A Great Disaster has befallen this world.
For too long we have succumbed to the bitter edge
that power is lost in the sweet and tender.
Romantic is not weak. Feminine is not weak. Cute is not weak.
We are fragmented and multifaceted.
The lack of emotion is often favored because success is credited to the mechanical and efficient. But sentimentality, empathy, and softness should not be seen as weaknesses.
We see the limitations of corporeality. As individuals
We feel our bodies existing daily in this universe
drifting towards the body illusory.
As dreamers, we explore the body liminal.
We reach into the darkness through the stars
towards our endless brilliant bodies,
whispering our invincible spell across space and time.
Force without master,
Heed the call of my ___ of dreams
and become my power:
hello there I have a few questions so I'm wondering how do I sign a contract? How do I even make one? I do believe in this stuff and I'm working really hard and also what what do you do if your soul gets lost or if it gets damaged like if I have a card as my soul gem if it was ripped, would it stop working and how would I wear my card or how would I even make it into a soul jam? I think I'm gonna be using an ace card as my soul jam but I'm really worried about this and I do want to be a magical girl and I want to help others because I've seen so many people suffer suffering and I really want to help them so if you could clear up some things with me that would be awesome thank you dearly Vivienne
Hello! ☆
It sounds like you’re interested in becoming a magical girl à la Puella Magi Madoka Magica so I’d recommend checking out these posts from my Magi Praxis series to get you started:
⟡ Contacting an Incubator
⟡ On Forming Magical Contracts
⟡ What is a ‘Soul’?
If you’re planning on using something like a card as a physical representation of your Soul Gem, I’d definitely recommend getting a card holder or something to protect it. If something were to happen to it though, you could always enchant something else to fulfil the same purpose.
Even if it doesn’t actually hold your life essence (as I discuss in the last post I linked), you should still try to keep it safe as it is an important symbol of your vow to be a magical girl!
In and around the irl puella magi community, many aspiring puella magi are understandably nervous about getting into a contract with Kyubey due to the stipulations shown in Puella Magi Madoka Magica and related works.
Famously in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, girls are scouted by an Incubator (such as Kyubey) to become magical girls for a wish at price of their souls—which get ripped from their bodies and placed in a Soul Gem. We see demonstrated in the source materials that when magical girls are separated from their Soul Gems for more than 100 meters, they collapse lifeless until they are reunited—but is this a realistic expectation for irl puella magi?
In this Magi Praxis installment, I want to discuss some interpretations of what a ‘soul’ can be in terms of a magical contract. I hope to arm you with some ideas that can enhance your magical work as well as your relationship with your contractor!
Please note that the opinions I share in this post do not seek to ‘fakeclaim’ or invalidate anyone’s practices or beliefs. I am merely offering suggestions.
This post is part of my Magi Praxis series. If you have any suggestions for future topics, or you have attempted anything I have shared and want you share your experiences, please send me a message! I am always happy to go back and provide further explanation as well. ☆
As I mentioned in a previous post regarding contracts, many irl puella magi have reported to have experienced physical side effects from contracting with Kyubey in particular and have attributed this to the moment their souls were taken from their physical vessel and placed into a Soul Gem (whether physically or astrally).
That being said, I don’t know if there is enough evidence (or any at all, frankly) to assume that there are multiple young magicians walking around with their life-force separated from their bodies. After all, there are no cases of magi disobeying the ‘100 meter rule’ and immediately dropping dead or falling into a coma when separated from their Soul Gems. Rather, many report feelings of weakness, general sickness, and inability to tap into their clairsenses when they happen to forget their physical Soul Gems at home.
I want to reiterate here that while some may dismiss these claims as psychosomatic, I believe these experiences are nonetheless meaningful and impactful to the individual magician and should be respected as such. After all, there is no ‘canon’ or standard for irl magical girls or even puella magi at large, regardless of what some in the community may say—your magia is yours and yours alone.
But if Soul Gems do not contain life-force itself in this reality, what is taken from the magician during their contract?
Eight years before the original run of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, CLAMP published xxxHOLiC in which Yūko Ichihara the Dimensional Witch runs a shop where she grants wishes for her patrons.
Proper compensation must be made for offered goods or services.
One must not offer too much for the payment, one must not charge too much for the product. Reasonable, equitable, and fair.
If it isn’t, someone gets hurt.
What gets ‘hurt’ if the payment is not appropriate?
Your body in the material world.
Your fortune in the celestial world.
Your soul in the heavenly world.
When explaining the price of his wish, Yūko explains to Kimihiro Watanuki that a ‘soul’ does not necessarily equate to someone’s life, or life essence.
‘Soul’ implies a great many things.
A soul could be an item of great value to a person.
To have your wish granted, the only payment must be something of great value. […] You must give up something valuable.
She also insinuates that one can lay claim to a piece of someone’s ‘soul’ with just knowing their name or take someone’s fortune by knowing their birthdate.
Throughout xxxHOLiC and its sister publication Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, we can see this spiritual exchange happen in various ways. Sometimes, the payment for a wish is something physical; other times, a person’s most treasured possession is something immaterial, such as a memory.
