wizards and women

in both tolkien and in the movie excalibur there is a sense

that wizards themselves (gandalf and merlin)

cannot have a girlfriend. they cannot have romance. they cannot get married.

the female sorceror taunts the wizard merlin. "perhaps you want what you cannot have."

someone once said that (was it nietzsche?) that socrates got married

specifically because it was absurd for a philosopher to be married.

he did it for the absurdity of it.

is there a sense in which it could be said that philosopher and wizards are similar?

both deal with basic, fundamental patterns of what life is. what society is. ideas. thoughts.

someone gets under a spell that says that he is to go out and spend money at the bookstore on something.

so he does it.

but a wizard will examine the spell, where the spell came from (in the case of advertising)

while the philosopher will examine the psychology of consumerism, what exactly is gained,

what exactly is lost, when you collect more "stuff" and why do you do it in the first place?

when a "magic man" does have a woman, as in the case of the song by heart, magic man,

he may only have her for a while, until something else happens. not holy matrimony.

thus, there may come a time when people lay aside their childish things,

and simply accept their destiny, as when "this rough magic i thee abjure" in shakespeare,

when the wizard in the tempest says. he gives up his magick. just as a writer

must eventually write his last play, his last short story, or whatever. a writer

is like a wizard as well. words, sentences, are spells to conjure up feelings.

sometimes someone may give up magic, because they may say

if i get what i want because of magic, maybe someone or something somewhere else in this universe

suffers because of it. or maybe karma will bring the suffering around full circle back to me.

better to be a buddhist.

better to be a stoic.

better to be a taoist.

better to be a christian.