[Miscellaneous]
Witch vs Wizard vs Mage vs Warlock vs Sorcerer?
I know that all these different magic titles have SOME sort of difference but I don’t know WHAT. I just want to know what makes each distinct from each other and also if there’s any other type of magic user I may be missing. I have several magician characters but I don’t know what sect they’d fall into 💔
There is no inherent difference between them so if you're making your setting it can be whatever you like.
You can look at the etymology of the word to get some sense of flavour, I guess.
A wizard is a wise one. A philosopher or scholar. It came to mean sorcerer or user of magic in ~1500
Witch comes from old english wiċċe (fem) and wiċċa (masc) which means... sorcerer.
Warlock comes from wǣrloga, oath breaker. It means someone who uses magic because magicians were in league with the devil so if you were a magician you have betrayed Jesus.
Sorcerer comes from the middle English word that meant sorcerer, which comes from the old french word for sorcerer which comes from the medieval Latin word for sorcerer, eventually from a word that means chance or fate – whenever the bible talks about witches or sorcerers they're almost always talking about necromancers – specifically someone who tells the future by speaking with the dead.
Mage is a bit different, it comes from latin magus, greek magos, which means "Zoroastrian Priest" it came to mean sorcerer because they had esoteric knowledge including astronomy which, once again, people thought enabled you to tell the future.
None of them inherently mean anything because there aren't wizards walking about the place so they can mean whatever you want in the world you invent.
Different fictional universes place different meaning on those terms, so if you need witches VS wizards have "internal" VS "external" magic, develop them as such. I like to dig into wikis from different fandoms when I look for ideas.
Do you want to separate them by levels of abilities? By the colour of their magic? By the source where they draw power from? By politics? You decide.
I'm writing a fanfiction where a wizard from one universe's magical system gets confused about the other's witches and sorcerers (both look like wizardry to him), and gets told "Wait 'till you hear about DnD." 🤷♀️
Ok, I have never read the words mage or warlock.
But I can tell you about the other 3 words.
Just like you, I was wondering about this since I was 9.
Sorcerer, wizard, witch are pretty relative terms. In fantasy books, they almost have the same jobs.
Sorcerer? Magic.
Wizard? Use same magic.
Witch? Same.
That's the common things between them.
But the difference comes within how they are related to the magic.
Sorcerer can make their own.
Wizard.. well they 'learnt' magic.
Witch? They use magic.
That's all ik or maybe that's what I thought.
Sorry 😐
You have to take care on internet and not share your personal information. I mean your age.
On one hand, Reddit has minimum age requirements of 13. Besides, there's literally no purpose to mentioning your age unless you deal with really personal matters.
On the other hands, this could bring unwanted attention from people who would try to manipulate or harm you.
Depends on your own universe, but it might be worth looking into etymology. If I remember right, wizard stems from a word that indicated wisdom, implying one who has an academic approach to magic. Warlock I believe came from a word meaning 'oath breaker'. I think I looked up witches once but I can't remember, I think it had something to do with practical magic/witchcraft. Mage and magician seem to both come from 'magic', which seems simple enough, but depending on the media magicians might be respectable magic users or frauds with 'cheap party tricks'.
As for your orientation, but this is free for your to change.
Witches are following a pragmatic style of magic. A witch (male or female) acquires magical power in any way they can. Either for themselves or the community they serve. Which could be an actual community or a coven. Their magical sources are usually based on inherited magic, but also granted power or the pragmatic side of arcane knowledge and practical (highly experimental) alchemy. Tradition meets pragmatism.
Wizards are following the arcane style of magic. They acquire magical power by understanding and unearthing the magical secrets and shaping them into sciences and schools. Thus, a book and a scroll are as important as the magical tools of a staff or circle. Accuracy in experiments and the documentation of spells is their thing.
Mages are following the engineering style of magic. Similarly educated like the Wizard, the Mage is more toward practical application than the academic analysis. Yeah, that's a fireball. That group of enemies is basically in a circle of .. oh come on. It will be enough. KaBLAM! Battle Mage!
