“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” -Roald Dahl

Doctor Strange, Marvel Comics’ Sorcerer Supreme.

Reimu Hakurei, Touhou Project’s Shrine Maiden of Paradise.

Keeping the world safe means being vigilant of its many dangers, especially the supernatural. And somewhere between the borders of reality are two masters of the mystic arts, who have worked all their lives rigorously to keep all that is otherworldly out, and send them back from whence they came. Powered by spirits and spherical objects, it’s time for the magic of the east and the west to duke it out! Will Doctor Strange find himself exterminated, or will Reimu be menaced by magic? It’s time to find out in this DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

Canon Explanation & Material Used

As always, Earth-616 is our main priority for Doctor Strange. However, due to a character of his nature, it is important that we go over a few things to make sure there isn’t any confusion when going into or walking away from the blog. Strange is a highly prominent and longstanding magic user, and as a result, has had a very extensive history of taking on different forms and using various items. For completion’s sake, we will be talking about virtually all of this, but that does not mean all of it will be used in the fight. We will specify, usually at the end of whatever paragraph, what is standard to Strange vs what he has lost/broke, and forms will also be noted as such.

As for Touhou, it’s a bit more complicated, but still relatively easy to understand! For Touhou’s analysis we shall be focusing solely on official, canon works by or sanctioned by Team Shanghai Alice, also known as series creator, ZUN (real name Jun’ya Ōta). Anything made by ZUN, or made with direct collaboration with ZUN (such as the Touhou manga & magazines, or the games made by Twilight Frontier) is official material, and free reign! This covers any of the official games, print works, manga, the stories contained within the music CDs (yes, those are a thing), as well as any websites, blogs, posts, illustrations, events, interviews and statements made by ZUN himself will be utilized in this blog. A list of much of the officially created content of the series can be easily found on the Touhou Wiki. While there has been some contention on the canonicity of the first 5 games of the series, the “PC-98” era, we will be taking it into account, as it’s been referenced multiple times within the Windows era, and ZUN himself has directly said that PC-98 is canon to Windows, as long as the content doesn’t contradict canon, in which case Windows takes priority, which makes it perfectly fine to use in analysis.

We will also be including a small handful of “non-canon” or “unofficial” material, but specifically with strong involvement from ZUN. Such as the appearances of Touhou characters in the first two titles of the Seihou Project series, being Shuusou Gyoku and Kioh Gyoku, which is a sister series to Touhou released between Touhou 5 and 6, had direct involvement from ZUN in the Touhou character’s appearances, and was even specifically requested by him. Genso Narratograph and its Expansion Book will also be included, as while it’s an unofficial TTRPG, ZUN directly wrote new, original character quotes, and the details and lore for the various locations in the game, as well as providing an example story in the book. Seeing as this information was directly written by ZUN, and is all directly supported or expanded information from canon, we shall be taking it into account as well.

It should be noted that some official Touhou print works like Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, and Strange Creators of Outer World, include fan-made doujin works in their pages, however, these materials are not counted as “canon” and are still explicitly noted to be unofficial derivative works. It’s akin to how western comics will occasionally spotlight fanart in between its pages, just showcasing full works and spotlighting them, as these series’ also double as a way to showcase and spotlight fanworks within the community. Thus, the only thing being covered from those magazines will be the official material.

Finally, there is a bit of misconception over Touhou and its “canon”, so let’s get this out of the way quickly. Touhou does not operate on a loose, open canon that’s freely accessible and changeable to anyone, it’s not like Japanese SCP Foundation or anything, and has a distinct “original canon”, being Team Shanghai Alice’s official releases. Touhou does have a very lenient, and open policy for fanworks, allowing for fans to be able to create, share and even sell fanworks and products of the Touhou Project IP as long as they follow guidelines given by ZUN. This allows for Touhou fanworks to be sold at conventions like Reitaisai, online through independent storefronts, and even on digital storefronts like Steam and the various home consoles completely legally! ZUN has even given permission to a handful of major companies to produce “officially licensed” derivative works – Goodsmile’s Touhou Lost Word being an especially well known example – and various other games that have been published and sold physically and digitally.

Basically, Touhou has a free and open license to use and create fan material however you’d like, as long as you follow the (very loose) guidelines, you can create an “officially licensed” derivative work that you can make money off of! This open range approach is what’s helped foster Touhou into the influential juggernaut of the indie scene and pop culture it’s become to this day, the doujin spirit being instrumental to the series’ pop cultural staying power. While this is all nice and great, and many of these fanworks are outright excellent, they fall outside of the confines of what we’re looking at for research, being derivative works, and will not be accounted for in this blog. Only canon, official material here folks! So don’t come in expecting feats from things like Memories of Phantasm, Fantasy Maiden Wars, Lost Word, or Luna Nights!

Special Thanks & Additional Credits

We’d also like to extend a special thank you to those who worked on Bang’s Blog’s Vecna vs Doctor Doom and Dormammu vs Trigon, as we shared a few members on that blog on this one, and were able to exchange notes to help find additional research for Marvel Magic users. We’d also like to thank Mad Dog of Fujiwara, who helped majorly in the early stages of this blog, providing various resources for Touhou and helping fill in a handful of sections, but unfortunately couldn’t work on the blog in its totality. Both of these sides provided invaluable additional research and help, and deserve a special shoutout!

We’d also thank the hardworking translators on the Touhou Wiki and Touhou Patch Center website, for hosting the most up to date translations for the franchise, as many of the uploads on Youtube for footage contain older, less accurate translations, and we frequently sourced their translations on the blog! Seeing as Touhou is a Japanese indie franchise with no official English localization, and we couldn’t take the time to hand record visually every single bit of information across the entire franchise, we regularly link to and source these wikis to give easy access to the most accurate translations in the most convenient way possible! Finally, we have some members to credit for the graphics you’ll be seeing throughout the blog:

Background Graphic (Doctor Strange): Stationsearcher
Background Graphic (Reimu): ishi_yuki
Scaling (Doctor Strange) & Category Graphics: SpaceJellO
Float, Scaling (Reimu) & Combatants Set Graphics: Mudonge
Blog Trailer: Anfang

Background

Doctor Strange

“Where mankind is menaced by magic… Doctor Strange must go to combat it!”

The title of Sorcerer Supreme has been passed down to successors for millions of years. It is a title that means a “practitioner of the mystic or magic arts who has greater skills than all others or commands a greater portion of the ambient magical energies than any other organism on a given world or ‘dimension’”. There have been many names that have sported this title, from the great Agamotto the All-Seeing to… Isaac Newton? And in November of 1930, the next bearer of the title would be born to Eugene and Beverly Strange in Philadelphia. It wasn’t long before the Ancient One decreed that this boy would become the next Sorcerer Supreme, though the world would wait for the young lad to reach adulthood. An incredibly smart and gifted young man, Stephen Strange would immediately become a pre-med student fresh out of high school, racked with guilt over the death of his sister after failing to save her from drowning, making him a much different medical student, more impersonal than most.

Stephen successfully entered a five year residency at New York Hospital, becoming a well-known neurosurgeon well before age 30. His rapid success made him prideful, hardly caring for the patients on a deeper level, only being concerned with the bills that could be paid for his work. How could a man be so cold and callous? It’s simple; the loss of life. Losing his sister was just the start, towards the end of his residency he also lost his mother. And two years later, his father seemed to be up next, growing deathly ill. When it seemed like it would all pile up on Stephen, he closed himself off, and wouldn’t go to visit his deathbed, angering his brother Victor in a heated confrontation that ended with Victor storming out, and running into oncoming traffic, dying in a car crash. Racked with guilt and torment, Stephen placed the body in cold storage, hoping that modern medicine would eventually help bring him back to life.

Like his brother, Stephen later ended up in a car crash of his own. Dr. Nicodemus West, another gifted surgeon, agreed to save his life, and Stephen was saved, though at a cost; the nerves in his hands were severely damaged, cutting his time as a neurosurgeon incredibly short. Still incredibly arrogant, he would not accept being a consultant or assistant, and his life seemed to take a downward spiral, and all his past mistakes seemed to have caught up with him. Nothing he tried, no matter how medically shady it was, seemed to work. He became a scruffy drifter, stumbling across New York and its many bars with no purpose, and almost no money. But all hope was not lost, as he overheard some sailors talk about a healer from Tibet known as the Ancient One, someone who could undoubtedly heal his hands. Using the last of his money, Stephen traveled to Tibet.

The Ancient One wasn’t too keen on helping Stephen with healing his hands, instead offering to teach him magic and mysticism, of which Stephen refused, and decided to leave and not have his time wasted. A blizzard made it so he couldn’t really leave, and Stephen stayed in the palace for a time. In the palace as well was Baron Mordo, the apprentice of the Ancient One, who seemed a bit odd to Stephen, who began to observe him. His skepticism ended up being proven right as he watched Mordo attack his master with necromantic spells, which the Ancient One easily warded off. Stephen confronted Baron Mordo and tried to tell the Ancient One what was happening, but Mordo easily subdued him.

Now amazed by the displays of magic, Stephen had a change of heart, and agreed to learn under the tutelage of the Ancient One, opting to challenge Mordo on his terms. Thrilled, the Ancient One removed his restraints and knew of Mordo’s treachery all along, hoping Stephen would challenge him, for he was someone chosen for a long time to be the next Sorcerer Supreme, becoming priority over far more powerful and legitimate sorcerers. The mantle of the Sorcerer Supreme was ready for its next successor, and he had an apt new name, one where the world was his patient; Doctor Strange.

Reimu Hakurei

“If I just go about things normally, there’s no way I’ll lose.”

In a country far to the east, standing proud on the border between fantasy and reality, one may find themselves face to face with the Hakurei Shrine. Few humans ever come by, it hardly receives any donations, and rumor has it that it is constantly infested with Youkai of all kinds. But it is also the home of the greatest protector of the land of Gensokyo, the Shrine Maiden of Paradise, Reimu Hakurei.

The duties of the Hakurei Shrine Maiden are for the most part quite simple. To gather faith for her God, to carefully protect the balance of Youkai and Humans in Gensokyo, and to prevent any harm from coming to the Great Hakurei Barrier that separates it from the Outside World. Of course, Reimu’s effectiveness in… some of those matters can be contested. (Could at least try to remember the name of the God you’re worshipping though…)

The Hakurei Shrine Maiden is a long lasting and storied role, the position of mediator of Gensokyo, the balancer of humans and youkai, preventing youkai from attacking humans, and preventing humans from becoming youkai. But despite the “role” of a Hakurei Maiden being well known… little is known about the Maidens themselves and their history. Not much is spoken about the previous Shrine Maidens, with glimpses of Reimu’s predecessors few and far between. Whether they’re all related by blood, or appointed by the supernatural is completely unknown. What is known however, is that they performed their duties well… but no Hakurei Maiden has had quite the same impact as Reimu.

If you ask around about the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, chances are you’ll get a ton of different answers, depending on who you ask. Some believe that she’s a complete slacker, more concerned with the Shrine’s reputation than with performing her actual sacred duties. Some might tell you of how ruthless she can be whenever she so much as spots a Youkai she deems worthy of extermination. And some would simply describe how carefree and simple-minded she is. These are, of course, all true in their own way. The only one that truly knows her thoughts and feelings is herself, but all of those elements make up who Reimu is.

But Gensokyo is not always a peaceful land, and once in a while grave Incidents putting their lifestyle in danger may occur, forcing Reimu to immediately jump into action. She may start off not having any idea of what is happening, but she has a knack for always discovering the ones responsible and foiling their plans. From vampires, to ghosts, to demons, to even the Celestials in Heaven and the Gods themselves, none have crossed Reimu’s path without having their ambitions put into a halt. And then, as simple as that, she can be seen hosting parties alongside the troublemakers as if nothing had happened. None even so much as holding a grudge against Reimu for what she did.

Living each day without a care in the world, as if she were floating by. That is the life of Reimu Hakurei. But be warned. If you dare to threaten the land of Fantasy, you’ll quickly learn why she’s known as the Shrine Maiden who can silence even crying children. Or was it the Shrine Maiden who makes silent children start crying?

Experience & Skill

Doctor Strange

Surgery

Strange’s career as a neurosurgeon is unparalleled. He’s been regarded as the greatest surgeon on the planet, performing impossible procedures, being stated to be the only person on the planet capable of performing a surgery to restore Mr. Ventrella’s motor skills. One time, a patient was undergoing a degeneration of the cerebral cortex that is causing seizures, and Strange was the only one qualified to handle the procedure at the moment. He has successfully performed emergency surgery while his hands were still shaky and even on an alien. He has extensive knowledge of the human body, from the process of cell death to performing physical and mystic surgery on his own fatally wounded body while possessing other people’s bodies, successfully saving his own life after his heart had stopped.

Taking things up a notch, Strange once mystically and physically surgically sealed and cut off the Unnameable One, an intangible eldritch entity, into Hulk’s memory cells. This kind of talent goes absurdly beyond just human bodies too. Just look at the time he performed mystic, cosmic surgery on Eternity himself not once, but twice. The first time he held onto the gravity-based hero, known as Gravity, so that those powers could be used as a scalpel and suture to excise the quantum-damaged spacetime from Eternity’s body by slicing that portion of his body off. The second time was performed after using a gem that was a fragment of Eternity, which let Doctor Strange astral project and perform surgery on Eternity on the Astral Plane. With a little help from a somatic casting to keep him portaled outside of Eternity, he was able to complete his operation successfully.

Magic Knowledge

Magic is Strange’s metaphysical might, so powerful and potent that it is not measurable via machines nor does it conform to the laws of science. His knowledge and mastery of the mystic arts are nearly unparalleled. He is repeatedly stated to be the best sorcerer on the planet, and he takes expansive memory courses and supposedly knows millions of spells. It’s no wonder then that he’s known as a master of the mystic arts, which is especially impressive given there are as many forms of mystical arts as there are martial arts and mastery of the mystic arts takes decades of study. This isn’t simply some title, Strange has stated that he has mastery over all mystic arts, even things as specific as the Indian Rope Trick, having trained in the mystic arts for years to the point that they’ve become the deeper meaning to his life.

Hell, Strange is a better magician than doctor these days. Even Mephisto once used magic and had to study decades to become an equal to Doctor Strange, even with an innate, natural talent for it. Doctor Strange is also one of the beings whom Silver Surfer holds in the highest regard in terms of magical cosmic awareness, alongside the Watcher, Odin, Charles Xavier, Mephisto, Doom, Mantis, Death, Eternity, and Galactus. Doctor Strange researches, conjures, and teaches magic daily, a practice that has made him knowledgeable in many, many subsects of magic and other ethereal subjects such as voodoo, chi control, ki in general, and necromancy.

Because of this, he’s an expert in all things zombie-related, interdimensional demons, and knows enough to call out that “Chaos Magic” isn’t real and that it acts more like a magical force granted to Wanda, even rectifying this stance on this and understanding on it later after studying it further. This even extends to black magic, which he trained under Kaluu to learn and even performed “experiments” using the dark arts. In fact, Strange has been described as a master of black magic for as long back as his very first appearance.

When fighting solo, Strange was described as having been ‘rarely ever bested’ in magic, and he’s consistently stated to be more skilled at magic than Doctor Doom. His magic prowess allows him to use common spells such as Crimson Bands, Shield of Seraphim, and Flames of the Faltine at once in quick succession, or chain spells together for deadly combinations. He can perform three spells at once against Daniel Drumm, them being Corelli’s Third-Party Astral Form Reinstatement, Colodor’s Reversal Spell, and Evanador Attack Spell. He can perform six soul-manipulating, binding, and damaging spells in quick succession and some simultaneously. Even when a spell has to travel across dimensions, much of its energy is lost and the remainder can be deflected by the Shield of the Seraphim.

His dedication to his studies never really stopped either. Strange owns books on metaphysicality and arcane secrets and knows incantations in languages that haven’t been spoken for “numberless centuries”. Strange later even learned how to view magic, such as magical entities, as magical theorems of science and math to inspect for breakdowns. Conversely, Stephen can also determine if dimensions are made by or of illogical magic systems. In another instance of understanding a magical system, a sentient one, Strange sublimated himself into an alternate layer of reality, walking between two worlds where he could hear the singing of the magical systems that ran Bigbox, talking to the consciousness of the fail-safe system to come to an agreement. Strange’s plan to save Logan’s soul wouldn’t work if it was clouded in doubt. So, Strange spent 3 weeks researching and 3 weeks meditating so that Wolverine’s soul would save himself.

Once, it was presumed that the Ancient One sent a puzzle box to Doctor Strange after his death, which Strange mystically examined for 3 hours for magical emanations, spells, or astral messages. He then spent 4 weeks exhausting arcane volumes and every spell he knew, plus a hundred new ones, to solve it. Strange thus went 40 days and nights without food or sleep, though it’s possible he only went some of that time without food or sleep and not the whole time that way. In terms of being able to actually mentally retain all of his studies, Strange has extensive knowledge of incredibly complex incantations and can recall them from memory alone. By meditating, Strange’s mind can review hundreds of spells in an instant, analyzing dozens of magical arts, categorizing them as to their intent, validity, and effectiveness.

He can identify virtually any spell or anything akin to magic, such as sigils of possession, symbols by a troll artisan that work with special metal capable of caging and containing magic, and deducing that an alien used specific magic to tear a dimensional rift with some relation to the Dark Dimension with Beast. Strange is also a case consultant and expert witness for crimes involving magical artifacts. Chondu once suggested that Strange begin writing up custom spells to rebuild magic, which he can see is currently far less active. Doctor Strange ends up doing just that in his fight against Nightmare by manipulating leylines to make a custom spell. This is consistent with how, after getting the specific blood components from viking descendants, Strange was able to recreate a specific spell that amplified a ton of zombie vikings.

When it comes to investigations and deductions, Strange can determine if someone is dead or in a mystical coma from missing their Astral Forms, and he’s familiar with psychic imprints left on objects that a man with special powers can “read the memories” of, which is implied to be magic in nature. Given his profession, it’s easy to figure that Strange is a professional at noticing demonic activity. He deduced that a demon hitched itself onto Cyclops, Voodoo and Strange once noticed a possessed man in a crowd, and even when he wasn’t the Sorcerer Supreme, he helped Akihiro identify an infernal force possessing him. Strange can even figure out the steps Black Knight needs to take to undo the evil-corrupting spell within the Ebony Blade.

Overall Experience

And when it comes to the sheer array of threats Strange has faced, he is nearly unparalleled, having done and seen things that no person dead or alive has done, all the while meeting some incredible people across the universe. Born in 1930, Strange has been alive ever since thanks to his longevity granted by Death. Silver Surfer even says Strange is among the wisest beings he knows. Perhaps Strange’s most notable feat that attests to his experience, is when he was called upon by the Vishanti to face the Trinity of Ashes for 5,000 years.

In recent comics, it was actually revealed that the Vishanti completely separated the version of Doctor Strange from the five millenia war from the normal Doctor Strange, dubbed the Warhound Strange. This version of Strange had mastered every possible way to kill a man! As a dimensional gatekeeper who also regularly does paranormal house calls, he has faced all manner of creatures, from demons to mummies, other-dimensional beings like the Mindless Ones, opponents who are exempt from the universe’s laws of magic, Eternity bodyguard monsters (which he fought for days), to the Central Park Dragon. He’s read from books before words existed, and has read every page of the Book of Vishanti, despite it being called endless in pages. In fact, Strange has more supernatural experience than anyone else on Earth.

After having become Sorcerer Supreme, Strange possessed the greatest mystic skill and power in the universe, and he’s far more skilled nowadays in the modern era compared to his early ones. And, the good Doctor has been able to prove this too, such as when he fought a gauntlet of Avengers all at once when Daniel Drumm was possessing them, which included Spider-Man, The Thing, Red Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Thor. Or, how about the time Imperator, who had killed numerous Sorcerer Supremes and had soldiers that were taking on powerful mystics like Wanda, was defeated by Doctor Strange without any magic or spells with some help from Mister Misery while magic was nearly dead.

