#energyforms

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Jasper's Energyform Zine

Hey. I made a zine about thoughtforms, servitors, and energyforms. It's free. It's yours now. Print it out. Eat it. I don't care. Just don't pretend you wrote it when I did all of this and screamed at the formatting and paid for Canva shit to accomplish this.

Download it as a PDF here.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Jasper's Servitor/Thoughtform Resource Post

last updated: August 12, 2025

Please note: The biggest difference between a servitor and thoughtform is the level of sentience (or perceived sentience). A servitor is not sentient, while a thoughtform is. Determine it as you will.

Also, a disclaimer! Even if I don't find a source particularly helpful, you might get more out of it than I did! I just like to categorize and sub-categorize things.

Tumblr Posts I Find Helpful

How to Make a Servitor by viadescioism: A rather straightforward guide on servitor creation.

Creating a Thoughtform by windvexer: A decently lengthy guide on thoughtform creation.

When Creating Thoughtforms by witchesalleyway: A little reminder about picking the shapes of your thoughtforms.

Technowitchcraft - Thoughtforms by aceswitch: A post with the idea of using a USB drive as the "body" of a servitor/thoughtform to allow for future edits.

Egregore by trustmepink: An extremely short post defining what an egregore is. Great for being introduced to the word and concept, though there's not much meat in the post and the sources/helpful links are a bit questionable.

Sigils: Scribbles to Forget or Spirits to Remember by witchofsouthernlight: While not about servitor creation, this is about reusing sigils for specific goals and how those can be spirits in an animist perspective. A really neat post overall and useful here because of the way that servitors are often tied to sigils.

Entity Creation Worksheet by jasper-pagan-witch: Adapted from Creating Magickal Entities, but altered to a decent extent so it's more helpful to me personally.

Servitor Design Template by ritual-and-chaos: Adapted from Servitor Magick, extremely straightforward with an explanation. A great alternative to my adaptation of the template from Creating Magickal Entities.

Chaos Magic: Servitors, Thoughtforms, and Godforms by trollkunnig: Incredibly in-depth and detailed when it comes to servitor creation, but since OP deactivated, the links in reference to the godform parts are broken. Damn the loss of information on the Internet!!!

Destroying Your Thoughtforms: by viadescioism: A fairly detailed (if a little wall-of-text-y) post on the destruction of the thoughtform, with a guide in case you didn't build a kill switch/phrase into your thoughtform to begin with.

Thoughtforms: Theory & Ethics by spiritvexer: A good companion post to the thoughtform destruction one above, giving a few alternatives to total destruction for the thoughtforms when you no longer need them.

Thoughts on Thoughtforms by spellsandwoo-woostuff: An insightful read into another approach to thoughtforms as OCs or writing muses given life rather than spells given sentience.

Basics of Servitor Creation and Implementation by majokkid: Part of majokkid's Magi Praxis series, this goes over the basic steps of servitor creation in a way that is straightforward, easy to understand, and works well even beyond magical girl-aligned practices.

Easy Ways to Charge Energyforms by windvexer: Goes over a bunch of different energy feeding and charging methods for servitors and provides resources for making this shit easier. And gods know we need to make this shit easier.

Untitled (I call it Name Brands As Thoughtform Portals in my energyform-and-work reference book) by windvexer: A pretty unique little idea about using brands as ways to access existent thoughtforms in the form of a projected market demographic.

Books And Websites I Find Helpful

Condensed Chaos: An Introduction To Chaos Magic by Phil Hine: While this is a chaos magic 101 type book, it has an incredibly robust chapter on servitor/thoughtform creation. It also has the benefit of talking about chaos magic more broadly to give you more context for servitor/thoughtform creation. You can find my initial thoughts on it here. APPLICABLE PAGES: 106 to 125, under the chapter name "Chaos Servitors"

The Forty Servants, The Four Devils, and The Grimoire of The Forty Servants by Tommie Kelly: Two pre-made servitor systems that are incredibly in-depth and, in my opinion, quite fun to use. There's a little bit of plug-and-play applicable here.

Magickal Servitors: Create Your Own Spirits to Attract Pleasure, Power and Prosperity by Damon Brand: It is effective, straight to the point, and actionable. But interestingly, it's incredibly combative towards chaos magic, which is where servitor/thoughtform creation sprung up to begin with. You can find my initial thoughts about it here.

