Michael Moorcock is easily one of the biggest influences on Dungeons & Dragons. Certainly, his contributions rival those of Howard or Tolkien in shaping the structure of the D&D multiverse. Indeed, one can barely talk about the Multiverse of D&D without invoking Moorcock.
When people talk about Michael Moorcock in Appendix N, they usually go straight to Elric of Melniboné, Corum Jhaelen Irsei, Dorian Hawkmoon, and the eternal war between Law and Chaos.
When I talk about Michael Moorcock and witches, I am not really talking about witches in the broom-riding, cottage-dwelling sense. I am talking about the pact-making sorts of witches. The ones who contact the beings from other planes (something that happens a lot in Moorcock's tales) and the ancient pacts that bind them.
Moorcock does not give us a village wise women. He gives us bloodlines that traffic with elementals, tribes that call heroes out of myth, and archetypes that echo across realities. His magic is not tidy. It is not academic. It is relational, dangerous, and deeply personal.
Which is why it works so well for me.
Elric the Prototype Warlock
Let’s be clear about something. Elric is not a wizard.
He does not memorize formulae in a tower and sling fire from careful study. His power comes from calling upon Arioch and other Lords of Chaos. He names them. He binds them. He bargains.
That is not arcane spellcasting in the later D&D sense.
That is a pact.
In the One Man's God post I wrote before on the Melnibonéan mythos, I pointed out that their religion and their magic are inseparable. The Lords of Chaos are not distant gods in shining heavens. They are immediate, responsive, volatile. They answer when called, but they always take something in return.
Elric’s magic is closer to a warlock than a magic-user.
Stormbringer itself is a kind of patron made steel. It feeds him power and keeps him alive, but it also owns him. That dynamic, that exchange of strength for service, is pure warlock logic.
And this is important when we talk about witches in Appendix N.
Because if Moorcock gives us a prototype warlock in Elric, he also gives us the larger framework that witches later inhabit in D&D. Magic is not a neutral force you manipulate. It is something you negotiate with.
That idea runs straight into warlocks, and through them, into witches who deal with dragons, animal lords, witch queens, and stranger patrons still.
Corum and the Old Religion
If Elric shows us the aristocratic pact, Corum shows us something closer to folk magic.
In the Corum stories, the human tribes are not sophisticated sorcerers. They do not maintain demon treaties stretching back millennia. They have rites. They have memory. They have belief.
And when the world is in peril, they summon Corum.
Not as a cleric would call upon a god for a spell. They call him as part of an older set of magical rules. A returning champion tied to the fate of their land, one who was prophesied. This feels less like wizardry and more like the Old Religion made manifest.
It is communal magic. It survives conquest and catastrophe because it is embedded in culture rather than codified in books.
If I were looking for Appendix N roots of the Wicce or of the Craft of theWise, I would not find them in shining cathedrals. I would find them here, in tribal rites that blur the line between prayer and spell.
The magic works because the people believe in the pattern. That is witchcraft.
It doesn't hurt that Corum and his people are often thought of as "elves" and that much of his tales are based on a psuedo-Celtic past.
Named Witches
There are very few named witches, and fewer still that are called "witch."
Myshella, the Sleeping Sorceress, is one. Though she is not called a witch, she certainly fills that role.
Jerry Cornelius is not a witch. Not by any stretch, really, but he is fragmented. Self-aware. Reality bending around him. He shapes his reality as much as reality shapes him.
Moorcock’s Eternal Champion is not a simple reincarnation. He is an archetype that keeps reasserting itself in different circumstances. And this is where I see the parallel to how I have played Larina over the years. Different systems. Different worlds. Different rules. Same witch. He is not a witch, but he and the other Eternal Champions have shaped my notions of my archetypal witches.
Moorcock’s Legacy for Witches and Warlocks
Moorcock’s influence on D&D is usually discussed in terms of Law and Chaos. Planes of exsistences and an eternal, if not Eternal (capital "E"), struggle.
But for witches, the more interesting legacy is this: Magic is relational. Magic is cyclical. Elric shows us the warlock bound to his patron. Corum’s summoners show us the persistence of pagan rites.
That is fertile ground for witches.
Not because Moorcock hands us a cottage and a cauldron.
But because he gives us a universe where magic is negotiated, myth returns, and some souls are simply meant to walk the long road again and again.
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