Being a student myself, I’ve struggled a lot with staying focused and keeping on task. In hopes of helping other students or anyone facing similar challenges, I want to share this spell.
This spell’s purpose is to anchor a fragment of your focus into the mirror, allowing it to take form as a second presence who acts as your accountability companion.
what you will need:
A calm or focused mind
A mirror or any reflective surface
The Mirror Card or the Mirror's Sigil
the step:
Settle your mind. Close your eyes and ease yourself into a calm, steady state. If true calm isn’t possible, focus will do.
Call upon the Mirror. Invite the Mirror to manifest. Feel their presence forming around the reflective surface.
Channel your energy. Direct your focus down from your shoulders, through your arms, out your fingertips, and into the mirror. Imagine the energy flowing smoothly and filling the surface with
Meet your reflection. Open your eyes and gaze into the mirror. Take note of your features. Imagine (or witness) the Mirror shaping itself into your likeness—your eyes, your lips, your expression.
When it feels complete, smile.
The Mirror smiles back, confirming that the connection is sealed.
State your intention. Tell Mirror your study plan. For example:
> “Okay, we’re going to finish this assignment, take a break, and then move on to the next task.”
Close the ritual. When you’re done, look into the mirror and thank Mirror to release them.
While we were traveling back home from visiting family today, I channeled the travel anxiety, overstimulation, and possible oncoming migraine into charging my rashinban on the train.
After orienting the compass north (which happened to be the direction we were headed in), I gazed at the image of the rashinban while focusing on my breath. I started with a holotropic breathing pattern but then settled into a box breath when I closed my eyes and held the image in my mind’s eye.
With each breath, a blue light started to flicker and balloon on the center of the compass, slightly inflating and deflating with my breath but overall growing larger as time passed and my breath continued to steady. As this was happening, I heard a loud whisper call my name several times from behind me in the southwest; it was definitely in my mind because I had earplugs in to deafen the noise on the train. Immediately following that, a bright light appeared to my east—it was blinding even though this was just a visualization with my eyes closed.
After that, the board in my mind’s eye was glowing a steady blue. I shifted my focus to the phosphene behind my eyelids to ease myself back to reality but instead of the normal shapes and wisps I’m used to, the compass appeared to be spinning behind my eyelids, focusing and zooming in on different directions periodically. I was so taken aback that the image in the phosphene was so vivid that I wasn’t able to note which directions it settled on in which order. Regardless, that indicates to me that the rashinban was successfully charged and ready for use! (I’m happy to report that my migraine seemed to have been staved off as well!)
The Shadow : you were allowed to hex them so you could work on spell creation and expansion. NOW, you to lock in and learn to kill them with kindness. And learn to think before succumbing to anger.
Me, just now remembering that I have 2 perfectly good wasp nests tucked away in my garage: Yeah, you would want that for me.
Cards by suits (bigger image) / Cards by elements (bigger image)
I recently bought a pack of Clow cards, and since it's going to take approximately an eternity to ship to me, I reading into the different methods for sorting the cards. I find it easier to understand things when I have a visual aid, so I thought I'd share these things I put together.
CLAMP's Clow Card Fortune Book sorts all of the cards (except The Nothing/The Hope) into playing card suits, so I made an image that lays organizes the cards into those groups along with the colors that CLAMP assigned to each suit. I also added the tarot equivalent of each suit and the element that's usually assigned to them, although I don't know how much CLAMP relied on the tarot meanings.
Then I sorted the cards into their element/guardian groups, which will probably be more familiar to fans. I also put the suits/colors on each card so it's easier to see patterns in the groups. For example, The Earthy rules over mostly over diamonds (pentacles/earth cards), but The Watery rules over mostly spades (swords/air) and has no hearts (cups/water), so I can't decide whether or not I should just disregard the tarot equivalents completely.
Anyway, I thought this was interesting, so let me know if you have any thoughts.
sound; voice; tone; noise; reputation; classifier for sounds.
水, shuǐ.
the watery.
water; river; liquid; beverage; additional charges or income (of clothes); classifier for number of washes.
波, bō.
the wave.
wave; ripple; storm; surge.
風, fēng.
the windy.
wind; air; manners; atmosphere.
樹, shù.
the wood.
tree; plant; set up; establish.
notes:
* these kanji are the logographic used for the title on their respective card. i understand this is logical given CSS is a japanese work. however, the character in the story that created the cards is chinese and the cards themselves are based on daoist concepts. for this reason i did my best to translate them as this is a list of the chinese names that would be (in my opinion) the cards “true” names. the rest of the infographics are mutually understandable between chinese and japanese kanji.
not listed by hierarchy, just sorted alphabetically for easier navigation.
i’m not a native speaker. i’m at a hsk 2 level at best, so feel free to correct me if there’s any mistakes.
Alright, so I recently caught up on the CCS: Clear Card manga and am therefore back on my bullshit with regard to Clow sorcery stuff. I have a lot of thoughts on various aspects of this arc and what the potential implications are for those of us who like to play in that magical sandbox, but for now I’d like to start with taking a look at the original Clow cards in comparison with the Clear cards. Specifically, I want to delve into what these two systems (because yes, I am about to argue that they are in fact separate systems) can tell us about a) the types of magic present in this paradigm and b) the different types of magicians we’re working with.
