The Scholomance.
The Scholomance was a fabled school of black magic in Transylvania, which was run by the Devil, according to folkloric accounts.
Overview[]
The school enrolled about ten students to become the Solomonari. Courses taught included the speech of animals and magic spells. One of the graduates was chosen by the Devil to be the Weathermaker and tasked with riding a dragon to control the weather.
The school lay underground, and the students remained unexposed to sunlight for the seven-year duration of their study. The dragon (zmeu or balaur) was kept submerged in a mountaintop lake, south of Hermannstadt.
Description[]
Curriculum[]
The school, as it was believed, recruited a handful of pupils from the local population. Enrollment could be seven, ten, or thirteen pupils. Here they learned the language of all living things, the secrets of nature, and magic. Some sources add specifically the pupils were instructed on how to cast magic spells, ride flying dragons, and control the rain.
The duration of their study was seven or nine years, and the final assignment for graduation required the copying of one's entire knowledge of humanity into a "Solomonar's book".
There was also the belief that the Devil instructed at the Scholomance. Moses Gaster remarked that this association with the Devil indicates that the memory of the school's origins as having to do with King Solomon had completely faded.
Location[]
The Scholomance was at some unspecified location deep in the mountains, but the dragon was stabled underwater in a small mountaintop lake south of Hermannstadt in central Romania. Stoker's novel locates the Scholomance near a non-existent "Lake Hermannstadt".
The Solomonărie, as it was called by the Romanians, was situated underground, according to Romaninan folklorist Simion Florea Marian. Students there shunned sunlight for the seven-year duration of their training.
Weathermaker[]
By some accounts, one of the ten graduating students would be chosen by the Devil to be the Weathermaker and to ride a dragon (zmeu in Romanian) in this errand; every time the dragon glanced at the clouds, rainfall would come. But according to legend, God made sure the dragon would not weary, because if it plummeted, it would devour a great part of the earth. The Solomonari's dragon-mount was, however, a balaur according to folklorist Marian's account.