He’s also well known for fighting and outmaneuvering eldritch beings, conceptual entities, and unholy interdimensional warlords regularly. Some of Stephen’s most notorious nemeses include Umar and Dormammu, Faltinian rulers of the Dark Dimension that are millennia old at the very least (billions of years and eons have also been stated), Shuma-Gorath, who has existed for millions of years at minimum, and Mephisto, an unholy demon that Strange has met in battle many times who claims to be older than time itself. In fact, Strange is able to stand fearlessly before gargantuan abstract cosmic entities like Eternity himself.

Superhero & Teaching Experience

There’s a reason people frequently come to Strange for favors, even if it means dropping in the Sanctum unannounced. His magic expertise has been called upon by countless heroes and even villains, and he has been recruited in saving the world on countless occasions. He’s a member of the Defenders with Silver Surfer, Namor, and Hulk, the New Avengers, the regular Avengers, commanded the Secret Defenders, organized the Midnight Sons, and was a member of the Illuminati shadow superhero organization with Tony, Reed, Namor, T’Challa, Black Bolt, and Xavier / Beast. Eventually, he even commanded the interdimensional hivemind mages known as the Black Priests as their de facto leader.

Stephen also has tons of experience in dealing with interdimensional issues. After T-Ray was lobotomized by Deadpool’s sword mid-dimensional shunt, this fluctuated the sword and sent T-Ray tumbling throughout dimensions, leaking black magic energies that threatened multi-dimensional stability. So, Strange fixed this by having Wade kill monsters and coat his sword in their life essence from different realms to stab back into T-Ray’s head to fix their dimensional integrities. While being chased through alternate dimensions, Strange sicced some Mindless Ones on his alternate universe pursuers to buy some time by passing through a dimension holding them.

Doctor Strange frequently teaches magic, even successfully attempting to teach Reed Richards, famous magic skeptic, magic. Reed treated it too much like science or exact formulas, so he is difficult to teach magic to because of his analytical scientist nature. However, under pressure, he pulls off sorcery using Strange’s teachings. Strange is also a teacher for fellow magic users such as Magik, teaching her how to use her Limbo powers via alchemy spells. Strange also trained Clea to cast the Rings of Ragadorr under duress of the Vapors of Valtorr, where she diverted a portion of concentration to cast Winds of Watoomb to disperse it. Strange tests this again with the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, which was too much for her, but Clea could now recover from the mystic backlash quickly.

Apparently, his times acting as a magic tutor inspired him enough to found the Strange Academy for the next generation of mystics, a school he hides through a spatial compression displacement enchantment with books there that predate time itself. His wisdom itself is unparalleled, as he was able to foresee what the empyrean, false Lords of Shamballah and Maya couldn’t, that a spell wasn’t necessary to ascend humanity and man would purge from within the hearts of humanity on their own agency, not literally kill everyone as they suggested. This ended up showing the Lords that they were fraudulent beings, making them crumble away as they were made to realize that they’re not from a higher reality in actuality.

Magical Skills & Tactics

Naturally, when the average person hears or knows about Doctor Strange’s absurd magical capabilities, it’s hard to envision him as anything other than a man that can handwave his problems away. However, Strange himself certainly wishes it was that easy considering the foes and problems he’s had to contend with, deduce, and outsmart. So, let’s look into different applications of Doctor Strange’s problem solving:

When facing limitations to his magic… One time, it turns out a sealing bottle he willingly entered was actually a demon, meaning his bottle-targeting spells failed to harm it while sealed within it, so Strange used a demon-targeting spell on the bottle to shatter it since the imp entity it conjured was an illusion. Strange has been able to get past a magical lie detector by telling a technical truth to come across as mentally unsound. An early Doctor Strange learned how to do an Astral Plane-exclusive teleporting technique while power-nulled from observing a demon doing what seemed to be teleportation, but he deduced that this was the astral form ignoring distance and physical law through force of will and weaponizes this to shunt the demon into a cage full of Mindless Ones.

When looking for Clea, Doctor Strange got trapped by becoming one with an antimatter dimension, he cast spells of dark arts with reversed names to continue to cast against and attack creatures in a reverse antimatter dimension. When Doctor Strange’s hands were being bound and his mouth was being gagged, it meant that he couldn’t cast “major” spells. However, he could still use the Eye of Agamotto and the Cloak with a thought. Strange’s magic is absorbed by the demon… but Strange deliberately overfeeds the demon so it can be easily popped and banished. The Eye of Agamotto’s light is blasted into Cloak’s world of shadow, outpacing its light absorption as Agamotto’s light is more than it bargained for. Strange force-fed these magic eating slugs so much magic that they went into a food coma, essentially thinking to overload their magic consumption.

When he needs to be cautious… Anticipating a confrontation with Infinity Gauntlet-wielding Adam Warlock, Strange shrinks and stores all of his magical artifacts in advance of the meeting in the Eye of Agamotto. If Strange sees that a threat can smack around people like Thor or believes that his magic might not work against them, he’ll hang back and avoid confrontation to plan things out. It takes more effort in an Astral Form, but he could control his Cloak with his thoughts, doing so to have the Cloak follow psychic trails and disrupt the magic circle ritual by yanking one sorcerer from the circle. If necessary, he astral projects if he’s fatally harmed to give himself CPR via possessing another body. Dormammu didn’t know Brother Voodoo was immune to flame, so Strange bided his time with knowing a weakness in Dormammu’s chamber for a long while for Brother Voodoo to capitalize on this.

Strange calms himself when blasting a beast that feeds off of his anger when dealing out magic blasts at it, instead opting for banishment when brute force doesn’t work. Strange retreats from a fight with teleportation if necessary. With magic eventually running out, Doctor Strange is far more strategic with how he fights. Holds back on going all out with magic to hide his true capabilities from a powerful foe’s detections. Strange’s magic passes through this golem, but Strange claims if he had an hour, he’d think of a spell to defeat it. Strange can remotely set his Cloak away with the Eye still on it and activate the Eye on the flying Cloak, which can both ensnare spirits. He can do all this without being present where they’re located. Makes sendings to scout out the Sanctum before he goes in himself.

When facing convoluted or powerful foes… By using Conan’s blade, Strange killed Shuma-Gorath and used the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to contain a blood sample from the creature on the blade, making a bloodpact with Shuma-Gorath to kill Kulan Gath via coming back to life from the blood sample within Gath’s body in exchange for Shuma to never invade the Earth dimension again. Another time, Mephisto granted the doctor that set up this pact power to match Strange in exchange for his soul. But, Strange outwits this doctor by meeting with Mephisto in Hell beforehand to dupe the doctor.

When Strange was fighting back against these pagan spirits early on, he filled himself with belief in magic and the old gods, which invokes the residual magical energies of museum artifacts to call forth the goddess Athena to blast away spirits. Mystically amplified by the Sanctum, Urthona used the Talons of Farallah to mystically grab onto a spaceship at a planetary distance, but Strange broke free and used this spell’s own force to bring himself down from orbit. A conjured Absorbing Man Memory Being once absorbed Strange’s magic and amplified off of it, becoming a being made of Strange’s personal magic. Strange says that spells are concepts, energy brought to life at the whim of a mystic master, so he willed it and dispersed the Absorbing Man who had assimilated to his own magic.

He’s been able to see and deduce waves of dark deception meant to fool mystics. Strange defeated Dormammu by sending his essence into a dozen different dark dimensions, diffusing and dispersing his energy so it would be impossible for him to reconstitute himself. Strange and the Defenders worked together to unleash enough mystic might to lay waste to a planet, which deliberately caused the villain to try to burn through all of his power to try to win. Doctor Strange used misdirection to defeat Nightmare, who’d been supercharged beyond the Abstracts and the Living Tribunal, pretending to be chained up with the use of harvested dream energy and illusions.

Uses a barrier to hold off a demonic enemy long enough to analyze them at length, and deduce the magic that created them. Then seeks to find a power that will work on them, describes it as akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Binds enemies with the Bands of Cytorrak so that he can hurl them into the Dark Realms of Dreaded Denak, and even Merlin himself could not have done so with more skill. Conjured Absorbing Man Memory absorbs Strange’s magic and amps off of it. Strange says that spells are concepts, energy brought to life, so he disperses the Absorbing Man who has assimilated to his own magic.

When he needs to perform dupes… Doctor Strange regularly uses illusions to trick foes he’s in the middle of fighting. Strange’s mystic bolts are faked being absorbed (as this isn’t Strange, this entity is fighting a fake). He uses magic to confuse this entity on which gateway is the path to Earth’s dimension before banishing it with a bait and switch illusion of himself to disguise the portal so the entity tries to tackle him, meaning he used illusions to fake an entire fight. Strange fakes being defeated for a sneak attack, and this whole location and confrontation was an illusion by Strange. Using a combo of invisibility and illusions, Strange makes a knight believe he’s fighting an illusory version of him. While weakened, Strange holds off multiple sorcerers at once and creates illusory duplicates while cloaking his real self to release a man from mystic mind control. These are illusory bonds and a setup to fool people into thinking Strange was captured.

Strange dupes Mordo with an illusion to get the jump on him. Creates a fog and an army of duplicates of himself and Madelaine with Images of Ikonn to buy time to figure out an Achilles Heel. He does this to leave and mystically seal a door. Impressively using an illusion on the Beyonder, Doctor Strange managed to keep an, admittedly drunk, omnipotent and omniscient Beyonder in a looping illusion, which he could’ve done for years by continuously keeping him inebriated. Similarly, Strange managed to dupe Hood, who wielded the Reality, Space, and, most notably, Mind Stone, with a disguise as Thanos to lure him into an ambush. Although, you could argue Hood wasn’t experienced with the Stones.

In a more solid instance of fooling an all-knowing being, Stephen managed to trick and hide his spellcasting from Dormammu when he was explicitly omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient after usurping Eternity. Sometimes Strange defeats normal Dormammu through his own trickery too, who is billions of years old or eons old. More simply, he’s able to fool an enemy with an empty cloak. Strange astral projects when physically restrained as a distraction tactic to capture a demon in a Maelstrom of Madness that spends its strength to defend from exposure to such arcane energy. Strange knows he can defend against a sneak attack while he’s in a trance.

Strange says not many people can sneak up on him, and he prevents Gorm from killing him despite being focused on the Spell of Akhryon. It’s worth noting Gorm appeared to be invisible here. The Spell of Akhryon worked on Strange. Correctly infers that the scroll has a spell on it to protect it from unworthy hands, and deliberately allows an enemy to take it so that their power will be permanently sealed off by said spell. Otto posits that a proper counter-frequency can disrupt Strange’s magic, but this was an illusory attack to test Otto’s defenses first. Tricked Mordred into making a Geas, a blood oath that binds him to a specific spot.

When he needs to rely on his intelligence… Strange can track where Black Swans have traveled via footsteps to guide his way through the labyrinthian Library of Worlds. Doctor Strange has beaten Dormammu in a game of chess. Strange questions the binary of black and white morality, so he’s willing to do dark things if backed into a corner by a scenario and sees no difference in black or white arts at this moment. Strange comes up with a custom spell by manipulating magical leylines on a global scale.

Sorcerers memorize counterspells for every conceivable threat, and Stephen tells himself that for every spell, there is a counterspell. Doctor Strange is able to mentally call upon spells learned years ago and continuously counterspell mages in combat that are far stronger than himself. Clea says making new combinations or formulas of spells takes a lot of work, and old school magic doesn’t really work on revenants. She does this on the spot. He once knew all along Mordred was innocent of using the Darkhold and was actually testing him the whole time.

Hand-to-Hand Combat

Not all of Stephen’s stats were allocated to Intelligence, he set aside some time to develop his Strength and Dexterity too! Perhaps that’s surprising, but Strange has stated that sorcery is more than just magic knowledge, it is also about muscle power and fighting skill. He regularly physically trains, works out with weights, and takes (semi-successful) archery classes under Hawkeye. Doctor Strange was taught how to physically fight from Wong, learning martial arts, some of which he’s a brown belt in, that get the job done but don’t measure up to Iron First, like Aikido.

He’s also skilled and very precise with a sword, and he’s a little out of practice but experienced enough with polearms. Even when low on magic, Strange was capable of going toe-to-toe with an Asgardian assassin invading his home. Strange has held his own against the interdimensional warlord Tiboro in hand to hand combat. On top of that, in his first bout with Dormammu, Strange fought him hand to hand after borrowing the Pincers of Power, and came out of the battle victorious.

Reimu Hakurei

When it comes to sheer experience and skill, Reimu’s come a very, very long way from where she used to be. Early on in the series, Reimu was initially quite lacking in training, and openly hated doing so, even being described as having the most lacking sense of danger and the most meager training out of all generations of Hakurei Shrine Maidens. In part, this is simply just how Reimu is wired, she isn’t the type of person to have extensive discipline and rigorous training, and that sort of thing simply doesn’t stick with her, a lesson Kasen Ibaraki had to learn the hard way. Reimu is the type of person who goes with the flow, and does things as they’re needed. In part, Reimu, for a long time, simply never had to train, because she was just such a fucking force of nature. Reimu was so innately talented, capable, and powerful, that she was so unstoppable in combat to the point that the Spell Card System and its Rules of Combat had to be incorporated just so Youkai could actually stand a chance in combat against her, as Reimu was so dominant in combat that Youkai were beginning to feel they were losing their purpose. When you’re that powerful, who needs training?

But that all changed overtime, as Reimu faced more and more threats of higher and higher calibers, and ran into more and more new phenomena and experiences, she would buckle down, lock in, and do what needed to be done. Reimu is trained and knowledgeable in Taijutsu, a form of Japanese Martial Arts, often mixing it into her combat alongside her Extermination Tools. She can fluidly string melee attacks together with a mix of kicks, barehanded strikes, and thrusts from her gohei, and just as smoothly segue those combos into danmaku after her strikes have knocked the opponent away. She’s also shown proficiency in grappling, able to put Remilia Scarlet into an armbar headlock she couldn’t escape, and catch Miyoi Okunoda in a full nelson hold before she could even realize. It’s also implied she knows Drunken Fist, but she passes out before ever using it. Reimu’s also skilled in fighting with her Gohei, able to engage in an extensive staff duel against Son Biten (Temu Son Wukong), ultimately stalemating her.

Reimu has also spent extensive time training for more specific forms of combat and abilities. She received tutelage from Yukari Yakumo and trained on her own for three months straight to be able to summon Gods, becoming so skilled that she could channel three gods into her body at once, performing triple the work of an average god summoning, and maintain doing so for 12 days straight, and potentially could’ve kept going for up to a full month. She’s trained the entirety of the Perfect Possession Incident, learning how to utilize Perfect Possession and its unique 2v2 dynamic in combat to successfully resolve an incident. Reimu has also trained under Kasen Ibaraki on multiple occasions, an Oni Hermit who’s over a thousand years old.

Impressively, Reimu is able to regularly keep up with Marisa, the deuteragonist of the franchise, and if anything, Marisa is putting her all into fighting Reimu. Marisa is an absurdly skilled magician, who excels in out of the box thinking, with Rinnosuke stating that in magic, she attacks common knowledge with her own theories, such as the theory that magic has only five basic elements. Marisa is the only person ever who’s put forth any effort in proving the theory wrong, and her magiccraft is so creative that the spells she makes surprise even the youkai of Gensokyo, many of which have been alive for thousands of years, with Youkai being so advanced compared to human civilization that they were able to map the stars and travel into space over a thousand years before humans ever would. Marisa is also currently the only human to actually be able to come to comprehend the magical tools of Oni, magical items literally designed to be incomprehensible to mankind, tools not of this world with power over the hidden itself that literally derive power from hidden things.

Marisa constantly trains, having worked every day of her life to get to where she is, with even magic being something she worked hard to be able to utilize, and despite all her hard work, she still struggles to match Reimu’s limitless innate talent. Marisa has been able to fight off and defeat Koishi Komeiji in combat on many occasions, someone who takes actions entirely unconsciously and is thus completely unpredictable, and has super-reflexes that surpass human limitations (Reimu has similarly battled Koishi on occasion as well). Marisa is implied to have even been able to do so without even being aware of her presence until after she’s been defeated, which would require absurd near instinctive reactions to accomplish, seeing as Koishi is a currently non-existent entity, a being lacking the five skandhas (those being form, sensation, perception, formation or consciousness), that’s impossible to be perceived normally.

In spite of all of that, Reimu regularly wins most of her duels against Marisa, with it noted that Marisa trying to fight Reimu is like “watching a hammer try to pound a nail into dust”. Reimu is such a force of nature that even Marisa has to constantly train to improve just to be able to keep up with her.

Reimu has also regularly battled against Gensokyo’s especially long-lived beings such as Sages and Hourai-made immortals, whose ages average in the thousands, with Eirin Yagokoro specifically being at least hundreds of thousands of years old, potentially even tens to hundreds of millions of years. The rabbit youkai Tewi falls into neither category, but she’s also pretty damn old and similarly outmatched by the Hakurei maiden despite this age advantage.

Of course, ages alone don’t mean much without proper displays of skill to back them up. She’s defeated Mokou on several occasions, who never holds back in a fight and spent so many years dispatching of youkai in her area that they could no longer keep her entertained, possessing a fighting style that was observed by Kasen Ibaraki to have no wasted movements. Hong Meiling, a taijutsu practitioner whose dream self could match several of Gensokyo’s key figures and supposedly the mythological god Taisui Xingjun in combat (this footage is more impressive with context about the Dream World, trust us), rarely stands a chance against Reimu, which is especially notable as Reimu is likewise acquainted in the martial art.

Miko had the ability to hear people’s desires and learn everything about them, past, present and future, and yet she was still defeated by Reimu in a duel. To make this more impressive, Miko is also capable of reading the very flow of Fortune, determining the slightest fluctuations in Fortune in order to determine what probabilities are going to occur, and using that to her favor, and she still lost. In one of her most impressive displays of skill, she even managed to stop the Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Incident, an event where the armies of the Lunar Capital invaded Gensokyo with intent to purify it. Reimu would fight off the armies, before taking the fight through a passageway in the Dream World to the Lunar Capital, fighting against Lunarian forces and Lunarians with absurdly dangerous and difficult danmaku who wouldn’t allow for any second chances, without ever being hit a single time and without assistance (the no-miss clear on Legacy Mode being the canon ending).

Beyond just direct combat capabilities, Reimu is still extremely knowledgeable. Even outside of her intuition, she’s still an expert on how youkai work and the best way to take them out, as well as being familiar with various shrine rituals meant to be performed as forms of gathering faith, able to perform a ceremonial dance to Yorihime’s satisfaction and a group of onlooking moon rabbits’ sweeping acclaim, the latter of which showering her in donations and praise immediately following said performance. Hilariously enough, she’s spent time studying fairy tales to great success, learning multiple successful methods of youkai extermination through doing so. With minimal information she was able to immediately realize the work of a Youkai, quickly research it, and determine exactly where to go to prevent further chaos. She was able to work together with Kasen and Marisa to figure out a plan to drag an attacker from the Outside World into Gensokyo to properly deal with them.

Backing up her capabilities and experience, Reimu also has shockingly high stamina and endurance. Every Touhou game is functionally fighting through a miniature army and facing multiple threats back to back with no break, and occasionally travelling across entire realms in the process, such as in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, where Reimu travelled from Gensokyo, crossed the Sanzu River, travelled to Hell, and then the Animal Realm, four separate dimensions, while constantly fighting the entire way. She’s hunted a youkai alongside Marisa for an entire week straight, going several days without sleep or rest, and has even spent 12 days straight in intense concentration channeling three gods into her body. She could have potentially done it for longer as well, as the original projected length of her trip was 2 weeks to a full month.

