Wizard Beard



A long beard (usually white,) extending a good ways down, is part of the standard appearance of a Wizard Classic. The length of a beard roughly indicates his ability as a wizard, as a really long beard can often indicate someone who is beyond a "natural" lifespan.

See also Robe and Wizard Hat. Compare and Contrast Beard of Barbarism.

Anime

 * Some of the older wizards in Mahou Sensei Negima (the Principal, and the head of the school Negi graduates from in chapter one) sport these.
 * Enho from The Twelve Kingdoms has one, despite not being a wizard.
 * The Familiar of Zero: the Headmaster has one

Comics

 * Shazam!
 * The Ancient One, mentor of Doctor Strange, has a long beard, albeit a neat one.
 * Panoramix.

Literature

 * Dumbledore of Harry Potter has such a beard (he and the beard are pictured above).
 * Played for laughs in Goblet of Fire. Dumbledore draws an "Age Line" around the goblet to prevent any underage students entering themselves for the Triwzard Tournament. Anyone who tries, even if they've magically aged themselves up, is knocked backwards...and finds that they've suddenly grown an enormous beard. When the Weasley twins try it, Dumbledore compliments them on the quality of their beards.
 * Merlin's beard!
 * Merlin is normally shown with such.
 * In The Sword in the Stone, his beard keeps getting tangled up or caught in doors.
 * Oddly, medieval portrayals of Merlin do not give him the beard - that came later. Merlin was only shown in early works as a youth, and in later works - like Mallory - he's a shapeshifter who takes the shape of a child, a woman, and old man, but never reveals his true form. The Merlin TV series has him as a youth, but he gets the beard when he transforms into his old self.
 * The Lord of the Rings: Gandalf, Saruman and Cirdan have such beards. Cirdan is interesting because he is one of the few elves to have facial hair, and although technically not a wizard, has pretty close ties to them.
 * Where's Waldo has a recurring character called Wizard Whitebeard.
 * Some older depictions of Elminster of Shadowdale in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms setting. Newer pictures give him a short beard.
 * Played with in the Discworld novels with Rincewind, who has a scraggly beard but is not one of nature's beard-wearers, and Ponder Stibbons, who is not able to grow one at all. They are the exceptions in a sea of proud, beardy wizards.
 * Cohen however, has a Barbarian Hero beard. It has been described as making his loincloth superfluous as far as decency was concerned.
 * Prehumous Professor of Morbid Bibliography, Professor Pelc (as opposed to the Posthumous Professor of the same. Think about it) wears a false long beard because it is expected of wizards and remains one of the few naturally, by choice unshaven wizards to be seen.
 * Professor Hix of Necromancy The Department Of Post-Mortem Communications has a goatee, as is expected of his position.
 * Cutwell in Mort also lacked a beard; the narration explained that there are fashions in wizardry like everything else, and Cutwell was out of step with the one that said you had to look like an elderly alderman.
 * In Old Man Khottabych by Lazar Lagin, the titular genie's beard becomes a plot point because he can only cast magic by expending a hair from it. Meaning that if, by any misfortune, he loses his beard (or simply gets it wet), he's Brought Down to Normal.
 * Lampshaded and averted in the Young Wizards series. It's pointed out that the most skilled wizards don't get the opportunity to grow long beards, since being a thorn in the side of the Big Bad tends to lead to a short life-span.
 * Averted/parodied in the first book of the Sword of Truth where First Wizard Zedd has no beard. Midway through the first book, Richard calls him out on this, saying that wizards are supposed to have beards, and everyone knows that. Zedd plays along, and magically grows out a long white beard...then immediately shaves it off, saying he doesn't wear a beard because they're itchy.
 * Both Fizban from Dragonlance and his Expy Zifnab from The Death Gate Cycle have these.
 * Enforced in Diana Wynne Jones' Dark Lord of Derkholm. Mr. Chesney's regulations state that very wizard leading a Pilgrim Party must wear a long beard in order to appear ancient and wise, no matter how old they really are. For this reason, women aren't allowed to be party wizards, one of the many, many complaints the locals have about the whole affair.

Live Action TV

 * Parodied hard in Wizards of Waverly Place where the senior Wizard of Wiztech has a fake beard that he surrenders to a wannabe dark wizard.
 * Merlin on Merlin usually averts this trope, since he's a youth in the series. But it is put into play when he uses the aging spell to turn himself into "Dragoon" and the beard is definitely there.

