The following article first saw digital print over on ChaosMagick.Com in late summer 2022, and while it may appear to have a far more whimsical tone than my other output there, much can be learned should you take the time to read right to the end. Because while the occult has been my main driving force over the last twenty or so years, I did once have a life outside of magick. Back then it was not unusual to see me working on my Warhammer Chaos army, or using dwarven satchel charges to turn the big bad dragon inside out from its rear end forward. I am the sum of experience, mundane and mystical, so my sorcery is too.

Do The LARP
Fake it Before You Make it
By Gavin Fox

It is fair to argue that live action roleplaying is a mainstay of modern gaming culture. Akin perhaps to improvisational theatre, though with a heavy overlay of rules and restrictions, anyone who has ever swung a foam sword in anger knows just how seriously LARPers take this seemingly misunderstood hobby. There are as many groups as fantasy universes to explore, and everything from Cthulhu to Harry Potter is represented somewhere along the way. It ties in with cosplay too, though that association is usually downplayed by both groups, sometimes to comedic effect.

Much like pop culture sorcery in general this interest in collective worldbuilding can seep through into everyday life, casting the cold grey cityscape in whatever Technicolor hue most closely matches the spirit of the chosen liminal space. Though an avid analogue gamer I have always been on the fringes of LARP culture, rarely getting as involved as my peers in roleplaying away from the tabletop. But when I eventually made a move towards that more public of hobbies I threw myself into it wholesale, at least until boredom diverted my gaze to other things.

A dogged Dungeons and Dragons murder hobo since my mid to late teens, it was Vampire the Masquerade as well as a handful of other World of Darkness games which saw me act my way through various supposedly deadly situations in spare rooms and rented halls all across the UK capital. The lack of plastic armour and foam axes required to LARP within a universe whose origins lay just slightly to the left of our own gave the whole operation an air of legitimacy that left me wondering exactly how far a person could run with a drastically different method of viewing their everyday life.

Unfortunately, far from empowering my first forays into magick, as it has with others who explored the World of Darkness franchise in their teens, that question has instead haunted me ever since. Because if becoming a student of the occult is typified by both an understanding of ritual and an alternative viewpoint on the nature of reality then it does not necessarily differ from roleplaying in any real sense. Rulebooks must be absorbed, character classes chosen and entire pantheons of godforms appeased or cajoled into assisting with a given goal.

The assumed presence of an intelligent creator with a millennia spanning grand plan mirrors the role of the dungeon master, and the trials humanity endures could easily be dismissed as steps along the admittedly anthropocentric hero’s journey. Various communities have coalesced around the exploration of one or more aspects of real world mysticism. This mirrors the schools of magick found in most fantasy realms, while those who prefer to work within the limits of hard science can instead adapt quantum physics to explain the spooky action in their lives.

Add to this the illusion of agency that casting spells or summoning spirits gives the truly powerless individual and it is not difficult to reduce everything we do to a game in all but name, one mistaken for an actual way of life. And while some may argue that the results we generate through the many and varied operations attempted in this pursuit of control add legitimacy to the magickian’s actions, elevating their efforts beyond simply acting like a badass and into some undefined supernatural space where all those spells really work, this need not be the case.

Instead when they stand outside the circle all the candles, robes and foul smelling incense are just window dressing designed to summon the magick dwelling within us already. Worse, a core tenet of modern occultism is the requirement to do everything possible in the mundane world to ease the path of manifestation. As a result there is always a chance that the dice would have fallen in the occultist’s favour regardless of any spirit input or metaphysical endeavours, no matter how adeptly applied.

It may all just be headology, as certain Lancre witches are known to claim, and no matter the outcome it is impossible to know what fate already had planned before the ritual was cast. That is not to say that magick as an idea is a lie, just that our assumptions about its separateness from human experience are deeply flawed. Reframing ritual as a purely subjective tool which functions internally as opposed to treating all those choreographed movements and barbaric phrases as the key to some external energy source can only be beneficial.

Not only does it remove the persistent assumption that we are the latest custodians of an ancient and mostly forgotten tradition, an argument which is easily crushed by the weight of historical evidence, but it also fosters freedom of choice with regards to what path to follow. Within said paradigm even the most massive and terrible godforms become little better than external complexes of internal meaning, though this does not render them any less dangerous to the inexperienced practitioner.

Plus, for those like myself who prefer to explain the workings of reality through a more digital model, this overarching nihilism still remains true. All code needs a creator, after all, and seeing deity as a by-product of our day to day lives actually empowers the magickian against the idea of vastly powerful external spirits. If our universe is made up exclusively of data in various states then it follows that every fake ritual and playacted offering will still imprint meaning regardless of how others would perceive the legitimacy of those ideas.

The trick is faking it until you make it, a statement that proves to be as true in the supernatural realm as it is anywhere else. Evidence of this can be found when looking at the concept of crisis magick, the application of desperate sorcery towards surviving an otherwise unwinnable or highly time sensitive situation. Here we see the ritual carried by the inner desperation of the occultist themselves as opposed to the trinkets they surround themselves with, and perhaps this proves that LARPing as an all powerful magus may indeed force the universe to wake up and take notice of their plight.

The method proves to be far less important than intent in cases where results are desperately needed, and a by any means necessary approach that disregards form in favour of function seems to create the best chance for success. Of course I am not saying that such brutal reductionism is definitely true, nor do I honestly believe our place in the universe to be so bleak. But my mind does wander from time to time and when it does I find myself travelling back to that once familiar World of Darkness, before asking the very same questions of magick as I did all those years ago.