#queer magic

I've been thinking of making an updated, transparent version of my original Pride Protection Sigil for a while now, so I figured Pride Month was a perfect moment for it! I remade the shapes I could in photoshop, copied the thorny vines from the original, and then made a bunch of different community ones (see more under the cut).

I've designed this sigil as a protection for the entire rainbow community. You can print it out or redraw it yourself. Place a candle over it, use it as a base of a crystal grid, place it on your altar and meditate, make it the centre of a (digital) moodboard, whatever feels right for you.

The centre of the sigil is the Progress Pride flag, symbolizing our community (you can redraw the sigil and place a different flag inside, if you wish to focus on a specific part of the community). Around it is a black circle (protection, community) which is made by five stickfigures holding hands (people, community). Around them is a square (protection) and then a ring of intertwined briar branches with the thorns pointing outwards (again, protection). On the right side I also snuck the rune Thurisaz (briar, protection) into the ring of briar branches. The pentacle in the centre stands for magic as well as, surprise, protection. Customize this for whatever you need, the pentacle is optional, place more stickfigures, change the flag, whatever makes it work for you.

after Nikolai Kalmakov

CHAPTER ONE: WELCOME TO THE CONCRETE JUNGLE, WHERE MAGIC NEVER SLEEPS

magic isn’t just for the deep woods and moss-covered stones. it’s not limited to candlelit covens or ancient runes etched in a sacred grove. magic is where you are. in the humming neon signs, the flickering streetlamps, the rhythm of bus doors opening and closing, in the energy of walking amongst a crowd on a busy street.

urban magic is about finding the mystical in the mundane, harnessing the city’s restless energy, and using every graffiti tag, liminal space, cracked pavement, and forgotten coin as a tool for enchantment. the city is alive—a churning, breathing, chaotic organism—and if you listen closely, it’s whispering spells in the wind between skyscrapers.

this isn’t some high-brow, ceremonial magic doctrine. here, we work with sigils written on coffee shop napkins, metro card protection spells, and phone screens charged as scrying mirrors. this is magic for the streets, for the punks, for the witches in walk-ups and studio apartments, for the ones who find the divine in the hum of a dive bar at 3 AM.

WHAT MAKES URBAN MAGIC DIFFERENT?

the biggest shift between traditional and urban magic is the environment. instead of sacred groves, we have community gardens. instead of rivers, we have storm drains. instead of bonfires, we have neon lights and power grids pulsing with raw electricity.

but just because the setting is different doesn’t mean the magic is weaker. city magic is potent as hell, because it’s charged with movement, history, technology, and millions of lives overlapping in real-time.

ELEMENTS IN AN URBAN CONTEXT:

• earth → concrete, bricks, asphalt, parks and park dirt

• air → the wind between high-rises, the whispers of overheard conversations, the endless streams of information moving across the city

• fire → electricity, neon lights, the heat of a crowded bus, a match or lighter

• water → rain pooling in the streets, sewer systems, fountains in public squares, water dripping from rooftops

• spirit → the city itself, the collective energy of its people, the ghosts in old buildings, the echoes of everyone who’s walked these streets before you

this practice isn’t about forcing the old ways into a modern setting. it’s about adapting magic so that it fits your world, your reality, your city.

THEORY & FRAMEWORK: CHAOS MAGIC, QUEER MAGIC, AND CITY SPELLS

urban magic thrives on three key principles:

1. ADAPTATION – use what’s around you. city witches need to be resourceful as hell. your “wand” can be a pen, a drumstick, or a crowbar if that’s what speaks to you (though a crowbar is a little extreme). your “altar” can be a windowsill, a shoebox, or even temporary like the back of a bus seat where you traced a sigil in the condensation.

2. INGENUITY – urban magic is subtle, fast, and often disguised. your ritual circle might be drawn in spilled coffee, your sigils hidden in street art, your glamour spells worked through fashion choices and body language.

