Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-24.212.150.137-20171014022757/@comment-4010415-20171014051029

True, though some people theorize that Ozpin has some kind of connection to the old wizard who gave the original Maidens their powers.

There were hints since Volume 1 that Ozpin is special, though none of them specified whether that "special" thing about him was magic or not. It was mostly just hints that Ozpin is much older than he seems, and then World of Remnant: Aura (which is sadly DVD/Blu-ray exclusive) implied that Ozpin is "more than just a man".

We also know that what happened with Ozpin and Oscar has actually happened before, to Ozpin involving someone else. In Punished, Ozpin said to Oscar: "I understand how you're feeling. I went through the same panic and confusion." This implies that what happened to Oscar also happened to Ozpin.

There is also the fact that, in the same episode, Ozpin tells Oscar that he helped build Haven Academy. However... WoR: The Great War says that the last king of Vale is the one who established the Huntsman academies, and in A Much Needed Talk, Qrow said that "Ozpin's predecessor" is the one who established the Huntsman academies. This means that the king of Vale was Ozpin's predecessor. So, either the body we first saw Ozpin in was over 80 years old (since the Great War ended about 80 years before the series and Ozpin had to be old enough to help build the schools), or the king of Vale is the one who ended up with his soul merged with Ozpin's. We know that Oscar is able to access Ozpin's memories, so it makes sense that Ozpin would, at some point, begin blending his predecessor's memories with his own and mistakenly say "I" when he means "the guy who merged with me".

Personally, I believe that the book Blake was reading in Volume 1, "about a man with two souls, each fighting for control of his body", was also meant to be foreshadowing about Ozpin. We know that other fairy tales and legends are real, not just the Maidens and the Silver-Eyed Warriors. We know this thanks to Qrow. In Fall, he said "How do you think legends and fairy tales get started? Even the craziest ones come from somewhere." and in End of the Beginning, he said "Remnant's full of legends and stories, some of them true, some made up." So, I think that book Blake was reading was actually about a very, very early case of what's happening with Ozpin and Oscar, way back in the early days of Ozpin's long line of soul merges.

Now, I highly doubt that the earlier instances of this soul merge were done using an Aura transfer machine, since the Aura transfer machine in Volume 3 was referred to as if it is brand new technology. When Ironwood begins explaining the machine, he states that Atlas has been studying Aura from a scientific standpoint for the past few years, as in this is a recent research endeavor. He then says that he believes they have found a way to capture it, and Qrow finishes his explanation with "Capture it and cram it into something else." This means that the ability to transfer Aura from one vessel to another is actually new technology.