The Scholomance ( , Solomonărie ) was a fabled school of black magic in Romania, especially in the region of Transylvania. Folkloric accounts state that the Devil himself ran it. The school enrolled about ten students to become the Solomonari. Courses taught included the speech of animals and magic spells. The Devil chose one of the graduates to be the Weathermaker and tasked with riding a dragon to control the weather.

The school was underground, and the students remained unexposed to sunlight for the seven years of their study. According to some accounts, the dragon (zmeu or balaur) was kept submerged in a mountaintop lake south of Sibiu.

Folklore

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An early source on the Scholomance and Dracula folklore was the article "Transylvanian Superstitions" (1885), written by Scottish expatriate Emily Gerard. It has been established for certain this article was an important source that Bram Stoker consulted for his novel Dracula.

In fiction

Bram Stoker, who studied Gerard's work extensively,

The warlocks in Bungie's Myth II: Soulblighter are described as having been trained at a school of magic named the Scholomance.

In Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, the Scholomance is a ruined castle held by undead forces whose cellars and crypts are now used to train necromancers and create undead monsters. Like its legendary namesake, the Scholomance in World of Warcraft is in the middle of a lake. The school is also featured in the Scholomance Academy expansion pack of 2020, for the related game Hearthstone and in the Warcraft universe.

In the online novel Pale Lights, Scholomance is a malevolently sentient palace originally built by Lucifer, converted by the Watch into an elite paramilitary training school. Every year attending Scholomance is a gamble; the artificial god infesting the building gains strength from every student killed by its deathtraps and the school's dangerous curriculum, but at year's end it must give up a portion of its essence to each surviving student. The school's motto is a quote from Lucifer: "Thus I have learned the language of all living things; its name is violence."

See also

  • Domdaniel
  • Sæmundr fróði attended the Black School according to Scandinavian folklore.

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

  • ——— . Polirom. (reprint)
  • Stoker, Bram (1897), Dracula.
  • Warrington, Freda (1997), Dracula the Undead.