Tumblr Posts I Find Less Helpful

Creating a Servitor and Creating a Thoughtform by witchy-oates: These guides aren't bad, but they really seem to focus on the fear that a servitor will spontaneously develop sentience, which I generally disagree with.

Is Your Spirit A Thoughtform? by elysiumconjures: A lengthy questionnaire and list of red flags that an entity you're interacting with might be a thoughtform. Personally I found it frustrating to read, but the list can at least guide beginners who are still learning discernment techniques to figure out what to look for.

On Telling The Difference Between A Thoughtform And A "Real" Spirit by creature-wizard: The counter-post to the above one, though you kind of need to see both perspectives to fully appreciate creature-wizard's wonderful counterpoints.

Distinguishing Imaginary Friends, Thoughtforms, and Spirits by spiritconnect: Another post about deciphering whether what you're talking to is a thoughtform or some other kind of entity.

A Short Guide to Thoughtforms by thewitchofbucktown: Longer than it promises, and I personally don't feel like referring to all deities as thoughtforms is something that works with my understanding of things at this time, but not a bad post considering it was written 11 years ago. Plus, OP hasn't deactivated, which is really hard to find in servitor/thoughtform resources.

Servitors: A Basic Guide to Artificial Entities by tinyrosemarysparrows: While this is a very detailed guide with some interesting and unique approaches to servitor creation, the author dropping back to "destroy if it even blinks wrong" (not that much of an exaggeration) makes me hesitant to recommend it fully, hence its placement down here. The post even says you can reprogram servitors but still recommends immediate destruction for every little thing, so…it's not really how I roll.

Books And Websites I Find Less Helpful

Creating Magickal Entities: A Complete Guide to Entity Creation by David Michael Cunningham, Taylor Ellwood, and T Amanda R Wagener: I hated this book so much. Out of everything in here, I found only four things that were actionable and that I could use. Every single author here was pretentious as fuck and took forever to make their damn point. This could have been an email. You can read more of my complaints here. The three parts that I found most interesting can be read in these Tumblr posts of mine: Servitors as Links; Energy Store-House Entities (ESHEs); and Servitor Biographies.

Protection & Reversal Magick: A Witch's Defense Manual by Jason Miller: I can't fucking believe I'm putting a Jason Miller book here. And look, I can't say this entire book is helpful because I haven't yet finished it, but the section on artificial spirits created for magical offense and defense? Probably one of the best sections on servitors/thoughtforms I've read in a non-dedicated book in a while. Just be aware that his tone of speech is deeply annoying, and this book of his leans more Hekatean. But because I have not finished reading this book, I cannot recommend this book fully. APPLICABLE PAGES: 119 to 146, under the chapter name "Spirit Guardians and Servitors"

Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current by Andrieh Vitimus: I hated this book. I hate this book. I will hate this book. It's deeply frustrating and there's only so many times I can keep writing "stop citing a white woman on hoodoo" in the book itself before I just start eating the pages. That, and many similar problems, are why I do not find this book helpful on the whole despite how in-depth it goes in its three chapters on servitor creation. The author also refers heavily back to Condensed Chaos by Phil Hine, so that's required reading before you even pick this up. Personally, I'm just not impressed. APPLICABLE PAGES: 287 to 339, under the chapter names "Creating Entities with Energy and Information", "Giving Form to Concepts and Ideas", and "Advanced Practicum on Entity Creation"

Jasper's Miscellaneous Bullshit

Jasper's Energyform Zine by jasper-pagan-witch: I suffered for two months to write this damn thing and by the gods I shall shill it.

Jasper's Guide To Energyforms by jasper-pagan-witch: A little glossary of how I, personally, use the terms you've seen speckled throughout this post.

The Modal Commander Servitor by jasper-pagan-witch: A Magic: The Gathering Commander format approach to creating a kickass servitor that can change and adapt as easily as swapping out cards.

Atronachs, Ash Guardians, and Quick Notes on the Less Common Atronachs on @the-college-of-whispers: Want a quick look at how Jasper from 3 years ago approached the idea of elemental Daedra as entities, both created and summoned? These three posts are for you.