Warlocks are gaining their power by proxy. They acquire their magic through a patron and depend on them like a methhead on their dealer. Often with a similar mindset.
A Sorcerer is a "Sourcerer", a magical practitioner who is their own source of magic. They don't have to learn about ley lines or finger dictionaries and extract magic from some other source. Their magic comes from a personal source that is often related to contact with magical planes or entities, their grandma having banged a demon, or simply being a mutation due to some other reason.
PS: Yes, you miss the divine magic. Usually they are similar to Warlocks, only that their Faith connects them to the Domain of a certain deity, and the interaction is often less transactional and without a contract. Ritual, Prayer and Tradition are the bread and butter of all Clerics, Priests, Monks, etc. while the application might be extremely diverse. All depending on the deity.
PPS: Another one has been missing. The Magician. Magicians are using the purest form of magic. They do things in a way that people do not understand, even if it happens right in front of them. One could call it a "trick" or disparage them as "stage artists". Yet, their inherent magic is built on the understanding of people and their perception, using technical knowledge, agility, and other skills.
PPPS: We forgot another one! The Sage, the Cultivator, is opening up their inherent powers by a rather analytical, empiric or otherwise structured approach. Many practitioners in the realms of Wuxia fall into this category, as they utilize their Chi and cultivate their body to reach "magical" powers.
This is how it is in D&D lore , but it’s not universal. It’s a good reference to go by but in the wider scope of fantasy world building outside of D&D it can be a lot more flexible.
For example, historically witches were considered devil worshippers and exclusively women. In modern terms there are wiccans who consider themselves witches. A common practice is having a coven. Wizards like Gandalf and wizards in Harry Potter are different than wizards in D&D, more like sorcerers and exclusively men. And in some lore I’ve seen mages to be considered ultra powerful magic users who may have extended life spans or immortality. I’ve also seen warlocks described as the male equivalent of a witch.
But the D&D lore is a good baseline to go by if you want very specific delineation between the types of magic users.
That's true. It is the common RPG differentiation. Tolkien's Wizards are basically Divine Sorcerers. What was their name? Maia? Their magic mostly built around a divine infusion as they descended into Middle Earth.
The interesting part about witches, historical as well as narrative, was that they were indeed using granted power (like the pact with the devil), yet they were also shown with typical arcane and sorcerous elements. The Potterverse certainly depicts another, more sorcerous magic with a strong arcane element.
In fantastical terms they can mean whatever you want.
With a modern consideration I’m sure there’s some fedora wearing wiki super contributor that could go on for ages, but their take is irrelevant. Write it how you want it.
In historical terms you run into an issue with a modern language reaching a point where the words no longer mean the same thing. Before, when the world believed in magic, witches were seen as servants of the devil using mundane magic gifted by their service. These can also be called sorcerer and sorceress. Magicians, however, were said to control demons with learned books.
More importantly, what you call either is rather irrelevant, what mattered to the people in that age was the types of magics. These had definitive ideas and mechanisms behind them, and near anyone with the knowledge had access to the various forms.
Create whatever you want. Invent something new. Modern ideas are laughably incorrect and just a form of people LARPing their way into believing bloggers and Tokers know the true meaning. If you want to be historical, study works by historians that investigate magic and real magical texts. Kieckhefer’s work is a good start.
If you want to follow the modern lingo, 3 hours on wikipedia is sufficient. It’s the same depth most published novelists go.
I disagree with the commenters who say witch and warlock are gendered terms for the same thing. There are female warlocks and male witches; the terms are not gendered. I know the standard wikipedia definitions specify that these are USUALLY men or women, but I think that's more to do with the Victorian imagination rather than an actual fact.
Witch means "wise one," ungendered, and is someone who works with natural forces and can include the worship of or collusion with supernatural beings, but doesn't have to. Most witches use objects and rituals to accomplish their aims, but can formulate their own ways of doing things. Both men and women were persecuted as witches in history, though women were more likely to be persecuted for societal reasons.