Also she’s been well trained in how to brew sake, and is pretty good at making plum brandy and plum wine!

Equipment

Doctor Strange

The Amulet of Agamotto

Before the Eye of Agamotto, there was the Amulet of Agamotto, Doctor Strange’s original mystic pendant that he used in his early days before proving himself worthy of the Eye of Agamotto by halting Dormammu’s invasion of Earth. However, despite the differentiation in name, the Amulet is simply a less powerful version of the Eye of Agamotto. Even so, Strange can use its light in battles to fire continuously for hours without running out of charge. This means that everything the Amulet can do, the Eye simply does better and with more potency. To start, while this is likely hyperbole in verbiage only, Doctor Strange claims that he conjured an “infinite” number of security enchantments onto it, so it’s difficult to hijack. And, when all of the Amulet’s energies are forcibly released upon getting past these enchantments, it can tear open portals between realities to Eternity, which neither Dormammu nor Umar could do on their own.

Speaking of which, Strange once defeated Dormammu by using the Amulet even when his extradimensional magic requests weren’t answering him. And, when Dormammu struggled against a Mindless One army with an impromptu Rings of Raggadorr shield, the Amulet could mystically amplify Dormammu so he can fortify this shield against the horde. It did this by supplying energy to others, like granting Dormammu the strength to hold off the Mindless Ones and re-energizing the Ancient One. In terms of other powers, the Amulet has displayed the following abilities:

Information Gathering: Strange can scan things with the Amulet such as checking if they have been affected by spells. He can also scan vehicles to see their driver, or check if they are evil or not. The Amulet can scan the Orb of Agamotto to find precise locations in seconds. By targeting a specific location, Strange can create a holographic recreation of what had happened there.
True Sight: It can peer through mystic veils that Strange can’t bypass himself.
Illusion Dispelling: The Amulet dispels illusions.
Illusion Detection: The Amulet confirms that something is not an illusion.
Possession Detection: Strange determines with the Amulet that a person is not possessed.
Communication: Strange’s Amulet can receive distress signals from other dimensions, which he can portal away to. Strange can communicate with people through the Amulet.
Mystic Tracking: The Amulet tracks both corporeal and ethereal beings by their psychic or magic emissions. The Amulet has tracking capabilities, being able to undo dark trickery and guide Strange the right way, track down enemies over a distance, guide him through different dimensions, and even send him on the right way when he had lost almost all his powers in the timestream between “reality and chaos”. Uses the Amulet of Agamotto to bring into focus the source of a horrid psychic cry.
Mind Manipulation: Strange’s Amulet can do entrancements. The Amulet can unleash a mystical light that can freeze and hypnotise targets.
Mind Reading: The Amulet can read memories and minds.
Energy Projection: Weaponizing light from the Amulet and melting alien materials. The light can destroy targets that his standard spells are unable to face.
Power Bestowal: The Amulet of Agamotto was able to amplify and fortify Dormammu’s shields against a Mindless One army when he was struggling.
Light Blinding: The Amulet can unleash light that can blind enemies as powerful as Nightmare.
Purification: The light is capable of purifying dark magic, dissipating even Mordo’s spells.
Telekinesis: The Amulet has telekinetic properties, and can push targets through the air or hold them still, even if they’re powerful mystics like Zota. It can open locks.
Barriers: The Amulet can create barriers which can last up to 23 hours.

The Wings of Needless Sorrow

When Doctor Strange had stopped being pure enough to wield the light of Agamotto’s Eye, the powers of the Wings of Needless Sorrow could search out the world of shadow’s depths for Cloak and channel black magic instead for a time. This little emblem came in clutch for Stephen during this “Eyeless” time, as it is far more powerful than even Dormammu dreamed. While the major drawback of using the Wings of Needless Sorrow is that they induce despair and sorrow to the point of suicidality over time from exposure to it, Doctor Strange was able to keep using them as a temporary substitute for the Eye of Agamotto.

One of its best abilities, though, is that it can absorb and redirect energies. One of the best showing of this was when Dormammu had possessed Doctor Strange’s body while Stephen’s Astral Form was nearly fully drained and tiny, leaving him to possess a rat to get by with just the Wings of Needless Sorrow. In this state, Dormmamu has Strange’s power stacked on top of his own, which would be nearly enough to challenge Celestials soon. Despite this, the Wings of Needless Sorrow were able to allow Strange to continuously absorb Dormmamu’s power and magical attacks even if he was getting battered by them, a process that allowed his Astral Body to reconstitute to full power and height again. They can also be used to summon Shuma-Gorath, you know, if he wants.

The Darkhold

When the Elder God Chthon writes a book, the world is forced to turn their heads once vampires, werewolves, zombies, and more are created from its dark pages. Within its pages is all the dark magical knowledge since Chthon’s time, which predates mankind, and the instructions on how to undo the creations of each monster made from the book. The actual book itself is said to be “indestructible”, to the point that Doctor Strange using his magic to (attempt to) obliterate all of his magical artifacts was successful with the sole exception of the Darkhold itself. Normally, Stephen owns the Darkhold and keeps it contained within the Sanctum Sanctorum behind a hidden sealed passage he set with his own magic, given that it has the power to destroy worlds, so it should be an option worth considering. As for what’s actually within the content of the pages, it naturally holds information on spooky, supernatural beings like Frankenstein’s monster, werewolves, and vampires. But, much like the Book of the Vishanti (which is meant to be a white magic counterweight to the Darkhold), it contains tons of spells, curses, and incantations worth chronicling:

Vampiric Verses: An infamous passage from the book that Strange tore out containing an incantation that can turn people into vampires, even resurrecting corpses as them. Strange has since gotten rid of this page.
Montesi Formula: This incantation is able to “destroy all vampire blood”, with the Book of the Vishanti containing a spell to neutralize the Montesi Formula if necessary. The Montesi Formula is so long and complex that even Doctor Strange cannot remember it in full without referencing it within the Darkhold, but its explicit use is to wipe out and destroy all true vampires on Earth and this dimension. It goes beyond bodily destruction, however, as it “erases” vampires, which can even melt, boil, and begin to erase vampires trying to enter Earth’s dimension after the spell was cast. Doctor Strange knows how to remove this curse from the nearly disintegrated bones of his vampirized friend, which restored him to life through removing the vampirism from his being.
Summoning: The Darkhold is used to conjure a massive swarm of previously banished vampire bats that hate Strange. The Darkhold can conjure monsters, like one with massive tendrils and numerous sharp-mawed mouths. Strange combats it with light-based tendrils from the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak to shunt the monster back to “Outer Dark”, likely banishing it back to the Darkhold to undo the conjuring. The Darkhold summoned a minotaur “into this world”, and Marie sends him back to his “netherworld”. Other mystics had psyches and the life force of people and cultists drained by some combination of spells, which was a spell of transferral, one used for a sacrificial ritual from fragments of the Darkhold to call vampires from other dimensions.
Dimensional Entry Prevention: Strange uses a counterspell from the Darkhold to cast a spell of closure to prevent Nightmare’s forces from invading the mortal realm.
Elemental Negation: Through command of the elements, the Darkhold can negate elemental manipulation like the Winds of Watoomb.
Magical Darkness: Marie unleashes a shroud of magical darkness through the Darkhold.
Magical Amplification: Amplifies two bird mooks to contend with Strange and grow in power over time.
Serpentine Mental Suggestions: There’s a name in some Darkhold pages that gives the Serpents “persuasive powers”.
Existence Erasure: Capable of selectively turning bird people to ashes, forfeiting their existence.

Healing Potions

Strange frequently carries healing potions with him on his belt, which are capable of healing minor wounds on his body instantly. At his best, he carries the Serum of the Seraphim, the most powerful medicine known to the occult.

Manual Weaponry

Sometimes, for whatever reason, magic might be unavailable or on the fritz. While you may think this would leave Doctor Strange without many options, he’s still quite capable of falling back on the many, many melee weapons and pieces of equipment he has hanging around in the Sanctum. Whether they be daggers, various knives, bats wrapped in barbed wire, or maces, there’s a definite possibility that instead of getting screwed over by a random spell developed centuries ago, a demon might just find that they’ve just been shanked by the Sorcerer Supreme.

Amongst his arsenal are countless axes, some of which are imbued with magical properties. One example is the Axe of Angarruumus, which can be wielded by his Astral Form. This is, of course, in addition to the tons of katanas, broadswords, shortswords, and mundane or magically enchanted blades that Doctor Strange possesses, some of which are capable of slicing through magical entities. He also carries around shields for defense at times for close combat. He even found a magical lightning bow, which he can use to fire explosive arrows or, more directly, shoot to pierce through the eyes and chest of Sorcerer Supreme-killing villains like Imperator. Other magical bow and arrows fire enchanted arrows that dimensionally phase and vanish you, banishing you to another plane temporarily. And, this isn’t even scratching the surface of all the halberds, broadswords, spears, and even chainsaws he has waiting for him back home.

The Scalpel of Strange

Also known as the Sword of Strange, it can be instantly summoned, used to surgically slice up the Charikon brute. Additionally, it’s able to cut through space and dimensions in order to make portals, and carve through and deflect energy blasts.

The Tarot of the Secret Flame

Strange’s calling card (heh) for when it’s time to summon the Defenders, though doing this Strange says the process of summoning heroes circumvents fate itself, meaning that fate will exact a price due to magic always having a cost. One of these cards literally has a sentient nebula inside of it. Other nonspecific tarot cards in an ancient deck imbued with power thrown by Strange are windows to the future and gateways to the soul.

Mysterium Coin

Strange carries with him a mysterium coin. Mysterium is a newer property in Marvel Comics, a metallic meta-material that harvested exotic particles from the White Hot Room, one capable of completely negative magic. Even just a mere coin of it could leave Strange vulnerable, and also force out Dormammu from a human he was possessing.

The Axe of Exquisite Decapitations

Currently as the Sorcerer Supreme of Asgard, Strange has access to an Asgardian weapon known as the Axe of Exquisite Decapitations, which can absorb magic of the user that it kills.

Magic Sash

Through the usage of a magical sash, Doctor Strange was able to harness vast quantities of dream energy, by using classic magician misdirection, to the point that he was able to overwhelm and supercede Nightmare who, with his own dream amplifications through putting Earth to sleep, was amplified to be more powerful than all the abstracts, such as Eternity, Lady Death, and even the Living Tribunal. He even managed to do all of this while Nightmare was omnipotent, subtly telekinetically moving it around with his mind to collect dream energy. In that same sequence, Strange says dreams can conjure up entire universes, and that just because Nightmare used everyone’s dreams, doesn’t mean they can be controlled, as dreams are unpredictable and magical, then restoring everything back to the way it was and shrinking Nightmare to fit in his pocket using the magic that comes from dream energies, revealing that this all happened in less than a day.

The Sanctum Sanctorum

Located in Greenwich Village, New York City, the Sanctum Sanctorum is the official home of Doctor Strange. It is a refuge, a fortress that houses the magical leylines of 10 million universes to converge, where the doorways between realities are thin, yet giving off the impression of a standard Victorian-style townhouse. But, inside, is a non-Euclidean series of complex doorways, corridors, and rooms that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. This is possible via highly advanced cloaking spells, masking its true nature to give off an illusion for what it really is, disguising it from the world to make it look empty and abandoned. Opening the Sanctum without a passcode leads to nowhere, which Strange has cloaked in this dimension to appear as if it’s been abandoned, alongside selectively cloaking its inhabitants.

His cloaking spell over the Sanctum makes Strange and co. invisible and casts an illusion over the building, which fools Tony’s scanners and Daredevil’s Radar Sense, even warding against mystical scrying. This masking continues while he hides the New Avengers with strong enchantments, though they can be dispelled. Additionally, the leylines the Sanctum is built upon are invisible, divine and primal global grids of magic, connecting power spots at different locations on Earth. Because the building is set upon such a dense magical nexus, specifically the greatest concentration of occult and supernatural phenomena in existence.

This allows the Sanctum Sanctorum to shield against planetary-wide destabilization of magic or act as a stronghold, given it’s also the most concentrated arsenal of magic in this dimension, when magic is outright dying worldwide. This might also explain why it’s always haunted by spirits and other entities. The main downside, obviously, is that all these protections might affect the signal on his television sometimes. Though, Strange might forgo cloaking altogether and simply hide the building in a liminal space instead. Plus, the power within the Sanctum is enough to recreate a previously sealed, full-power Zom, something other enemies have absorbed to amplify off of.

If it’s under too great a threat, a forcefield or barrier exists around it, though it can be brought down with magic. Strange himself can simply activate all of its defensive enchantments with a verbal order. Upon approaching the Sanctum, warning spells appear, and there are many protective spells (with some specifically against demons and wraiths) and a dozen defensive hexes around the Sanctum to keep out any intruders. Strange can teleport the Sanctum around even to outer space, allowing him to kick entities out the front door onto the moon. Plus, it has wards on it that can ignore Enchantimatics, which can erase things from existence.

He sometimes needs to occasionally maintain these defenses through rites to renew the protection spells, but these spells can even include seals on doors and mystic defenses on the structure itself. Typically, bypassing the protection spells or its cloaking requires bypassing its seal of protection by changing the very constitution of the wood or using a specialized device to undo the spells. Otherwise, you could hammer away at these spells for years without ever making a dent given that it’s protected from mystical and physical assaults, even from repeated blows from the Hulk himself.

And even if you break in, you won’t go unnoticed as Doctor Strange is attuned to the shield spell and knows if you’re trying to brute force it. Clea Strange also set up an alarm system for unwanted teleporters breaching the Sanctum. The curtains in the Sanctum will attack intruders, and a two-headed snake helps guard its hallways. Failed attempts to break in can prove to be disastrous, such as when a group of X-men tried to break in and proceeded to get sent through “several trillion agitated molecules” and even into the Dark Dimension, which is called a place where time itself does not exist.

Almost every item or piece of furniture within these rooms are booby-trapped too, like illusory, electricity-powered traps Strange can activate manually if cornered and a piano he can enchant with all of his power with a spell that’s an energy lock that moves power uphill and leaves you hovering forever on the brink of oblivion. The Sanctum’s windows can automatically blast Black Cat out with winds when she tries to break in, doors inside the building can swap around, disappear, and illogically lead back outside, and any alien trying to bash the Sanctum’s front door down will get mystically blasted away.

Even placing your hands on the areas near the windows to try to break in will mystically burn them without physically scarring you as an automatic defense. The Sanctum also has magical defenses that zap intruders who try to enter, repelling them. There are hexes in the library that can hold back Fin Fang Foom, some places inside the Sanctum don’t follow physical laws or gravity, have doors to other dimensions, and the building is far bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Sometimes, you’ll even notice that it’s only raining out of one window or that some furniture might have eyes.

If needed, the Sanctum Sanctorum can teleport interplanetary distances or be transported back from beyond the stars. Thus, it should be obvious that most of the items within the building give off tons of magical energy, which is why it makes sense that Strange is at his most powerful when surrounded by his artifacts at home. Needless to say, anyone capable of breaching the Sanctum’s defenses is no ordinary being. Or, you could just sneak in through the chimney as mist. Sure.

If you are invited in however, there are lots of rooms to look at, some that can even access points in time in the great past. Many points of interest in the Sanctum include:

Time River Room: Strange has a door in his Sanctum that leads to a pocket dimension room where Strange can literally view time as a river and get information he needs from points in history, such as how these viking zombies got so powerful and amplified. He can search for descendants of people as well and pluck them and items out of time and into the room in the present. Just as easily, Strange can return the people he plucked from time back home through the same room.
Delayed Time Room: Wong enters a time room in the Sanctum that operates on a slower time than the present so that Doctor Strange can deal with a patient, where Wong arrives marginally earlier than when he entered.
Painting Dimensions: Some of the paintings in the Sanctum lead to hidden pocket dimensions that Stephen uses to keep his body safe while it’s in suspended animation.
The Crypt of Shadows: The Crypt of Shadows is a space hidden behind the mirrors of the Sanctum Sanctorum.
Dimensional Doors: Strange has a door that’s a portal to the Netherworld in the Sanctum. In fact, the Sanctum has hidden portals to other dimensions, including some that lead to a pocket dimension full of undead.
Fandazar Foo Shortcut: Doctor Strange was hit with a magical shockwave upon opening the door to Fandazar in his Sanctum, it hit him so hard it shunted his Astral Form out of his body. Fandazar Foo is a Nexus Point between dimensions he can access in the Sanctum to (usually) relax within its overflowing magic, like a rest stop.
The Basement: The basement of the Sanctum Sanctorum is easy to get lost in, and sometimes doors will lead to nether-worlds like Weirdworld.
The Occult Library: In this vast library is where Strange’s magic can be learnt upon and used for good, housing many books and scrolls. Strange has confiscated magical armors, magic artifacts, amulets, and priceless scrolls gathered from countless dimensions, all of which he keeps in the library. One such book of importance is the Book of Lamentation, a codex of hellish ciphers and magic designs that he stole from the Red Library, a demonic collection of texts. Its most important by far however, is the Book of Vishanti.
Indian Ocean Gateway: The Sanctum has a giant vault door that can open up and lead directly into the middle of the Indian Ocean as a shortcut to the sunken Temple of Watoomb.
Time Portal Room: Strange has a portal to the past in his Sanctum, apparently triggered by a life-threatening emergency.
Hidden Darkhold Chamber: While normally hidden, Doctor Strange can reveal a hidden passage in the Sanctum and release mystical seals that are on it. The Darkhold itself is usually contained within the Sanctum here by magic.
Chamber of Extrospection: The Chamber of Extrospection is a hall in Stephen’s Sanctum that contains tons of curtains, including a curtain that apparently has something deadly behind it. It also has a mirror that allows you to locate missing pieces of your soul. However, Topaz was able to be contacted through Strange’s Chamber of Extrospection because her missing soul provided a link to the villain of the arc.
M.C. Escher Stairwell: Looking at the gravity-defying M.C. Escher-style stairway in the Sanctum Sanctorum could melt your eyeballs out if stared at directly for too long.
Non-Rooms: The Sanctum’s doors swap around and can automatically open to the outside while Black Cat, who had broken in, was inside of a deep hall. Upon realizing this, Black Cat noticed this didn’t make Euclidean sense, but the door behind her was already gone. So, sometimes Sanctum doors just don’t go anywhere or make any directional or spatial sense to intruders. Strange can also manually shift around the entrance of the building himself instead of relying on the automated systems if he needs to.
Sanctum Machina: Within the Sanctum Sanctorum is the all-important Sanctum Machina, Doctor Strange’s personal mystical weapon forge where he created a lot of his specialized equipment.
The Shrubbery: Doctor Strange’s shrubbery just outside the Sanctum contains man-eating flowers and can be magically manipulated to attack and grab at intruders.
Anti-Gamma Room: Strange could prepare a room in the Sanctum on its own plane of existence that renders Gamma meaningless, disallowing the Hulk from emerging at all.
The Cellar: Whatever you do, don’t enter or open Doctor Strange’s cellar.

Also, the Sanctum bathrooms have a dragon that hands you the toilet paper. Based.

Miscellaneous Artifacts

Naturally, Doctor Strange has collected a wide variety of one-off magical equipment that he still owns should the time or opportunity rise to use them again, ranging from his more standard equipment to random bobbles that do one incredibly specific and situational thing. Although, do keep in mind that disturbing basically anything around the Sanctum Sanctorum, where he keeps all of his artifacts, is dangerous. Some of this stuff, apparently, can even end all life. So, uh, be careful what you knock over.

