The Magician seeks to find a spiritual mastery of the universe and its power. Able to see the greater scheme of things, they are dreamers and mystics that search for greater knowledge than is found inside them. They are not only spiritual; they often manifest a charisma that provides them with control over the world around them.

Background

For those of us just seeing this series for the first time, I'm writing a series on using Pearson's personality archetypes (affiliate link) in storytelling. This profile, of the Magician, is the seventh of twelve entries in this series, following the Destroyer, Orphan, Innocent, the Sage, the Warrior, and the Ruler. You might also be interested in my earlier series on the Hero and Hero's Journey and the Nemesis.

If you just want a quick recap or introduction, here's the gist: archetypes are recurring patterns that have proven to be pretty universal. They're cognitive schemes that allow us to examine behavior and narratives in light of a coherent whole. That makes them valuable tools to audiences and storytellers, since they make stories authentic and lend them meaning.

Understanding the Magician

I take a much less mystical view of the Magician than Pearson does. I consider the magician to be spiritual in a sense, but not necessarily belonging to some transcendental school of thought–the thing that distinguishes them is that they seek intrinsic power in the universe, not the immediately obvious and common sources of power, and that their primary goal is understanding this power rather than having any particular end that they seek to achieve with it.

This is not to say that the Magician is aimless; it is rather that they rely on another archetype within their persona to drive them toward a particular goal; the Innocent may desire to conquer the secrets of life and death, the Ruler may seek to bring order to the world, and the Warrior may seek to protect their people.

One of the important things to consider about the Magician is that for them it is the pursuit of power and (by extension) self-improvement that is an intrinsic drive for them: they want to become part of the universe by drawing on its most sacred and secret powers. This puts them at odds with the Warrior and Ruler, who seek to protect those around them and set a new order in the chaos of the universe respectively.

The Magician's fundamental goal is transformation and transmutation; even if they simply seek to understand how it is done, the ultimate outcome will be an attempt at pulling the strings of the universe.

The Tragic Magician

There are a few ways that the Magician can fall into tragedy. The Faust legend provides an illustration of this.

In some of the many versions, Doctor Faust winds up making a deal with a devil, Mephistoles, when his ambitions to understand the true nature of humanity and the universe are thwarted by the limits of his nature. The various storytellers paint this differently; some paint Faust as proposing the deal, even summoning Mephistopheles, while others like Goethe paint Mephistopheles as the initiator of the bargain.

In any case, Faust is so desirous of coming into contact with some greater knowledge and power than he can acquire, he follows the devil's suggestions and takes the wager, giving his soul up in exchange for power. The various machinations that unfold lead Faust to some of the power–if not all the power and more–he once desired, but in doing so he damns his soul.

Faust und Mephisto, by Tony Johannot

Another example of this can be found in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, where the titular protagonist sells his soul to maintain eternal youth, a painting of his likeness instead aging and bearing the sins of his various endeavors.

The moral of these stories is simple: in pursuing the power of the universe, be careful that you do not unwittingly become a slave to your power. This Nietzschean reflection of the dangers of the hunger for power, and the potential of the will to pursue unfit ends is important as a revelation of the fundamental problem of the Magician: that they can focus on negative things rather than the positive.

The tragic moment of both Faust and Gray happens when they find themselves confronting the fact that despite their newfound power they have squandered it on the pursuit of a goal which they weren't supposed to even desire. Their life has been shallow and driven by an ultimately meaningless pursuit because of the evil they welcomed while doing so.

Both Gray and Faust ultimately meet their end at a moment of potential redemption, realizing that the bargain that they struck was not worth the price that they paid. Gray destroys his painting, killing himself, and Faust dies, his soul the subject of a struggle between God and the Devil: although Goethe paints his soul as saved by the power of God, other variants of the story show Faust choosing damnation as a just punishment for the crimes he has committed.

In the case of the damned Faust, it's important to note that Faust has the power to seek salvation, and ultimately rejects it. While his motivations for doing so vary from telling to telling, the core notion is that his pursuit of power overpowers the aid and wisdom of others that would demand a symbolic reduction of power. Of course, saving his soul would be a much greater exertion of power over the universe, but this is too extrinsic for Faust; he had to make a deal with Mephistopheles, but Christ's salvation is unearned.

The Villainous Magician

The villainous Magician seeks unbridled, unlimited power. They tap into the backbone of universe not because they wish to align themselves with it, but because they wish to align it to their cause.

