Why are Wizards Wizards?

Because wizards know.

Wizards know.

That's what defines them. An incredible information asymmetry.

Trying to understand the occult is like skimming the top of a miles-deep cold pool with your hand. As good as all of it you'll never come into contact with unless you jump into the pool. But once you get in you invariably sink all the way down. And then you're a wizard.

The occult mystery relates to a deep part of you, one that no acquaintance or friend can ever reach. It's so complex and stimulating to explore but you can't do it with anyone by your side. Conversation, friendship, it's all nice but it feels like talking about the weather and about what brand of cereal you like to eat. It's skin-deep. It fails to even approach to address this core element that's come to define you, this cosmic adventure you are immersed in but have to undertake solo.

You're quite terribly alone in the matter, and relating to anyone else becomes awfully difficult. You can only let yourself be absorbed by the intricacies of the mystery to keep the terrible loneliness at bay.

That's the Sadness

You can think of understanding magic as being in on the world's greatest and most complicated conspiracy theory. And knowing that it's true. But talking to anyone about it majorly weirds them out. And they keep asking why you are wearing all that funny stuff, and what you need that industrial shipment of plastic Garfield alarm clocks for. You know of course. But there's simply no way of just telling them. For that, they have to immediately be filled in on the whole thing to get it. And that would take years, not to mention they'd also have to become a wizard. You see the world differently. Everything has a different meaning, defined reasons and utilities and purposes are all turned on their head. It's everywhere, in everything. It's a new dimension to the three you were used to seeing. Most of everything you do, your habits, your dress sense, seems harebrained to other people. No matter how much they observe you there just doesn't seem to be a discernable method to your antics. Not to mention you'll do the most bizarre and affronting and horrifying things, and you know that's what you have to do of course, but nobody else does.

That's the Madness

It gives you a kind of power. With the right means you can do things that are, to normal people, simply incomprehensible. But everything you say and do is incomprehensible to normal people.

That's the Magic

When a wizard meets another wizard, their behaviour towards each other is hard to understand. Sometimes they'll become soul mates. Sometimes strictly business partners. Sometimes mortal enemies. The criteria for this are undoubtedly to be found somewhere in the vast byzantine facets of the arcane mystery. Somewhere. Probably.

"Magic. Madness. Sadness. MMS runs through all magic users." -Betty Grof