Gauntlets of Defying: These weapons were crafted by Strange himself in the Sanctum Sanctorum, and are made from the hide of a Graxolous, a creature resistant to magic. They allowed Strange to resist the effects of the Wrecker’s reality warping crowbar, a weapon that can literally pry into reality itself. The Gauntlets of Defying resist magic inherently.
Armband of Strange: An armband that offers limitless stamina made from the heart of an Elbrendorth Dragon.
Amulet of Strange: Different from the Amulet of Agamotto, it provides protections from elements unknown, such as the ether’s everpresent poisons.
Mace of Strange: A mace that specifically exponentially enhances physical strength.
The Ring of Zonma: An artifact Strange was able to smuggle out of the Sanctum Sanctorum when the Mindless Ones invaded. It is a very versatile ring, being able to make the user and others invisible. Its main power though is teleportation, and Strange used it to teleport Morbius the Vampire to Antarctica, and take himself and Spider-Man to the Arctic. The big drawback however is the teleportation’s range is limited to Earth, and interdimensional travel is beyond its capabilities.
Humility Artifact: Strange owns an artifact in his Sanctum that activates through admission of humility in the face of magical forces. Upon doing so, this can mend broken items, teleport characters out of Hell, produce magical blasts strong enough to overwhelm Doctor Doom, turn people invisible, mystically amplify punches, and activate nonverbally.
Cage of Cyttorak: Strange has a magical “Cage of Cyttorak” that can hold spirits behind bars.
Possessor-Holding Mirror: Stephen manages to eject Nightmare, an astral entity, from Wong’s body and into a mystical mirror he has in the Sanctum Sanctorum.
Netherworld Icon Statue: Strange has a statue that causes dread emanations if rubbed, which falsely sets off danger senses like Peter’s Spidey Sense.
Divination Orb: Strange is able to divine that Spider-Man is caught in a cosmic web, a tug-of-war between cosmic entities, but it’s harder to read more explicitly into these divinations because this is originating from the netherworlds.
Enigmatic Orb of Snnnr: Used as a way to remotely scry and communicate with a villain inside of a building from a safe distance and commune with spirits of the dead.
Sword of Surtur: Strange’s protégé reads an incantation from one of the Sanctum’s books that summons a magic sword that transmutes Stephen into a frog, only reversible by a kiss.
Mappa Mundi of the Netherworld: Owns a mystical map of the netherworld, where he can track and see if anything odd is happening in locations like Hell.
Mystical DVD Player: Strange can check the Arcane Scripts, through a mystical DVD and DVD player, which is a mystical encyclopedia of supernatural knowledge.
Fermented Sweat of Morpheus: A vial that Stephen has that will render him temporarily dead so that his spirit may wander the afterlife realms freely as his body is in suspended animation.
The Hand of Vishanti: An artifact given to Spider-Man a few times, one previously used to fight Shade on the Astral Plane. The Hand of Vishanti grants a mystically invisible glow that lets its users travel to the Astral Plane and use its aura as a shield or weapon.
The Amulet of Eden: Can reduce the pain of somebody possessed by an evil spirit.
Strange Figurines: Strange made 47 figurines of himself and gave them to allies across the world as a means of astral communication. These figurines can be used for combat purposes, and removing its head has no effect.
Ghost Prism: In his library, Strange has a prism that turned Spider-Gwen into a ghost.
Avengers Identicard: “Yeah guys Strange is more of a Defender and not really an Avenger, he shouldn’t be in vs Justice League.”
Crystal Ball: Used for communication with others.
Bio-Mystical Danger Sense Bracelet: Doctor Strange lent Spider-Man a special bracelet that enhanced his biological and quasi-mystical Spider Sense a thousandfold. Gave away a similar artifact later that enhances sight and tracking-based abilities, even magical ones.
Mental Response Knives: Stephen owns a set of flying knives from the Ancient One that respond to his mental commands even if he’s entirely without innate magic powers.
Crystal of Kadavus: The Crystal can focus cosmic forces with an incantation to recharge the Wand of Watoomb’s magic, re-energizing it fully. The crystal can restore a drained Wand of Watoomb’s power on a proper positioning of a full moon, and it can pinpoint the location of a Wand with a verbal incantation.
The Hands of the Dead: A mystical artifact that can send someone across time or put them in multiple places at once in one time by letting you enter the tides of space and time to travel the world in the blink of an eye: “Everywhere and nowhere. Here and there. All at once.” However, Strange cannot stop Aunt May from dying this way. The human consciousness can only be spread so far, which is what Peter did to be in multiple places with the Hands. Peter Parker invokes the Hands again in Latin to travel back in time as a flying intangible time spirit. As one, Peter can feel what his past self is feeling.
Chthonic Designate: An ethereal device that reaches across NYC’s consciousness to detect that the Cosmic Cube’s effects may have been affected by the population’s collective wishes.
Soul Mirror: Doctor Strange has a mirror in the Sanctum Sanctorum that can show issues with a person’s soul or lack thereof.
Eternity Fragment: Strange owns a gem that’s a fragment of Eternity in case he needs to restore a damaged magical artery in the universe. Using the gem, Strange can astral project and perform surgery on Eternity on the Astral Plane with a little help from someone to hold a somatic gesture to keep him projected and portaled outside of Eternity.
Equipment-Teleporting Coin: Strange attaches a teleportation rite to a coin so that a simple coin flip will teleport all his equipment onto him. In fact, it’s such a simple spell that it won’t trigger magical detection alarms. This happens almost instantly, bringing all of his main Sorcerer Supreme equipment onto his body.
Tytrek’s Dimension Guide: A tome that can help Doctor Strange figure out what dimension is attacking them and sending demons his way.
Golden Bullet: For some reason blasting Redblade’s monstrous form with a revolver broke his magic. This is because Strange has a golden bullet that could disrupt him by shooting through his magical fields only if he’s in a physical form (as in, not while he’s in an astral magic form).
The Eye of Ahcatan: An artifact that can try to hypnotize you to sleep.
Mystical Furnace: Doctor Strange owns a forge in the Sanctum Sanctorum that contains the Flames of Faltine, which is contained because the furnace is composed of a metal that is able to cage magic.
Siege Courageous: An object that will transport someone anywhere in Battleworld. It also transforms them in a manner befitting their true… potential? T’Challa’s speech bubble blocks the rest of the explanation. Rude.
Grimoire of Watoomb: A magical tome that can send Stephen himself flying if opened.
Magic Carpet: Strange owns a typical magic flying carpet.
Mystical Mirror of Mysandragor: A magical mirror that, when faced towards the targets, is able to suck in and banish an army of Unseen Ones and wild, magically conjured items.
The Helmet of Razadar: A magical helmet that lets Strange see in the dark and float for 30 seconds as a backup if he loses magic for any particular reason.
Isandra Dust: A bag of dust Stephen owns that can ward off serpents.
Een’Gawori Slugs: Little slugs that eat magic and, thus, can sense and track down magical items.
The Ancient One’s Skull: When magic was dead and resources were low, Doctor Strange kept his former master’s skull and crumbled it for its residual magic, where he was able to use it as explosive pocket sand that caused building-sized explosions.
Gum of the Winterfawn Tree of Auckland: A magical piece of gum that freezes on contact, when chewed to a certain consistency, once Doctor Strange presses it onto a body.
Magic Apple: Doctor Strange tossed a magic apple at Mordo that instantly grew a mystical apple tree against him.
Ropes of the Xiand Monks: Tethers capable of spanning dimensional doors.
The Oculus Oroboros: The Oculus Oroboros sends a serpent-like energy entity to steal the life force of anyone touching it, killing them.
The Star of Capistan: An artifact Strange wielded that once corrupted him in the past. It mind-haxed Strange to be evil and sought to join everyone’s mind of Earth as a collective consciousness hivemind.
The Sword of Bone: An item that’s powerful and has regenerative properties for the wielder, although this is primarily wielded by Cadaver, not Strange.
The Moebius Stone: The Moebius Stone allows for time manipulation, either to slow down, speed up, or travel through time. It raises the dead, absorbs life energy, and accelerates or decelerates the passage of time in a localized area… however, it was destroyed early on.
The Purple Gem: Grants access to and out of the Purple Dimension. Misuse of Strange’s Purple Gem BFRs you to the Purple Dimension, (unless you’re Loki, I guess). Strange can enlarge the Purple Gem to seal and BFR conjured duplicates into its dimension. Stephen can use the Purple Gem to amplify a magical blast.
Hand of Forgetfulness: An artifact that can erase a specific memory of Strange’s choice (which can avoid the usual toll of a Spell of Forgetfulness) like hiding the hiding place of an Infinity Stone from someone’s memory.
Dark Dimension Ring: A ring of union that is currently veiled meant to connect Stephen with Clea, allowing them to be together with a wish, track the other’s location, and sense the other’s peril. They’re divorced now, but he still wears it, keeping it concealed with invisibility.
Mr. Dapples: A multidimensional powerful teddy bear that Strange had magically locked and behind barriers in the Sanctum Sanctorum. It actualizes as a mirror demon (as in, its true form is only seen in reflections) to protect a girl.
Trans-Hypnotic Jewel: A mystical stone that possesses the power of trans-hypnosis, capable of turning matter into imagination. It can dissolve atoms, send people across dimensions, and locate people across reality.
Protective Charms: This protective charm lent by Strange ends up killing Murdoch’s love, who tried to kill him, with a defensive enchantment.
Cauldron of the Cosmos: 7 hours of meditating by the Cauldron of the Cosmos grants Strange visions of demonic activity. The Cauldron of the Cosmos scries and locates Eternity’s fragment avatars.
Silver Dagger: This silver dagger can exorcise possessions with a single stab while leaving the body unharmed.
The Scrying Stones of Chthon: Various magical stones guarded by the unreal nature of a phantom wall (the Spirits of Shuma Gorath) in Voodoo’s manor and guards against the stones being transported without Voodoo’s say-so. With them, Voodoo can keep watch on all mystical things that converge with our plane. Strange is averse to this, however. Nightmare hijacked the Scrying Stones Jericho owned to exert his mindhax influence over every candidate for Supreme.
The Tincture of Tinyness: Strange used this on Devil Dinosaur to temporarily shrink him down to the size of a large dog.
Gravy Of Giant-Sizing: Used to temporarily make things big.
Lesser Cloak of Levitation: The cape he wore prior to his current one. It allows him to levitate, but can also cause an aura of light and shadow to blind enemies.
Ring of the Ancient One: Grants Strange the ability to use his full magic potential while in his Astral Form.
Swan Feather: Strange can put this in his mouth to fly.
Vacuum Cleaner: Doctor Strange once temporarily sealed away Zom, one of his biggest foes, with… a normal everyday vacuum cleaner.

The Vehicle of Volkswagen

dude. hell yes.

Shuma-Gorath Floatie

_{FLOATIE?!?!?!??!!?!?!??!?!?}

For when he needs to read the Smut of Salacity.

Reimu Hakurei

Gohei(s)

You can’t be a Shrine Maiden without one! The Gohei, or Purification Rod, is typically used for the sake of Shinto rituals and ceremonies, cleansing and blessing objects or people of any negative energies they might have. It’s Reimu’s main weapon of choice, and used regularly by her in any physical confrontation she finds her way into. Some, if not most of her Gohei are prepared for her by Rinnosuke, the same person who created Marisa’s Mini-Hakkero. Reimu can also smack people with it, of course, and dual wield two for, by her own (obviously exaggerated) estimation, twice the power. She also regularly uses them in her Exorcisms and Exterminations (which we’ll cover later on).

For one of the many incidents Reimu had to solve, the power of the mystical Miracle Mallet made her Purification Rod come to life, and it would instinctively chase down and attack any nearby youkai of its own volition. Like master, like tool, I suppose. It is said that tools can be brought to life by the magic of their owners, but since the Mallet’s own effects dissipated, Reimu hasn’t bothered with anthropomorphizing it any longer.

By the way, fun fact, did you know that Reimu’s Gohei appears in the Hercule Satan vs Dan Hibiki DEATH BATTLE? Most people don’t! Now you do!

Ofuda

As simple physical attacks are usually not able to exterminate Youkai, Reimu carries with her an absolutely massive amount of Ofuda, or Amulets… or charms… or exorcism slips… they’re called a lot of things, really, but all function similarly and look similar! Reimu can use her amulets for a variety of effects, but their primary utility is causing mental damage to Youkai. In gameplay, Reimu’s amulets are often portrayed as homing directly towards their target, at one point being said to act as though they have a mind of their own.

With them, she can create body doubles, seal away enemies, bind people in place to slowly strangle them to death, ensnare and completely restrict opponents leaving them open to attack, and ward off youkai and phantoms (though at small range). Some Ofuda are infused with the power of gods to repel evil youkai, but they fail against beings with no malicious intent or evil auras. Reimu seems to be capable of turning even regular stickers into effective amulets, doing so to create Talismans for an “Exorcism of Newspaper Subscription Solicitors”, so she can always make more amulets if she ever starts running low on them somehow (which is doubtful, given her infinite supply of projectiles, ofuda and needles both). Running further down their list of applications, they can nullify Tsukumogami, transforming them back into regular, harmless items and prevent regular household items from transforming into Tsukumogami. Lastly, they can destroy physical objects if their power is spiritual in nature, causing the spirit within to pass on, such as crystallized spirits or crystals with sealed youkai within.

Reimu, hilariously, has even booby-trapped some of her amulets, disguising them as gift envelopes with “Full House” written on them, but containing nothing but the amulet, a simple trap for Youkai to be caught by.

Persuasion Needles

Reimu’s secondary shot type. According to her, some youkai are too dense for the mental effect of her amulets to work, so she keeps these around for when she needs a more physical form of attack. Thankfully, these needles are both easy to throw and have a connection to the divine, which make them an effective tool for a Shrine Maiden. While they may lack the homing properties of her ofuda, they make up for it in sheer firepower, boasting the greatest strength of her shot types so long as she can keep a lock on her opponent. This is especially true when you consider that she’s able to throw hundreds in a matter of seconds, easily piercing through even the toughest youkai’s defenses.

She’s also surprisingly accurate with these things, able to take down individual youkai with just one good throw. While they may be significantly more durable than a few flimsy slips of paper, her sealing needles can still bend and break, and their efficacy is further weakened in times where the powers of the gods wane, such as Kotokya. That said, Reimu has no issue taking down weaker spirits and youkai even with weakened needles, and she later got some replacements whose quality exceeds what even the finest human smiths could produce, courtesy of Kogasa Tatara. Reimu, broke as she is, repaid her by kicking her ass with the very same needles she forged. I mean, how else was she gonna test them?

As an aside, they have also been described as being an “achingly good itch-scratcher” that Youkai are happy to get hit by. Okay.

Yin-Yang Orbs

Crafted out of special Izanagi Objects from the age of the Gods, the Yin-Yang Orbs are one of Reimu’s greatest trump cards. The orbs are a go-shintai, a sacred object where a God resides, being the home of the Hakurei Shrine’s resident deity, making them incredibly effective when used in Youkai extermination. Reimu can summon several Yin-Yang Orbs to her side, being able to use them as extra source of projectiles or launch them to damage foes directly (these are called “Options” across the series regularly, for future reference). They’re powerful enough that even a single one making contact with Kasen’s Artificial Arm was enough to blast off her hand, forcing it to regenerate.

After modifications from Yukari, the Yin-Yang Orbs became usable as tools for communication across great distances, letting Reimu talk to Yukari or even others like Suika or Aya.

In PC-98, the Yin-Yang Orbs possess a variety of unique properties never seen elsewhere. It can summon a wish-granting fairy, destroy the entire Planet Earth, grant their user the ability to never get fat from eating sweets, smell like their favorite scent or turn into a cat. Furthermore, it was potentially responsible for a blast of light that evaporated Rika’s ultimate tank, with Genji attributing her defeat to the Yin-Yang Orbs’ power shortly thereafter.

Ultramarine Orb Elixir

An elixir created by the Lunarian Sage, Eirin Yagokoro. This elixir allows any who drink it to experience the near future (though whether this is simply seeing all possible futures needed to manifest victory, or literally travelling back to an earlier point in time upon death is unclear), seeing any instance where they might get struck by a killing blow, and react accordingly to avoid that fate. In addition, the Elixir has the side effect of purifying one’s past and removing all impurity from a human who may consume it, weakening the influence of the concepts of life and death on those who use it. The Elixir’s purifying effect is so potent that it would be instant death to a Native God.

Eirin gave this to Reimu in order to assist her in the Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom Incident. Canonically, Reimu simply managed to never get hit even once without bothering with taking the elixir. Show off. So reasonably, she’d still have it in her possession.

Lives

Ahhh, video game characters and their extra life arguments. This is pretty simple though, so let’s get it over with. It’s established that the “Lives” across Touhou’s various game modes are simply just life-force, or the life force of another being. Extra lives just mean extra life-force to restore the protagonist when they’re taken out, giving them another go!

Ability Cards

_{the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for gensokyo}

The actions of the leader of the crow tengu, Megumu Iizunamaru, and the God of special event marketplaces, Chimata Tenkyuu, led to the creation of Ability Cards, special cards made through copying a small part of people’s souls that allow any person that holds them to tap into special powers and abilities from a wide variety of humans of youkai across all of Gensokyo. Reimu has used these during multiple incidents, and as of now, these are still in circulation with no sign of fully vanishing. These can only be used if acquired through the proper trading process, and any attempts to steal them or receive them without paying would make it impossible to access their power.

