1. Black mages are not made, they are born - it's an axiom.

2. "The white mage seeks harmony with existence. For the black mage, it is natural to be in confrontation with reality" - theorists write this phrase from age to age without thinking at all about how the properties of magic affect specific people. The essence is that a white magician is carried through life in a furry glove, and a black magician is chased by a broom.

3. It is well known that the foundations of Alchemy were laid by black mages. Less well known is the reason why they undertook such an undertaking. On closer look, one has to admit that they were not driven by a passion for knowledge, but by elementary laziness. They found the invocation of personal power more tedious than pounding a mixture of powders in a mortar, and naturally the first discipline of alchemy to take shape was pyrotechnics.

T.N. Translation of the original novel. Link to the original.