Black Magic vs. White Magic in Shakespeare’s The Tempest


“A man who governs his passions is “truly wise”…. The heavens have not seen nor has the earth borne a more glorious person than the man who always obeys reason. Not all the crowns of the world can adorn his head fittingly; only eternity can recompense one of such high virtue. To have a quiet soul is the only pleasure of the world” (Anderson 173-4).

Where is the line drawn between good and bad magic? Who decides which form of magic is evil and which is not. Why was there a Glenda the good witch and the wicked witch of the west (Wizard of Oz)? According to Robert S. Ellwood,

Magic is widely practiced in primal and traditional societies. In such contexts magic is not simply a pre-scientific way of attaining practical ends- it may also involve at least a partial symbolic recognition of the society’s spiritual worldview and of its gods and myths. In this respect magic often merges with religion, and indeed the line between the two is frequently blurred (Ellwood, Encarta).

Prospero definitely exposes the gray area between religion and his magic. He realizes that if he unleashed the storm, giving his brother and the ship’s crew the idea that they would perish, the fear and despair that Prospero felt upon first embarking the island would be felt. Prospero teaches his brother a subconscious lesson at sea. Prospero was scholarly, but magic surpasses book smarts, it requires a sense of society, the people that the magic would affect. It is also figuring how they could be effected, a manipulation of sorts to employ the correct means of magic, “magic attempts to affect the future, not merely to predict it (Ellwood, Encarta).

Black magic [wicked witch of the west] is typically used as a negative force, and White magic [Glenda the good witch] is used in a positive manner. “Prospero’s magic is White magic, not Black. He summons up no evil spirits, makes no compact with the devil, and does not jeopardize his soul. The forces he commands are these of nature…. (Smith 5).Because Prospero was so into books, the idea of science and nature as magic is more of an exploration of power than a malicious intent to destroy. Prospero induced the natural course of nature, a far more successful form of revenge because it is unpredictable, (like nature often is). He did not used man made tools like daggers or other hardware to kill, showing a significant sign of mercy towards the ship.

Magic is often confused with witchcraft, especially in the history of European religions. Modern anthropologists, however make the useful distinction between magic as the manipulation of an external power by mechanical or behavioral means to affect others, and witchcraft as an inherent personal quality to the same ends….Divination, the skill of understanding mystical agents that affect people and events, should be distinguished from magic in that its purpose is not to influence events but rather to understand them (Encyclopedia Britannica, 302).

What is important to recognize with the analogy of a ‘Divine Prospero’ is to know that Prospero is not made out to BE a Jesus. It is the essence of Jesus’ philosophy that is apparent in Prospero’s character, ”Jesus is not finally to be equated with Shakespeare’s saintly persons; rather in him we find a blending of saintly peace and universal assurance with the unrestful propulsive quality of Eros”(Knight 73).