The I'm going to be. Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore.

Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world.

I'm Amanda.

And I'm Julia.

Amanda, I want you to describe to me what you picture when I say wizard.

Julia, I picture someone with a long blue cloak with stars and moons on it, probably some

kind of pointy, if not silly hat. I picture a staff. The staff

might have like an orb on top, or maybe there's like a staff and then also some kind of like

magic orb that you can look into, crystal ball. I am picturing various spells, probably like a leather

bound book with maybe a pentacle on it, and some kind of tower or secluded place,

maybe even in the woods. Okay. All right. And that's a very distinct picture that you have in

your mind there, right? It is. It reminds me of probably like the Raderweight tarot deck,

the sort of like, you know, magician wizard figure.

There is a way to look like a wizard for Halloween, and that's what I'm picturing. Now, Amanda, the reason that you have this very specific image in your mind is because of a very

specific and very recognizable figure that is pretty much the prototypical wizard. And that is Merlin.

Merlin. That's right. The granddaddy of all wizards. So he is described in Merlin,

a case book by Peter H. Goodrich as the second best known character from medieval literature, which honestly,

in reading that, made me laugh. What's the first? First off, it's funny that he is the second

well-known one stated in his own casebook. That's funny as hell. Yeah, damn. But this is actually saying

a lot, Amanda, because he is the second best known character in all of medieval literature outranked only by King Arthur.

Oh, of course.

But here's the thing is Merlin lies at the center of nearly every Arthurian legend.

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