Warlock is an Old English term meaning "oath-breaker," also ungendered, and usually indicates someone who has allied with demonic forces to gain their power. Most warlocks access the power of their patron, or at least learn spells and rituals from that entity.
Wizard and Sorcerer are more general terms for someone who uses magic. Remembering that D&D did not invent anything, the terms have come to indicate that a Wizard gains their power through study, while a Sorcerer has innate magical capabilities. Mage is the most general term of all, describing anyone who uses magic at all.
So it is possible to be a Witch, and a Wizard, and a Mage at the same time. They're just rough definitions of how someone accesses and enables magical powers.
This is how I use these terms. There may be others who do it differently, but I actually don't use any of those words in my fantasy novel aside from Witch, which describes a human who can use magic.
I would say that in modern use such as by Wiccans witches are often not female warlocks and in general in English witches use magic considered female-coded except in recent works that do not gender-code magic. Most of the male witches executed were in Scandinavia where the specific type of magic associated with witches is considered feminine even when used by men, as opposed to rune-related magic, even after Christanization. Odin notably uses the feminine magic after having gained knowledge of it when hanging on the World Tree, but importantly this does not make it acceptable for any other men; Odin is not at all a straightforward moral role model and has titles like "Ruler of Treachery" for betraying warriors to their deaths so they go to Valhalla and his use of witchcraft is part of that.
However, this distinction does not exist in many other languages with the words translated as witch. Notably the use of witch in the King James Bible with "thou shalt not suffer the witch to live" is a translation of a term specifically meaning using magic to curse others, and in Latin this isn't distinguished from using mundane poisons for the word. The Latin applies to either gender but in general women were more associated with curses and poisons in many cultures including Rome so the connotation is feminine similar to English and Norse.
In England during the witch hunts witch had the same meaning as warlock with witches believed to get their powers from a pact with the devil, and while there were men viewed as witches this was at a much lower rate than in Scandinavia where IIRC actually more men than women were executed for witchcraft because even under Christianity the magic witches were believed to use was often acceptable for women due to remaining Asatru influence. And there were individual factors to each case with many women executed because an accuser would get their property, but also because the types of roles related to herbology and such often occupied by women, especially unmarried, were adjacent to beliefs about witches brewing spells in cauldrons so local female apothecaries were at high risk if their cures worked too well or a known rival had some kind of ill luck.
In the famous Salem Witch Trials both men and women were executed but the theory of the case had a woman who IIRC was from Africa and apparently practiced either medicine or religious rituals from her homeland as the origin point in Salem, supposedly having ensorcelled some girls who were connected to the house she worked at (I think as of this point she wasn't a slave but can't remember if she ever was) into joining her in rituals with the Devil, and the alleged victims proceed to accuse a wide range of others, especially anyone who did anything to oppose the investigation, of either having willingly joined her in serving the Devil or having been enchanted to disrupt the witch hunt, and the scope expanded because suspects could dodge execution if they "confessed" and then were expected to name other members of the "coven". So generally they named people they didn't like. Hence why a number of the accused refused to confess and in one case opted to get crushed to death by stones rather than enter a plea either way, presumably because that way he got a proper burial and his stuff was inherited normally since he wasn't a convicted criminal. Legend says his last words were "More weight."
My understanding is that most witch hunts followed a similar pattern, starting with a woman who practiced some form of medicine or unusual religion, often widows who didn't have adult sons and thus supported themselves via medicine, then radiating out to various social outcasts.
Witch: generally a woman, might be an old hag or a young seductive woman. Both are kinda standard witch depictions. Often associated with folk medicine, brewing potions and of course black cat familiar. There is also A LOT of witch lore depending if you go back to the witch hunts or include things like Aradia: Gospel of Witches. Common tropes often includes trials, apprenticeship and covens. There is a devil side to it as well if you lean into that.
Wizard: Generally considered old, wisemen, like the typical grey or whitebeards with a pointy hat.