This inevitably means coming into conflict with others.

When driven to villainy, the Magician will stop at nothing to pursue power and use it in their perceived best interest. The White Witch of Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series is not some dualistic force in opposition to good in the universe, but rather an example of this Magician consumed by Shadow.

The Magician can control the universe, drawing on arcane power or simply the role they play in their society (I would be remiss to describe the Magician in purely supernatural terms). They unmake those around them–perhaps turning them into a frog in a fairy tale. Outside of fairy tales, however, the Magician undoes the very nature of existence; many dystopian villains are Magicians as much as everything else; this may couple with the Ruler, or in the example of Ayn Rand's Anthem it can simply be a case of the Magician feeling that they have the ultimate say over what is right in the universe.

The Magician practices transformation, and the villainous Magician practices destruction. They do not respect other things in their universe, and they grow to reject power that is not theirs. Their reaction is as paranoid and as fearful as any other, but their power is more insidious. They play on a different plane of existence than the others in their world.

The Magician in Star Wars

Many of the characters in Star Wars ultimately fall into the Magician archetype, because the Force is a manifestation of magic in the universe and the conflicts that surround the understanding of the Force are a fundamental conceit of the stories.

I feel that Count Dooku is an example of this. His turn to the Dark Side is not necessarily an example of seeking a total rejection of the order (as the Orphan) or following the Sith blindly. His move is to build power in the universe, to lay the foundations for the order that will eventually propel Palpatine to power.

Dooku's power is not only in the Force; using his position as a nobleman to play the game of empire-building, he uses everything at his disposal to shift the gears and mechanisms of the universe, including playing people against each other. Dooku is the centerpiece of a grand scheme, but he does not seek to change the universe like the Ruler does to create order: instead he seeks to change the universe so that he can find the power within it for himself.

Using the Magician in Writing

The Magician is a powerful archetype to bring out to drive characters to inspiration and doom. It encourages a sort of myopia in this one-minded pursuit of power, often as monomaniacal as Ahab in its pursuit.

It also serves as a motivation for those characters who seek to understand the universe, but also to live in harmony with it. These people need to resolve an internal conflict between their desire to understand the secrets of the universe, and the need to find responsibility for the power that comes with it (the old Peter Parker adage applies).

Dealing with an awakening to the universe is a compelling problem for a character to face, and the Magician is in a unique way to deal with that. Even simply uncovering ways that they can step outside the fold can move a Magician to the brink of crisis. By finding power, they risk alienating themselves from the world that they fundamentally love and seek to understand.

The Magician often ostracizes themselves from others; their power is mysterious and misunderstood, and often provokes fear in others. Things that they view as nothing more than an extension of their learning and newfound power often come across as malicious to those who haven't gained the same appreciation of the universe (making a small sacrifice for a great good, for instance).

Another challenge for the Magician is that they cannot achieve their goal alone (nor can any archetype seeking to complete a Hero's Journey). They need the benefits of a Sage, another Magician, or another well-learned individual to guide them. Many of the tragic Magicians choose poorly when they seek their mentor, and this leads them down the wrong path.

The final step for the Magician is figuring out what to do when they come into the apotheosis of their power. They may be transfigured into the Sage, which is a generally desirable outcome by that point, but maintaining their power and using it to change the ordinary world at the end of the Hero's Journey requires them to show enough restraint that they do not, by extension, destroy their ordinary world by too much change.

Using the Magician in Gaming

Many compelling game characters can become Magicians, and it is a natural trend in many game systems to encourage characters to follow such a path: this overt self-improvement and growing command of the universe is an interesting concept and is satisfying as a reward for players.

With that said, you need to consider a few things to use the Magician archetype well:

• Power needs to be available, but it also needs to be limited by responsibility
• The Magician needs support to grow; they are not strong enough to stand alone
• The world needs to provide opportunities to use power, and times where power is not appropriate

Following these rules, you can have Magicians face challenges and stay interesting even as they transcend mortal boundaries.

Wrapping Up

The Magician seeks the source of all power, and they are as a result capable of bringing themselves most in line with the universe. Their journeys are largely internal and are built on the notion of transcendence without self-annihilation.

The journey, however, can be dangerous: the pursuit of power is not always matched by a maturity that is necessary to handle the responsibilities that it brings.