LogFAQs > #906070816

Aside from that, there are a few other distinctions.

"Magician" can be a general catch-all term for anyone who uses magic, but some settings use it as something of a derogatory term for "stage magicians" who use tricks and props to do fake magic rather than actually tapping into any real power. Some settings differentiate between "real magicians" and "stage magicians" by calling stage magicians "conjurers" (though in D&D, a Conjurer is someone who uses very real summoning-type magic), "illusionists" (though again, Illusion is a very real type of magic in D&D), or something else.

"Theurgy" is a term from the real world that specifically refers to magic that is channeled directly from a god - some branches of Christianity even used it to refer to what they considered the "acceptable" magic of "miracles" inspired by God, as opposed to the "Goetia", or black magic that comes from the Devil or his demons. Some settings use it to explicitly refer to holy or divine magic (like what you'd expect a Cleric or Priest class to cast), as opposed to "arcane" or "Wizard" magic. But other settings occasionally just use Theurgy as a general term for magic, with a magic-user being referred to as a Theurge.

"Thaumaturgy" is another term that gets pulled out a lot when fantasy writers are looking for fancy terms, and which also originally started out more referring to god-inspired miracles, but it never got picked up by Christianity in that way, and usually gets lumped in with the various bad black magic that religions condemn. Thaumaturges or Thaumaturgists are people who use Thaumaturgy, and the term gets used a lot in settings where people are trying to make magic sound more "scientific".

Lastly, "Nigromancer" is a term you may come across, especially in older works (or newer works trying to sound medieval) - it basically translates into "black magic user". It occasionally gets confused with Necromancer, but the two are technically different - the necro in Necromancer means death, but the Nigro in Nigromancer is Latin for black. The two DO tend to overlap (since most settings assume death magic = evil magic), but you CAN have necromancy in a setting that isn't evil, and you can easily have a black magic user who doesn't use death magic.

Side note - while most modern writers and settings assume "mancy" just means "magic use" (so, say, a Elemancer might be someone who uses elemental magic, or a Technomancer is someone who uses technology-based magic), the root actually refers to divination specifically. So a Hydromancer would be someone who uses water to specifically predict or see the future (and not just someone who uses generic water magic), an Oneiromancer is someone who attempts to predict the future via dreams, a Cartomancer is someone who uses playing cards or a Tarot deck to predict the future, and so on.


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