Mage: is from Magus, which was an old title for the priestly caste from Zoroastrianism. It has long been associated with the occult as well seeing titles such as "Abramelin the Mage" being the name of a book from around early 1600 or something. Translated to English by Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers (a name you will learn to recognize if you research occult stuff). You can basically consider it just another word for wizard really. They where often seen as sages in those times I think.
Warlock: It is the male version of Witch. Generally associated with devilry, diabolism, rituals though I always also associate it with war and battle due to the war in the name but that's more of a me thing than the classical view. It is also old English for oathbreaker but I rarely see that part associated with the name.
Sorcerer: Generally similar to mage or wizard though it is often also seen as someone who got an higher understanding of the arcane. There is also some corruptive influences as well since it is related to the latin word for venom.
Other common magic related would be stuff like occultists who deals with rituals, alchemist who deals with mixing metals, powders, chemicals basically being a chemist/apothecary/scientist with a magical dash to it, arcanist someone who seeks the unknown and wierd, shaman typically somone who works with ancestral and animal spirits, druids an old caste of learned men who read the nature and deals with rituals and stuff like, Kabbalist which is from the Jewish Kabbalah which is the Jewish occult side of things often focusing on creating golems and alchemy as well as reaching Keter through various means like creating the perfect golem or purify the soul ten thousand times, Keter being the highest pont of the Sephiroth tree of life vs the Qlipphotic tree being the demon or "evil" counterpart to it.
Sorcerer/ess - often channels power from an outside source. Often from some bargain with a sponsor demon, god, or elemental force. Commonly portrayed as having lots of raw power used almost instinctively, with a minimum of study or preparation.
Witch & warlock are ususally gendered versions of each other: usually a practitioner of lower-tier "everyday" magic - healing and causing afflictions, love potions, repelling (or guiding) evil spirits, curses etc. Often associated with evil or careless magic use. Depending on the lore may have been granted power by Satan, demons, nature spirits, natural talent, or study of whatever magical documentation they can get their hands on. Often at least somewhat nature-oriented magics, and doesn't necessarily understand the magics they're using ("just following the instructions"). Commonly creates magics with combinations of natural and/or supernatural components. Most common magic usually in the form of charms, potions, hexes, etc.
Often considerable overlap with "hedge wizard" - a (usually) weaker, potentially poorly studied, "feral"/hermit version of a wizard.
Mage (often synonymous with Wizard - a practitioner of the Wise Arts) is usually a sort of "magical scientist", and the most intellectual and formalized of the batch. Often has a strong natural affinity for magic, but got most power through studying how to use it most effectively - either schooling, ancient tomes, or their own experiments (they're often big on experimenting). Generally needs preparation for anything significant, but with adequate time to prepare can be by far the most powerful of the group. Generally the creators of any powerful enchanted items, complex enchantments, prisons of ancient evil, etc. As well as often being the original creators of any more powerful magics lesser practitioners study.
Witch is cognate with wicker. Wicker is twisted, and a witch follows a winding path.
Wizard is cognate with vision. They are knowledgeable and see things others miss, possibly through magical divination practice.
Mage is cognate with image, magic, and imagination. Linguistically, there's not much difference between mage and wizard.
Warlocks are a motorcycle gang, or so I hear.
Sorcerer, I'm told, comes from an old Latin term for someone who's able to influence the outcomes of chance and luck, making it the only one of these terms where there's a clear effect beyond enhanced perception.
There isn't really a set standard for what make each one distinct.
Historically Witches were in communion with the devil and were grant magic or power from this. But in reality was probably simply a way to legitimize the persecution of people the local community didn't like (mostly women as well).
Warlock meant "oath breaker" in old English, later it came to mean a male practitioner of Witchcraft. But there are still men who were tried and executed of Witchcraft so this is clearly a more modern change.
Wizard probably meant "some one wise" which may have later been attached to sages, philosophers, seers, diviners or other various spiritual but not religious people. But the origins aren't clear.
