Our Schools and What They Mean

thaumawizard:

I was bored and when I get bored I get really into etymology so I’m just going to do some googling and see if I can’t find out what we’re calling ourselves.

Because it’s my school, I’ll start with Ice, then proceed arbitrarily through the elemental schools, then balance, then the spirit schools. There will sometimes be brief commentary but for the most part I’ll keep my own comments out of it and let y’all interpret it. Why these names for the schools? How fitting, or not, are they? If you want I can make a second post or reblog this with my own comments but for now I’ll leave it as is.

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Ice – Thaumaturge: From Greek thaumatourgos  meaning “wonder-worker”. Interestingly, it comes from the same root as “theater”, which is thauma(wonder, lit. “a thing to look at”). Plus ergon “work”. Source.

Storm – Diviner: From Latin divinus “of a god”. It means “soothsayer” and seems to more literally mean “to be inspired by a god”. Source. Also.

Pyromancer – Fire: This is one of the more obvious ones. It comes from Greek pyr “fire” and manteia “divination”. The manteia root is common with all “mancy” magics and the prefix is fitting. Interestingly, given what divination is, a pyromancer is someone who divines by means of flames. So, another fortune teller. Source.

Sorcerer – Balance: From Medieval Latin sortiarius “teller of fortunes by lot” or literally “one who influences fate/fortune” and by extension the Latin sors “lot, fate, fortune”. It has the same root as “sort” as in rearrange or order things. Source.

Necromancer – Death: Another obvious once, it has the same “mancy” (manteia“divination”) ending as pyromancer, but the prefix comes this time from the Greek root nekros “dead body”. A necromancer divines by means of communicating with the dead. Fun fact, manteia is related to the word menos“passion, spirit” which is where we get the term “mania”. Source.

Conjurer – Myth: From prefix com- “with, together” and iurare“to swear”. It means, basically, to band together. Which makes perfect sense for what a conjurer does, id est, summon things. Source.

Theurgist – Life: Like thaumaturge, the ending part of theurgist comes from Greek ergon “work”. But the root is theos “a god” (same root as theist and theocracy). So, rather than a work of wonder, theurgists do works of god. Theurgy is divine magic. Or more simply theurgist means “miracle worker”. Source.