@jasper-and-the-forty-servants: Remember how I was talking about the plug-and-play part of the Forty Servants above? Yeah, that's what I do over on this blog. My favorite two are, hands down, Falco Spara, Pactweaver as the Protector and Dina, Soul Steeper as the Healer.

GOFLOWOLFOG and Fotamecus: Two servitors/egregores that I and people close to me have had incredible experiences with. Hell yeah to both of them.

Mesperyian: Tumblr's very own Greek goddess egregore. An excellent study in the power of multiple people taking something and running with it. (Her original story can be found here, by the way!)

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Jasper's Guide To Energyforms

The various categories that any given energyform may fall under.

There are innumerable names and ideas for energyforms. This will merely go over my own categorizations and definitions of them. These are not universal, but they’ll hopefully provide a good starting point for your own understanding! Ultimately, this is all my own understanding, and all “sources” are meant to encourage you to look around and explore this subject on your own!

What Is An Energyform?

An energyform is any entity made of energy, often your own. I use the term as the catch-all category for servitors, thoughtforms, and so forth, because having a catch-all term for them is very helpful to me. The term is derived from “manaform” from Magic: The Gathering, which is a being that is made of pure mana. [1] I altered it to energyform for my own practice.

Types Of Energyforms

Egregore: An energyform created by an entire group of magical practitioners, typically more than 4. Three or fewer magical practitioners working together on an energyform will still produce a servitor. An example of an egregore is GOFLOWOLFOG. [2]

Pop Culture Entities: One theory for the validity of pop culture magic is that the pop culture entities – including deities, heroes, spirits, and more – are egregores. This is not a universal approach to pop culture magic.

Godform: The image or incarnation of a god. [3] Not quite an energyform of its own, but an energyform can be made to be a godform or to channel parts of a god’s power. [4] A godform energyform can fall under any other category.

Living Spell: An extremely basic energyform that is only a step above the basic spell by way of being given a form to deliver the said spell to its intended target. These typically fade away or are automatically destroyed once they accomplish their goal.

Servitor: A servitor is the “default” type of energyform, lacking in “sentience” and being focused on one or a handful of very specific goals. Extremely simple to make and often look more like “people” (humans, animals, demons/angels, et cetera) than a living spell. Most servitors are best described as magical computer programs.

Viral Servitors [5]: Servitors that have automatic ways built into them to copy themselves to continue doing their job so that there are many of them. One example of a viral servitor is Fotamecus. [6]

Sigil: Most sigils are symbols created for particular purposes and are more often connected to energyforms rather than being energyforms in and of themselves. However, certain animist approaches [7] may see sigils as spirits in and of themselves!

Chao-Mines [5], Energy Store-House Entities [4], Linking Sigils [8]: Functionally the same thing, these are particular sigils or energy points that you can use to draw energy from a place, another energyform, or a thing.

Hypersigils: The term was coined by Grant Morrison and elaborated upon by Aidan Wachter. It is a work of art, such as a novel, journal, or piece of art, that functions as an elaborate sigil. [9]

Sigil Shoals: A collection of sigils that are led by one that is guaranteed to happen, thus forcing the rest of them to come true as well. [10]

Thoughtform: A thoughtform is a “sentient” energyform, though the definition of “sentient” is up for debate. Typically, thoughtforms can think for themselves and do not need to be specifically directed around obstacles keeping them from accomplishing their goals. Thoughtforms are often compared to the type of “artificial intelligence” found in science fiction.

Citations, Resources, And Further Reading

[1] “Mana” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Mana

[2] “GOFLOWOLFOG” on the Paranormal wiki, compiled by para.wiki users: https://para.wiki/w/GOFLOWOLFOG

[3] “Godform” on Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/godform

[4] Creating Magickal Entities: A Complete Guide to Entity Creation by David Michael Cunningham with contributions by Taylor Ellwood and T. Amanda R. Wagener “Servitors as Links” specifically can be found here: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/763362873038782464 “Energy Store-House Entities (ESHEs)” specifically can be found here: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/763362842589151232

[5] Condensed Chaos: an introduction to chaos magic by Phil Hine “Chao-Mines” specifically can be found here: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/763430369816182784

[6] “Fotamecus” by Fenwick Rysen: www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/fotamec1.html

