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Are Any of the “Famous Witches and Wizards” Real?

WHEN THEY FIRST TAKE THE HOGWARTS Express to school, Ron introduces Harry to the Famous Witches and Wizards trading cards that come with Chocolate Frogs. He mentions a few: Dumbledore, Merlin, Paracelsus, the Druidess Cliodna, Hengist of Woodcroft, Morgana, Ptolemy, and Circe. Some of these wizards are actual historical figures. Others exist in legends going back hundreds of years.

AGRIPPA

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was a wizard during the Renaissance. Born Heinrich Cornelis near Cologne, Germany, in 1486, he took the name Agrippa in honor of the founder of his hometown.

He had a varied career, working as a doctor, lawyer, astrologer, and faith healer. But he made enemies as quickly as friends and was

According to legend, says witchcraft expert Rosemary Ellen Guiley, toads are considered “psychically sensitive” and can detect ghosts.

Agrippa was said to be accompanied by a spirit (a “familiar”) in the form of a black dog.

branded a sorcerer. In 1529, he published a book called On Occult Philosophy, combining ancient Hebrew and Greek texts to argue that the best way to know God was through magic. Because of his efforts he was forced to leave Germany. In France, where he had been a physician to the queen mother, he was jailed. He died in 1535.

Agrippa was one inspiration for Wolfgang Goethe’s play Faust, in which a scholar makes a pact with the Devil—similar to the pact between Voldemort and his followers. His name also came to be the term for a special sorcerer’s handbook cut into the shape of a person.

DRUIDESS CLIODNA

In Irish mythology, Cliodna has several roles, from goddess of beauty to ruler of the Land of Promise—the afterlife. She is also goddess of the sea. Some say she is symbolized at the seacoast by every ninth wave that breaks on shore. She has three enchanted birds that heal the sick.

PARACELSUS

Paracelsus, born in Switzerland in 1493, is considered a founder of modern chemistry and medicine. He began his career as a medical doctor, then turned to the study of magic, especially alchemy and divination. His reputation as a wizard and his role as a doctor are linked. Because he refused to limit himself to the traditional medical education of the time and developed his own successful treatments, he was deemed a sorcerer. But Paracelsus ignored his critics. “The universities do not teach all things,” he said, “so a doctor must seek out old wives, gypsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers, and such outlaws and take lessons from them. A doctor must be a traveller. Knowledge is experience.”

Paracelsus developed several useful remedies. He also found the cause of silicosis, a

The gifted doctor Paracelsus.

miner’s disease that comes from inhaling metal vapors, which previously had been blamed on evil spirits. He helped stop an outbreak of the plague in 1534 with a form of vaccination.

Paracelsus was born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. The name he created for himself is immodest. It means “beyond Celsus,” referring to a noted physician of ancient Rome.

Because of his attitude and accomplishments, other doctors disliked him. He spent almost a decade in academic exile—and was even forced to flee the city of Basel under cover of darkness in 1528. But by the time of his death in 1541 his reputation had improved greatly.

MORGANA

Morgana—sometimes known as Morgan Le Fay—was a powerful enchantress of British myth, especially gifted in the healing arts. Merlin was her tutor, and she is sometimes said to be the half-sister of King Arthur. She was often Arthur’s rival, stealing his sword Excalibur and plotting his death. But she is also said to have been the queen of Avalon, the fairyland where dying heroes are rewarded, and to have tried to heal Arthur there when he was wounded. According to some legends she lived in the Straits of Messina, off Italy. An unusual sea current in that area often draws phosphorescent creatures from the depths to the surface, creating the impression of strange lights or objects floating above the water. These are called Fata Morgana, from fata, the Italian word for fairy.

MERLIN

Merlin is considered one of the wisest wizards ever. A master sorcerer, he was said to have been an adviser to the British kings Vortigern, Uther Pendragon, and Arthur. Although he may have been based on a wizard who actually lived, the Merlin we know is a character created from fantastic legends. For instance, some say he arranged the huge stones at Stonehenge. Others say he was gifted in prophecy because he lived backward, so he had already seen the future.

Some legends of Morgan le Fay come from tales of the ancient Greek sorceress Medea. Both of them cast a spell on a cloak so that it would burst into flames and kill whoever wore it.

“Merlin” is an English version of the Welsh name “Myrddhin.” The stories now associated with Merlin draw on early tales of a wizard named Ambrosius, who supposedly lived in the sixth century. The historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, who relied heavily on legends, connected him to the tales of King Arthur.