Reimu was a main character in both Unconnected Marketeers and Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, and thus could have gained access to all the ability cards present within those two games. However, Reimu was not playable in 100th Black Market, not having been the one to resolve the Marketeers Incident. Taking into account her general disinterest in the Black Markets that came after, it is hard to say for sure how many of these cards she holds in her possession. However, she was present for the Black Market of the Moriya Shrine, and is shown to have access to some of the cards from the Incident, so she should reasonably have access to any of the cards present in the Moriya Shrine’s Black Market, but not the rest present in 100th Black Market as a whole. Notable Ability Cards include:

Physical Enhancement Jizo: Gives an extra life, and then makes you gradually gain more lives over time.
Gluttonous Centipede: As long as Reimu does not die or use a bomb, her attacks gradually become stronger
Death Avoidance Elixir: Allows Reimu to negate death, at the cost of two bombs (or one, if it’s your last one). Also releases a massive wave that erases all nearby bullets upon negating said death.
Back Door, Annoying UFO, Ancient Magatama, and Danmaku Ghost all have the ability to completely erase enemy projectiles, through means such as grazing or contact with a familiar.
The Idol Defense Corps and Keystone of Endurance both grant shields that can erase incoming bullets
Phoenix’s Tail: Immediately gives Reimu three extra lives when activated
- Seeing as this Ability Card is derived expressly from Mokou no Fujiwara’s ability to regenerate as a Hourai Immortal, the three extra lives Reimu gains should be comparable to the level of regen that Mokou is capable of. Hourai Immortals have had the boundary of life and death removed from them, unable to die, they can regenerate from the complete annihilation of their bodies, able to create bodies from their souls effortlessly, and even Yuyuko’s ability to induce death and send souls to nirvana, and even kill youkai, can’t work on them.
Lucky Rabbit’s Foot: Through the power of good luck, increases the amount of time available to deathbomb, and also prevents losing Bullet Money upon death
- Borrows Tewi Inaba’s good luck, whose potency has been documented as that of a forty-leaf clover compared to a four-leaf clover, able to manifest many four-leaf clovers at her feet (according to Tewi, there’s a one in a hundred thousand chance of finding one, which she does not consider rare), fill Kaguya’s tea with columns, allow lost humans to escape the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, and dig up buried treasure by random chance.
Pebble Hat: Makes Reimu immune to contact damage. Implied to make the user imperceptible to a degree, similar to Koishi Komeiji.
- This card is derived from Koishi Komeiji’s imperceptibility, which makes her presence unable to be felt by anyone unless she has entered their direct field of vision, she’ll be perceived as unimportant, and once she leaves that person’s sight, she’s immediately forgotten.
Gale Geta: Allows Reimu to move with Aya’s speed when not firing shots, making Reimu extremely hard to hit in the process, even making her briefly invulnerable to damage upon starting to move. Committing genuine “hitbox crimes”.
Princess Kaguya’s Secret Stash: Generates a Spell Card item every time Reimu is hit, allowing for more easy retaliation and defense!
Kiketsu Matriarch’s Threat: Causes enemies to “produce extra money” upon defeat, causing them to release more Bullet Money that Reimu can use for various means.
Money Is The Best Lawyer In Hell: By offering up money, Reimu can negate death itself, avoiding the loss of a life and continuing the fight.
Esteemed Authority: Through sheer aura, this card makes all incoming bullets that don’t present an immediate threat disappear from sight, heavily reducing oncoming threats
Vampire Fang: Allows the user to deal “fatal damage” through close range attacks, releasing an absurdly high damage attack right in front of the user.
Heavy Drum Bass: Erases enemy attacks through releasing the soundwaves of Raiko’s drum, cancelling out the wavelengths of the enemy attacks in the process.
Psychokinesis: Allows one to deflect most bullets, except lasers.
Miracle Mallet: Transmutes enemy attacks into money
Sheep You Want To Count: Allows one to clear a stage and defeat the boss immediately by making everything up to that point all a dream, gaining any spoils from completing the stage and instantly giving Reimu the victory, a form of subjective reality that alters reality itself.
Smelt’s Scales: Makes Reimu temporarily invincible, implied to be thanks to entering a parallel world only fish know about
Indomitable Meathead: Increases power every time Reimu loses a life
Law of the Survival of the Fittest: Increases the power of Reimu’s regular shot significantly.
Sutra of Dharmatic Power: Massively buffs the power of Spell Cards, and reduces the cooldown time for all Active Cards.
Sky-Blue Magatama: Allows Reimu to breathe in low-oxygen areas, such as dungeons with hazardous conditions and anoxic zones, and is later elaborated to include any kind of oxygen-free environment.
Half-Half Ghost:A half of Youmu’s ghost half, being 1/4th of her, a familiar that follows you around and helps attack enemies.
- Phantoms are capable of possessing others, induce frigid colds, and can induce death upon proximity and contact.
Shanghai Doll:One of Alice Margatroid’s dolls, a familiar that automatically seeks out enemies to attack.
- Alice’s Dolls can fire lasers with infinite range
Moon of Madness: Allows Reimu to hurl a fake moon straight forward at the opponent, causing significant attack power, and erasing all bullets it makes contact with, acting as a means of defense.
Underground Sun:At the cost of some of Reimu’s own power, she can use Okuu’s Underground Sun attack, tossing out a gigantic sun capable of burning things to ash, dealing massive damage and erasing bullets in the way. It functions like a bomb!
- Okuu’s attacks are formed via nuclear fusion.
Reliable Tanuki Apprentice: Prevents the loss of spiritual power below 75%, and increases power by 25% upon activation.
Bursting Red Frog: Causes the user’s shot sometimes explode, making the attacks cause much more damage and gain a wider radius.
Ice Fairy:Allows for the user to fire out ice shards everywhere, using Cirno’s ability to freeze to attack.
- Cirno’s ice is capable of reaching “Minus K” temperatures at its coldest.
The Kiketsu, Keiga and Gouyoku Families all have Cards tailored to weakening and nullifying enemy Animal Spirits, or powering up Reimu’s own Animal Spirits.
The Mini-Hakkero, Mini Hakkero (Missile), Maid Knife, Maid Knife (Ricochet), Safe Return Amulet, and Shed Snakeskin Amulet all emulate Marisa Kirisame’s magical lasers and missiles, Sakuya Izayoi’s silver knives & ricocheting knives, and Sanae Kochiya’s explosive frog and homing snake danmaku.
Yin-Yang Orb: Provides additional homing shots, giving Reimu another Option.
Loathsome Road to Yomi: Slows down enemy attacks as they get closer to Reimu.
Appreciated Talisman: Has Reimu’s ability to make one’s hitbox smaller, and can make Reimu’s hitbox… even smaller?
24/7 Drunken Fist: Increases Reimu’s firepower when she’s in proximity to an enemy, doing more damage the closer she is.
Spirit Power Sample Bottle: Should Reimu be lacking Spell Cards, she can utilize some of her power to use a Spell Card instead.
Great Tengu’s Barley Rice, Dragon Pipe, Aggression Is the Spice of Hell, and Spell Before The Fall allow Reimu more means to generate spiritual power and Spell Cards.

Ruukoto

A multi-purpose android maid given to Reimu by Yumemi Okazaki. She functions semi-permanently and can do cleaning, cooking, the laundry, among other things. She is, however, not very good at anything, so Reimu ends up having to do everything herself anyway. She’s trying her best though!

Incident Stones

During the events of Fossilized Wonders, Reimu and Marisa faced one of the greatest threats to Gensokyo yet… AI! Due to an explosion in the volume of misinformation in the Outside World due to the advent of AI, it led to an absurd amount of information being debased and passed into fantasy and flooding into Gensokyo and the Lunar Capital. In order to stop an unprecedented disaster, the Lunarians awoke the Princess of Permanence, in order to utilize her power of Immutability to prevent that information flow. Not knowing the source, and with all of Gensokyo affected by some unknown ability, the girls needed some especially potent firepower to help handle the threat… being the Incident Stones!

The Incident Stones were created by Misumaru, being extremely sophisticated magical items by Marisa’s own admission, and creations admitted to be beyond even Yukari Yakumo’s own capabilities. Each stone not only represents and contains the power of a specific Incident that once beset Gensokyo, but also typically contains the magical power of someone who caused, or was directly involved with the Incident.

Incident Stones are more than just that though, they’re literally ever changing stones that are based upon Incidents because an Incident inherently brings about unexpected change, the stones are quite literally representations of Change itself. Through that, the stones are made explicitly to counter the power of Ariya Iwanga’s Immutability, or Changelessness, the power to completely stop change. As long as Reimu has the Incident Stones, she remains completely immune to the effects of Ariya’s Immutability.

Change Manipulation: At its most fundamental, Immutability is the prevention of any kind of Change, able to engulf transformation itself, and many of its effects can stem directly from this complete prevention of change.
Memory Manipulation & Erasure: Even after the Incident ended, nobody who was afflicted by it was able to remember the Incident, including humans, youkai, and even gods. Even just being in the vicinity of the Sanctuary after the Incident ended is enough to affect the minds of those who aren’t protected by the Incident Stones.
Information Manipulation: The very crux of Immutability is said to be a form of information manipulation, but through “stopping change”, Ariya is able to completely stop the flow of information itself, able to “shut out all information” from flowing into Gensokyo or the Lunar Capital. Ariya is similarly also stated to be capable of purifying impurities (which are “life information”). It should be noted that the Asama Purifying Mountain contained countless streams of life information, as well as the information of all living things, which Ariya was able to completely stop. Ariya’s ability is able to “trap/strangle” information in space-time.
Time Stop: Immutability caused the flow of time in Gensokyo to come to a standstill, with the flow of time not returning until Immutability was withdrawn.
Power Nullification: Immutability robbed the powers of all afflicted by it, even the Youkai and Gods of Gensokyo had their powers nullified and were left incapacitated, to the point where it’s difficult to tell if they’re alive or dead. Even abilities such as Koishi’s state of existence and imperceptibility were able to be weakened and nullified by Immutability.
Boundary Manipulation: Ariya’s Immutability was able to affect the Hakurei Barrier enough that it’s completely paused being able to pass things into fantasy during the duration of the Incident.

Seeing as Ariya is able to replace Yuiman’s role in the Asama Purifying Mountain, and can even purify information in the same way that Yuiman can, it’s likely that she could manipulate information in similar ways to Yuiman, which the Stones would protect against. The stones may also directly defend from Yuiman as well, as Yuiman directly threatens to make Reimu vanish without a trace, and is shocked she can’t defeat her.

Information Manipulation & Erasure: Yuiman is able to process, reshape, reconstruct, purify, and even erase information

Universally, the stones are also capable of breaking through seals/barriers through the magics contained within them, even barriers casted by Lunarians. They’re also especially sensitive to every kind of abnormality an incident can bring, which can even allow the wielder to determine if information is true or false, as well as give off strong reactions to help guide them to where they need to go, and even directly communicating with their wielder, informing them of ongoing incidents. The stones are also capable of returning to their wielder in the event they’re separated, such as in Marisa’s Bad Ending.

While wielding the Incident Stones, it causes the user’s attacks to generate Incident Stone fragments, or to generate them as they graze enemy attacks. Absorbing these fragments increases their “Incident Gauge”, which allows them to use a specialized “Incident Attack”, of which each stone has a unique one.

Marisa does note that after the events of Touhou 20, the stones appeared to be becoming weaker, though we’ve heard nothing about them since, so it’s unknown if they eventually became fully depowered or not.

As for the specific effects of each individual stone…

Scarlet Devil Stone

The Scarlet Devil Incident Stone contains the ominous aura of the Scarlet Mist Incident from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, as well as the energy of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and a direct copy of the magic power of Remilia Scarlet. Marisa likens it to “straight-up copyright violation”, showing further how identical the magical power is. The stone is capable of replicating the effects of the Scarlet Mist, empowering Reimu’s Needles and attacks with the Scarlet Mist in a more weaponized form, being especially potent. The Stone can similarly imbue Marisa Kirisame’s lasers with Scarlet Mist empowerment, supporting this.

Conceptual Erasure/Boundary Erasure: The Scarlet Mist, if not stopped, would have erased the border/boundary between the Boundaries of Scarlet/Red and White, with the Boundary of Scarlet/Red and White symbolizing the distinction between existence and nothingness, representing the beginning of all things.
Poison: So much as inhaling the Scarlet Mist can result in one being so sick they become bedridden
Death Inducement: Any human exposed to the Scarlet Mist for more than 30 minutes would die due to the “mysterious energy” it contains.
Perception Manipulation: The Mist affects perception, blocking out both sunlight and moonlight, as well as making the full moon seem hazy, appearing several times larger than it is in actuality.
Barrier Breaching/Boundary Breaching: The Mist was capable of breaching through the Hakurei Barrier, and was going to spread into the Outside World.

The stone could potentially be able to replicate some of Remilia’s other magic as well, but is primarily shown to represent the Scarlet Mist. The stone also provides the supportive effect of increasing the damage of Reimu’s Focused Shot. The stone’s Incident Attack is the “Super-Firepowered Destruction Needle that exterminates just about everything”, unleashing a gigantic barrage of extremely powerful destruction needles. The stone is also noted to be constantly growing more powerful.

Creature Red Stone

The Creature Red Stone represents the Beast Spirit Incident of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, and contains the aura, as well as the magic power of Saki Kurokoma. Containing the power of the blood of those oppressed by beasts under law of the jungle, it’s a powerful stone capable of releasing a Cursed Charm Spread, attacks capable of covering a wide area, with the Incident Attack variant being an “exterminating shot”, which fires out in a massive radius. The stone also has a supportive effect of making the Incident Gauge fill up faster, allowing for more frequent Incident Attacks.

Considering the stone contains Saki’s power, it should provide an impressive power boost, as Saki is considered the strongest of all Beast Spirits (besides Yuuma, who’s implied to be stronger, at least magically so), and was even able to push Reimu when amplified by a Wolf Spirit to her limit.

This stone does have a weakness however, in that it seems to have a dulling effect on the user’s mind. Marisa noted that while wielding it she feels “overconfident” and feels “empty headed” when holding the stone, seemingly a side effect of copying Saki’s power. However, Reimu herself has never noted any adverse effects while wielding the stone, making it unclear if she takes similar effects.

Snow Blossom Stone

The Snow Blossom Stone represents the Spring Snow Incident of Perfect Cherry Blossom, containing the desolate power of a melancholy and endless winter. This stone is strange, as while the Spring Snow Incident was directly caused by Yuyuko and Youmu’s absorption of spring causing a neverending winter, the stone doesn’t seem to represent any abilities of Yuyuko or Youmu, instead embodying the endless winter itself.

The stone attacks with “Obsessive Homing Charms”, charms that home in on the opponent, with the incident attack being “Obsessive Supersized Charm”, unleashing a powerful barrage of charms. The stone also is stated to have “a freezing power”, and notably imbues Marisa’s magic and lasers with ice, showing it has ice magic related properties. It provides the support effect of increasing Unfocused Shot Attack damage, boosting the user’s power.

Blue Season Stone

The Blue Season Stone represents the Four Seasons Incident from Hidden Star in Four Seasons, which was perpetrated by Okina Matara. The stone is a purely natural power, containing the concealed power of the madness behind all seasons, and considering that the Scarlet Devil Stone replicates Remilia’s magic power, since Okina’s magic was the direct cause of the Four Seasons Incident, all in a bid to show how powerful she is, it’s very likely this stone contains a direct copy of Okina’s magical power, which would be a substantial amp in power, seeing as Okina is one of the most powerful characters in the franchise.

The stone provides the Power of the Back, which aims shots at behind the user to protect them from behind, and the Incident Attack, “Reliable God’s Back”, even erases enemy attacks that come from behind, with the range for this being absolutely massive, allowing her to dive back into it to erase oncoming enemy attacks. It also provides the supportive effect of causing “Power” Items to generate and drop more often. Interestingly, Okina inserted a Backdoor within this stone, which allows her to survey everything that occurs from the stone itself.

Yellow Subterranean Stone

The Yellow Subterranean Stone represents the Incident from Subterranean Animism, which was caused by Utsuho Reuji… but the stone instead contains the aura and magical power of Utsuho’s Mistress, Satori Komeiji?! Said to be a pure and merciless, repulsive power keeping everything with unholy energy sealed within the Earth, the stone is capable of replicating Satori’s mind reading abilities to some extent, which include:

Memory Manipulation: Satori was able to dig up memories from Mizuchi, and then “dump” the memory into Reimu’s mind, in order to help her learn how Mizuchi was defeated by her ancestor in the past.
Hypnosis & Trauma Inducement: Satori can use hypnotic lights to distract opponents, causing them to seize up and become easier to attack. In the process, it calls forth memories normally hidden deeper in the surface, digging up past traumas.
Power Mimicry:Satori is able to replicate the Spell Cards and Danmaku she can see in the memories of those she battles, through uprooting the memories of Reimu and Marisa, she was able to replicate Nitori, Patchouli, Alice, Aya, Suika and Yukari’s danmaku and Spell Cards. Though it should be noted that the mimicry isn’t perfect, as there are slight discrepancies in her recreations.
- Dawg I am not fucking listing out all the Spell Cards and Danmaku she copies, this section is already long enough and I’ve spent hours on it, you can see all the ones she’s copied here.

The stone utilizes Taboo Option, which allows Reimu’s “Options” (the Yin Yang Orbs surrounding her) to retaliate with their own attacks, with the Incident Attack being Overflowing Taboo, which creates a barrier which prevents Reimu from being hit for a moderate time, nullifying any attack that connects with her. The stone also provides the support effect that grazing enemy bullets will occasionally erase them.

Imperishable Moon Stone

The Imperishable Moon Stone is based on the Eternal Night Incident from Imperishable Night! Said to contain a cleansing power of purifying energy from the Moon, a powerful purifying magic power. Reimu even threatened to use its powers to purify the Asama Purifying Mountain. It contains the same energy from the Eternal Night Incident.

This stone empowers Reimu’s Options with “Purifying Option”, in order to erase the bullets the stone makes contact with, and counterattack the enemy after doing so. The Incident Attack, “Impure Land Evasion” causes all options to reflect enemy bullets back at them, and at the end of the attack, reflect all enemy bullets back at them. It’s quite an effective uno reverse card. It also provides the support effect of occasionally erasing bullets that make contact with Reimu’s Options.

This stone is a little unclear, as it’s not actually clear if the stone is based upon the powers of any specific character, or just the incident itself. It’s noted repeatedly to have purifying powers, which could coincide with Kaguya Houraisan’s powers, which are noted to have a purifying effect, meaning it could potentially be a copy of her magic and thus her abilities, but it’s not exactly definitive, as Eirin Yakogokoro is the one to appear in the endings, rather than Kaguya. It could also potentially just be weaponizing the Moon’s Purity.

Beast Hardiness Stone

The Beast Hardiness Stone represents the Incident of Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, providing the, and I quote, “impermanent power of beasts with the mercilessness of that vast, unending Hell”…. Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. More precisely and accurately, it is a crystallized version of Zanmu’s power over Nothingness, containing her magic aura. Zanmu’s Nothingness ability is somewhat poorly defined, and interpreted in the fandom in many ways, ranging from very good manipulation skills or “””social influencing””” to outright mind manipulation.

The stone utilizes Beast Spirits offensively, releasing Steller’s Sea Eagle Flock, a barrage of Eagle Spirits that fly to target the enemy. When Marisa Kirisame utilizes it, it is capable of releasing a pack of wolf spirits. The Incident Attack is The Spider’s Thread, which generates a Spell Piece, helping to restore the user’s bomb quantity if they go without being hit during the Attacks’ duration. Its support effect increases attack power against Wonder Stones, which are crystallizations of resentment.

Shintoism Wind Stone

The Shintoism Wind Stone seems to be tied to the arrival of the Moriya Shrine in Gensokyo from Mountain of Faith. The stone contains the gods’ mystical power, filled with the force of the winds blowing through Youkai Mountain, which is where the Moriya Shrine resides. Said to hold a mystical and divine power, said power originating from a God or Buddha, which is even confirmed by Reimu herself.

The stone is able to release Mystical Serpents, homing energy snakes that pursue the enemy with single minded ambition for murder, and the stone’s support effect increases the duration of Incident Attacks. When Marisa uses the stone, it weaponizes explosive energy frogs. The Incident Attack is Mystical Spirit Strike, which unleashes a spiritual attack that releases offensive and defensive power, creating a large barrier that nullifies any attacks that come into contact with it.

Common Magic Stone

The Common Magic Stone isn’t actually based upon any specific Incident, instead serving the purpose of an… “amplifier” I suppose. It’s capable of absorbing magical power, and is used to mimic the Main Incident Stone chosen. The support effect of the stone will mimic the main stone, but be slightly inferior to the actual thing. Theoretically, its ability to absorb magical power could allow it to replicate the effects of other magical artifacts or items.

Greedy Trial Items

_{Only a Sporkful….}

In the Greedy Trial mode in Sunken Fossil World, the protagonist is able to collect a variety of items with various effects provided by Okina Matara, and can stack each item several times to amplify their effects. These items are:

Keseran-Pasaran

A strange spherical object gifted to the Hakurei Shrine a long time ago, Reimu initially mistook it as a foxball, a magic item which lets one see through disguises. In truth, the ball is a Keseran-Pasaran, or a type of fungus with its own will which causes instant happiness in whoever holds it. Due to its presence, the entire Hakurei Shrine was enveloped in an unusual happiness for a time. Such a power is typically permitted only to the gods, and fungi can cause fermentation, which is another ability reserved for the gods. In fact, some of the gods that exist are likely fungi just like the Keseran-Pasaran. Thanks to this divine power, only shrine maidens such as Reimu and Sanae can safely hold it, while causing a mildly painful jolt to anyone else who tries to hold it before fleeing. As the Keseran-Pasaran is a fungus, it requires specific conditions to remain healthy and maintain its power, so Reimu currently has it tucked away in her storeroom.

Fragment of Onikirimaru

A fragment of the Youkai Blade Onikirimaru, an extremely powerful blade capable of sealing away a youkai and their power in a strike. Originally used to sever off one of Kasen’s arm, sealing all her malice into a separate being (Ibaraki-Douji), Reimu was given a fragment of the blade by Kasen to help her in sealing away Kasen at full power after she re-merged with her arm. Just by holding the fragment, Reimu’s sealing capabilities are amplified drastically, capable of overpowering and sealing away Ibaraki-Douji, who was initially resistant to Reimu’s sealing abilities. Her sealing was so powerful that it even completely disintegrated Kasen as a side effect of sealing Ibaraki-Douji.

