tum Odysseus into an animal and starts a
passionate, year-long love affair with him. However,
Odysseus is a happily married man, so—after that
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year—he decides to continue on his way home and
leaves Circe alone on her island.
Ancient China's Immortals
Sorcerers in ancient China had a neat trick. It was
called living forever. In a legend about the magician
Huang An, a visitor finds Huang seated motionless
on the back of a large turtle. The visitor asks the
wise old magician how long he has sat there.
Huang replies: "The tortoise
fears the light of sun and moon
and puts out its head only once
in 2,000 years. I have seen it do
this five times already since 1
have been sitting here."
Sitting on a turtle for 10,000
years is impressive, but it's not
exactly exciting. Hence, the
Chinese immortals were famous
for other feats. Some immortals
could cure any disease instantly,
and others learned how to tame
dragons. The legends of wandering magicians were so
powerful that Chinese emperors
are said to have sent out armies
to find the immortals and bring
them to the palace. In some
stories, the armies succeed and
the emperor meets the immortal. In other stories,
the armies come back empty-handed, and
everyone assumes that the immortal has abandoned earthly life and risen into the heavens.
Black Magic From Eastern Europe
Two of the most famous magical beings in fiction
are found in the stories told about the forbidding
forests of Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania.
It is there that the fertile imaginations of storytelling created one of the most terrifying cannibals
in history—Baba Yaga.
Baba Yaga is an old crone who lives in a house
that stands on chicken legs. Her home moves
around the forest, so it's impossible to say where
she vdll turn up next. Often, she seems like a nice
enough old lady. The hapless characters who run
into her are always very respectful toward her.
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However, certain red flags arouse suspicion: Why
is Baba Yaga's fence made out of human bones?
Why is Baba Yaga sharpening her teeth? Why is
Baba Yaga offering a human arm to eat?
In most Baba Yaga stories, the heroes must
escape the old witch by using magic trinkets and
their own wits. In some versions of the story, the
hero manages to get away by throwing a comb on
the ground; the comb instantly becomes an impenetrable forest. In other stories,
heroes manage to push Baba
Yaga off a cliff. In the end, it
doesn't matter. Baba Yaga
never dies. She continues to
search for more victims by
(lying through the night sky in
a magic mortar and pestle,
kitchen equipment used to
grind up spices.
However terrifying Baba
Yaga is. she's not alone. Some
unfortunate heroes in eastern
European folklore have to take
on Koshchei the Deathless.
He's often described as a dark
spirit that drags off women
and children and keeps them
captive in his home on a far
"! away mountain. He's especially
hard to kill because, as it says
in his name, he's deathless.
The only way to kill Koshchei is to trick him into
revealing where his death is hidden and then find
it. Usually Koshchei's death is in an egg hidden in
some impossible-to-find place, such as a log
floating in the middle of the ocean or under a
particular tree in a forest. However, when the hero
finally finds the egg, he or she gets to hold it in
front of Koshchei and see the fear in his eyes
before breaking it and killing him.
Merlin Forever
When you think of wizards, one name comes to
mind: Merlin. That bearded wise man in the pointy
hat has always been a big hit viith readers. Sure,
there are other magicians in early English and
French poetry, such as Morgan Le Fey, who has
Today's Magicians
Some of the most fascinating magical characters you
can read about aren't based on fiction. They're reap.
David Blaine, "Drowned Alive"
many of the same powers as Merlin, and the
shape-shifting Archimago from Edmund Spenser's
Faerie Queene. But those characters don't seem to
have Merlin's gravitas, or importance. Few characters can compete with Merlin's awesome magic
powers ... or his dark personal secrets.
For example, in most stories, Merlin does not
have a human father. The story of Merlin's birth is
told in a long poem called Prose Merlin. It was
written in the 1400s, just before Thomas Malory
wrote Le Morte D'Arthur, the famous Arthurian
legend. Prose Merlin relates that Merlin's mother
was supernatural. She was a virtuous woman and
Merlin's father was a demon seeking to create an
evil agent on Earth. Fortunately, a holy man named
Blaise teaches Merlin to use his powers for good
rather than evil.
As a child of supernatural parents. Merlin's
powers are almost limitless. He defeats dragons,
builds Stonehenge, helps recover the Holy Grail,
and serves as a counselor to King Uther Pendragon
and Uther's son King Arthur.
Unfortunately Merlin's emotions make him
vulnerable. In Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. Merlin
falls in love with a lady of the lake, Nimue, who
traps Merlin under a rock. In some stories, that's
where Merlin dies. In other stories, though. Merlin
never dies; he simply continues to exist in a halfalive, half-dead state.
Merlin's character is alive and well today, just as
Gandalf is in the pages of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of
(he Rings series and J, K. Rowling's great bearded
wizard, Dumbledore, in the Harry Potter books.
Young wizards, such as Harry Potter, are direct
descendants of centuries of sorcerers. They are
the next generation of magic folk, •
At age 34, David Blaine began his
career as a street magician, performing card tricks and other illusions. In recent years, Blaine has
performed many daring public
stunts. In 2006, Blaine submerged
himself in an 8-foot vi/ater tank outside Lincoln Center in Nev\/ York
City. He spent a record-breaking
seven days and seven nights inside it.
David Copperfield, "Living Legend"
At age 16 in 1970, David
Copperfield (whose real name is
David Kotkin) became the youngest
person to be admitted to the
Society of American Magicians.
Over the course of his career, he
has made the Statue of Liberty
disappear, levitated over the Grand
Canyon, and walked through the
Great Wall of China.
Criss Angel, "Rock Star Magician"
Using his television show
Mindfreak. Criss Angel (whose real
name is Christopher Sarantakos) is
trying to become the next great
superstar magician. He's already
pushed the envelope of modern
magic by making his pulse stop,
sawing himself in half, and getting
run over by a Hummer while lying
on a bed of nails.
WRITE ABOUT IT
Do you have a favorite magical character?
Research and write a history of that character,
and submit your work to our literary biog at
word@weeklyreader.com. We'll post our favorite
articles online during the week of Halloween!
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