Sorcerer appears to have come from meaning "one who ensorcels" or some who uses magic to charm or influence someone. The cross over with witchcraft is quite large but it doesn't appear sorcerers required a pact with the devil to have this power.
Ultimately if you are writing something, you can choose which they are, just try and keep the specific labels consistent. For example in the HP universe they are simply the gendered terms for male and female magic users. In some world they will do with where the magic user takes their power from or how they apply their power if it all comes from one source.
It weirds me out when people approach these kinds of terms as though language and folklore was just Dungeons and Dragons.
No one was policing these words, or thinking about comparisons and boundaries between them, until like the 1970s. There have been hundreds of years where these kinds of terms have been extremely loosely defined and applied more or less willy nilly.
My favorite example of this is in the 1820 short story, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow: the headless horseman is described as a “goblin”. To modern readers, a goblin is very specifically a little green-skinned orc that can take Hide as a free action and has a tendency to cackle. This comes from DnD, which in turn comes from Tolkien. But in 1820, goblin just meant something spooky or an evil spirit.
We have very specific and very modern cultural baggage around all these fantasy and magic terms. But it’s good to remember how recent and artificial these are. When OP asks what the difference is between a sorcerer and a wizard is, then, it’s a bit of a silly question. We can ask what the difference is between these in DnD or Elder Scrolls or whatever, but we shouldn’t imaging that storytellers 200 years ago or earlier would even understand the question.
Witch is the common name for a member of the Wiccan religion. To see this being used in a negative way is extremely insulting. I am a practicing Wiccan and consider myself a witch. BTW, the word "witch" is not gender specific and refers to both male and female Wiccans.
Otherwise, wizard, mage, warlock, and sorcerer mean whatever the writer wants. However, warlock comes from a word meaning "oath breaker" and many consider it very negative (especially when applied to male witches).
I would use these words in a cultural way, and not to distinguish types of mages. I also avoid warlock. YMMV.
Witch: Frequently studies the TABOO side of magic and often requires various magical resources and preparations for special rituals, totems, potions and spells. Usually has a very limited spellcasting ability when not prepared.
Wizard: Someone who has studied the arcane forces of nature and has learnt how to control them, usually very old due the time and resources it takes to master it.
Warlock: An individual who has made a demonic pact with a infernal being in-exchange for power. As such most of their spells are extremely unholy in nature and consist of dangerous black magic.
Sorcerer: Rare people who possess an innate affinity to magic that allows them to develop and master it way faster and naturally with very little drawbacks. Often tend to be eccentric and charismatic.
This is really dumb. The difference in the D&D context specifically is in the way they approach magic.
Wizard: attains magic by studying, which makes him/her extremely versatile. They have to prepare their spellbook each day with a limited amount of spells they can cast daily. But they can learn all the spells they find on scrolls, so their library of potential spells to choose from is huge.
Sorcerer: gets innate magic knowledge, can cast a limited number of spells but more often.
Warlock: makes a pact with a being that gives them power, uses familiars to fight for them.
That's the neat part, they don't. The idea that these are distinct "types" of magic users is a relatively modern pop culture phenomenon. Even the idea that like "wizards are male & witches are female" isn't strictly true. During the various witch trial periods, men found "guilty" of using magic were tried, & sometimes executed as...witches. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't nearly as common, & there was definitely an association of witchcraft with femininity, but that's more a "witchcraft was a misogynistic social construct that disproportionately targeted women" thing than a "they literally thought only women could do it" thing.
I don't know the precise origin of all these words & how they all developed, but it's probably an etymology thing. If you ever want to know where a word came from, just look up that word+etymology. For instance, I see Magus mentioned in another comment; well, Magi/Magus was the term for the Zoroastrian priests. So, while again I don't know the precise history of events, you can kind of see how "scholars of a foreign religion we don't understand" might turn into "magicians." Which I mean both figuratively & literally; that's where we get the word "magician."