Bullfinch Whistle

Reimu has access to a special whistle that allows her to call upon a flock of bullfinches, special birds that peck one’s lies from their being, and transfer them into blessings. Oddly specific thing to have, no?

Rope

Seemingly bog-standard rope for when you need to restrain someone. Reimu is, for some reason, skilled enough with using it that she can whip it out with one hand and instantly catch someone’s hands behind their backs and tie them in a knot.

Disguises

Reimu has a wide variety of different outfits and disguises she wears when she’s trying to go “undercover” or “unnoticed” in the Human Village.

Gravitational Wave Detector

An advanced piece of Lunar Capital technology lent to Reimu by Eirin, this satellite dish is capable of detecting gravity waves. Reimu used it to track down the last known location of individuals who were spirited away into the Outside World by detecting the unusual gravitational waves caused by their sudden disappearance and the accompanying loss of conservation of mass.

Abilities

Doctor Strange

Sorcery

Due to the nature of magic in Marvel being very complex, multi-faceted, and full of random facts ranging from weaknesses to hidden lore, we’re going to do our best to break down magic into as many fundamental aspects as possible, and talk about how they all apply to Doctor Strange before getting into his specific spells.

Magic in the Marvel Universe

“So let’s talk about magic. We can dicker on the exact rules, if you like. There are all sorts of Grimoires and Cryptonomicons. I’ve got an AD&D manual somewhere. At the core, though…magic is taking a thought and making it real. Taking a lie and making it the truth. Telling a story to the universe so utterly, cosmically perfect that for a single, shining moment…the world believes a man can fly.” -Loki

According to Doctor Strange himself, “‘Magic’ is a complex weaving of natural forces – life energy, elemental power, cosmic energies. And, like more familiar physical forces such as thermal energy, electricity, or gravity, they abide by a set of governing laws. They do not simply obey the whims of those who employ them. They have limitations and foibles.” It is directed energy, and extra-dimensional forces that are used to manipulate the natural world. Magic is also part of the axis power of the universe, being the opposite end of science, with birth and death and good and evil also being part of the totality, forming a cube-like shape. By its very nature of misdirection and imagination, magic manipulates and alters local probability fields on a quantum level.

Magic emanates from the Fourth Plane of Consciousness, and its place of birth was the Fifth Cosmos by the first sorcerers, saying that modern magic is more refined but less powerful compared to magic in its most primal state eons ago. But through this refining, lots of different types of magic are born. In Marvel, there are four main types of magic: Ego-centric (self or internal), Eco-centric (environmental or external), Exo-centric (realms beyond being channeled), Necromantic (relating to the dead). More specific magics exist, such as Asgardian or Chaos magic, showing that it can hail from specific people and places. More specific magics like Watoomb and Agamotto are generated from the daily churn of existence, an energy that flows from the moment-to-moment machinery of the universe, but in this, there exists a gap between what is and what could have been, unleashing a side of magic from potential, from missed opportunities, and from events that do not happen. There is so much magic and spells that have been created that according to Strange, you could combine every magic text, from a beginner’s guide to the Darkhold itself, you would still only grasp 8% of what magic can do. The Spell of Akhryon allows a magician to find commonalities between magics.

Magic has lots of inherent properties to it that Strange relies upon in order to perform spells or operate. It leaves behind mystical and occult energy that can be sensed or tracked, manipulate the energies of other dimensions, and commune with “higher plane” powers, which Strange frequently uses in order to invoke a majority of his spells, taking magic out of everyday objects, to make the Flames of Faltine powerful enough to level a skyscraper.

Magic Physiology

Strange’s physiology is altered by magic by virtue of being the Sorcerer Supreme. He has magic bits that run in his blood, which he can actually use to divine magical artifacts located on a map, or imprint maps onto his skin. His body is altered in a few ways as well, such as when he used a spell to alter his metabolic rate to grow out his hair, or how his stomach can only accept this gross food now, food that would normally kill a normal man, because of his exposure to magical energy. Because Doctor Strange passed Mistress Death’s trial, he has a prolonged lifespan of up to 600 years. Satannish comments that Strange grows in both power and prescience every time they meet, though Strange admits it’s been at the expense of warping himself and his spirit in terrible ways.

Precision Required

A central part of Strange’s magic is the ability to concentrate and be precise, and there’s no better way to do this than with meditation. By meditating, Strange’s mind can review hundreds of spells in an instant, analyzing dozens of magical arts, categorizing them as to their intent, validity, and effectiveness. Similarly speaking, magic can restore his mystic capabilities, and Clea says making new combinations or formulas of spells takes a lot of work and time like composing a song while doing complex math, and old school magic doesn’t really work on revenants. She does this on the spot mid-combat. Strange’s spellcasting sometimes is a mix of somatic and verbal components, and this one undoes the bindings on him and Casey after he teaches her to do a spell.

Overall though, Strange’s spells need concentration as a requirement, and in the past Strange has worried about certain magic taking a long time to cast, requiring ingredients he doesn’t have, and potentially tainting his soul. Some spellcasting can be done without speaking, such as nonverbal casting of a barrier and fires magic, and even Strange notes a difference between spoken spells and thought spells. Some spells require complex incantations while others only require a thought and a gesture.

The Title of Sorcerer Supreme

According to Doctor Strange himself, the title of the Sorcerer Supreme, is somebody who is recognized to have magic primacy, and is thus granted a wellspring of powers not offered to other magic users, and that he is a prime defender of Earth from other dimensions invading the mortal plane. The Sorcerer Supreme own the Cloak of Levitation, Eye of Agamotto, and Wand of Watoomb, along with other artifacts such as the Orb of Agamotto, Darkhold, Scrolls and Wand of Watoomb, Purple Gem, Book of Eibon, Book of Vishanti. The Vishanti created or empowered these items for the Sorcerer Supreme, such as the Book of Vishanti, Eye, Orb, Amulet of Agamotto, Moebius Stone, Hand of Vishanti, and Sword of Bone. Sorcery involves extraversal forces and deities that require humility in exchange for the spells and abilities going off successfully. This humility is implied to be why Doom isn’t as skilled as Doctor Strange in sorcery. If Strange himself shows arrogant vibes, magical forces can reject his pleas.

One common misconception is that the title of Sorcerer Supreme being stripped of him means he cannot use magic period. For those unaware, the Dark Arts were Strange’s previous usage of magic prior to becoming Sorcerer Supreme, and there have been a few times where he has called upon the Dark Arts when all else fails, causing Strange to lose the title of Sorcerer Supreme. However, it’s shown he still can control magic, however, without this title. He doesn’t lose his magic without it. When The Ancient One leaves Jericho Drumm a message through the Eye choosing him as Sorcerer Supreme, he claimed Strange “chose to let go” of the title, meaning using the Dark Arts on its own doesn’t strip Stephen of this title. Both Jericho and Daniel Drumm are imbued as the new Sorcerer Supreme in this storyline later. Although other times Strange claims magic “turned its back on him.”

Names Invoked

a cartoon of two men standing next to each other in a room with the caption `` by the eye of agamotto '' .

As you’ve noticed, a vast majority of Doctor Strange’s spells have names at the end that seem random, but are actually higher powers within Marvel that Strange calls upon for power, many of which will be gone over below. The primary group Strange draws power from is the group that gave him his title of Sorcerer Supreme, that being the Vishanti – Oshtur, Hoggoth, and Agamotto. The Vishanti is a trinity entity, a group of beings that can manipulate matter on an atomic level and observe the multiverse from a pocket dimension. Earth’s physical laws don’t apply in Agamotto’s realm and it shapes itself to the mind of the visitor.

Counterspells

Doctor Strange says that for every spell, there is a counterspell. By merely sampling magic of an opposing enemy, Strange can figure out counterspells against whatever magic spells he is up against. If Strange learns an unknown spell used on him, he can counter it, and sorcerers memorize counterspells for every conceivable threat, and Strange is very capable of using counterspells mid-battle against the likes of Baron Mordo. He can use counterspells against mages and deities far stronger than himself, such as Shuma-Gorath. There are many examples of counterspells working on specific powers and undoing them such as magical hexes, transmutation, trapping sigils, planetary scale mental influence, locked enchanted doors, Brother Voodoo’s scrying/dispelling, constructs, mystic defenses, magical symbols, binding magic, protective spells, astral imprisonment, and mystic restraints. Strange has even counterspelled some of his own spells such as the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak or the Seven Rings of Ragadorr. Most impressively, Doctor Strange has performed counterspells on spells Wanda has set, both in a small sense and even contributing to a counterspell against “No More Mutants” with Emma Frost at “ground zero”, which prevented the reality rewrite from affecting various memories and a number of mutants, which protected them from the effects.

However, these counterspells very much apply to Strange as it does his opponents, as spells that Strange uses also have a counterspell to them. For instance, Strange’s banishment to the Crossroads spell was prevented by a counterspell blanketing Hulk, a restraining spell that prevents him from shunting or transporting anything off this dimension. Potent sorcerers such as Clea have also been able to continuously counterspell Strange before he can even cast a spell.

Learning Other Magicks

Along with counterspells, Strange can learn magic spells or types of magic from other sources of power than just the Trinity of the Vishanti. An early Doctor Strange learned how to do an Astral Plane-exclusive teleporting technique while power-nulled from observing a demon doing what seemed to be teleportation, but he deduced that this was the astral form ignoring distance and physical law through force of will and, thus, weaponizes this to shunt the demon into a cage full of Mindless Ones.

When far away from Earth and low on magic due to distance, Strange usurped Asgardian magic when Loki became the Sorcerer Supreme. It is suggested that Strange undergoes the Spell of Ahkrynon, a spell that alters the mindset in order to pave way for magic not naturally accessed in a certain magic, which in this case would be Asgardian magic. More recently as the Asgardian Sorcerer Supreme, Strange was able to learn a new magic called scythe magic mid-fight, magic that exists in a gap between what is and what could have been, unleashing a side of magic from potential, from missed opportunities, and from events that do not happen (more elaboration in Sorcerer Supreme of Asgard section in Forms).

Bolts of Balthakk

When Doctor Strange casts and evokes the Bolts of Balthakk, he fires what everyone typically recognizes as magical bolts or blasts. Strange’s energy blasts have harmed notable characters such as Kulan Gath, King of Hell Johnny Blaze, and Sorcerer Supreme Jericho Drumm. While possessed, Stephen and Daimon Hellstrom were able to manifest a gigantic magical beam and use magicks that could hurt spirits. These energy bolts aren’t just limited to single shots either, Strange can fire multiple magical beams at once, magic AOE blasts out of his Cloak of Levitation, magical shots in various different directions with a swipe of his arm, and spam a volley of mystical energy attacks, where he additionally claims he can reduce shattered bodies to a molten slag. The Bolts of Balthaak themselves can be imbued with effects from other spells too, like when the Winds of Watoomb and Bolts of Balthaak imbued him with lightning that allowed him to disperse a storm above a cruise ship and dry out various water elementals.

An alternative spell that effectively accomplishes the same thing as the Bolts of Balthakk are the Bolts of Bedevilment. The Bolts of Bedevilment can be cast with verbal components to imbue custom effects, but are otherwise somatically cast. With the Wand of Watoomb, this can shunt characters to an alternate reality, but this is normally just a magical energy shot. Some custom effects include redirecting energy attacks from Dormammu back at him. These bolts are well-known amongst mystics, and the custom banishment properties have been used by Strange to banish invisible fiends that he could see. Strange implies that the Bolts of Bedevilment are used on targets he doesn’t consider big threats. Ebony Bolts of Bedevilment have also been used to telekinetically push Mordo back.

Sometimes, however, Doctor Strange just uses general offensive magic blasts and energy without really invoking any named spell in particular. Offensive magic can be so potent that they can outright disintegrate bodies to skeletons or ashes, splatter demons to pieces, or simply target and disintegrate items like paper with dangerous information on it. The Daggers of Denak are mystical energy sawblades and the Disks of Denak are energy disk projectiles that apply blunt force. An alternate universe version of Strange taking over Drank Castle was able to conjure mystical shockwaves, Doctor Strange can phase his Astral Body’s hands into Mordo to imbue with enough magic to explode and disperse his body parts across a dimension, and even unskilled sorcerers can make mini-black holes via magic that can take out Los Angeles. Strange is also capable of overloading targets who can absorb magical energy with his blasts, or use them to mend magical pathways.

Speaking of wide ranges, magic energy can naturally be expelled in explosive and omnidirectional blasts around a sorcerer’s body. Doctor Strange can do this with a wide blast of magical light, and Sorcerer Supreme Jericho Drumm was able to manifest an energy field around himself to incapacitate two Ghost Riders attacking him at once, meaning it can affect spiritual beings. Satana was once able to release all of her magical energy at once in a massive omnidirectional blast as a sacrificial move, meaning the upper limit is defined by the sorcerers themselves.

Astral Projection

One of Doctor Strange’s abilities that almost everyone knows about is the act of astral projection, or the power to “eject” his consciousness and metaphysical spirit from his body in an ectoplasmic state that lacks form and substance. This is done by having your consciousness ascend and travel to the Astral Plane, which is layered over our reality. Having done this countless times at this point, Doctor Strange can astral project “immediately”, leaving him selectively invisible much like ghosts, meaning he can allow certain people to see him when others cannot. This even hides him from things like Daredevil’s Radar Sense, but having a form of supernatural awareness will let you see normally unhearable and invisible Astral Forms (Spider-Sense works to detect it too).

Plus, Strange can still communicate with teammates in this form if he really wants to. But, Astral energies left behind or on Strange’s Astral Form can be read and detected by Stark tech, energy fluctuation readers, and energy scanners. In this state, the Astral Body has no weight nor mass, doesn’t require air, light, or food, and doesn’t feel fatigue like the physical body does. This means that even if his physical body is injured, his Astral Form is still in peak condition. Despite all that, Strange can still “feel” his environment as his Astral Form and jolting his physical body will notify his ectoplasmic self. And, this state is entirely unbound by space and time, as in time and space mean nothing to this form and “no barrier of time or space” can stop his Astral Body. Because of this, he’s unbound by physical laws, which is what facilitates his intangibility and phasing so he can ignore enormous physical attacks such as Black Bolt’s speech blowing up a building. Of course, this also means that Strange in this state sometimes cannot communicate or interact with anything physically, but other comics allow his Astral Form to physically break through windows and feel pain or catch monsters.

So, what exactly is the Astral Form made of? It’s consistently stated to be an ectoplasmic form. But, more specifically, spiritual beings such as ghosts are described as “walking information”, something further clarified by the Collector describing the Soul Stone as containing “information”, a storage device or hard drive given it contains Soulworld and spirits. And, he describes the Infinity Stones in general as being representations of “computer code”. With this in mind, however, it should still be noted that harming his Astral Form respectively harms his physical body in the same spot, further supported by when it was stabbed by a mental avatar and he’s shunted out of Wade’s mind, shown by the nosebleed in his body in the physical world. Though, Astral Bodies are not really notably fragile. Strange’s astral form took damage as he fought an Astral Plane demon before, though assaults on his Astral Body do still require massive energy to defend it. Also, being in an Astral Form is extremely taxing on his concentration, so those in the know like Doom know to attack Strange’s physical body to disrupt the concentration maintaining his astral projection. Using a bunch of other magic like sustaining a cloaking spell while teleporting and astral projecting is going to put an exhaustive strain on his physical body if he’s not careful.

However, many of his enemies have thought to exploit what may seem like the most obvious downside to using this power. See, Strange’s body is usually suspended and immobile while astral projecting, and his body in this state actually counts as “being asleep”. So, why not just immediately run after his physical form to blast it to smithereens? Well, Doctor Strange normally casts a protective spell over his physical body before astral projecting out, something he can leave protected by multiple psychic membrane layers of the Shield of Seraphim that even the Ancient One needs time to remove over time. In fact, Strange’s Astral Form being attacked by invisible magic-eating bugs shows them eating through the protective spells that normally shield and empower him in this state, meaning his Astral Body is similarly protected. In earlier comics, he even has the Vishanti protect his physical body from harm in this state.

But in more recent comics, this weakness is actually kind of a non-factor nowadays. Strange can activate a sliver of his Astral Self while still maintaining his normal form, and his body can still function and perform tasks while his astral form is outside of it, calling it “multi-tasking”. One of the bigger benefits to flying around with his spiritual consciousness exposed like this is that it’s actually way faster at flying around than his physical body, allowing him to travel half the world in the time it takes a bat to beat its wings, traverse millions of miles instantly, and fly faster than any jet. It’s typically explained that the Astral Form is this fast because it’s unfettered by the normal laws of space and time. He’s previously flown to outer space, implied he could astral project halfway across the planet, and can teleport in this projected form (even ignoring distance and physical law to do so in the Subtle Realms), making it great for recon missions.

Now, there are drawbacks to staying in this form for too long, since the longer he’s away from his body, the weaker his Astral Form gets. But, the biggest and most consistent weakness is that you can’t maintain an Astral Form for more than a day in the main universe before perishing, and this deadline shortens if the magician is weakened. In fact, an Astral Body with a dead body would die within a day had this mystic not transported it to the Astral Plane to exist for centuries or taken over a body with great effort, though this left him in a weakened state with limited magic usage. If one doesn’t return from their astral body to their physical body in 24 hours, the astral body will dissipate, break apart, and cease to exist.

