This has been sitting in my head for a while and I wanted to talk about it. I want to talk about the idea of using a persona to cope with yourself, to better yourself, or to discover things about yourself. We’re gonna call this persona magic from here on out.
✨So what is persona magic?
In short, you create an idealized self, and you let yourself ‘become’ this entity in places like meditation, astral travel, dreams, or embody them in your magical space while awake if you need/want to. And your persona doesn’t have to be a human for this!
Persona magic is a psychological and spiritual way of imbuing yourself with certain emotions or characteristics you might want for what you are doing. For instance you can use it to empower yourself, or calm negative emotions and thoughts. If you believe in the ‘raise power, send power’ practice of magic, this is a way to help raise power in yourself as well.
In your mind you become the persona, and through the persona you do what you need to do. Me, personally, I take on my persona form when I do meditations, and I choose to make it my full time appearance online. I’ve recently started experimenting with embodying it in my magical practice as well. My persona makes me feel powerful, magical, and (perhaps the best part) alleviates my dysphoria, which often weighs heavily on me. My persona helps my mind stay clearer. Older personas of mine also lead to me realizing I was trans and understanding my transness.
✨ What did you mean by ‘your persona doesn’t have to be human?’
Exactly what I said! If you don’t feel like a human represents you, don’t be one! Your persona can be whatever you want. You might’ve heard of various kinds of personas that aren’t human before, the most common being the fursona. There’s also witchsona, monstersona, objectsona. There’s so many kinds of personas, and you can pick any one of them to be you!
Take my persona, for instance. I am a dragon with a human face.
If I had to put myself under a more specific label, I would call this my ‘monstersona’ I suppose, but since I choose to represent myself as this entity full-time online, I prefer the broader ‘persona.’ When I do deep meditation, I often look like this. In fact, this form came to me in deep meditation!
Another thing worth mentioning about your persona: It can change any time you want/need it to. I have had multiple personas over my life, and who knows if the persona I have now will be my last one. Your persona can be changed to fit what you want or need. That’s part of what makes it so great.
✨ How can I use my persona in magic?
As I mentioned previously, your persona’s main job is to imbue you with whatever emotions/thoughts you want/need for what you’re doing. I suffer from dysphoria, anxiety, and doubt, so my persona is designed to alleviate these things.
Visualization and intent are a big part of magic. Your persona can assist you in these things. Your persona can be a sympathetic object, for instance, or represent the tools you want to use for a spell.
“What’s a sympathetic object?” you might be asking. In short, a sympathetic object is something that represents something else-- in this case, the persona represents you. According to Deborah Lipp in her book Magical Power for Beginners, that which is like the object (sympathetic) is the object where magic is concerned. In the same book she explains that a way to make a spell more powerful is to layer it, aka adding more than one thing serving the same purpose to the spell. So by visualizing yourself as your persona, you are layering yourself, adding two forms of you to the spell. Remember, that which is like the object is the object in the realm of the spell, so your persona (which is like you) is you.
Your persona can also help you raise power. In Lipp’s same book she talks about the process of casting a spell, which is broken down like this:
Raising power is the act of generating energy. You can pull energy from several different sources, but one of the easiest sources is yourself. If your persona makes you feel more powerful, you are likely tapping into power/energy you already had, but had cut yourself off from because of mental/emotional hang-ups. You now have more power to use for magic! And, potentially, a clearer pathway for that power to flow through you.
A very popular (and accurate) phrase in the magical community is that you don’t need a ton of tools to perform magic, you need intent. Visualization is also a powerful tool in magic. You can use your persona as part of your visualization work. For example, let’s say I don’t have a ritual knife, but I want to do something where one would be good to have. My persona has claws. I can visualize my persona/myself using those claws to achieve the same effect as the ritual knife.
✨ How do I make a persona?
There are two main ways to make a persona, which I refer to as ‘active creation’ and ‘organic creation.’ Active creation is where you sit down and consciously choose everything that goes into your persona. This is how most people make them. Organic creation is where you let the persona ‘come to you’ through a process, such as meditation or astral travel. My persona is organic in this way, as I went into a deep meditation and and prompted my mind to ‘show me what I am.’ I didn’t pick a bunch of things I wanted it to include, I let it come to me all at once and I looked at it and figured out how it made me feel. I’d highly recommend this method, as I personally feel a very deep connection to my persona as a result, but if you have trouble with meditation or visual thought, then an actively made persona is just fine! The important thing is that you resonate with the form.
✨ What else can I do with my persona?
Aside from being a magical tool, your persona can be used to help you cope with your feelings. Like I’ve mentioned, I use mine to cope with my dysphoria, which can get pretty bad and can be triggered by pretty innocuous things. Ever since I chose to represent myself with my persona online, though, I’ve found that my dysphoria is easier to manage and is triggered less. You can use your persona to help alleviate anxiety or depression. My previous personas were ‘reminders’ to myself of what I was capable of. I would often tell myself, “If I can make a character who is like this, I can be like this.” (There’s that sympathetic magic again.)
And that’s it!
I hope you find this useful and get amazing results, should you choose to implement this into your practice. If you have any questions about persona magic, feel free to shoot me an ask!
(Please keep in mind that persona magic is not an alternative for medical/professional help. Mundane before magical, friends. If you feel you would benefit from medication or therapy, get it. Stuff like this can help you, but should never replace what a professional can provide you.)