He is best known as King Arthur’s mentor. In a noteworthy parallel, he hid the infant Arthur just as Dumbledore knew to hide Harry from Voldemort. The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson recounted that part of the legend in Idylls of the King:

By reason of the bitterness and grief
That vext his mother, all before his time
Was Arthur born, and all as soon as born
Delivered at a secret postern-gate
To Merlin, to be holden far apart
Until his hour should come; because the lords
Of that fierce day were as the lords of this,
Wild beasts, and surely would have torn
the child
Piecemeal among them, had they known;
for each
But sought to rule for his own self and hand,
And many hated Uther.
Wherefore Merlin took the child,
And gave him to Sir Anton, an old knight
And ancient friend of Uther; and his wife
Nursed the young prince, and reared him with
her own;
And no man knew. And ever since the lords
Have fought like wild beasts among themselves,
So that the realm has gone to wrack.

Merlin then became both Arthur’s tutor and his counselor, using his keen intelligence and innumerable acts of wizardry to help the young king fight Britain’s enemies.

According to some stories, Merlin was tricked by the Lady of the Lake, whom he loved, into creating a magical column of air that she then used to imprison him forever.

HENGIST OF WOODCROFT

This wizard either is or is named for a Saxon king of Britain. King Hengist and his brother Horsa—their names come from the German words for “stallion” and “horse”—arrived in Britain in AD 449 as mercenaries to help King Vortigern put down Pict and Scot rebels, but they eventually led a rebellion of their own. Hengist founded the kingdom of Kent.

The name Woodcroft may simply be one that J. K. Rowling spotted on a map and liked. In Peterborough, north of Kent, you can find a Woodcroft Castle, site of a grisly murder and an old ghost. In 1648 Dr. Michael Hudson, chaplain to King Charles II, was killed there while battling Oliver Cromwell’s troops. He is said to haunt the castle on the anniversary of his death. Sounds of the battle can be heard, as well as Hudson’s cries for mercy.

Many Merlin stories are related to the legends of another early Welsh wizard, Taliesen (see pages 27 and 53).

CIRCE

In Homer’s ancient epic poem The Odyssey, Circe is a “great and cunning goddess” who lives on an island. Odysseus’s men, returning home after the Trojan War, stop at her island and become victims of this enchantress:

When they reached Circe’s house they found it built of cut stones, on a site that could be seen from far, in the middle of the forest. There were wild mountain wolves and lions prowling all round it—poor bewitched creatures whom she had tamed by her enchantments and drugged into subjection. Presently they reached the gates of the goddess’s house, and as they stood there they could hear Circe within, singing most beautifully as she worked at her loom, making a web so fine, so soft, and of such dazzling colours as no one but a goddess could weave.

They called her and she came down, unfastened the door, and bade them enter. They, thinking no evil, followed her.

When she had got them into her house, she set them upon benches and seats and mixed them a drink with honey, but she drugged it with wicked poisons to make them forget their homes, and when they had drunk she turned them into pigs by a stroke of her wand, and shut them up in her pigsties. They were like pigs—head, hair, and all—and they grunted just as pigs do; but their senses were the same as before, and they remembered everything.

Odysseus himself, having taken a special potion, resists Circe’s charms and eventually frees his men.

ALBERIC GRUNNION

This name must have been inspired by the Alberich who is a powerful wizard in the German epic poem Nibelungenlied (“Song of the Nibelungen”). The poem is a mythical account of a historical event, the defeat by the Huns of the kingdom of Burgundy (now part of France) in A.D. 437. It has been the basis of many modern works, most importantly the Ring Cycle, a series of linked operas written in the nineteenth century by Richard Wagner. (When you see cartoons of opera singers wearing horned helmets, it is Wagner’s Ring Cycle they’re singing.)

In Wagner’s version of the story, Alberich is king of the dwarfs, full of hate and ambition. When he discovers a hoard of gold

The name Oberon, which Shakespeare gave to the king of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is an English form of Alberich.

One hero of the Ring Cycle wins a prize from Alberich that will be familiar to Harry Potter fans: an invisibility cloak.

PTOLEMY

Claudius Ptolemaeus lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the early part of the second century A.D., where he was an astronomer and mathematician. He collected the world’s knowledge of those fields into a book, eventually known as the Almagest, which influenced scholars for more than a thousand years. His most significant conclusion was that the Earth is the center of the universe, and that all other celestial bodies revolve around it. This is known as the “Ptolemaic system.” Although it was disproved in the 1500s by the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, Ptolemy’s records of his observations of the heavens are still considered useful to scholars even if his conclusions are

Caution! DO NOT READ THE NEXT SECTION UNTIL YOU HAVE READ Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince AND Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows