A Friendly Reminder That You Do Not Need To Transform To Be A Magical Girl!

A friendly reminder that you do not need to transform to be a magical girl!

You don’t need a familiar or magical guide to be a magical girl!

You don’t need a set battle costume or magical weapon to be a magical girl!

You don’t need a concept or script to be a magical girl!

There are limitless ways your practice and identity can manifest and grow and they are all valid and beautiful. ♡

What got you into the pursuit of practicing magia?

For me, I think it was love.

Not a romantic love or a love for a specific person (though I was surely experiencing that as well), but a deep, sad love for the world and those that inhabit it. Through my mahō shōjo work I’ve come to be able to hold and make space that gut-wrenching sadness and aching love for the world while also actively putting energy towards a brighter, softer future.

My first intentional spells were focused on healing and taking physical and emotional pain away from others, often redirecting it to myself. I know now that that kind of self-sacrifice for magic is unnecessary and often counterproductive but I remember feeling so strongly that my existence was only good for relieving the discomfort of others and I became obsessed with that notion for a long time. This kind of magical thinking put me in a dark place, especially in middle and high school, and often made me susceptible to abuse. Even now I sometimes catch myself starting to think along those lines and have to work to not let it overwhelm me.

I think this is why CLAMP’s works and Puella Magi Madoka Magica struck such a chord with me in particular. Many of these characters similarly felt overcome with immense feelings of deep, and sometimes painful, love and struggled with fears of inadequacy which pushed them towards self-sacrifice or even martyrdom. That being said, I also see in them profound hope and optimism for a better world, which is something I always seek to emulate in my magia.

I am consistently so proud and thankful for my cards and how they share their power. I love how genuine and caring each entity is and how willing they are to offer advice, even to new friends. That’s not to say they aren’t mischievous and can even be dangerous at times if summoned incorrectly. (I have a story of how a combination of cards inadvertently brought several well-established magicians to their knees, but that’s perhaps for another time.)

For context, this is my personal deck that I created several years back drawing inspiration from the various decks Sakura Kinomoto wielded throughout Cardcaptor Sakura and Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card and applied attributes from those cards to a system I have been helping my partner develop. While I also own a facsimile deck of Sakura Cards, I find my personal deck to be much more honest and in tune with the intentions of each entity.

I generally only do readings for myself (with this particular deck or by utilizing other methods) but I am involved with a small community of practitioners and we occasionally do readings for each other. Last night I received an amazingly quick and auspicious geomancy reading from my partner and I had the opportunity to read for one of my friends. I wasn’t provided a question to tailor my responses to so I used one of my ‘avatars of divination’ (read: magicaly charged fortune telling toy) for the novelty of a ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘inconclusive’ response before doing a single card pull. For my friend, Watery, the Agent of Process made themselves known. She is one of four reflections of the self, or the querent, present in my deck. While they have the ability to be tempestuous and destructive, she is arguably most powerful when fully cooperative. She offered that people would be more willing to open up and work with my friend if they were gentle and understanding. Apparently this, in addition to the ‘inconclusive’ response from the chosen avatar, was just what my friend needed to hear. (It was great hearing that another friend, who was privy to the situation, agreed with this sentiment!)

This is all to say that I love my cards. I love their gentle natures when they are called upon earnestly and I love them when they surprise me with their great power.

I’m only going to do this once since I felt like it was clear that I didn’t want anything to escalate by leaving Magi Metro and I figured that you and your community wanted nothing to do with me. I was upfront from the beginning that I was going to keep interaction to a minimum and I am completely content to continue blogging as I would have before being introduced to your circle. I have done nothing but provide my experience and my insight and I am honestly at a loss at figuring what I could have done that made such an impact.

I asked the Tumblr community for clarification on something (all the while noting that I was not disparaging anyone’s practices) and even though I never really got a sincere answer, I was met with animosity from you and I suppose those you felt the need to vent to.

If you want to continue this conversation, please message me directly. ☆

Can someone explain to me the actual difference between ‘physical’ and ‘astral’ magical heroes? Most of the folks that I have come across that label themselves ‘physical’ heroes don’t really seem to have a practice rooted in or working in this reality? They seem to still rely heavily on astral work and reality shifting.

For example, I suppose you can argue that my approach is ‘physical’ since I have an established magical practice utilizing tools and techniques that are tangible in the here and now (not that they couldn’t also be used out of the current timeline or on the astral) and I work to better our current and shared reality. I don’t really assert that the ‘physical’ or ‘astral’ distinction has to be made but if people feel that they need to use those labels, I think the community has to do a better job explaining the difference in approaches.