Darn, can’t see the link. But if I understand the answers here, Merlin was basically an illusionist?
Well if I go back to the 1981 Excalibur movie, Merlin there describes himself as a ’‘necromancer’’. Not entirely sure why, to my understanding, a necromancer is a magic used to raise the dead, animate corpses and the like.
In that movie, Merlin explains that nature is its own entity, and describes it as ’‘the dragon’’. He is able to harness that power to do all sorts of things, from making simple potions to altering the fates of men. (Merlin is also not human) But Merlin himself says that ’‘the dragon’’ is ill tempered and cares about nothing, and he himself wields very little power compared to ’‘nature’’.
In fact in the movie, it seems that Merlin barely ever does anything, and just uses metaphors and random wisdom and passes it off as magic. But if you pay attention he does use magic quite a lot, I mean besides the obvious time where he changes Uther’s appearance so the latter can go bang Igraine.
Interestingly enough, in other depictions of King Arthur, Merlin is like a shaman so to speak, who apparently communicates with other powerful sources, but the only witness to his magic power is the mixing of roots/potions, and knowledge of runes, ancient writings and herbs.
(makes me think that if there ever actually was a ’‘Merlin’’, he was probably a druid of some import, before or during Roman invasion)
I was going to talk about Gandalf, but I think I’ll leave that one to Seek.