Persona

Clothing, magic, and identity

The other night I got into a conversation with a friend about how clothing can be used to help a person fit into a community. The way I see it is clothing is another tool in your magical arsenal that you can use. We use clothing everyday and we also look at how other people are using clothing to determine if those people fit in with our respective outlook. I think of clothing as a symbol, and an indicator of a lot of other information about person. That person over there? She's wearing a business suit, so she's either working in a corporate job, or is a self-employed entrepreneur. That person over there, he's wearing a pair of denim jeans, work boots, and a t-shirt. He's either working in construction, or in a tech company. Now the only problem with what I've just written is that we're judging what those people do (and to a lesser extent who they are) by the clothes they wear and we could be completely wrong...and yet people do this all the time, and the enterprising magician is aware of this and has clothing for different occasions, in order to fit in with whatever type of situation s/he is in...or stand out as the occasion warrants. Watch the video below, where I discuss this more and then tell me what you think. Do you use clothing in your magical work, and if so, what do you do?