Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites: Witch and Wizards

The concept of the magical realm never gets old. Stories about witches and wizards are always one of the favorites of fantasy lovers, also a popular theme for Halloween costumes and other. In addition to this, there seems to be a very frequent question about male and female wizards: If witches are only females, what are ‘male witches’ called? The magical world stepped into fictional works since a long time ago, and the impact of the gender hierarchy still remains in parts of it. I remember that when I was young, the vocabulary ‘witches’ was often used to address females who are considered ‘evil’; only ‘females’, that is. There didn’t seem to be the opposite term for males.

Equal Rites is one of Terry Pratchett’s Disc World novel series that touches on this topic of the gender in the magical world. Esk is a girl who has gifted the magical powers from a wizard in his last days, but doesn’t realize her powers until later because female magicians were considered taboo in Disc World. This was the part that I felt the author was connecting heavily to the gender equality issues that I’ve mentioned above. Within Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett describes the difference between witch and wizard magic as being household and fighting magic. The scene in which Granny teaches Esk witch’s magic implies the inequality further as the magic that Granny teaches are tricks rather than magic. All the other ‘real magic’ that Granny talks about are all related to household chores and duties, and Granny is often connected to the smell of ‘herbs’ which emphasizes her thoughts about magic being harmonious with ‘nature’.

The nature we all know is often called ‘mother nature’ which is also another fun element to think about when reading this book. The ‘female magic’ as referred in the novel heavily relies on the logic of nature, while the ‘male magic’ is the magic that comes from nowhere – such as making fire in mid-air without anything – going against the natural laws. Nature itself has been like a symbolism of the female gender identity itself. While the ‘witch magic’ follows the laws of the world, ‘wizard magic’ is characterized to be powerful and dangerous, referring back to the idea of ‘masculinity’ that came down far from the past.

The turning point of the novel when Granny sends Esk to the University of wizards seemed to be the main message that Pratchett was trying to deliver. When we think about categorization of ‘male and female’, everything is quite unreasonable meaning that it is more of a prejudice.

The topic of ‘witch and wizards’ is something to think about and also a chance for us to think of all this gender categorizations that exists even within the media today.