[7] “Sigils: Scribbles to Forget or Spirits to Remember” by witchofsouthernlight on Tumblr: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/762793274388938752

[8] “Create Your Own Linking Sigil” by Jareth Tempest on The Shadow Binder: https://theshadowbinder.com/2019/02/22/create-your-own-linking-sigil/

[9] “Hypersigil” by writingdirty on Tumblr: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/710434325688123392 “Hypersigil” by windvexer on Tumblr: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/700376884034355200/hello-chicken-can-you-share-your-thoughts-on

[10] “Sigil Shoaling: A Chaos Magic Tool” by Cristina Farella on a personal website: https://www.cristinafarella.com/astrological-magic-tools/sigil-shoaling-a-chaos-magic-tool “Sigil Shoals and Robofish” by Mahigan on Kitchen Toad: https://www.kitchentoad.com/blog/sigil-shoals-and-robofish

“Jasper’s Servitor/Thoughtform Resource Post”, compiled on Tumblr by jasper-pagan-witch: https://jasper-pagan-witch.tumblr.com/post/762988504970100736/jaspers-servitorthoughtform-resource-post

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Energy Store-House Entities (ESHEs)

Have you ever wished that you had just a bit more magickal energy during a working? Have you ever wished that you could tap into an energy reserve to help out with a healing? Well now you can, if you create an Energy Store-House Entity (ESHE). An ESHE's sole purpose is to collect, store, and distribute energy on demand. This type of entity is created to store energy that is given to it at times when you feel full of energy or power, but have nothing to do with it. It then collects this energy and stores it, waiting for you to call upon it to deliver the energy back to you. Even if you feed negative energy to it after you have been in an argument, your ESHE could have been instructed, during creation, to remove all emotion from the energy and to store only the pure, raw energy for your use.

You can adapt an ESHE to collect neutral forms of energy, like the light from a lamp being left on when it is not needed, to add to your energy to increase the power available to you. If you do this, it may be a good idea to be very specific as to what type of energy it collects, and how it collects it. There have been some ill prepared magi that have accidentally created energy "vampires" that would collect any type of energy they can, even from people.

You can also use this sort of entity to send energy to other people. If, for example, a friend of yours was just in an accident, you cannot be there for them and you do not have the time or ability to do a full magickal ritual for them, you could, however, send your ESHE to deliver energy to them - it sure "one ups" the typically "I'll light a candle for you" cliche spewed by so many.

~Creating Magickal Entities: A Complete Guide to Entity Creation, by David Michael Cunningham with contributions by Taylor Ellwood and T. Amanda R. Wagener, pages 90 to 91

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Servitors as Links

If you have a desire to work with a commonly known spirit, deity, or entity, you can create a personal entity to act as a link with it by developing a name, image, and symbol based on the characteristics of the inspirational subject. You can even decide upon a specific realm of influence based on the general realm of influence of the original spirit or deity. By doing this, you are personalizing a link with the original subject through the creation of a personal entity. From that point on, you can call upon the spirit or deity through the name and symbol that you have designated to elicit a direct response from the desired entity. It is important to remember that you are working with an entity that serves as a link to the spirit or deity and not the spirit or deity itself. After continuous workings, you can, if you so desire, have the entity you created evolve away from the original spirit or deity to become its own independent entity. Then when you work with your entity, you will be working with your entity alone, though it will have gained knowledge and experience through the old link with the spirit or deity.

The same idea can be used to make an entity based on the aspects of a living or dead person. By taking the person's name and personal attributes, a very powerful and viable entity can be formed. This new entity will be linked to both the person and to you, in a similar fashion to an entity providing a link to a deity or spirit. This type of entity, when linked to a living person, can have great and powerful affects upon them. With such a link, an entity can be very useful for works of healing and protection directed at the person to whom it is linked. Of course, you can also use this sort of entity to inflict many dire things upon a person, should you so desire.

~Creating Magickal Entities: A Complete Guide to Entity Creation, by David Michael Cunningham with contributions by Taylor Ellwood and T. Amanda R. Wagener, pages 91 to 92

[jasper-pagan-witch]

How do you know when to make a servitor vs. a thoughtform? Can you give an example?

It's funny that you ask this, because this is a conversation we've recently had in the Jasper's Beans Discord server.