3. INTERACTION – the city is alive. talk to it. work with the spirits of your apartment building, the crows and raven and wandering city cats who see a lot, the graffiti messages that seem to answer your questions in cryptic scrawls, street names that feel like answers to questions. trust your gut, keep watch for the synchronicity

MAGICAL SYSTEMS THAT THRIVE IN THE CITY:

1. CHAOS MAGIC: THE DIY APPROACH TO WITCHCRAFT

urban magic truthfully falls under the umbrella of chaos magic.

chaos magic is sort of like punk rock spellwork. no rules except what works. it’s the belief that magic isn’t just about ancient texts and strict traditions—it’s about belief as a tool. hacking reality, using symbols, and experimenting with what actually gets results. if something stops working you chuck it and move on to something new.

• create sigils from street signs, corporate logos, and subway maps.

• use “reality hacking” spells—like placing intent in a QR code or whispering an incantation into a social media post before it goes viral.

• swap out outdated correspondences for modern tools—your phone can be your scrying mirror, your router a beacon for intention-setting.

chaos magic thrives in the city because cities are chaotic. they’re full of random encounters, glitches, synchronicities waiting to be tapped into.

2. QUEER MAGIC: BREAKING RULES, BENDING REALITY

witchcraft has always been the domain of outsiders, rebels, and the marginalized. queer magic embraces fluidity, resistance, and radical self-expression.

• use genderfluid deities, archetypes, and spirits in your workings.

• cast spells at drag shows, pride marches, and underground raves—because those are modern sacred spaces.

• turn self-love into a spell, defying the narratives that say queer people don’t deserve power, joy, or love.

urban queer magic is loud, unapologetic, and built on the bones of those who paved the way before.

TOOLS & MATERIALS: USING THE CITY AS YOUR SPELLBOOK

urban witches don’t need fancy supplies. we use:

• 📱 smart phones – scrying mirrors, digital sigil boards, enchanted playlists

• 🎫 metro cards & transit tickets – protection charms, travel blessings

• 🗝 keys – for unlocking opportunities, closing doors that need to stay shut

• 🖋 pens & sharpies – sigil-making, graffiti spellwork

• 🪙 spare change – prosperity charms, offerings to city spirits

• 🧾 receipts – paper magic, petition spells, glamour workings

if it exists in your daily life, it can be a tool.

EVERYDAY SPELLS & RITUALS

🔮 PROTECTION SPELLS FOR NAVIGATING CITY LIFE

• “doorway ward” – rub salt along your threshold, whispering “no harm may cross this line.”

• “metro shield” – imagine a glowing energy bubble around you before stepping onto public transit.

💰 PROSPERITY & SUCCESS SPELLS

• “lucky coin” – pick up a found coin, say “bring me fortune,” and carry it for a week.

• “resume enchantment” – anoint your job applications with cinnamon for luck before sending.

💡 HACKING REALITY WITH CHAOS MAGIC

• “digital sigils” – set a sigil as your phone wallpaper and charge it every time you unlock your screen.

• “parking spell” – whisper “open the way” as you search for a spot—watch as one appears.

🌀 COMMUNITY SPELLS & URBAN COLLECTIVE MAGIC

• “city-wide sigil work” – drop the same symbol in different places and see what manifests.

• “full moon offerings” – leave a quarter at a crossroads to honor the city’s spirits.

THE CITY IS YOUR ALTAR

this is your grimoire, your spellbook, your guide to turning the city into a magical playground. don’t just live in it—work with it, enchant it, let it enchant you back.

We all see it all the time. This plant has masculine energy. This crystal enhances feminine power. This ritual balances masculine and feminine forces. But what does any of that really mean?

After all, a plant does not have a gender. A crystal does not have a gender. Elements, planets, and celestial bodies do not have genders. So why is everything broken down into gendered categories in modern occult spaces?

The short answer: "Masculine" and "feminine" are shorthand terms that were developed by medieval alchemists, but modern occultists have lost that original context, leading to one-dimensional and reductive use of these terms.

The long answer: This model comes to us from Hermeticism by way of medieval alchemists. In the Hermetic model, the universe (or Prima Materia or Source or whatever) is a single whole divided into polarities -- sets of equal but opposite forces.

