The Sorcerer is one name for an enigmatic cave painting found in the cavern known as 'The Sanctuary' at the Cave of the Trois-Frères, Ariège,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, made around 13,000 BCE. The figure's significance is unknown, but it is usually interpreted as some kind of great spirit or master of animals. The unusual nature of The Sanctuary's decoration may also reflect the practice of magical ceremonies in the chamber. In his sketches of the cave art,

Henri Breuil Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil (28 February 1877 – 14 August 1961), often referred to as Abbé Breuil, was a French Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist. He is noted for his studies of cave art in the Somme an ...

drew a horned humanoid torso and the publication of this drawing in the 1920s influenced many subsequent theories about the figure. However, Breuil's sketch has also come under criticism in recent years. A single prominent human figure is unusual in the cave paintings of the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

, where the great majority of representations are of animals.

Breuil's drawing

asserted that the cave painting represented a shaman or magician — an interpretation which gives the image its name — and described the image he drew in these terms.

Margaret Murray Margaret Alice Murray (13 July 1863 – 13 November 1963) was an Anglo-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she work ...

having seen the published drawing called Breuil's image 'the first depiction of a deity on Earth', an idea which Breuil and others later adopted. His views held sway in the field for much of the 20th century, but they have since been largely superseded. Breuil's image has been commonly interpreted as a

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

performing a ritual to ensure good hunting.

Critique

Certain modern scholars question the validity of Breuil's sketch, claiming that modern photographs do not show the famous antlers.

Ronald Hutton Ronald Edmund Hutton (born 19 December 1953) is an English historian who specialises in Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and Contemporary Paganism. He is a professor at the University of Bristol, has written 14 b ...

theorized that Breuil was fitting the evidence to support his hunting-magic theory of cave-art, citing that "the figure drawn by Breuil is not the same as the one actually painted on the cave wall." Hutton's theory led him to conclude that reliance on Breuil's initial sketch resulted in many later scholars erroneously claiming that "The Sorcerer" was evidence that the concept of a

Horned God The Horned God is one of the two primary deities found in Wicca and some related forms of Neopaganism. The term ''Horned God'' itself predates Wicca, and is an early 20th-century syncretic term for a horned or antlered anthropomorphic god partl ...

dated back to Paleolithic times. Likewise,

Peter Ucko Peter John Ucko FRAI FSA (27 July 1938 – 14 June 2007) was an influential English archaeologist. He served as Director of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL), and was a Fellow of both the Royal Anthropological ...

concluded that inaccuracies in the drawing were caused by Breuil's working in dim gas-light, in awkward circumstances, and that he had mistaken cracks in the rock surface for man-made marks. However, this ignores the well-known fact that prehistoric art figures commonly use accidents in the material's surface (bumps, holes, cracks...) as part of their shape, in many occasions drawing only the lines needed to complete the figure; a technique reinforced with the optical effects brought by flickering fire light. Also, "the Sorcerer" is composed of both charcoal drawings and etching within the stone itself; details, such as etching, are often difficult to view from photographs due to their size and the quality of the light source. Particularly celebrated prehistorian

Jean Clottes Jean Clottes is a prominent French prehistorian. He was born in the French Pyrenees in 1933"Jean C ...

asserts that Breuil's sketch is accurate, saying "I have seen it myself perhaps 20 times over the years".

Continuing influence

The general assessment has placed the figure as central to an understanding of cave art: as S. G. F. Brandon expressed it in 1959, "it seems to be generally agreed that this picture of the 'Dancing Sorcerer' was a

cult object In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece and Ro ...

of great significance to the community which used the cave."

Popular culture

Breuil's interpretation of the drawing as a shaman strongly influenced writer

Pat Mills Patrick Eamon Mills (born 1949) is an English comics writer and editor who, along with John Wagner, revitalised British boys comics in the 1970s, and has remained a leading light in British comics ever since. He has been called "the godfather ...

in the creation of the Lord Weird Slough Feg, a sorcerer, god, and early antagonist of the ongoing comic book title Slaine."The Origins" (two-page text article), ''2000 AD'' #352, 1984 The novel ''

The Story of B ''The Story of B'' is a 1996 philosophical novel written by Daniel Quinn and published by Bantam Publishing. It chronicles a young priest's movement away from his religion and toward the environmentalist teachings of an international lecturer k ...

'' by

Daniel Quinn Daniel Clarence Quinn (October 11, 1935 – February 17, 2018) was an American author (primarily, novelist and fabulist), cultural critic, and publisher of educational texts, best known for his novel ''Ishmael'', which won the Turner Tomorrow ...

includes an interpretation of the painting as an expression of late Paleolithic

animism Animism (from Latin: ' meaning ' breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things— animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather syst ...

, a symbol for the human sense of identity with other animal life. The 7th installment of the children's book series '' Magic Tree House'', ''Sunset of the Sabertooth'', The Sorcerer is depicted as a shaman-like traveller who rescues the protagonists, Jack and Annie, and helps take them home.

References

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