For those who don't know, the way I generally break it down is that a servitor is an energyform with no sapience, while a thoughtform has some level of sapience.

A servitor is what you make when you want something to do as it's made to do. If you just need something done. It's a lot like building a shelf - it's here to do one thing and it's quite simple. For example, my Beans server now has This Guy, and he's a pretty simple little fella, but he's already doing his job so well! A more well-known example would be Fotamecus or GOFLOWOLFOG.

A thoughtform is what you make when things are a little more complicated and you need more give-and-take or agency. If you create an energyform to scout an area, aid in divination, or help with research, you may want a thoughtform, that way they don't have to wait for your every order. These are also the more likely ones to develop into egregores or godforms if you let them. A funny example of this one is Mesperyian.

I hope this answered your question, anon!

~Jasper

[jasper-pagan-witch]

The Modal Commander Servitor

An approach to a Magic: The Gathering servitor subtype. This is one of my UPG-filled personal projects.

There are many approaches to making a servitor. There are ways to advance that servitor straight to thoughtform. There are even ways to make an egregore with other magic practitioners. So that’s not what this post is about, though I will leave resources at the bottom for that [1]. This post is about using pop culture in tandem with magic to make a servitor even more powerful. I’m warning you now, we get well into the mechanical weeds of Magic: The Gathering in this one.

The thought came to me a while back in a Discord server with some magic-practicing pals. I got the idea to use my Magic: The Gathering Commander decks as modal spells (more on this term later), which then turned into ideas for making them servitors. To quote myself,

But more to the point, the idea of a Commander deck is that you have a central Guy in charge of particular Things and you typically build the deck around that, so why not treat the central Guy as a servitor empowered by the tools built into the deck (in the form of supporting cards) to accomplish a goal, and it’s empowered every time you play the deck. It’s basically outsourcing magic bullshit to eldritch monsters from between the planes, a toddler cactus person, several pirates, the gods’ most unfortunate bisexual, and a lawyer.

And then I put the idea aside for a while. Summer, my fallow period, happened. But when I came back to my practice near the start of autumn, I found myself revisiting servitor/thoughtform ideas, which prompted me to return to my old notes on Modal Commander Servitors, the Hireling Sliver Hivemind Linking Sigil System (SHILLS), and Echo Summoning. We’ll only be focusing on the first in this post.

But let’s start at the beginning. The crux of this servitor is that it is the Commander of your Commander deck, so let’s talk about the Commander format.

The Commander format (as officially known by Wizards of the Coast aka WOTC) is also called Elder Dragon Highlander or EDH. It is a casual multiplayer format with a competitive form known as cEDH. You have a deck that is 100 cards strong, and with the exception of basic lands, you can only have one copy of a card in your deck. Commander is centered around a Legendary Creature (or, more rarely, a Planeswalker) who exists in the “command zone” separate from the main deck but that still counts towards that 100-card limit. Under certain circumstances, you can have two Commanders (such as with the Partner, Partner With, Friends Forever, Choose a Background/Background, or Doctor’s Companion mechanics). You start at 40 life, and if you end up at or below 0 life, or you take 21 points of Commander damage from a single Commander, you lose the game. Your deck’s available colors are restricted only to your Commander’s color identity – every color that appears in their card, not just the ones in their initial mana cost. [2]

There’s a lot more to it than that, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll be focusing on your Commander itself rather than its format.

Depending on your approach to pop culture entities (PCEs), you may already see them as faces of existing entities (such as Karametra being a face for Demeter) or as embodiments of archetypes (such as Bertram Graywater embodying the “corrupt lawman” of the Western genre). However, these are far from the only approaches. My personal approach is “everything is already so goddamn weird, so why wouldn’t they exist”. Luckily, when creating a servitor, we’re not drawing on an existing PCE. Instead, we’re forming our energy into the shape (and sometimes personality) of one!

In the meta sense, a player of Magic: The Gathering is a planeswalker (a mortal with a spark in their soul that allows them to travel to other planes and access the magic of other planes even if they aren’t there), battles with other players are duels with other planeswalkers, and their deck represents their allies – other planeswalkers they can call in favors for aid with, creatures and allies they can summon for help, and spells and other resources they have at their disposal. [3] Therefore, your Commander is your greatest ally who can help you in this duel, one whom you can keep resummoning easier than others (as seen by the command zone being a separate zone from the graveyard). The crux of this format, in a meta sense, is that your Commander wants to help you. So why not make it into a servitor, a type of energyform, so it can help you for more than merely games?