Here's a quote from the book Real Alchemy by Robert Allen Bartlett that I think explains this well:

"One of the earliest observations of Nature was that everything has its opposite -- day/night, male/female, hot/cold, wet/dry. The One divides into active and passive modes, with the active energy constituting the energies of life, and the passive one of the energy of matter.”

This idea was ridiculously widespread in the Middle Ages. To give just one example, Western traditional medicine (i.e., before modern medicine) was based on balancing the four humours by balancing opposite forces. So if you have inflammation, which is a hot and wet condition, you would treat it with herbal remedies that are cold and dry.

Early Hermeticists and alchemists classified different natural forces as either active or passive. Heat is active, cold is passive. Light is active, dark is passive. Fire (the force of transformation in alchemy) is active, while water (the universal solvent in alchemy) is passive. You get the idea.

Because of gender stereotypes in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, activeness eventually became associated with masculinity, and passiveness eventually became associated with femininity. You can still see this in old medical texts: Male bodies are hot and wet, but female bodies are cold and dry, so the medieval doctor should choose his treatment accordingly.

This has more to do with medieval European issues around gender than with nature or magic. My point here is that the gender stuff isn't literal: the Hermeticists did not literally believe that the planet Venus is female or that iron is male. Gendered terms were used as a shorthand to name opposites.

And even within medieval alchemical sources, gender is a spectrum! Let's take the elements as an example:

According to Bartlett, fire is the most active (“masculine”) element, while air is active but less active than fire. Water and earth are both considered passive (“feminine”) elements, but water is less passive/feminine than earth.

So, to recap: Hermetics believe in a perfect whole divided into polar opposites. Alchemists, doctors, and ceremonial magicians love this idea and run with it. Masculine/feminine is just one of many ways to describe these opposite forces. You could just as easily use active/passive to mean the same thing. And even in medieval times, each of these pairs of opposites was understood as a spectrum, with most energies falling somewhere between the two extremes.

The problem is that we've been playing a centuries-long game of telephone. Victorian occultists who were referencing Renaissance grimoires and still working in a vaguely Hermetic framework write in their books that, for example, roses have feminine qualities. A Wiccan author writing in the 1980s comes across this during their research and includes it in their book, but now it's one step further removed from that context. Several other authors repeat the claim that rose is feminine, all citing that one book from the '80s. Flash forward to 2025, and this claim is so removed from the original context that some witches genuinely believe rose is A Girl Flower because of some intangible Girlness inherent to the plant.

What does this mean for modern witches? Honestly, I think that kind of depends on the witch.

If you find working with masculine/feminine classifications helpful, I don't necessarily think you need to throw out that model. Just make sure you understand the background of these terms and remember that masculine/feminine in a magical sense is not the same as masculine/feminine in a gender sense. Maybe read up on Hermeticism, alchemy, and the other medieval and Renaissance occult systems that originated this model. Also, think about how using gendered terms in your practice is connected to your relationship with gender. How are you making space for nonbinary and agender energies and identities?

If you want to work with pairs of opposites but get weirded out by all the gender stuff, why not use a different polarity like active/passive or hot/cold to classify things instead? (This is how I classify herbs in my Southern Folk Magic practice.)

I've probably posted about this before but I'm steadily trying to learn about glamour magic again since some of my guides are pulling me towards it and I'm honestly getting increasingly frustrated. All the information I find revolves around makeup, which is a huge sensory problem for me, and femininity, which is a growing point of dysphoria for me. The Divine Feminine keeps coming up but there is no acknowledgement of masculinity or The Divine Masculine or how to practice glamour magic as a partially masculine individual. As a genderqueer individual, I don't want to abandon my masculine identity for this practice but I can't find any information on glamour magic that isn't pushing for hyper femininity. I have no problem if that's what makes you happy and if being hyper feminine gives you your power back but that's not something that brings me joy and it's a little frustrating that I can't find any other information.

Edit: I also don't see anything regarding fatness or alternative styles. I just see conventional attractiveness and thinner individuals and it's.. disheartening as a fat person who likes leaning into alternative fashion.