I have a hypothesis. Wizardry already exists.

This began as an irritation rather than a vision, which I have come to think is the more reliable origin for anything worth doing.

The irritation is this. I keep meeting people who are formally one thing and actually five, and I have never once been able to introduce them properly.

You will know the type. Someone whose job title accounts for perhaps a fifth of what they can do. They fix their own car and have opinions about the metallurgy. They read history for pleasure, at length, without any intention of writing about it. They can identify birds by sound, or debug a network, or make a decent stock, or explain why that bridge is shaped like that — and frequently several of these at once, with no apparent sense that this is unusual.

Ask them what they do and you get the job. Ask a second question and you find the rest, and it is always the more interesting half. They do not mention it because there is nothing to call it.

Stating it properly

A hypothesis ought to be stated in a form that can be argued with, so here it is.

The wizard archetype is not a fantasy invention. It is a description of a recurring human type, dressed for narrative purposes, and that type exists now in considerable numbers without a name, a language or any means of recognising itself.

The supporting observation is that the archetype survives having its magic removed. Take away the supernatural apparatus and what remains is a person of wide reading and long study, who keeps records, runs experiments, knows the names of things, is consulted for judgement rather than strength, is expected to use capability responsibly, and is trusted to admit the limits of what they know.

That is not a fictional character. That is a description of several people I could telephone this afternoon.

How I would know I am wrong

It would be poor form to build a framework on discernment and then exempt its own founding claim from scrutiny. So: the things that would tell me this is a bad idea.

If nobody recognises themselves. The hypothesis predicts that a specific and fairly large group of people will read the description and feel it is about them. If the response is polite interest rather than recognition, the type I think I am describing does not exist in the shape I think it does, and the honest conclusion is that I generalised from my own address book.

If it attracts the wrong thing. If the word pulls in people who want the aesthetic without the practice — the robes without the reading — then the framing is a liability regardless of whether the underlying observation is true, and the word should go.

If it makes anyone worse. If this becomes a way for already-confident people to feel clever about knowing a little about a lot, it will have inverted its own second and third principles and should be dismantled with some urgency.

I mention these because they are the actual risks, and because a project that cannot say how it might fail is not a project. It is an advertisement.

Why not simply say “curious people”

Because it is too weak to do any work. Everyone believes themselves curious; it is the personality equivalent of claiming a good sense of humour, and it commits nobody to anything.

The wizard framing does three things that plainer language cannot. It implies study rather than dabbling, which sets a standard. It implies responsibility, because the archetype has always carried an expectation that capability comes with care — and that is the characteristic failure of clever people, so it is worth building into the vocabulary rather than adding later. And it is faintly ridiculous, which keeps the whole thing self-aware.

That last one is not a joke, or not only a joke. A group organised around how much its members know is at permanent risk of becoming insufferable. A word that makes you smile slightly when you say it is a cheap and surprisingly effective inoculation.

What I actually want

Modestly stated: I would like these people to be able to find each other.

Specialists have this solved. There is a word, a journal, a conference and an argument already in progress. The broadly capable have none of that, because breadth has no professional body and nobody has ever been given a sabbatical for it. The result is a large, scattered population with the same habits, no shared language, and no particular reason to think anyone else is out there.

What follows from a shared word is not obvious, and I would rather not pretend it is. Perhaps talks and workshops and field visits. Perhaps a reading group that meets in three cities. Perhaps nothing more than a few thousand people who now have a way of describing themselves at a dinner party without apologising.

That last one would be enough to justify the effort, as it happens. But I suspect there is more, because when you put people like this in a room the conversation goes somewhere that neither of their fields would have reached alone. That is the whole premise, and it is the part I would most like to test.

An open invitation

This site is deliberately unfinished. The ten domains are a first attempt and at least one of them is probably wrong. The principles are seven because seven felt right, which is not a reason. The word may not survive contact with a hundred sensible people.

If you have read this far and recognised something, the most useful thing you can do is say so — and then tell me which part of it is mistaken.