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Warlock

[wawr-lok]

Warlocks are, among historic Christian traditions, said to be the male equivalent of witches (usually in the pejorative sense of Europe's Middle Ages), and were said to ride pitchforks instead of broomsticks which normally witches would ride. In traditional Scottish witchcraft, "warlock" was and is simply the term used for a wizard, or male witch. A synonym is sorcerer.

Etymology

The commonly accepted etymology derives warlock from the Old English wærloga meaning deceiver, or "oathbreaker". A derivation from the Old Norse varð-lokkur, "caller of spirits" has also been suggested, however the Oxford English Dictionary considers this etymology inadmissible.

The Oxford English Dictionary also provides the following meanings of the word: Warlock v¹ Obs. (ex. dial.) rare, also warloke: To secure (a horse) as with a fetterlock. Warlock v²: To bar against hostile invasion.

Modern witchcraft

Although some modern practitioners of witchcraft identify themselves as 'warlocks', many avoid this term and/or find it offensive. Wiccans in particular consider it to be a pejorative term, meaning "oath-breaker". Wiccans use the term "warlock" to mean one who has been banished from a coven, either for revealing secrets, or for breaking coven laws. However, in many forms of Traditional Satanism, with its strong association to histrionics and counter-cultural "shock value, the term "warlock" is embraced and employed as the primary title for a male member of the coven.

In popular culture

Warlocks appear in a number of fantasy and science fiction novels, movies and games. They may be portrayed as humans who have attained magical or mystical powers, often evil, such as in the fantasy television series Charmed, in which warlocks are the evil counterparts to good witches. Elsewhere, the distinction between 'warlock' and 'witch' may be purely one of gender, such as in the television series Bewitched and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Alternatively, warlocks may be portrayed as a separate species or alien race, such as in the comic book series Nemesis the Warlock. Occasionally the term is used to refer to technological wizardry rather than magic, such as in Christopher Stasheff's Warlock of Gramarye series of novels, or in the film Live Free or Die Hard, where 'W4rl0ck' is a computer hacker.