I try to imagine what a wizard is like through creative imagination, going beyond the classic tall pointed hat, long beard, hawk nose, large piercing eyes, long robe, and walking stick. I’m describing one type of wizard; he wears the clothing of a 19th-century sea captain; his home is a ship at sea with no sails; it’s a futuristic ship. He wears a captain cap, a medium lengthy beard, a deep blue buttoned jacket, and white pants. It’s the ship he commands that has the magic; it goes underwater, sails on the surface of the ocean, in the air, and travels on land, becoming a trailer or a house, but mainly, his ship stays on the surface of the sea where he feels at home. They call him the Captain Wizard of Everything. Of course, there is a crew to work the ship. Despite his great powers, Captain Wizard of Everything can’t do all the work. A first mate who looked half tiger, half human, and a robot saw all the responsibilities of keeping the ship afloat, marking off the supplies needed for long voyages, noting missing cargo, and keeping things clean. The other crew members were an assortment of beings that weren’t exactly human. Like the first mate, they were a mixture of various forms: animal, human, plant, and machine. There were the physically strong dwarves who carried heavier loads of cargo. The beings covered with hair and clothes used swords and pikes to scar or fight potential pirates that had ships similar to the Captain Wizards that sailed through the various universes looking for victims to steal from. Their ship sailed between worlds of reality and fantasy, a place where the laws of physics didn’t apply. Sometimes, the ship entered the realm of the flat worlds where ships, if not equipped well, sail right off the edge. The Captain Wizard’s ship was prepared for that kind of world. The ship had wings similar to those of a butterfly. Once it ran off the flat world, the wings extended, and mists accompanied the ship to travel in a universe where the blue sky is the reality of what would be space in the universe humans reside in. The ship sails to other flat worlds containing different physical laws; the crew was prepared; if the ship sailed that was going backward, stopping meant accelerating, keeping the sails unfurled in mast furled mainsail. The Capatin Wizard had been sailing through the universes for centuries, the ship was home to him and his crew.

Some wizards are children who command all kinds of magical powers. They believe the world is their playground. Wizard children have less power than adults because they deliberately limit what their children can do as they haven’t reached maturity and wield complete control, which is dangerous to people and the life around them. Also, their education in magic hasn’t been completed, there were and are prodigies, as it was said before, and the senior wizard’s council keeps back their full potential. They had to learn to control the magic. It was in error to consider the wizard children human in appearance, they were not, their forms were of all sorts within the limits of the humanoid form. Some had eyes covered with skin to protect them in their native environment from the harsher rays of a blue sun. The mouth was like a slit without much of a lip. There was no ridge for a nose, only a dome and nostrils. Their faces looked more like an embryo. Their skin was bluish-green, which kept them safe from the blue sun. They wore tight and loose clothing. They were taller than other wizard children. Others appeared to be more human, with light to dark brown skin. They were a bit shorter than the blue ones but physically very strong. Their fashion was for tattered clothing. Some children were covered with hair and wore whimsical, colorful clothing. They were all equal in magic. Their magic was turning a hovering sphere of any material, mostly glass, into a living bird of terrestrial species or bird of fire, water, or metal. They created new universes in the form of a bubble, complete with stars, planets, nebulas, and galaxies. The wizard children were sought after for mortal children’s parties because their magic was real, compared to illusion. When aroused, they were dangerous, so wizard adults kept an eye on them to protect mortal children and adults from harm.

A wizard wears a tank top, or sleeveless undershirt, with a cigar in his mouth, a big bulbous nose, thick curled-down lips, rough dark skin, and a balding head; he wears shorts and lives in a trailer. This trailer is in the middle of nowhere; people come to him for advice; he has magical powers over the animals and plant kingdom, and that’s his specialty. If you pay him enough, he will turn the customer’s enemies into animals and things as long as they aren’t human. If that wizard discovered it was an injustice, he would transform the enemy back into human form and turn the former customer into that same form, and he would benefit from keeping the money. If his mood permitted, he could curse people, having a person or their families get into accidents that killed them. If you went to the tank top wizard, the right questions and words were needed, his wisdom was beyond wisdom, and he could read the customer’s mind. If you were saying something that didn’t correlate to your spoken words, he angered and threw out the customer, warning them never to return. He told fortunes to people who came to him, he sat on the dirt, and a hole appeared in a rainbow-colored swirl; his hand reached inside and came up with the person’s future life. If it was negative, it was discarded by the customer. The tank top wizard demanded payment; he was paid, and people feared his powers. He said what was indicated in the swirling oracle. He embraced the concept of dirty. The trailer he lived in was rundown, rusted, dirty, unclean dishes that had been there for years and roaches everywhere. Bathing was beyond him. The life he led was secluded; he was in his own world.

She lived in the mountains, a tall, beautiful young woman with brown skin. She appeared in seconds in front of people only by chanting words and when she wished to see them. She’s called the mountain wizard, the builder of things, machines, and vehicles. She was known as Natiro; her abode was an acre-dome that covered the machines she designed and built with her ingenuity. Despite magic, not all the machines worked as she wanted them to. Natrio realized she constructed machines that had their own minds. They stubbornly resisted her wishes. She discovered those were sentient machines with minds to dominate her. Natiro overcomes them with a simple solution that doesn’t require any magic; she removes the cube she originally built into the machines. They were unplugged, and the machines soon died. It took time for Natrio to repair them. They became the machine intended.

Wizards come in all kinds of forms; imagination has no limitations, and wizards are what we wish them to be.

Robert J. Matsunaga