This is your invitation to magic. To visit magic. To return to magic, again and again.
And to one day stay and never leave.
This is your permission to enter. To dip your toe, or completely immerse.
To explore traditions and follow or to forge a path out into the unknown, following no rules or teachings.
Painting by Karin Edman.
Magic is as old as the self aware mind. Magic is an altered state. And you can enter it, you are allowed to enter it, you are invited to enter it even if you need to use the alibi of role-play to do so. Magic is for you and no one needs to know how seriously or non-seriously you take it.
You don’t need to leave it behind.
Not when you stop playing and become yourself again.
Not when you become older and wiser.
Not when you go back to your regular life.
Never.
You don’t ever need to leave.
Painting by Karin Edman.
We talk about entering the magic circle when we go to a larp, and we talk about leaving it. But there are other ways for magic to exist in your life.
Like a parallel universe, just on the other side of the thinnest of veils.
Like a double meaning to the tasks you undertake.
Like a special room inside your mind, that you share with others or that you keep private.
The way I see it, you don’t need anyone’s permission to start living with magic.
Not from a living person, and not from a manual written by a dead historical person.
Magic will be personal anyway.
Never let anyone else gate keep you from connecting with magic. They don’t own that bond, you do.
You do.
Painting by Karin Edman.
Manuals and grimoires and magic books and traditions are not THE truth, just a truth. It was hopefully true for the writers, the makers, the members, doesn’t mean it has to be true to you.
Larp is fiction, but fiction can inspire real life choices.
By larping witches, mages, magic users, sorcerers, völvas, druids we can try with our physical bodies to move through so many strands of magic and see if they resonate with us.
You are invited.
Painting by Karin Edman.
Cover Photo: Close-up of painting by Karin Edman.
This article will be published in the upcoming companion book Book of Magic and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Edman, Karin. “This is an Invitation to Larp.” In Book of Magic, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021. (In press).