As a note, this post will be somewhat image-heavy so I apologize for that in advance. Additionally, I will be discussing SPOILERS UP TO MANGA VOLUME 5 since that’s where we really start to have a clearer picture of things. I won’t be addressing anything specific to the anime because I’ve not watched it yet and have discovered via discussions with other fans a number of divergences on some key plot points, so I’m leaving that alone atm. Be advised.
Now, we have concrete confirmation that the Clear cards are the sole product of Sakura’s power and imagination (something which I speculated on nearly a year ago, so I feel rather validated on that front). For anyone who has been dipping into Clow sorcery, this is kind of a big deal on multiple levels. First and foremost being, they are not Clow cards. These new card spirits exist wholly outside of the original framework that governed the Clow. This is evidenced by a few things, starting with the names and appearances of the respective spirits.
A large majority of the Clow cards were anthropomorphic/humanoid in appearance. Only a handful of them did not fit into this category, and even most of those could be identified as an object of some sort. With the exception of the Illusion and the Wave, every Clow spirit had a definitive and recognizable form that personified its inherent power. The Clear cards, on the other hand, are largely abstract. Even those that are described as birds (Gale, Aqua, Blaze) are not any kind of bird that is immediately identifiable as such. To date, the only truly humanoid Clear card spirit is one that is directly inspired by a Clow card, and consequently shares the original spirit’s name (Mirror).
You may be asking why any of this matters. Obviously they needed a new #aesthetic to hook people, so that covers that, right? Well, I think it’s a little more significant than that, especially since Sakura responded so well to the original cards and developed a decided friendly relationship with them. Why, then, would her own cards be so different to the friends she had already made?
I believe it boils down to a key difference between Sakura’s and Clow’s magic which becomes pretty apparent when you examine their respective mahoujin. Looking at Clow Reed’s magic circle, we see a TON of different magical elements. At first glance, we clearly have some astrology, some sacred geometry, the kanji for the four cardinal directions, and a host of symbols, sigils, and script all divided neatly into sections that obviously have some type of mystical correspondences. This mahoujin is absolutely packed with occult knowledge that Clow spent years painstakingly crafting into a coherent system, the final product of which were the original Clow cards.
Some of this detail and structure is maintained in the magic circle Sakura ends up using in the second half of the series, but some of it is also lost. We retain the astrological symbols and the Sun, Moon, Star motif (slightly rearranged to reflect the source of Sakura’s power). We still have the cardinal directions and the interlocking geometric designs, but the rest of the glyphs and magical script have gone missing. Looking at this mahoujin, there are enough similarities to clearly show these magicians are still working within the same paradigm. One is a little more heavy on the elements you might expect to pick up over a life-long study of the occult, while the other has been parred down to reflect a magician who is still growing into their craft.
Virtually all of this changes with the Clear cards, though. Absolutely everything about the original mahoujin, save for the presence of the Sun and Moon, has been edged out by the dominance of the Star. Even the four kanji representing the cardinal directions have been replaced by the kanji for Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth. Perhaps even more fascinating, the circle no longer even manages to contain the whole of the design. This magic circle is literally bursting with Sakura’s own power, and very little else.
What this says to me is: Sakura is not only stronger than Clow was, but she is also an entirely different type of magician. While Clow relied heavily on various elements of ceremonial magic and established lore to create a new system that married Eastern and Western philosophies, Sakura isn’t so much creating a new system as she is unconsciously harnessing raw elemental power through sheer force of will.
This is also demonstrated in the different incantations for unleashing the Wand. Both the original incantation and the one Sakura uses in the latter half of the series call upon a very specific force - the “power of the Dark” or the “power of the Stars”. In the Clear card arc, however, she calls upon the “Force without Master” to release her staff and secure the new cards. Honestly, I suspect the only reason the new cards are even cards at all is because she is mimicking a familiar template without realizing it.
The point is, this explains a hell of a lot. The reason the Clear cards are more abstract is because they haven’t been refined by any formal rules or tools beyond the power that is required to wield them. It also explains the disparity in the range of their application as compared to the original Clow. Clow spirits all had a very narrow set of skills and parameters specific to their nature. By contrast, the Clear cards have a broader range precisely because they are, in essence, still very raw. Which is understandable, since it takes years of learning and practice to develop the control necessary to work with fine lines as opposed to broad strokes.
But what this proves is that Sakura’s power is far more chaotic than anyone except perhaps Eriol may have realized, simply because she has no boundaries to contain it.
I’m still not entirely sure what all this means for practitioners of Clow Sorcery, but there are a few things I can say with relative certainty. The first is that I absolutely believe one can choose to work with the new cards without having to give up the Clow. The second, is that anyone who does decide to work with the Clear cards should probably keep in mind that they are an entirely different beast born of a much wilder magic than the original Clow, and therefore may not necessarily play by all the same rules.