Applying this back to the world of Madoka Magica, we can suggest that the complexity or the impact of a wish could inform an appropriate price. However, this price should only be something within your means of fulfilling—whether that is upon the acceptance of the contract or throughout your magical journey as a magical girl. If there as an imbalance in this exchange, or the magician fails to complete payment per the terms of the contract, the contract could feasibly become null and void.
This is all to say that your life-force needn’t be on the line to become a magical girl, even if that is what the source material dictates. I do believe something of great value should be offered though—it underlines the solemnity of the vow the magician is making.
If the xxxHOLiC interpretation of a ‘soul’ can be used in this context, here are some examples of sacrifices that could be sufficient:
⟡ An item of great importance or significance to you. You don’t need to destroy or throw it away but if it is something that you wear or interact with, you can put it aside and offer it solely to your contractor (at least for the duration of the work you are pursuing).
⟡ A vice, bad habit, or addiction. By accepting the terms of your contract, you can sacrifice this negative attribute that you feel defines you. I also see this exchange as great motivation for recovery, depending on the context. (If you are dealing with a chemical dependence, also seek professional medical guidance for your safety!)
⟡ In a similar vein, abstinence from particular activities, specifically ones you actively engage with or are otherwise drawn to.
But really as long as you feel the payment is sufficient, I’m sure everything will be alright. ☆
I just came across someone (a minor) saying my privated posted made them ‘want to kill someone’ on my dashboard and… yeah. While I thought I was done talking about it, this clearly needs to be addressed.
Granted, they said they ‘don’t actually mean it’ and the word choice was really just their way of expressing anger and being edgy, but this is exactly the sentiment I was pointing towards in my original post. That kind of thinking is not only so gross to see in this space, but that dehumanizing rhetoric is absolutely how fascist and supremacist ideology becomes commonplace.
If you have curated your magical practice or persona in such a way that dismisses human life as insignificant or disposable, please block me.
If you insist and persist this is your identity—that you are so above humanity that you can casually joke about offing people—and especially if you want to carry the title of ‘magical hero’ on top of that, just block me.
I’ve said it before but I generally don’t like blocking folks in and around the community that seem earnest about magic and want to learn more so I’m going to leave it at that in case they decide to talk to me directly. But if you want to complain about stuff I already apologized for while demonstrating the issues I was raising, miss me with that. It is not my job to impress or placate those kinds of attitudes.
do you take suggestions for the cute lil picmix things you make? 🥹 priconne was a big part of my childhood ( YES i know it should not have been 💔 ) and it makes me happy to see content of it from cool people who aren’t l0lic0ns or 1nc3ls!
I haven’t really thought taking requests/suggestions before but I suppose I could within reason! I’ve just been using it to add some flavor to my posts and feed my blog’s hypersigil.
Oh my god, I hope people don’t think I’m weird for using it then!!
I literally only heard about Picmix around when I started the blog because I wanted to finally play around with something like Blingee (after kinda ignoring it when I was younger)!
I knew my card revamp was going to be tricky but it’s proving to be more complicated than I initially anticipated~
While I have generally come to accept that my magia comes from a pretty mysterious, instinctual place, my partner’s system is deeply philosophical and mathematical in nature. I feel bad that he has to routinely hold my hand through a lot of process of breaking it down, especially now that they have made some adjustments over the years since I first created my cards.
I’ve been racking my brain trying to determine where I can iron out redundancy and continue to hybridize cards versus where there opportunities to bring different card fairies in, making the deck more versatile. In the end I might gain four more cards, bringing the number of cards up to 46.
Waah! I almost forgot how intense it feels to puzzle over this! It’s exciting and terrifying trying to crack the code of something that hasn’t quite been explained yet!
In the three years of running this blog, one of the things I’ve struggled the most with is contending with the vast age differences of people in and around the real world mahō shōjo space.
While the primary purpose of my blog is to document and share this significant part of my personal magical practice, I quickly realized I would have a difficult time avoiding contact with minors given the subject matter. With that in mind, I decided to start my Magi Praxis series to provide resources for newer magicians, regardless of age or level of experience.
Even though this was a significant departure from my original intent for the blog, I do strongly believe that there should be high-quality magical resources out there that are accessible and provide a safe, respectful structure for even minors to engage with. After all, my first occult ‘tomes’ were books on the history of witches and wizards published by Barnes and Noble and unofficial guides to the world of Harry Potter (back in the early 2000s). While they provided some interesting entry points for me, they left much to be desired in terms of actual, practical technique.
Given that, it does disappoint me to see folks purport that I am ageist or hold some internalized ageism—even though ageism generally refers to systemic and institutional discrimination against elderly people, not a disregard for minors/youth (which I don’t think I have even expressed here). I definitely lean on my ‘teacher voice’ a lot on this blog 1. because it feels natural when providing resources and 2. it implies a level of difference in experience (which there undoubtedly is, whether you are referring to years of life experience or time actively doing magic). Obviously it was never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable or dismissed in any way but I do think it is necessary to maintain a healthy level of reservation and formality on my end, given the circumstances.
If you have suggestions regarding my approach, I am always willing to listen. It’s clear that I’m kind of an outlier in this space but I really do enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with you all and I hope you feel the same.
