List of magical beings in Charmed

This article lists magical beings in the The WB television series Charmed. In its eight-year run the writing staff led by show runner, head writer, and executive producer Brad Kern adapted fantasy, horror, and folklore into a fictional universe that was recognizable as being like our own—if one assumed ours held a hidden group of magical users altering between good and evil practitioners. The forces of good, at least on the sharp pointy end (cops, special forces units, operatives) are called es in the Charmed universe, and there are a number of allied good character types and three main evil types of character races.

Avatars

Avatars are an ancient group of magical beings who can bend the very fabric of time. The Avatars tortured Leo with floating heads to get him to join their collective. Once Leo joins them the Charmed Ones trust the Avatars strengthening the collective and helping the Avatars to create Utopia. The Charmed ones then realized utopia isn't all it was cracked up to be.

Cleaners

The Cleaners are secretive beings operating under the authority of a joint council of upper level demons and elders () who are sworn to, act to, and are charged with keeping magic secret from mundane humankind. Their first appearance in the series was doing the cleanup in a magic-gone-wild situation when having seen one on television, conjured a flying fire breathing dragon which disrupted downtown San Francisco and created a press firestorm.

In appearance they have a glowing white aura emphasizing a white linen suit, conveying existence on the side of good. As such they go in after a magical exposure episode and have the powers to alter circumstances including rolling back time to change events, in effect changing history and creating an alternate historyor a restart of an adverse event to control the outcome and limit the exposure of magic. They can also erase or change memories.

They initially appeared in the episode "" as somewhat antagonistic magical entities of vast powers—only in a role where they were indirectly opposed emotionally to the three Charmed Ones upon whom their memory erasing spell was only partially effective. In the episode, since they were not an evil threat that could be dealt with by vanquishment, they gave rise to an episode needing a cognitive solution (puzzle) for the Cleaners were intent on removing from Piper, the earth, and the family. This was part of their "after task action items" to prevent future exposures that would also require cleaning upin short they took the stance that the Charmed Ones, and especially Piper, could not prevent from conjuring another fire-breathing dragon—or perhaps something worse. Removing Wyatt from Earth would prevent future exposure of magic.

After that, the cleaners only appear in a few episodes in a minor way, but for one, when they are forced to clean up matters in a way Piper dictates, in effect summoning them and using them as an adjunct. They do not appear centrally again despite that circumstance until, and most significantly, in the sixth season episode "" where their appearance— having acted to cover-up for the sisters being filmed doing magic in Inspector Sheridan's stake-out— puts police Lieutenant Darryl Morris on death row without further appeals. They had in fact set a trap wherein Piper could not blackmail them again, via consultation with higher authority—The Tribunal.

In the event, the demon Barbas had manipulated events and deliberately caused the exposure of magic by engineering a sequence of events so Darryl Morris escaped death and the cleaners had to restore circumstances hide magic another way. (In the backplot, the memory stayed with him, bothered him and his wife Sheila, and was a major (justification) factor (by the writer's in the series canon) in him leaving the region (and the series) in the eighth season.)

Darklighter

Darklighters are the demonic counterparts to Whitelighters, guardian angels in the series. Darklighters are primarily only a threat to whitelighters and witches, and have the task of furthering the spread of evil, in part, by seducing likely future whitelighters into selfish and evil behavior through seduction. One subgroup of darklighters specializes in furthering the spread of evil by impregnating women and then abandoning them as single parents with their evil far-less-than-innocent babes who will blossom into evil children. This is the counterpart to the —the half-human offspring like Belthazor that come about from an upper level demon's intercourse with a human female, or a demoness bearing a human's child.

Demons

Demons and Demonesses (female demons) are close to the concept of western cultural depictions of demons of myth in Judism and Christianity, but serve a very different niche in the mileau, since there is no all powerful deity operating in the Charmed universe — though a great deal of respect is given various world religions, from Zen Budhism to Roman Catholic orthadoxy.

Elders

The Elders are a fictional group of people who oversee good magic. Originally, they were referred to as "The Founders", but all subsequent episodes use the term "Elders".

Elders mainly keep track of witches, watching from the Heavens. They communicate with those on Earth through their helpers and messengers, the Whitelighters. The Elders decide who may become a Whitelighter, and give and take their powers. A Whitelighter's ability to heal is channeled directly from the Elders.

It appears that most of the Elders were Whitelighters themselves at one time. Though some were probably witches because Kevin, a teenage witch, was promoted to be an Elder. Leo Wyatt is promoted to the rank of Elder after saving the Charmed Ones and the remaining Elders from the wrath of the Titans.

Though Whitelighters are not allowed to kill, the Elders have powerful fighting abilities. For the most part, the Elders' powers are only shown on screen when Leo is promoted to the rank of Elder. Leo is seen using a lightning-like power to kill Gideon. In one episode, three Elders are shown to kill Phoebe and Paige with magical flames, although this occurs in a magic-induced hallucination and does not indicate their actual abilities.

When witches need advice on demons they know nothing about, they can ask the Elders by sending their Whitelighter. The Elders are not all knowing, however; in some cases, they know no more than the sisters do. In one episode, Leo had to find out who the Four Horsemen were and what they were up to, because the Elders could not help. The Elders do not allow witches or any other magical being besides themselves and Whitelighters to enter the Heavens. Even the Charmed Ones do not have this privilege, as Piper and Leo have to ask for an audience when they seek permission to have a relationship (though this rule is trumped by Piper's god status), and Leo specifically tells Piper she is not allowed there when she comes to see him. The Elders do, however, allow Leo to watch over his son Wyatt and to take him to be with the Elders when he may be in danger.