For Doctor Strange, if his Astral Form dies while he’s in this state, it’s been stated quite a few times that that will be the end for him. Should his physical body die, then the Astral Body will die along with it shortly. As in, killing Strange when his physical body is being projected from will leave his invisible Astral Form wandering dimensions forever. However, when his heart stopped, his Astral Form was forcibly ascending, his ties to the world dissolving, but Strange was able to forcibly pull himself away and back to his dimension. But, the catch is that he can only do so into a willing host body. Plus, there’s also instances of Doctor Strange helping to hold an Astral Form together with magic, as Jessica Drew’s one was transfixed between dimensions, leaving it to fade from existence if stuck in this state for too long. There’s also a bunch of exclusive powers that Strange can access in this form, so it’s not as if taking on this state doesn’t offer significant benefits, such as:

Instant Astral Projection: Chenzy’s Emergency Act of Self Astral Manipulation (a spell for instant astral projection). Killing Strange’s spirit kills his body, so he avoids a volley of exclusively spirit-targeting spiritual arrows by astral projecting at the last second so they harmlessly pass through his body. He outruns astral buffalo and returns to his body before it can be destroyed to leave his spirit wandering forever.
Astral Body Removal: Carelli’s Forced Mortal Astral Extraction allows Strange’s Astral Form to rip someone’s astral self from their physical body. Strange brings Tony and Reed’s consciousnesses to the Astral Plane as an Astral Form. Caretti’s Forced Mortal Astral Projection brings Victoria and Strange to the Astral Plane. Removes an astral form from the physical body it is possessing. Astral Form tackles a spirit possessing his physical body out of it and into the Astral Plane.
Astral Body Unsealing: Strange’s Astral Form is trapped inside of his body through black magic, so he asks Wong to bring out the Karkuthi to read an incantation to free it.
Astral Body Reinstatement: Corelli’s Third-Party Astral Form Reinstatement allows Strange to put astral forms back in their bodies.
Astral Body Rejection: Spell that can block an Astral Self from re-merging with the physical body.
Astral Body Splitting: Can divide a sliver of his Astral self to operate independently. The Muntu Splitting of the Self is a spell Strange’s astral form casts to split up his astral form to fight as multiple Doctor Stranges. Taking damage as his astral self hurts his physical body and removes the duplicates, so he needs to consolidate energy. Splits his Astral Form into multiple Stranges, but splitting his Astral Form weakens him. Strange can activate a sliver of his Astral Self while still maintaining his normal form.
Astral Conjuring: Strange uses a spell to cough up a heart-based magical grenade using the magic in the guts of his astral form that causes a mystical aftershock that makes people vomit in the material plane, but lures all the magic-eating slugs.
Internal Attacks: The Ancient One phases and pokes Strange’s heart with his astral form to wake him up. Doctor Strange can phase his Astral Body’s hands into Mordo to imbue with enough magic to explode and disperse his body parts across a dimension.
Self-Power Sharing: When his body was injured, this created a connection between his body and his spirit which is now allowing his spirit to absorb power from his body to break the bindings that Nightmare placed on him. The aforementioned tactic is shown succeeding.
Teleportation: Stephen’s Astral Form warps space to teleport and does so by ignoring distance and physical laws when maneuvering through the Subtle Realms.
Multilocation: Doctor Strange goes into the Astral Plane, but Strange’s Astral Form is flickering in two places at once in two different worlds.
Possession: Strange can possess people as an Astral Body. Possesses a rat. Astral Forms can puppet a body when entering their mind or psyche, which is basically a form of possession. Strange transported his Astral Form into the body of his ally when his own body was injured. A dying sorcerer once possessed Vision. Strange is impaled with an alien weapon, severely wounding his body, so Strange falls back on fighting with his Astral Form possessing someone. After Strange’s heart stops, his Astral Form is forcibly ascended, his ties to the world dissolving, but Strange forcibly pulls himself away and back to his dimension, but can only do so into a willing host body. Possessing mystically attuned bodies brings Strange’s powers to their peak. Possessing a cat to feign his physical body’s defeat, which made his physical body resistant to mind-destroying spells as it lacked his consciousness within the Astral Form. Uses his Astral Form to enter Adam’s body to find his soul. Strange can possess inanimate objects such as wax figures.
Dimensional Travel: Forms can travel across solar systems, into minds, and into dimensional portals. Strange avoided being shunted to the Purple Dimension via the use of his Astral Form. Warps reality to dimension hop home. Strange intends to breach through the Spacewall separating our universe from the Microverse in his Astral Form. Traveling in the void between dimensions and through to the Microverse. The Astral Form can travel to minds and dimensions. Astral Forms can travel through portals. Astral projecting into Mephisto’s realm while his body remains on Earth.
Memory Manipulation: Has an ability to interact with and talk with those from his memories, almost as if he is in the past. Strange can use astral projection to enter into someone’s memories by projecting into their very blood, using blood cells to tap into the memories and life of Kulan Gath and even his ancestors, being able to view Earth in the Hyborian Age many millennia ago.
Mindscape Travel: The Astral Form can travel to minds and dimensions. Strange is able to enter mindscapes in his Astral Form.
Dreamscape Travel: Astral Projects into a sleeping person’s dream. Strange’s Astral Form travels to someone’s dream. Implied to have accessed Spider-Man’s dreams through the Astral Plane.
Time Travel: Strange was able to travel to an object’s specific past as his Astral Form. Strange offers to send Bruce Banner’s Astral Form back in time as a loophole, since Astral Forms can’t interfere with anything in the past. Strange sends Banner’s Astral Form back to when the first gamma bomb was detonated.
Sense Manipulation: Strange says listening to D’Spayre via astral communication is optional.
Soul Tracking: Strange locates Brother Voodoo’s soul.
Poison Absorption: Bit Morbius’ neck in the Astral Plane to absorb the poisonous drug he had taken to make him okay.
Astral Self-Perpetuation: Spell to prevent Astral Self from dissipating even when the body is clinically dead so long as they’re in the Astral Plane. Strange can hold Jessica Drew’s Astral Form together while it’s transfixed between our universe and an astral plane, magically wrestling with Morgan over it.
Astral Plane-Rooted Attacks: Daniel Drumm, from the Spirit Plane, is “everywhere” and he can be anywhere and possess anyone he wants, to the point that “space” means nothing to him.
Astral Size Manipulation: Strange uses blood magic to grow to kaiju size as his astral self to match the demon’s size and fight him evenly without a size discrepancy. Astral Form Strange battles a demon in a storm, enlarging his size to do so.

We also need to clear up that the Astral Form isn’t actually restricted from using his usual magic that he performs while he’s in his physical body. In fact, he can even use spells that help to manually maneuver his own unconscious body through space or use teleportation spells on it. When it’s inside of mindscapes, Astral Strange can fight off nightmare demons or even invoke AOE energy spells and the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak against spiritual Soulworld residents. In this form, Strange could dispel demons, cast named spells, generally cast spells, cast basic healing spells, conjure barriers and shields, and fire or block magical bolts or blasts like normal. There’s also sometimes this hazy differentiation between Astral Bodies and ghosts / spirits in Marvel. Much like Astral Forms, ghosts are normally invisible and can phase, but Astral Bodies have the privilege of being able to remerge with their living body.

And, while lacking a soul leaves a person’s physical body to gradually grow more frail, astral projection doesn’t achieve this same effect. In fact, these past Sorcerer Supreme Astral Forms were used up entirely to seal a dimensional gate, but this leaves their physical bodies behind indefinitely. Jericho and Daniel Drumm, as Sorcerer Supreme, could later unseal this by interacting with these physical bodies. Yet, despite these technical differences, spells that seem to affect Astral Forms in their names can affect spirits like Daniel Drumm. This would mean that Daniel Drumm’s ghost being described as having an “unreal nature”, which is similar to Nightmare’s lack of tangibility via unreality, shouldn’t be too dissimilar from Astral Form compositions.

But, Doctor Strange acknowledges that astral projecting doesn’t mean he’s “a ghost yet”. Usually, a body missing an Astral Form will be recognized as simply missing a “mind”. To corroborate this, The Eye of Agamotto scanned a body and found that its mind was gone altogether, meaning her Astral Form. And, Strange possessed a cat to feign his physical body’s defeat, which made his physical body resistant to mind-destroying spells as it lacked his consciousness, which was within the Astral Form. Additionally, if Strange’s dream self is ripped out and controlled, his Astral Self can simply take its place with full independence. Strange can also appear as an Astral Form to independently assist heroes against his corrupted physical body.

Basically, the difference is a state of death, since astral projecting is recognized as a form of “sleep”. It is, in fact, outright stated that otherwise his soul and Astral Form are the same thing. This mystic villain could astral project after his body was fatally injured, but could not cling to this realm for very long before fading away upon death. And in this comic run, Stephen used a vial of mystic sweat to “temporarily kill him” so his ghost can travel the afterlife realms freely rather than simply astral projecting. His magic isn’t as powerful, however, when he’s a ghost traveling the afterlife. But like his Astral Form, pain dealt to his physical bodies can be felt by his spirit and he’ll be left wandering forever as a spirit if his physical body dies before he gets back to it. Likely because of this death connection, Astral Bodies in the Death Dimension are rendered solid.

Crimson Bands of Cyttorak

The Crimson Bands are one of Doctor Strange’s most well known spells, something present in almost every iteration of media that includes him. In fact, Cyttorak spells are amongst the first the Ancient One ever taught Strange. What this spell does is that it conjures bands of mystical energy with verbal and somatic components that can snake its way through the air like ribbons, which bind targets with energy so tough that it requires a lot of superhuman or supernatural effort to break free of them. And, if Strange casts the verbal component with a funky little rhyme, they generate more power. Yet, Strange is skilled enough that can perform the spell with somatic components only or in his Astral Form.

It takes a powerful enchantment to magically break free from the Crimson Bands, which Strange and someone with his mystic powers were able to accomplish multiple times. Or, they can be dealt with if you have a magic-cutting sword like Magik or know the right counterspell to dispel them. It’s treated as a big deal when someone breaks them, but they’re not infallible. Mages are able to redirect the Crimson Bands if it’s used on them to bind the caster, and they are only sustained and as strong as the caster’s concentration. But, don’t sell the Bands short. They’ve been able to restrain multiple people at once, building-sized targets, fling helicopters, groups of fiends to set up a banishment, Limbo demons, multiple X-Men including briefly holding Storm, Loki, several Avengers at once including Thor, the Hulk, and Donald Blake, who took a beating from an Odinforce-enchanted Destroyer.

This spell has a lot of different properties and general capabilities despite its simple typical use cases. The Crimson Bands can bind Strange’s Astral Form and residents of Soulworld, with other Cyttorak-rooted magic artifacts like the Cage of Cyttorak being able to hold spirits. They’ve restrained dream selves and, with six other spells, it facilitated the act of Strange binding Daniel Drumm’s spirit to Luke Cage’s body. They were cast to manifest out of a man’s chest to protect him from an entity trying to phase his claws into it and transmute his heart. They can act as a guide for Strange through the Dark Dimension. The Bands are also surprisingly incredibly fast, since they can track someone to ensnare them over a large area, with no speed or distance making a difference since, even at “the speed of thought”, Strange faster Astral Form couldn’t outrun their tracking ribbons.

But, binding with bands is not the only form they can take. They can be cast as omnidirectional spherical restraints, like this example of them encasing an alternate universe Doom-ified Tony Stark, or in a yarn ball-looking form for Hulk to roll around in. Crimson Bands can be used in other ways, like to yoink the Cask of Cyttorak, seal away the Eye and Cloak in a nigh-impenetrable forcefield, or break free and sunder prisons made by containment spells meant to stop incantations altogether. Strange is also able to imprison Valtorr tendrils in a container of Bands and shrink them to condense the imprisonment so that he can more easily shunt them to a void.

Other examples of the spell helping with banishment include the time Strange combatted a Darkhold-summoned monster with light-based tendrils from the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak to shunt the monster back to “Outer Dark”. On top of that, they could seal off a dimensional gateway, which spatially severed a tentacle by closing it. With a long super incantation for the Crimson Bands, Strange could banish Mordo’s mook despite them using an aging power that worked to weaken and even nullify spells, with other incantations dissipating magic barriers.

Variants that aren’t specifically called “the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak” exist too, like a multicolored version that can gently catch people falling out of the air, green energy coils to try to restrain demons after duping them with a duplicate, magical rings that restrain Deadpool’s mental avatars, or the Ribbons of Ragaddor that restrained Spider-Man’s limbs. Strange has easily broken out of a variant called the Emerald Bands of Exador, and the Hulk has broken free of eldritch bands cast by him before too. There’s the Bands of Bedevilment that can bind Brother Voodoo, these weird energy construct tendrils that can restrain a Kindred-possessed Silk, and Strange can materialize this mystical mist that’s able to restrain Captain America.

There’s the Binding Chains of Valtorr that “cannot be broken” which he used to restrain an Astral Plane demon. The Scarlet Sphere is a variation with a higher toll on the caster that makes a spherical barrier that’s tougher than other shields. And, the Chains of Krakkan (that can bind a weaker Ikonn) conjures magical binding chains or cuffs, which are more physical constructs. After willingly allowing himself to be bound by the Shackles of Sheol, Strange could invoke Oshtur to break free, showing he has answers to mystical shackles or binding himself. All these different versions don’t have the prestige and legacy of the Crimson Bands, plus some can be dispelled away, but certain ones like the Snake of Baltik are still strong enough to be able to restrain heavy hitters like Galactus. Also, Doctor Strange can conjure up Crimson Crystals that conjures not only a containment vessel, but can also fire magic lasers!

Rings of Raggadorr

This spell conjures magical energy rings meant to act as a mystical binding, which Dormammu has used in the past to hold back a Mindless One army when actualizing the spell as a shield. This is something that Doctor Strange has replicated with the help of multiple sorcerers to create a mystical Ring of Raggador barrier to seal off the Mindless Ones. These rings can also be conjured in the form of mist to act as mystical chains, used to bind beings like Ghost Rider, be used to safely handle an antimatter microverse, and they can banish entities. More practically, they can be used to search every crevice of a library for specific scrolls.

The Rings of Raggadorr can also be used to catch someone that goes through the inside of the ring itself, which makes them fall immediately unconscious and inert. Or, they can be weaponized and shot out as projectiles to shatter gargoyles. Generally speaking, invoking Raggadorr, a mystic principality and ruler of a dimension of the same name, can bring in other kinds of spells separate from the aforementioned uses of the rings. His magic can conjure waves and rings to wash people away, boost speed, free people from mind control, perform exorcisms, and break bonds, contaminants, or barriers.

Images of Ikonn

This is a spell that invokes Ikonn himself in order to facilitate illusions that help evade attacks, fool opponents, or it can even be used to dispel other illusions, reveal them for what they actually are, or dissolve his own ones at will. See, Ikonn’s hold on reality allowed him to bend physical laws and warp reality when he actually came down to Earth, so these illusion powers almost appear to branch off from what he could enforce. Doctor Strange can get quite creative with this spell, using illusions to set up counterattacks with portals that hit an opponent from behind or testing out defensive countermeasures against magic with fake attacks. Doctor Strange’s Astral Form, used in tandem with the Images of Ikonn, can allow him to selectively appear to certain people. In order to cast the Images of Ikonn to make illusory clones or cloaking spells, a verbal component is normally necessary. But, not every instance of illusory usage requires that, since he can cast it with just a thought. And magic illusions in general are able to replicate smells and sounds.

Making illusions during fights is actually something Strange tends to do quite often. He’s made avatar duplicates to fight Zemo with him, used illusory duplicates to fool and distract Mindless Ones to sneak past them, made copies to intimidate people, copied himself in fights to surround a foe, and Clea even ends up using tons of duplicates this same way. Or, you can be like Stephen and use it casually for more degenerate vices, I guess. Of course, with the proper area of effect, you can wipe out a bunch of these illusions at once. Though, he’s experienced in using them during fights in a ton of strategic ways, so this might be difficult.

One time, he created a fog and an army of duplicates of himself and his friend with Images of Ikonn in order to buy time to figure out an enemy’s Achilles Heel. He also does this to retreat and mystically seal a door behind him. While weakened, Strange fended off multiple sorcerers at once and created illusory duplicates, he did this while simultaneously cloaking his real self to release a man from mystic mind control. On top of that, Strange has previously created an illusionary copy of himself for Mordo to attack, and made such a good illusion that Mordo was fully convinced there were two of him. Impressively, he once faked an entire fight with an illusory duplicate of himself, even faking his mystical bolts being absorbed. He ends it by disguising his duplicate over a portal so his foe would be duped to try to tackle it and fall in. By using a combination of both invisibility and illusions, Strange made a knight believe he was fighting an illusory version of him too.

In terms of general illusions beyond making Shadow Clones, Strange typically knows to use them to dupe other magicians like Mordo to get the jump on them. And, when it comes to disguises, which Strange considers a basic spell to teach students, he’s able to concentrate and silently cast them. With help from Xavier to make the Kree more suggestible to it as a threat by actually destroying ships at the same time, Strange alone cast a massive illusion of Galactus. And, he can make it seem as if a villain was getting jumped by more Avengers and heroes than he actually was. He’s previously freaked people out by casting an illusory dragon head, fooled Hood (who wielded the Reality, Space, and Mind Stones) with a disguise spell to make Strange appear as Thanos, disguising as the Hulk, disguise the Hulk as Bruce Banner, cast an illusion to disguise himself and to make a woman see the thing she most dreaded, and he can cast the Holcate Illusion of Fears to invoke a target’s deepest fears with a combo of somatic, verbal, and thought components to conjure dinosaurs and Fin Fang Foom.

Disguise spells can also be used to disguise Namor as just a regular (talking) owl, multiple people as entirely different people, or non-humans to appear human. Other mystics have used illusions to their advantage too, like Doctor Doom disguising Reed as himself so the Thing punches him, Brother Voodoo using imagery incantations of monsters to scare soldiers, and Wanda conjuring an illusion of Dormammu. These illusions can even fool people that should personally know the one being mimicked incredibly well, should they not attempt to use magical detections. Clea once even fooled Umar with an illusion after swapping places with her complicit lackey throughout her reign, Clea’s father. And, Strange was able to take on the form of a Mindless One to fool Umar as well. Similarly, he was able to fool Mordo by disguising as the Ancient One despite Mordo knowing his previous master for years.

Strange can create illusions for more practical purposes, like visualizing explanations or trying to appeal to Hulk’s empathy and logic. But, if he has to disguise multiple people, there can sometimes be too many people in a group to mystically disguise at once. Though, he can still disguise a respectable number of allies at once despite this. When he does end up using any of his previously mentioned disguise spells, however, Strange can cast an aura of doubt simultaneously on anyone that saw him using magic. Perhaps most impressively, however, was when Doctor Strange showed a drunk Beyonder an illusion of Strange’s past and tricks him with its shifting locales, disorienting him. He says the Beyonder would have lived out an eternity in that illusion if he didn’t meet his criteria of character development within it. The Beyonder even later says that Strange might’ve been able to keep him constantly inebriated (drunk) and in a pocket dimension for years. With the Death Illusion Spell of the Shadow, Strange can darkly torture people by making them experience ther own deaths. But, clearly, the most important aspect of his illusion powers… is that he can instantly swap his outfit to whatever style or look that he vibes with that day!

Shield of Seraphim

The most famous go-to defensive spell that Doctor Strange is known for. By casting the Shield of Seraphim, a defensive barrier is projected either in one direction or as a spherical omnidirectional barrier. More specifically, Shield of Seraphims are mystic barriers that can deflect ectoplasmic spells and contain or repel evil. The barriers can be moved by casters and are manifestations of willpower, which can be made opaque and be as big as several city blocks. They’re conjured with a thought or verbal incantation, but an aspect of humility needed to conjure them successfully. Typically, Strange will always keep a spell of protection prepared to be invoked for casting whenever he knows he needs to be cautious, and he can sense whenever one of his mystic shields falls. Plus, he can open other mystic barriers made by Dormammu and Umar, and his own barriers are able to block full force punches from the Hulk. If he needs to, he can also have them grow large enough to stop a planet’s army from interfering with one of his fights. So, it’s easy to see that Doctor Strange’s knowledge and control over mystic forcefields is more than unparalleled.

Sometimes these shields are invoked as the Shields of Vishanti, though there isn’t much of a difference in what they are. The Circle of Seraphim variant, however, is smaller, but more dense and concentrated. And, Colotor’s Protective Spell makes magic barriers faster than Shield of Seraphim and can be cast with just a thought. But, Shields of Seraphim specifically have been able to block: mystic energy blasts, general spells, Bolts of Bedevilment, bolts from the Wings of Needless Sorrow, fire breath from a dragon, Flames of the Faltine, Icy Tendrils of Ikthalon, Darkforce energy, spirits, dark energies that threaten to rend his soul asunder, and Crystals of Cyndriarr. They can deflect lightning and even deflect and diffuse radio waves from reaching their target.

Not only are Seraphim barriers able to contend against assaults from Nightmare, but Doctor Strange is so skilled at and used to casting this spell that he’s managed to heavily fortify it even against mystics who try to undo their barriers. When Strange had left himself faux-dead to travel the afterlife, he left his corporeal form guarded from attack with the Sacred Shield of Seraphim molded over his body even while he was away as a ghost, which was composed of several psychic membrane layers that would take even the Ancient One time to remove. These shields can be moved around at the whims of Strange’s will and used as a battering ram, making them mobile and good for improvised offense. And, they can be invoked to… erase memories? Okay, sure.

Now, obviously, Doctor Strange has cast and made use of way more shields, barriers, energy fields, and forcefields than just the Shield of Seraphim, all with differing properties or effects. Normally, maintaining barriers against attacks requires concentration, and distractions can weaken sustained barriers. But, he can use this ability to easily block magic projectiles with his bare hands or form multiple magic shields around himself at once. Mordo once bestowed a magical aura around a lackey that can block magic shots from Strange. Stephen’s barriers can even withstand pressure from a binding Crimson Bands variant. And, time-displaced Strange’s shields could repel Kaelicius with Strange’s power. And, Kaelicius, with Strange’s powers, can make shields that ward off harm, mental subversion, and even spiritual destruction.