Okay, so we’ve covered the Commander, and you presumably already read up on servitors and thoughtforms recently. But what about that other word, modal? Modal is an MTG mechanic that gives you the choice of two or more effects of a spell or ability when it’s cast or otherwise put on the stack. Modes are the different effects you may choose on a modal spell or ability. There are keywords that add onto it (escalate, entwine, and spree) that allow you to pick more or all of the options at once. [4] If you’re worried about what “the stack” is, don’t, it’s not actually relevant for what we’re doing with this servitor. Not even MTG players understand the stack. The point is, modal means options, and the only thing better than good stuff is options for good stuff.

So let’s put all of these definitions and mechanics together. A Modal Commander Servitor is an energyform stored in a Legendary Creature (or Planeswalker) card in charge of a Commander deck who uses the cards and resources in the deck (or otherwise given to them) in order to adapt to whatever you need it to do. They’re created like normal servitors and can draw on the same energy sources as normal servitors, but they can also draw power from the lands in their Commander deck. They can be empowered by both magical and in-game usage. The deck theme and archetype (such as an Otter Typal deck for Bria, Riptide Rogue or a Ninjutsu Theme deck for Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow [5]) also tie into and empower the Commander as both a Commander and a servitor. Sure, you can build a deck completely divorced from its Commander, but you’re kneecapping yourself and your Commander by doing so.

Let’s circle back to the Partner mechanic. It appears in multiple forms – Partner, Partner With, Friends Forever, Choose a Background and Background, and Doctor’s Companion. These abilities give you the ability to have two Commanders for your deck, with caveats.

Let’s start with Partner, the broadest form of this mechanic. Any Commander with Partner can team up with any other Commander with Partner. While most are monocolored (and there’s a colorless one that you get to choose the color of), there’s also quite a few that are dual-colored, meaning that your deck can have up to four colors with two Commanders. Of course, you could absolutely use two Partner Commanders with the same color identity to make a monocolored deck. There are definitely benefits to that approach, depending on which Commanders you choose. (Cough, Akroma, Vision of Ixidor partnered with literally anyone.)

“Partner With” is similar, but it restricts you to premade pairings. This was seen in the Battlebond set, the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths set, and several Universes Beyond (aka, officially licensed crossover cards) sets like the Lord of the Rings Commander decks, the Doctor Who Commander decks, and the Assassin’s Creed set. “Partner With” is just a chunk of its keyword. Part of the keyword itself is the card that the Commander is...well, partnered with. “Partner With” is not the mechanic fully, because the full mechanic is “Partner With [specific card]”.

Choose a Background and its partner, the Background Enchantment subtype, were introduced in the Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate set that came out well before Baldur’s Gate 3, leaving most of us confused about all of these named Commanders like Shadowheart and Karlach and Wyll. Backgrounds were a new way to add something to the Command zone that wasn’t necessarily a Creature or Planeswalker – instead, they’re Enchantments that boost your Commander. Even better, they work as part of the normal Commander deck, so they can still boost your Modal Commander Servitor even if they’re not in charge of it!

Friends Forever is a type of Partner originally tied to the Stranger Things Secret Lair cards that was brought in-universe with the Innistrad re-workings of those characters into more lore-accurate cards; any card with Friends Forever can team up with any other card with Friends Forever, but this one can even give you access to all five colors of mana.

Doctor’s Companion is a Partner keyword from the Doctor Who Commander decks that allows the cards with that keyword to partner with any Commander who has the subtype line “Time Lord Doctor”. My coworker, who is way more into Doctor Who than I am but knows very little about Magic: The Gathering, was absolutely giddy when she saw how that worked.

I understand that this is a lot, so let’s circle back to the primary point: using Partner Commanders means that you essentially have two Commanders to try and deal with in a Modal Commander Servitor context. I can think of a few ways to handle this, personally. One way is to just have two servitors and allow them to work together or separately to accomplish goals. Another is to treat them as two sides of the same servitor, drawing on one side at a time. A third that I can think of is to just address them as one unit, since that’s what your Commander deck is – a fusion of their two abilities to create a stronger whole.