Folk Lore

 * Most depictions of Merlin, natch.
 * Many deities have such beards. These include Zeus/Jupiter, Saturn/Kronos, Odin and even some depictions of capital G God. See Grandpa God.
 * Santa Claus.
 * Melchior from the Magi.

Tabletop Games

 * Warhammer Fantasy's wizards largely avert this trope. The most powerful wizards in the Warhammer world are either Elves (who are naturally beardless), Slann (giant frogs, so no body hair at all), daemons (mostly hairless, though it varies) or undead (and hence tend to lack not only hair but any skin to grow it from as well). The most thickly bearded race, Dwarfs, doesn't have any wizards at all. Of the remaining races with spellcasters Bretonnian wizards are all female, Skaven and Beastmen have animal heads rather than human facial features, and Ogre wizards tend to have little by way of facial hair, which leaves the human wizards of the Empire and Chaos Sorcerers as the sole candidates for Wizarding Beards. Even then beards are fashionable in the Empire in general, and most Imperial wizards tend to be no more fulsomely bearded than other Imperial citizens, with the usual exception of the wild and shamanic Amber Wizards and druidic nature-venerating Jade wizards (but that's just as much a Beard of Barbarism). The most powerful wizard in the Empire, Balthasar Gelt, probably does not have a beard, and even if he does it is sufficiently small to conceal entirely behind the golden facemask he wears at all times. In fact just about the only wizard model in the entire citadel range that embodies this trope is the Mordheim warlock special character Nicodemus.

Video Games

 * Athos (who is over 1000) of Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword has a beard almost as tall as he is (or taller; portrait, official art, and battle sprite differ on the exact length, but it is always past the waist).
 * And Hector constantly lampshades it with his nickname for Athos, Graybeard.
 * In Little Big Adventure, to become a wizard, a (fake) long white beard is a necessary costume element along with the wizard robe and hat. Before being able to graduate, Twinsen must buy one off of a shady flying carpet salesman.
 * The archmagi (including Antonidas) in Warcraft.
 * Velen, too, although he's less "wizard" than "ancient high priest."
 * Lezaford in Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
 * The Riftwar Cycle: The Great One (read: really powerful Tsurani magician) Makala has a long white beard, in spite of the books asserting emphatically that Great Ones do not wear beards, because in Tsurani culture, only slaves are anything but clean-shaven.
 * In the game Space Station 13, there's a gamemode in which a player is selected to be a Space Wizard and cause chaos on the station. He needs a few items to be able to cast spells. Those items? ARobe and Wizard Hat and a Beard.
 * Gammel Drask of Grim Grimoire.
 * Manannan in King's Quest III.
 * Alakazam from Pokémon.

Web Comics

 * In My Middle Name's Adventure, Lina's mentor has such a thick beard his speech is incomprehensible. The tail of his speech bubble even gets stuck in it.
 * In Nodwick, Artax has a Wizard Mustache. In an alternate universe where he's more powerful, it's longer, and prehensile.
 * Order of the Stick: The wizard Dorukan acquired a proper long white beard in his old age, well after attaining Epic status.
 * Gandledorf from Sluggy Freelance, what with being a Dumbledore parody with a little bit of Gandalf thrown in.
 * While it's not quite a beard, Sarda, the Jerkass Wizard Who Did It of Eight Bit Theater, was around since the beginning of the universe, . As he sits and waits for millennia, his iconic moustache can be seen gradually growing.
 * Wizard School has several of these - Headmaster Farnsdorf has a particularly long wizard beard.

Western Animation

 * Merklynn from Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light.
 * The Ice King in Adventure Time.
 * Homnibus the good wizard in The Smurfs.
 * Yen Sid, Mickey Mouse's magic teacher in both Fantasia and the Kingdom Hearts series.
 * In My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, Twilight Sparkle goes to Nightmare Night dressed up as Star Swirl the Bearded, a famous unicorn mage. As you can guess, the costume includes a long, grey fake beard.
 * Avatar Roku has a Gandalf-esque long white beard to emphasize his role as Aang's mentor.

Real Life

 * Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and other important graphic novels, has also claimed at times to practice magickal arts
 * Two of the three members of the rock band ZZ Top.
 * The other member, who's clean shaven? His name is "Frank Beard." Seriously.
 * Aubrey de Grey, immortalist. See Long for This World.
 * William Lee Golden of The Oak Ridge Boys
 * George MacDonald, influential Scottish fantasy author, was not a wizard but often wrote about them, and had a most impressive beard to show for it.