Magic Forums

I've been trying to follow the movements of magical creatures (as incorporeal beings) between the Otherworld and our world, hoping maybe I can use new kinds of magic myself in the process. As I study legends of magical creatures I notice places where they seem to break into our world. I think other magical-folk do too... there seems to be a lot of spellwork surrounding faeries, dragons and merfolk. I say, "why not other creatures, too?" So I started keeping a sort of "bestiary", writing down the names of lots of different magical beasts along with their biological functions in the world of fiction, and I record the subtle ways I've seen them pop up in our world.

For example I've been intensively studying vampires and werewolves (NOT the 'Twilight' kinds) and I've noticed them surfacing as close as my hometown. There are a lot of different kinds of vampires and werewolves in stories and in real life, but this is what I've especially noticed: Vampires in our world tend to be emotionally manipulative people who drain others of their well-being via rape, abuse and sometimes outright stealing. "Internet trolls" are vampires: they have a need to "dominate" others and gain a sort of sustenance from inciting negative emotions in them. Werewolves are a more mixed bunch, but they tend to be people who shed their inhibitions and revert to a primal, feral state, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Involuntary werewolves especially interest me as I find them very frightening, and there was a sort of werewolf-attack in my hometown not long ago when a schizophrenic man blacked out and killed several people. You can find historical examples of these creatures breaking into our world in similar ways - for example ancient ulvenhast & berserker warriors manifested werewolves, as did patients with "Clinical Lycanthropy" being studied in asylums, and the femme-fatales and don-juans who caused poets to fall under their spell and grow gaunt and pale with obsessive passion (sometimes even killing themselves), manifested vampires.

It also seems like magical creatures, especially the more beast-like ones, share their energy with certain animals in our world. For example dragons partly manifest in our world as crocodiles and snakes, and phoenixes partly manifest in our world as falcons and peacocks. Similarly a composite creature like a gryphon combines both the energies of eagles and lions (and possible other birds and felines). This is where it kind of enters into magic working with spirit animal guides/guardians, which is one of the first types of magic I've tried.

I'm looking into how you can do magic involving fantastic creatures. There are pages on this site dedicated to magic with faeries, merfolk, dragons, werewolves and vampires. Most of it is just whimsy and stuff from books/television (not that there's anything wrong with that), but some of it is pretty intriguing. I have a bunch of ideas for spells involving things like turning a feather into a "phoenix feather" by taking a falcon or peacock feather and charging it with energy from a fire (possibly burning ash-wood and mistletoe in the fire and smudging the feather with the ashes). Then you can use the feather for spells/charms involving things associated with the magic power of the phoenix, like illumination & rebirth. I haven't really tried any of these ideas yet, though. Partly because I'm not really that sure about how to tap into that part of the magical-energy network encompassing fantastic creatures, and partly because I like to learn as much as I can about these creatures and kind of "study them from afar" before I actually start trying to come in contact with them (as spirits visiting from the Otherworld, not tangible living creatures), because I feel like these creatures should be treated with due respect. Remember 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban', and what happened to the student who tried to approach the hyppogriff without first bowing his head to it as he was instructed! The Harry Potter series is fictional and has nothing to do with how the magical world actually works (in fact as I write this I am yet to read all 7 books or see all 7 movies) but the series does have a lot of little things that can be seen as allegories, fables and morals for both magical and non-magical things in our world.

I'd really like to hear from someone else who does magic involving fantastic creatures or has a keen interest in folktales involving these creatures (as I do, going way back to before I started doing magic myself). I am by no means an expert on the subject and there are probably a lot of other ways to view the relation between the world of magical creatures and the world of the mundane, but it's still one of my favorite subjects to talk about. If you have any ideas about it, feel free to share!