We have already described Battle Magic, the most common type of magic used by humans and some other races of the Warhammer World. In describing the Battle Magic spells we made mention of the fact that these represent only a selected few of the spells a wizard might be capable of learning and using. This section goes into more depth by looking at the Colleges of Magic in the Empire. These are the foremost Schools of magic in the Old World, where even wizards from Kislev and Bretonnia come to learn their art.

There are eight of these Colleges, namely the Celestial Wizards, Grey Wizards, Bright or Fire Wizards, Gold Wizards, Jade Wizards, Light or White Wizards, Amber Wizards and Amethyst Wizards. Each type of wizard studies a slightly different aspect of sorcery as represented by a particular colour. High Magic is a combination of these colours, but humans are too weak to be able to study magic in this unadulterated form. To become proficient a human wizard must decide which part of the full magical spectrum he will study, and he must focus all of his powers to attain mastery of that colour alone.

There are eight Colleges of Magic and each teaches a particular type of Battle Magic, based on one of the divisions of the winds of magic. Some kinds of energy are denser than others. The more rarefied types billow like a high cloud in the upper atmosphere, while the darker, denser varieties skim over the earth's surface, or saturate the land itself.

The eight Colleges are Light, Gold, Jade, Celestial, Grey, Amethyst, Bright and Amber. Each type of magic is identified by a distinctive colour, and has a special rune to represent it. A wizard of a particular College is known by the name of that College and wears robes of the College colour, so a Wizard might be a Light Wizard, or a Gold Wizard, for example.