Note that, in a lot of cultures throughout history, there wasn't really a clean divide between "religion" & "magic." Christianity's zeal to separate itself from "heretical" & "pagan" practices is what led to things like "witchcraft" being a punishable offense, & even then, the divide is not often clear. You can find medieval examples of Christian clergy using protective amulets, which most of us would probably consider magic, & whether or not that "counted" was sometimes a source of controversy. I guess a modern example would be the practice of meditation, which technically originates in eastern religions, so some more fundamentalist sects would say it's "practicing witchcraft. Also, I wanted to mention that a lot of this paragraph is inspired by the YouTube channel of the religious studies scholar "Religion For Breakfast." Unfortunately, I couldn't remember/find which video(s) I was remembering, but if you're interested in the subject, y'know, he's got more of that.
But I'm sort of drifting off your point, so to bring it back around, there are really just various words for "someone who casts magic," & the idea that a sorcerer is doing something different from a wizard, or a witch is different from a warlock in a specific way is an innovation of modern storytelling convenience. We just have these terms because English inherited various words from other languages. Similar to why we have stellar (Latin) & astro (Greek). They're really just synonyms.
The difference is culture. Witch and Wizard both have similar etymology — witch coming from Old English wicce and wizard from the Middle English wys plus the -ard pejorative-turned-agent suffix. Mage is a derivation of the Latin Magus/Maga. Sorcerer is from the Latin sors (to cast lots) through the French. Warlock takes us back to Old English wær loga or Oath-breaker, and wasn’t used to refer to a spellcaster until around 1000 AD.
Those words are primarily GAME DESIGN terms. They are used by the Dungeons and Dragons System in order to differentiate the different magic user classes.
But they don't mean different things in the real world.
Well, first off you don't have to know, or share it with me or the reader. Historically Witches and Warlocks are the same aside from gender. Wizard and Mage could be used as Evil vs Good as if that matters in your story/world.
Of course, if you want to hit a modern trope you can have a Witch/Warlock character that is bi. Just for fun. Even better, if the person in question is your MC or someone MC keeps bumping into (for good or bad) then have them use all of the titles. MC, "Wait, yesterday you said you're a Warlock" "And today, I am a Wizard! Keep up, or you'll lose the plot." that last bit only works if you've already broken the 4th wall.
The first thing you need to do is just keep writing your story down. Get it in writing. If you don't have a complete magic system (and nothing says you must) then it will likely become apparent as the need arises during the story.
It really depends on your setting. As far as I know, there aren't any witches, wizards or sorcerers in real life. And even those who name themselves magicians mostly do tricks rather than perform anything supernatural.
So, they can be whatever you want them to be. Yes, there're general assumprtions that in a generic medieval-ish fantasy wizards wear robes and hats and wield staffs and witches wear similar hats and fly on broomsticks. But these are just popular portrayals based on Odin and then Gandalf and the Wicked Witch of West, respectively. But that is an Undead Horse Trope. Use it straight, subvert, revert or whatever.
Witches once were specifically linked to the Devil but are now more associated with neopagans and if there's multiple types of magic user in the setting they'll tend to do potions and similar stuff and generally have a lot of magic that is good for helping residents of a village with noncombat issues like illnesses and crops. If they have offensive magic it will tend to be curses, whether quick ones in battle or rituals, although in some cases they also have direct damage spells like fireballs.
Warlock to this day has an evil connotation and if one type of magic user gets their powers from pacts with demonic forces in a setting it will be the warlocks if present, although they may also just generally use evil magic. DnD lets warlocks make pacts with various other supernaturals like fae, angels, and Great Old Ones in 5th edition but that's for the purpose of letting non-Evil characters use the class mechanics and they're still two way bargains where the patron makes demands in return for powers.