There are also the Companions to consider. The Companion mechanic debuted in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths in 2020, and it was panned as a mechanic. Even being reworked for the Multiverse Legends in 2023 reprint didn’t help the mechanic much. Notably, Lutri, the Spellchaser was banned in Commander the moment it was previewed [6] and Yorion, Sky Nomad can’t be used in Commander because it requires your deck to have more than the 100-card limit the format has. [7] But the other eight Companions are able to function as Companions (provided you have that Rule 0 talk with your pod about allowing a sideboard) within the constraints of the Commander format [8], thus giving you a 101st card and, potentially, an additional servitor. While they may not necessarily be an additional Modal Commander Servitor, they can be crafted as an additional, lesser servitor to aid your Modal Commander Servitor.

And no, you can’t use it as both a Commander and a Companion. The “only one card” rule still applies, so you have to choose one. However, provided that both of your Commanders meet the Companion’s requirements, you can absolutely have two Commanders and a Companion.

Do you see what I mean about getting into the weeds?

So what about when you’re done with your Modal Commander Servitor? My approach is to use a built-in “kill switch” to dissolve the servitor and, since this is tied to a specific Commander deck, to dismantle the deck and cleanse the Commander card. Simple and to the point, because I like simple and to the point.

I also made it easy to activate and dismiss my Modal Commander Servitor. I build all of my energyforms with activation phrases that will pull them out of “hibernation” and dismissal phrases that send them back to it. This allows them to rest and regain energy without having to be actively used. I used this same method and theory for my own Modal Commander Servitor.

I am also in a pod that believes in using every card we own, so even if a card is officially banned in Commander by the Commander Rules Committee (before they recently disbanded) or Wizards of the Coast, we still use them. (I feel the need to mention that I primarily play against my mother, who was a Magic: The Gathering player from the early days and does not believe in mercy.) Naturally, if you play with a specific group, you can talk to them about in-pod bans and allowances, but if you play against random people, it’s probably best to listen to the existing banlist. Of course, with WOTC in charge of the bans now, there’s going to be a whole power scaling thing... Lowkey, this format is kind of a mess right now because people lost their ever-loving minds recently. [9] But this is a post about pop culture occultism, not...that mess, so let’s move on!

For the rest of this post, let’s step through a theoretical Modal Commander Servitor. We’ll pick Yorion, Sky Nomad [7] because I feel bad for it. Although it can’t be a Companion, it’s still entirely legal as a Commander! Yorion is a White and Blue Legendary Bird Serpent for five mana, getting up into the pricier side of a Commander. It has four power and five toughness, meaning it can hit your opponents decently hard and take a pretty big hit. It has the Flying keyword, meaning that it can only be blocked by creatures with the Flying and/or Reach keywords. When it enters the battlefield, you get to exile any number of other, nonland permanents that you both own and control; they then come back to the battlefield at the beginning of your next end step. This is commonly referred to in MTG as “blinking”.

So this is pretty good, at least to me. You can bring it into the battlefield and exile any number of things that also have “enters the battlefield” triggers to get them to pop off once more. And looking at Yorion’s EDHRec page, a lot of people had the same idea. As of writing this, there are over one thousand decks on EDHRec that focus around blinking with Yorion at the helm. But blinking isn’t the only thing Yorion can do. Plenty of deck themes also feature cantrips (cards that draw you cards in addition to doing something else), those damned Persistent Petitioners (who can make your opponents mill their deck until they die from running out of cards), cloning, Flying, and so on, though none of them have nearly the number of Yorion decks that blinking does. Personally, I’d build a Bird deck, because I’m predictable and like Typal decks. I would add cards like Skycat Sovereign, Watcher of the Spheres, Favorable Winds, and other cards meant to boost Birds or Flying creatures. Ultimately, I would focus on making this a functional Commander deck first and foremost, because I’m not going to keep a deck around if it sucks ass. That kind of defeats the point of the Modal Commander Servitor – in order to make it more powerful, you need to use it for both kinds of magic.

