The Marriage of Dark Sorcery & Gnosticism In Fantasy

The trope of the dark sorcerer, steeped in forbidden knowledge and mad with power, permeates fantasy to its roots. Sauron, Voldemort, Emperor Palpatine, the Horned King, Saruman and hosts of others flesh out an archetypal tradition begun with the biblical magicians in the court of the Pharaoh. The sorcerer hoards secrets, pursues avenues of knowledge shunned by the world at large and always seeks to use that knowledge for the acquisition and consolidation of material power. They embody, then, two halves of Gnosticism's diverse mythos. On the one hand they transgress against the controlling forces of their respective worlds, mirroring the Fall of Man in their sacrifice of innocence for knowledge. On the other they are, in spite of their mystical powers, strict materialists. They seek dominion, adulation and the Demiurge-like subjugation of all life. The sorcerer, then, presents a contradiction within the Gnostic framework.

Some Gnostic interpretations of the Old Testament hold that Christ is the serpent that tempts Eve, redeeming Man with the gift of Knowledge. Serpentine imagery is closely-bound to the tradition of dark sorcerers, stemming mainly from the traditional Christian interpretation of the Fall. In parsing the body of the trope, though, we can apply a Gnostic interpretation. Voldemort's snakelike appearance and the serpent motif of Orochimaru (son of snakes in Japanese mythology)represent, then, not just their loss of humanity but their acquisition of knowledge outside the reach of blinkered man. The association of the serpent with wisdom, cunning and amorality holds true in fantasy.

There are instances in which the dark sorcerer adopts a more traditional Gnostic role through madness (Gnosis), denial of reality and existential dread. The trope of Omnicide, the expurgation of all life and existence, reflects a distortion of the ultimate Gnostic goal of freedom from the material world of the Demiurge. When the sorcerer seeks not dominion but destruction he can be seen as an emanation of the Sophic tradition, pursuing release from flesh through revelatory knowledge or Gnosis. In Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow & Thorn the villainous Storm King was thrown down for learning forbidden magic and, upon his escape, sought at once the undoing of the physical world. Sorcerers make natural candidates for the experience of Gnosis. Both their materialistic bent and the immense power they wield which, in its transcendence of physicality, shows them the futility of their ambitions, prepare them perfectly for a plunge into apparent nihilism.

A sympathetic reader of fantasy might, given a grounding in Gnostic thought, appreciate more fully the spirit, if not the method, of sorcerous monomania. Forbidden knowledge, like the apple of the fall, makes hash of physical ambition. Dark wizards reflect, unconsciously, fantasy's Gnostic roots and influences.