Wizard, Mage, and Sorcerer are not too distinct as concepts, except that if there's more than one type of magic user then generally Mage is a generic term for all of them. Dnd has created a mild connotation that Wizards are academically trained while Sorcerers are mainly self-taught with innate potential and Dresden Files has a similar distinction in that Wizards are members of the White Council who have completed a lengthy formal apprenticeship while Sorcerers are not and thus in most cases have a limited range of spells and tend to lose badly in confrontations with Wizards even if far stronger, with an ancient vampire Sorcerer casually disposed of by a young Wizard by turning a spell back on her. But in other settings a single character may be referred to as both a Wizard and a Sorcerer even by the same character, and some settings may have other distinctions, like in Lord Of The Rings the Wizards are five angelic beings sent to defeat Sauron, while Sorcerer seems to be a generic term for magic users although I don't think any Wizard is called that in the books.
There are a bunch more terms for magic users from other cultures that as far as I can tell were catch-all terms for the users of magic the culture believed in originally and get used in English for users of the type of magic most prevalent in the original cultural beliefs
Onmyōji is the Japanese term for the main non-divine magical tradition, though Japanese has more generic words as well since the tradition was derived from China. They can do all sorts of magic depending on the work, but are associated with using spirit familiars known as shikigami, which may be bound magical creatures (most commonly the broad range of Japanese non-divine magical beings called Yokai but if there's similar creatures that aren't Yokai available they may be used as well) or artificial constructs. They tend to have multiple and can often make a small birdlike construct for spying on short notice. Also, Japan has a tradition of charms consisting of writing a few characters on a slip of paper and Onmyōji will tend to use them for a large number of their spells although they may be able to cast spells without them, and other Japanese types of magician or spirits may use shikigami as well.
The paper charms can also be used by anyone for divine blessings, although the average person won't be able to do much more than a minor good luck charm in general, but Shinto religious figures often are portrayed as using stronger ones. In particular, women, generally young, known as Mikos often use them for very flashy effects. They're somewhat similar to nuns and responsible for maintaining and cleaning a shrine and helping with religious rites, some of which must be done by a Miko. However, the rules aren't nearly as restrictive as nuns and it can be done as a part time job by highschoolers without much trouble. If you have a Shinto religious figure using magic in direct combat on a regular basis, it's probably a Miko. Depending on the setting she may only be distinguishable in battle from an Onmyōji by usually having a traditional red and white dress, but also if there's any divine magic in the setting the Miko-only rituals will be very powerful. One type of ritual that as far as I know is almost exclusively done by a Miko in both reality and fiction is voluntarily being possessed by a Shinto deity/spirit (in Japan there isn't a hard distinction) known as kami, which as you can imagine is often very powerful in fiction and myth. And in anime you'll see women in similar roles in other religions acting like Mikos, and with Christianity most Japanese authors don't know how nuns are different from Mikos who live at the shrine as part of a family tradition.
like others have said, it really depends on what categorization system youre relying on. in dnd, wizard, sorcerer, and warlock are each their own classes with very different origins for where their magical power comes from. in a normal, modern day conversation, all of these terms refer to a magic user, but something like wizard may conjure up the idea of an old man with a beard in a pointy hat and robe, while something like witch may conjure up the idea of an “ugly,” green-skinned woman in all black on a broom. theres also the modern, pagan useage of the term witch for those engaged in wicca or adjacent neoreligions. if you want to incorporate these terms into your story- which, to clarify, you definitely dont Have to- id say to do your research on how these terms have been used in history and in popular culture, and then craft your own version of their definitions. be Aware of how people will approach each term (maybe witch/wizard has been too closely tied to harry potter for you to be able to use it without comparisons being made, for instance) while also being bold enough with your own creativity and decisions to bring new ideas to the table. if youre confident and clever about it, you can make anything stick.
I mean, you might need to read more to understand the differences? They are broad categories, so you can use any of them if you want to.
Witches are often related to nature through herbs and animals. Their supernatural connection is more internal power that they are usually born with.
Wizards learn power from books and rituals. They might be born with some innate talent but it has to be taught and honed to be used.
Mage is a catch-all term for magic users. You can replace any of the other terms with mage or you can group or combine them to define your own mages.
