Preview images of two of the hypnotizers on the Hypnotizer app by SergioGF sold on Amazon – and fortuitously depicting two frequent images for hypnotism in popular culture (with the one on the left particularly being used for hypnotic or hypnotized eyes)
(4) ENCHANTMENT
There’s no nice way of saying this – enchantment is the school of magic for mindscrewing. It ranges from more benign charms for friendship or infatuation, through various forms of mind control or domination, to metaphorically riding your subjects like rodeo bulls or attaching the fuzzy dice of their testicles (or ovaries) to the rear view mirror of your mind…
Like so – in this photograph of fuzzy dice doing just that in a 1958 Ambassador photographed by CZmarlin – Wikipedia “Fuzzy Dice” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
If your school of enchantment extends to memory, then you can up the ante from brainwashing to complete mindwiping, as you replace the previous inconvenient persona or psyche of your subject wholesale with one entirely of your own choosing – family, friend or lover who’ll do anything for you. In theory, this makes enchantment potentially the most powerful school of magic of all, as you could tell the very gods they should let you run the show. A supreme enchanter could sit sipping cocktails in Hell served up by all the brainwashed demons.
In practice, apart from all the protective abjurations against it (screw you, mind blank!), there is the narrative need for enchantment to be severely nerfed for the sake of game or story, otherwise you’d simply mindscrew your way from one end of fantasy to the other or pilot your dragon like a drone through any dungeon. So this tends to be one of the weaker schools of magic you can skip in Dungeons and Dragons or any other fantasy, because anything powerful enough to be game or story breaking is immune or resistant to it. Otherwise, Gandalf would have just told Sauron to go jump like Gollum.
In a sense, the only real ‘magic’ is enchantment, as humanity finds a bewildering number of ways to enchant itself through religion, politics, money, fame, celebrity, love, sex…just take any cult.
BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL
Obviously, if enchantment is opened up to its full potential in fantasy – or let loose in our world with no resistance against it – then this would be the ultimate jackpot. Even if others conjured more money and divined more profit or power, you’d simply enchant them into giving it to you – just like you’d simply enchant Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Elon Musk into doing the same in this world. H. L. Mencken quipped that no one went broke or lost an election by underestimating the taste or intelligence of the average person – with enchantment, you’d just go that step further of making their taste and intelligence for them.
As for your own Playboy Mansion, you could let your enchanted fame and fortune work their own powers of enchantment, as indeed they did to fill the actual Playboy Mansion. With enchantment, however, you don’t have to wait. You could equally be able to just enchant it full of the subjects of your choice. Of course, while you’re doing all this, you may want to enchant away your own conscience as you enchant away other people’s minds.