Photographed by Mark Wynn for the Dark Door Roleplaying Club In so doing, it undermines human-centred accounts of play as an activity that imposes meaning on the world and instead reveals the ways in which play is responsive to, and emerges from, a world outside, or beyond, the human.Ī ritual in larp. It creates and collapses physical, social and metaphysical borders. Taking seriously the word “magic” in the idea of the magic circle, I follow Chris Gosden’s definition of magic as a philosophy and practice that emphasizes human connections with the universe, that enacts a continuity between human will or action and the world around us, as well as the converse of this idea: “magic allows the universe to enter us.” 6 Whereas the discussion of the magic circle in Game Studies tends to follow Huizinga’s use of the term as an idealism enacted in the field of human culture, this article considers the magic circle as a material prop in the occult tradition. The anthropologist Victor Turner suggests just such a potential for what he calls the “wheel of play”, arguing that it reveals the possibility of “restructuring of what our culture states to be reality.” 5 In its appeal to metaphysics, my reading draws on the long history of the magic circle outside of Game Studies, where it is understood as a practice (both real and imagined) of witchcraft, sorcery and ritual, a way to break down barriers between the natural and the supernatural, or to commune with more-than-human entities. In suggesting that the magic circle, understood in this way, erects and disrupts ontological boundaries, I engage a metaphysical rather than social argument about the ways in which play might disrupt players’ worlds. The word also retains some of its modern scientific meaning, suggesting the material, practical and systemic applications of the magic circle. In identifying the magic circle as a technology, I evoke the Greek root of the word: tekhne, which means an art or a craft. However, I argue that the magic circle is not only a metaphor for understanding the boundaries of play it is a technology that paradoxically erects and disturbs ontological divisions and a ritual technique that enacts ⎯ as do many forms of magic ⎯ a “reciprocal participation between people and things.” 4 Drawing on speculative and animist philosophies, I seek to shift discussion away from anthropocentric ideas of play and consider, instead, the magic circle as a technology through which mutual participation and mutual immersion between “world” and “player” is revealed. 3 This article builds on the understanding of this broad conception of the magic circle as a way of understanding the interactions, participation and meanings generated by games. 2 As Eric Zimmerman clarifies, the magic circle is the “idea” that when games are played, new meanings are generated. 1 Jaakko Stenros’ ‘defense’ of the magic circle expands its metaphorical utility to explain the psychological bubble created during gameplay, the social contracts that frame the action of gameplay and the demarcation of the sites or space of gameplay. The concept of the magic circle in Game Studies, where it is deployed as a metaphor to discuss the boundaries of play, has been at times lauded as indispensable and at others maligned as defunct.
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