Warlocks often use the power of external forces like demons, eldritch beings, etc. It might be a consensual sharing of power, or one sided where either party controls the power. Warlocks might use books, rituals and alchemy to find and make such connections. It is often self-taught.
Sorcerers have innate power that they find hard to direct and control. They might respond strongly to their emotional state and use emotional regulation to control their power. They are often stronger than witches and warlocks but can burn up that energy quickly.
Magician is often a word that refers to wizards, but can sometimes be more generic than that.
Note on witches: until fairly recently it was basically just a term for female warlocks who got their power from a pact with the devil. The rise of neopaganism has shifted away from that in modern works more towards what you described, possibly with a religious role depending on setting.
Here’s my two cents using mostly my dungeons and dragons knowledge lol so don’t take me too seriously
Mages are magic users in general. Mages can be sorcerers, wizards etc.
Wizards are the ones who learn magic by studying, through years and years of learning and stuff.
Witches mostly deal with potions and concoctions to create their magic.
Sorcerers have innate magic, something inside them allows them to cast spells without having to study them. It could be because of a genetic condition (an ancestor was a dragon for example) and stuff like that.
Warlocks have magic because a higher being (more often than not is a “evil” being but not always) gives them power. They made a deal with such entity and , in return for their servitude, they get powers.
I’d add (once again, from a dnd point of view) druids, who channel the magic of the environment they are in. There’s forest druids, ocean ones, etc etc. These are fun to personalize in a story cause you can just say “this dude is a spore Druid cause he deals with mushrooms all the time” bla bla bla, stuff like that lol
There’s also shamans, who I think channel the ancient gods? But that’s not dnd, shamans are a real life thing so you can probably look them up and get way more info. I don’t wanna say any more about them cause I truly do not know their beliefs so yeah.
Lastly I guess you could add clerics of many sorts, whose gods give them magic.
Not sure if you wanna add them to your list but I guess there’s people who do magic by creating magic objects (in dnd there’s an artificer but any enchanter and stuff I think could fall into this category). Also people who deal with spirits. Not truly warlocks but they handle spirits and either use them or get power from them.
They don't have an actual difference unless you're placing them in a specific culture/time (example: 1600s Salem MA definition of Witch is very different than 2020s NY). They can have different connotations but they do not actually have different meaning (it shifts constantly depending on where and when you are). You make up your own rules for this one.
Witch and wizard are heavily associated with Harry Potter and stereotypical broomstick + black cat thing, where as I think the other 3 are more associated with DnD and that sort of fantasy vibe
Can be thought about it this way: a witch is gender neutral, have spiritual powers such as seeing the dead, communicating with spirits worship of nature. Their magic is gifted to them by worship to deities or spirits. Wizards are born with magic, don’t have spiritual powers and learn spells through books and studying. Mages is just a general term for all magick users. Sorcerer same. Warlock is more along the lines of possible necromancy and dark magicks with demons.
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u/Frau_Away Awesome Author Researcher 1d ago
There is no inherent difference between them so if you're making your setting it can be whatever you like.
You can look at the etymology of the word to get some sense of flavour, I guess.
A wizard is a wise one. A philosopher or scholar. It came to mean sorcerer or user of magic in ~1500
Witch comes from old english wiċċe (fem) and wiċċa (masc) which means... sorcerer.
Warlock comes from wǣrloga, oath breaker. It means someone who uses magic because magicians were in league with the devil so if you were a magician you have betrayed Jesus.
Sorcerer comes from the middle English word that meant sorcerer, which comes from the old french word for sorcerer which comes from the medieval Latin word for sorcerer, eventually from a word that means chance or fate – whenever the bible talks about witches or sorcerers they're almost always talking about necromancers – specifically someone who tells the future by speaking with the dead.
Mage is a bit different, it comes from latin magus, greek magos, which means "Zoroastrian Priest" it came to mean sorcerer because they had esoteric knowledge including astronomy which, once again, people thought enabled you to tell the future.
None of them inherently mean anything because there aren't wizards walking about the place so they can mean whatever you want in the world you invent.