As the show progresses, Paige begins using her Whitelighter side, and is able to converse with the Elders as she pleases. Though she does not go to the Heavens like the other Elders or Whitelighters do, they meet at the Golden Gate Bridge and she speaks with Sandra, one of the few female Elders.

Very few Elders ever come to Earth. Leo and Gideon are rare examples who spend most of their time outside the Heavens. A few come to Earth to speak directly about important issues, like Gideon's intentions to kill Wyatt and the possible threat of the Avatars. The Elder Sandra comes to speak to Piper about Leo during the last season. Overall, as a group, the Elders prefer to take a background role and remain largely unseen in the day-to-day affairs of even the magical world.

Thousands of years before the present, the Titans once ruled the world, but were abusive of their powers. Seeking to entomb them, the Elders of that time created the Greek gods by infusing mortals with a mystical power beyond their own. Ironically, the self-declared Gods of Mount Olympus would later force the world to worship them too for many years.

Ghosts

Ghosts are given uneven treatment in the writing of the series, for in general are presented and believed to be harmless neutral beings who return to the world of the living for their own various reasons. In reality of the series, in the two cases where they are long dead{{

—

}} they are spirits of a malevolent nature seeking vengence:

"Saving Private Leo" features two brothers killed in World War II who have a grudge against who enlisted with them in the Marines; (Costas Mandylor), as Nathan Lang, (Louis Mandylor) are two brothers and very close friends who enlisted in the service with Leo Wyatt and hold him responsible for their own deaths as is divulged in the fourth season episode "", when they come back as ruthless evil ghosts and manage to stab Leo, a school teacher that is one of his charges and Piper, Leo's wife, which turns out to be helpful. The latter point is important, for Ghosts are tough to vanquish unless another spirit can read the only spell known to the Halliwells, so Piper is able to vanquish them before Leo returns her from death's door.

features Rachelle Lefevre as the vengeful ghost who almost does in during a feud between two witch families. It turns out she's stirring up the feud and can use some magical abilities from her ethereal state.

The Hollow

The Hollow first appears in the season four episode "" as a plot element and is used again in the last two episodes of season eight. In its first appearance, the Source of All Evil has become obsessed with prophecies from those made by in season three when he began to actively seek an end to the Charmed Ones, eventually having attempt to deal with them only to have their soldier of fortune, Belthazor, become infatuated with Phoebe Halliwell seduced away from supporting evil.

The Hollow is depicted as an extremely powerful vapor essence with limitless power-absorbing potential, the chance to possibly end all things because it seeks mindlessly to go on absorbing energies of any kind and could consequently make reality into a completely empty void (matter is energy, according to Einstein's famous relationship E= m * C²) if unleashed for too long. It also has the ability to possess the corporeal form of any living being. In the Charmed series, the Hallow possessed the following list of characters during the three episodes it was written into manifesting during a show: The first Source, two of his , Cole Turner as a demon's powers power-stripped human, Piper Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Billie Jenkins, and lastly, the evil Christy Jenkins have all ended up possessed by the Hollow once each at some point.

Titans

The Titans in standard western Greek mythology... in the two hour season finale

Warlocks

Warlocks are an evil race of magical beings that are ex-human witch analogs dedicated to evil as Charmed Universe witches are dedicated to good. Unlike in other occult mileaus, the term is not gender-specific and so refers to witches who have gone down the path of evil, rescinding their humanity after committing an irrevocable act of evilwhere one of their selfish main goals are to expand their own powers by [...] witches and stealing their powers.

An evil witch differs from a warlock in that they have not killed another witch to steal their powers, but rather use magic for personal gain and are willing to kill innocents instead of protecting them. Evil witches only become warlocks when they've killed good witches to steal their powers. When warlocks have children, the children will automatically be warlocks unless one of the child's parents is mortal, as evidenced by the character Brendan Rowe from the episode "When Bad Warlocks Turn Good" wherein Brendan Rowe is a half-warlock who is resolved to remain good and become a priest due to the fact that his mother was human.

It has also been stated in the episode "They're Everywhere" that warlocks don't bleed but this has been contradicted by warlocks bleeding in other episodes. This is a definite example of a problem with Retroactive continuity (or "retcon"). It is also established later in the third season that the power to blink from place to place instantly is an exclusive warlock power, which in some plotlines to come will also allow differentiation between evil witches and warlocks. The power to blink is analogous to demons' abilities to shimmer or white/darklighters to orb between planes and dimensions.

Witches

Witches in the Charmed universe are nearly always good characters aiding the battle for goodness and arrayed as the field forces on the pointy end opposing evil and evil beings. Witches frequently come into their active powers fairly young if they are powerful hereditary witches, and since such powers are coveted by evil power-stealing beings (several types of Demons or Warlocks harvest such children if they are unprotected) it is not uncommon that a protective relative, coven leader, or whitelighter arranges for their powers to be bound until they are old enough to both use them responsibly, but to survive not only the likely inevitable attacks, but also to handle them mentally and emotionally. In this dog-eat-dog model (or as Cole Turner quipped in "" this Demon eat demon world) witches with significant powers have a short lifespan if not protected, and several episodes deal with the down aspects of being a child or adolescent with powers: ''"", ..., " etc HELP!"

Whitelighter

Whitelighters are "guardian angels". They watch over their charges and intervene when necessary to help them along their path and keep them safe; they can also be called by their charges. They can constantly hear the lives of their charges in their heads, and if one of them calls their Whitelighter's name, they can usually show up at a moment's notice.