Magical practice has long been shaped by its visual and narrative representations, from religious iconography to fantasy cinema. With the rise of Japanese video games as a global cultural force, these imaginaries have found a new and highly interactive form. This paper asks how Japanese video games mediate occult aesthetics and how players translate these aesthetics into ritual practice. I focus on titles such as Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, and The World Ends With You, which draw on diverse esoteric sources, including Western occult traditions, Japanese folklore, tarot, or Jungian archetypes, and explore how these symbolic worlds are reinterpreted by contemporary practitioners.

Grounded in frameworks from media anthropology and the study of digital religions, I employ a mixed methodology that combines narrative analysis of selected games with digital anthropology and practitioner interviews. The ethnographic component is based primarily on online discussion boards and communities (such as Reddit and Discord, ~80% of the data), supplemented by live interviews with practitioners (~20%). This dual approach highlights how players not only consume occult imagery but also ritualize and integrate it into lived practices.

By situating these practices within theories of mythopoesis and lived religion, I argue that Japanese video games function as mythopoetic toolkits: they do not merely reproduce occult aesthetics but actively shape how magic is imagined, enacted, and personalized in the digital age.

Authors:
Andrej Kapcar, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic

About the Presenter(s)
Andrej Kapcar's academic background includes a BA in Archaeology, MAs in Economics, Archaeology and Comparative religions and a PhD in Archaeology.

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