So that’s the “Commander” part figured out. Let’s shift focus to the “Servitor” section. I have a fairly quick yet simultaneously detailed approach to making servitors. [10] The important things to emphasize when building this Modal Commander Servitor are to name the servitor for the card (including any epithets or surnames on the card you’re using), to give them the ability to draw on the cards/resources in their Commander deck, and to specify that your Modal Commander Servitor is just that when you are speaking it into existence. Give them the ability to adapt and whatnot.

So now we’ve got a Modal Commander Servitor. Personally, I would focus on pouring energy into it and giving it simple tasks at first so it can get its feet under it. Being spontaneously brought into existence is disorienting, even for things that can’t think for themselves and aren’t sentient, so I give my servitors a chance to exist and hang out in their “dismissed”/hibernation state so they can get used to existing.

Now, let’s talk about potential specificity. Even though I keep my Modal Commander Servitors extremely vague and adaptable, you can outline the particular modes you need them to function in more specifically. For example, Yorion can be given different “modes” focusing on categories of magic typically aligned with White and Blue, such as protection, scouting, travel, and elemental air and water. This can help if you want the Modal Commander Servitor to be more specific than “do whatever”. If you follow the “all entities are ultimately facets of a bigger entity” approach, you could have Yorion channel parts of the Bird overspirit or the Serpent overspirit, if that’s your spiritual cup of tea.

Ultimately, the point of the Modal Commander Servitor is adaptation and flexibility. Sometimes, you just need to outsource a problem and you don’t have the time to make a more specific Guy for it, but if you already have one of these handy, you can just point them at the issue and wait to see what happens.

I hope you enjoyed this post! It got...pretty long, but I think that’s ultimately for the best, since it enabled me to pack more detail in. If you end up doing this, please let me know what you do and how it goes! I’m eager to see what other people experience with this deeply UPG-based approach to servitor creation and usage.

Citations, Resources, And Further Reading

[1] “Jasper’s Servitor/Thoughtform Resource Post”, compiled on Tumblr by jasper-pagan-witch: https://jasper-pagan-witch.tumblr.com/post/762988504970100736/jaspers-servitorthoughtform-resource-post

[2] “Commander (format)” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Commander_(format)

[3] “Planeswalker” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Planeswalker

[4] “Modal” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Modal

[5] “Bria, Riptide Rogue (Commander) – Otter” and “Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow (Commander) – Ninjutsu” on EDHRec: https://edhrec.com/commanders/bria-riptide-rogue/otter and https://edhrec.com/commanders/yuriko-the-tigers-shadow/ninjutsu

[6] “Lutri” on the MTG wiki, compiled by Fandom users, through a Breezewiki mirror: https://antifandom.com/mtg/wiki/Lutri

[7] “Yorion, Sky Nomad” on Scryfall: https://scryfall.com/card/mul/64/yorion-sky-nomad

[8] “All Companions” on EDHRec: https://edhrec.com/companions

[9] “On the Future of Commander” on the official Magic: The Gathering website, by Wizards of the Coast: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/on-the-future-of-commander

[10] “Entity Creation Worksheet” adapted on Tumblr by jasper-pagan-witch: https://jasper-grimoire.tumblr.com/post/763362895377694720

Condensed Chaos: an introduction to chaos magic by Phil Hine: A good beginner primer on chaos magic, with a fairly extensive chapter on servitors/thoughtforms and a willingness to explain things that I just gloss over and build red string boards about.

Magickal Servitors: Create Your Own Spirits to Attract Pleasure, Power and Prosperity by Damon Brand: A very thorough book on servitor creation, though not necessarily from a chaos magic lens. I found it very funny to read how much the author was frothing at the mouth about chaos magic. Yet, it’s still hands-down the best book dedicated entirely to servitor creation that I’ve read thus far.

EDHRec, a website for comparing Commanders and seeing the most commonly used cards in particular decks: https://edhrec.com/

Scryfall, an MTG card searching database: https://scryfall.com/

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Do you utilize servitors or thoughtforms in your craft/practice?

Yes (only ones I make)

Yes (only ones made by other people)

Yes (regardless of origin)

No, that ain't my thing

No, but I'm interested in starting to do so

Nuance/bald/vanilla extract button

Voting ended onOct 2, 2024

I'm curious about how common my own experiences are and I understand that a Tumblr poll is still incredibly biased, but we all love to press buttons so I figured I would make one anyhow.