In fact, his normal barriers could withstand the force of Cloak’s World of Shadow, cause dragons to bloody their heads when smashing against them, block attacks from Loki, and block attacks from Mephisto in Hell. He can summon up the strongest shield in all of magic in mere moments, and Strange’s shields are stated to be stronger than the Ancient One’s shields. His mystical barriers aren’t invincible, though. Strange was once shot after a silver bullet containing absurd amounts of negative energies was able to bypass his magic barriers and defenses. Corashnado’s Defense Spell can be interrupted, and Strange can’t throw up shields if enemies are far too close to him. With enough continuous blows, they can be shattered. Or, mystical barriers can obviously be sliced through if you have a sword that cuts through magic. Regardless, it’s worth listing out and sorting just what the overall potential of magic shields, from Stephen or otherwise, are when viewed as a whole:

Deflecting Properties: Magic shields can deflect mystic attacks. Umar’s shield deflects Clea’s mystical blast. Deflecting magic fire with a protective veil. The Circle of Shangtor surrounds and bathes Strange in light and can deflect lightning and fire. Spells from Strange on their own can deflect magic rays of light. This variant of the Shield of Seraphim causes the pseudo version of Borgo’s Power Cosmic to backfire on him.
Soul Attack Protections: Strange mystically blocks but is still singed by hellfire from Ghost Rider. Casts a sphere of protection against summoned fiends that consume body and soul.
Mental Reinforcement: Mystic shields by lesser mystics that resist Umar’s mental attack. Strange protects his body and mind with a dozen spells designed to shield him as he sleeps.
Sound Manipulation: Strange makes a forcefield of astral force to have a selective, private conversation.
Absorption: Strange’s shields absorb mystical bolts fired at it by other mystics.
Conjuring: Strange stops collateral damage with magic energy tendrils coming from his shield.
Energy Fields: Baron Mordo surrounded Angela’s hammer in a sphere of energy she struggled to get through. It causes massive pain and requires willpower to power through. MODOK’s sensors can’t calculate Mordo’s magic sphere’s power, but this is partly because Mindless Ones are surrounding him. Yet, Angela eventually takes the hammer free.
Multilayering: Sustains a multi-layered barrier with Susan Storm and Iron Man against Void. Strange survived a blast from Galactus with the help of three shields. Stephen layered several psychic membranes of the Shield of Seraphim over his physical body to protect him while he’s active as a spirit.
Elemental Protections: Strange can also make simple magical screens to block weather. Strange shielded himself and his buddy from gases. Stephen creates a barrier that protects from the cold. Alien
sorcerers have magic that can shield them from a Gamma Bomb going off.
Barrier Manipulation: Clea can selectively allow people in through a magic barrier. While he doesn’t recall it in time in this comic, Strange knows an ancient incantation that can allow him to slip within the mystical fabric of Dormammu’s binding spell barrier and temporarily undo it. Called upon the power of cosmic, godlike beings, Oshtur, Seraphim, and Satannish, to nullify the existence of a mystic barrier, wishing for it to “vanish”. Capable of lifting the Sanctum’s defenses. Can extend the Shield of Seraphim so that no one outside it will be able to see in. Capable of destroying a barrier that saps the life force of those inside, but would kill the people inside in the process.
Mystical Wards: Strange places runes and sigils onto Iron Man’s containment facility to ward off mystical attacks. Strange, while mentally manipulated, casts a protective magic shield spell over a Shuma-Gorath avatar called the Nightmare Eye of Zhar-Logos, which prevents punches from landing on its body. These sigils can be replicated and reverse engineered with light manipulation. In a shrunken state within Luke Cage’s body, Strange casts a spell to protect both him and Ant-Man from Luke’s biological defenses.
Containment Barriers: These are instances where forcefields trap enemies, imprison items, prevent entry, or just keep characters in magic barriers. So far, Strange or other magicians trapped or caught the following in barriers: Dracula, interdimensional creatures, Ghost Rider, his vampirized brother, flightless heroes to transport them through the air, allies in a floating barrier bubble, an army in a massive barrier, Atlantean soldiers, brief cocoons of light force around Dormammu, nets of psychic force around a shapeshifter, and an instance of Strange invoking the Seven Suns of Cinnibus to block off and contain the forces of Limbo with Magik. He can create barriers to block an exit from an alley, construct an ethereal barrier around Genosha that prevents anything undead from leaving the island, with said island having 16 million mutant zombies on it, or conjure barriers that can block the forces of an entire planet from intrusion. Umar and Dormammu imprisoned the Mindless Ones behind a great mystic barrier. And, the Ancient One formed mystical, dimensional barriers Dormammu couldn’t cross. Strange also put barriers around dangerous objects for safeguarding and constructed a shield to stop Jeff the Shark from eating the Time Gem, knowing to target items if necessary.

Icy Tendrils of Ikthalon

A spell that involves Ikthalon, the Demon Lord of Stagnation, used to conjure up devastating blizzards, cold temperatures, and ice cold freezes. This ice freezes at absolute zero, and is strong enough to freeze a dragon solid. Normally, Strange uses this to flash freeze enemies that don’t resist it, casting it with verbal components and a great familiarity with frigid temperatures to achieve the absolute zero blast. Or, he can cast it as an ice coffin as a form of containment. Even without the Icy Tendrils of Ikthalon, Doctor Strange can freeze targets with a glance, or (in this instance, an alternate one who was possessing Frank Castle) was been able to call upon general ice magic that could flash freeze a Ghost Rider, a spiritual being that’s always ablaze with hellfire.

Flames of the Faltine

So, the Flames of the Faltine are not simply an elemental fire blast. No, these flames have tons of mystical properties that can facilitate various other abilities through the usage of this fire. The Flames of Faltine can shatter barriers, illuminate places, and keep a soul tethered to the present while time traveling. This cannot be stopped by water, only equal magic, and it’s verbally and somatically cast. This fire can be heard to banish entities through portals when combo’d with the Winds of Watoomb, or it can both banish and seal away entities simultaneously. For example, it was once used to seal away Morgan’s Astral Form in a rock body that she constructed. And, it’s potent enough to not only dry up water, but thaw out bodies frozen by the Icy Tendrils of Ikthalon, which freezes at absolute zero.

These flames also have spatial properties, as in they can manipulate space offensively and defensively. When Doctor Strange was turned 2-D and spatially shattered into a million pieces, the Flames of the Faltine were able to not only emerge him, but restore him to 3-D form. This fire can not only be used to make weapons “vanish” altogether, but the flames in general can sear and rip through space itself, plus banish light darts. This spell can be used to form a protective wall around Strange, or he can channel them into a powerful beam. In fights, the Flames are potent and strong enough to burn Shuma-Gorath’s body, potentially erase you from existence, and you need to be skilled enough with the spell so that casting it won’t result in the flames consuming the caster instead. Strange has attempted to target and dissolve armor with it before, but the armor being spellproof nullified the effects of the Flames of the Faltine. Similarly, magicians like Cyrus Black can simply dispel the incoming fire if they manage to do it in time. Or… you can conjure the spell in the form of an adorable little fire elemental! The Flames are also incredibly potent, since when Galactus absorbed them, they were able to harm him and burn his molecules.

But, in true mage form, Doctor Strange has a lot of general “fire magic” separate from Faltinian flames and the effects exclusive to this spell. Stephen’s student learned to manifest or fire flames from his hands from Morgan La Fey. And the mystic master himself is able to fly in a circle around flames to create a flaming vortex that he can dissipate just as easily. While villains like Mordo have set a woman on fire to summon Dormammu in a ritual with magic, Doctor Strange has actually managed to burn entities down more thoroughly. An alternate universe Strange in Battleworld was able to incinerate Bruce Banner down to dust while hitching his soul onto Punisher, and he’s completely incinerated magically enlarged bacteria. And, Agatha Harkness has been able to use artifacts from the Vishanti that was able to mystically burn away the magic of the Sanctum Sanctorum. In general, flames conjured out of magic have been able to burn hydra monsters, Man-Thing, and a small army of Unseen Ones.

Winds of Watoomb

By invoking Watoomb, a powerful ex-mortal sorcerer turned mystic principality, Doctor Strange and various other magic users can call upon a directed, otherworldly gust of wind to whisk foes or allies away to specific or nonspecific locations. Strange has been able to direct Winds of Watoomb to return mutants to God Emperor Doom’s Genosha, carry a demonic entity weak to water to a nearby swimming pool, whisk wandering snakes to their cages in a pet shop, or return Doctor Strange, within moments, from where the stars are only a distant flicker after being banished there by Adam Warlock with the Infinity Gauntlet. The Winds can basically drag and push foes into his Battlefield Removal options too, like when he cast them to send a knight into the open maw of some Fangs of Farallah to shunt him to a realm of his worst fears or banished foes through an opened portal in combination with some Flames of the Faltine. This can even work on explicitly intangible creatures to whisk them away.

These gales, and similar spell variants, can also be used to induce or assist with flight. Similarly, they can be cast to conjure a featherfall effect, using the air to cushion or slow down falls from great heights. More offensive use cases include knocking doors off their hinges, giving himself a boost of speed (which attracts Watoomb, but it’s okay he can hide with Images of Ikonn), sweeping back hordes of monsters sent by Doom, or the time when an alternate Avenger Prime Loki army wiped a crowd of alternate Doctor Dooms by channeling Winds of Watoomb from four different Marvel continuities at once. The aforementioned speed boost is actually way more impressive in practice when used that way, as the Winds of Watoomb gave Blur, a speedster who could race from one end of the multiverse to another, race through time itself, and kept up with Eternity in a footrace, his speed in the first place.

Alternatively, the mystical whirlwinds have defensive versatility, such as when they get used to counter Flames of the Faltine, propel himself out of being buried under rocks, or disperse the misty Vapors of Valtorr with a portion of concentration while Clea was under duress. There’s more esoteric applications of the Winds of Watoomb as well, like being used in a combo with the Bolts of Balthaak to imbue him with lightning so he could disperse a large storm and dry out water elementals in a single move. And, despite being primarily in the form of a powerful tempest, this spell can be used to reinforce and strengthen Shields of Seraphim. It’s worth noting, however, that Winds of Watoomb can be negated by other elemental control, such as from the Darkhold.

Mists of Munnopor

The mystical fog conjured by the Mists of Munnopor can accomplish pretty esoteric effects, like how it turns demon wings into lead, can be paired with Valtorr spells for exorcism, can be used to banish, can transmogrify, can break barriers, allow flight, and simply distract. For example, the mist from the Mists of Munnopor hid a ship from a sea serpent or can confound a group of snakes with a variant known as the Maze of Munnopor, which confuses you directionally. The Mists of Munnopor also can start to magically suffocate Strange when surrounding his face, which he can mystically dispel his own. With the Ancient One, he summoned mystical glowing orbs and he can manifest a visage of the goddess Munnopor herself just by invoking the Moons of Munnopor in general.

Magnets of Mercillon

A spell of magnetism that can be used to draw objects, substances, or attacks to Strange (should they have magnetic properties). The spell can also be used to magnetize magic weapons together. Strange has previously manifested a magnetic vortex that created a noise “beyond the very fabric of sound itself”.

Crystals of Cyndriarr

Invoking the mystical entity known as Cyndriarr, this spell unleashes a flurry of crystals that induce death upon contact. Supporting this, the Crystals of Cyndriarr have been described as being “certain death”. Strange has also created crystals to contain enemy weapons, as well as numerous targets at the same time.

Golden Gaze of the Gorgon

As to be expected from the name, the Golden Gaze of the Gorgon can turn someone into a statue.

Vapors of the Vishanti

Acting as a multi-purpose veil, the Vapors of the Vishanti are a mist that can banish entities they envelop and facilitate any cloaking spells that Doctor Strange enacts. Additionally, Strange can conjure an incantation that can dispel all mists.

Vapors of Valtorr

Each time this spell is invoked, it calls upon the demon lord Valtorr that granted hundreds of generations of sorcerers their powers. Through Valtorr, mist is conjured that can blind, sedate, silence, or burn a foe. They can be used offensively, encompassing Ancient One in an attack before dispelling them. In order to cast these dark powers, somatic and verbal components are necessary, allowing casters to use a versatile array of applications of the demon’s might. Examples of the effects of the Vapors of Valtorr are the corrosion of physical or magical barriers, the weakening of an opponent, the silencing of characters to prevent specific information from being spoken, the encasement of targets, and the cleansing of the mind and body to free people from charms.

Fangs of Farallah

By casting the Fangs of Farallah, Doctor Strange can summon a massive, serpentine, and fanged mouth that can bite down on foes and tendrils for him. Not only can these fangs attack with oozing tongues, but being dragged or sent into the maw of the spell will send characters into its realm where their worst fears will take form and induce utter madness within their minds. Farallah’s Fangs, when invoked, can even outright paralyze people.

Cantrips of the Onyx King

Doctor Strange is able to invoke the Cantrips of the Onyx King, which makes a 30 second stasis field where magic is disabled for either combatant, giving Strange the chance to use his brown belt level skill and subdue Masked Rider.

Sands of Nisanti

This particular magic spell is incredibly risky, but it can even the odds in certain fights. Whilst casting this spell, the Sands of Nisanti conjures an hourglass with a timer of three minutes. During this time, for the caster and any targets nearby, magic itself will be entirely disallowed in all forms, nullifying its use within a localized area. Naturally, the use of this spell means, for the next few minutes, it’s time to throw hands. The way the Sands of Nisanti works is that it swallows all of the magic in an area. However, Clea’s Faltine physiology meant she had access to magic not of Earth, so its magic nullification didn’t fully work on her.

Yet, when Zelma cast the Sands of Nisanti one of Asgardian origin, they were able to negate Strange and Loki’s abilities so that “neither of them could so much as wish on a lucky penny, let alone cast any magical spells”, forcing Loki to throw hands instead of, say, dipping into the Mystery to avoid attacks like he’s done before. For the record, Asgardian magic granted by Loki is able to allow Absorbing Man to absorb the concept or purpose of substances.

Non-Physical Interaction

As a sorcerer, Doctor Strange has not only cast many different magicks, but he’s also able to grasp, as in literally grasp, the unknown that normal people cannot interact with in the slightest. To give an idea as to the basic extents of what Strange can interface with, he’s described as a “ghost battler”. This is literal in every sense of the phrase, since there are countless examples of Stephen fighting off groups of psychic, demonic apparitions and attacking spirits like Daniel Drumm with his magic. He’s interacted with Peter Parker’s immaterial spirit, returned it from insubstantiality, and healed his essence, plus other magical constructs like the Cage of Cyttorak are specifically used to cage spirits. Doctor Strange’s own ghost and its magic are also able to affect and interact with other ghosts in the Land of the Dead. Not only have miscellaneous alien sorcerers held portions of souls in their hands, but Stephen himself has physically held both Clea’s soul and Casey’s soul in his hands on separate occasions.

Additionally, sorcerers amplified by mystical energies like Doom here can redirect Susan Storm’s psychic attacks, and Strange is able to blast and affect an energy being known as the Celestial Order with mystical beams. Obviously, our sorcerer here is able to manipulate magic, but he can also tamper with magical leylines, which are invisible, divine, and primal grids connected to power spots around the globe. And, because of special properties associated with magic itself, they’re able to affect explicitly intangible things like these creatures that Strange’s Winds of Watoomb are able to whisk away.

There are also entities in Marvel that are even more untouchable than an intangible being. One example, just to prove the precedent, was when Magus was trapped in Soulworld as a soul that was “not a full spirit”, causing him to phase through other souls since he’s only an “aspect” of Adam Warlock in the first place. Doctor Strange is actually able to use his magic on similar, “more intangible” beings known as Nightwalkers, who were able to harm the currently immaterial, phasing time spirit of Peter Parker, yet Peter himself could not interact with them at all. Despite this, Strange was able to mystically exorcise or banish these entities by invoking Agamotto.

On his own, Strange’s magic was also able to blast and defeat Dormammu by sending and dispersing his essence to a dozen different dark dimensions, something noteworthy since Dormammu cannot be harmed by “physical might”, only mystical might. And, more importantly, Dormammu is an energy-based conceptual being. What this means is that Doctor Strange is able to affect concepts themselves. Similarly, he’s been able to possess Nightmare’s body before and threaten him with an exorcism spell that would’ve caused him pain. Again, Nightmare’s body is both composed of the essence of the Dream Dimension and he’s a conceptual entity.

This is something that Doom’s actuality shields had to combat against since this meant his body had an “unreal” nature that needed to be actualized to be attackable and absorbable. To help back up the claims that Stephen can interface with “looser reality”, one time Strange and Kaluu used the Dragonfire to travel to a place where “the dark folds and the light fractures, where space hangs in tatters like an old sock, and ramparts of dreams rise up to power”. And, an Arioch-amped Strange and Shuma-Gorath’s battle was going to collapse all the nether-realms if they weren’t stopped, which took place above Limbo. This is important as Limbo transcends all realities and interfaces with all planes of existence. From Limbo, you can access all time and space, the whole of creation itself.

However, the good doctor can actually affect substances that are “less real than a concept”, as in essences that are less “substantial” than an idea. What fits this kind of criteria? Well, there’s a funny green “thing” known as Gamma that we need to get into. So, to start, Loki’s bestowed powers via Asgardian Magic is what allows Absorbing Man to absorb the concept or purpose of substances he touches. Despite this, in the same run that this is emphasized, Absorbing Man could not grasp onto or assimilate to Gamma, as it lacked substance even beyond concept. And yet… Strange could prepare a room in the Sanctum Sanctorum that existed in its own plane of existence that rendered Gamma meaningless, preventing the Hulk from being able to emerge out of Bruce Banner.

For a similar or comparable level of “substantiality” to the Gamma example, there’s another avenue to support the idea that Doctor Strange’s magic can interact with such things: the Abstracts. This squad of more fundamental or “abstract” concepts includes the classics like Galactus or Eon, who are all sustained by and utilize magic in its most fundamental form. See, the Abstracts have these representational avatar forms known as M-Bodies, which are “too abstract” and “transcendant” to contend with one another in a “physical manner”. This is actually backed up when Agamotto and Galactus had a fight, where Agamotto, a “lesser” being by comparison, is described as not being a physical or corporeal entity that can be hurt traditionally.

Doctor Strange has previously been able to use spells like the Snake of Baltik to restrain Galactus, and the Flames of the Faltine were able to harm Galactus and burn his molecules when he absorbed a huge amount of it. Most impressively, when Galactus was reduced to flotsam, Galactus could only try to keep himself intact specifically because Strange’s will and mystic aura were allowing his resurrection to be possible in the first place. Stephen even said that the Vishanti could be called upon to assist Galactus in reconstituting himself. Needless to say, the Sorcerer Supreme’s magic has the capability to interact with essences that are more abstract than a regular concept. And yet…

…There’s still the undeniable fact that Stephen has performed surgery on Eternity and used the Shades of the Seraphim to seal a breach in Eternity on his own. In fact, he can even merge with Eternity and take on his essence. Basically, this is actually even more impressive than interacting with a typical Abstract. Eternity, in his totality, is an entity beyond the bounds of reality and is the manifestation of all things, including magic. To illustrate this, after falling beyond space, time, dreams, thought, life, and death, Strange landed by Eternity, and his strongest spells at the time were unable to do anything to him, melting in his presence. This cosmic being contains all of the conceptual abstract beings within himself as the sum of all of them, and he’s at the top of the cosmic, abstract power hierarchy, only superseded in transcendence by the Living Tribunal. Thus, being able to affect Eternity means you can affect things that are even more abstract and even less substantial than Gamma or the Abstracts within his being.

That level of insubstantiality is about where Doctor Strange’s magic normally stops being able to affect beings or manifestations beyond what we just laid out, especially ones that are “more abstract” than Eternity. This is clearly shown off when Strange attempted to fight the In-Betweener, an entity stated to be “beyond Eternity” who was able to completely ignore his spells and allow them to pass harmlessly through his body. So, just who is this monochrome bozo, anyway? Well, the In-Betweener is the “concept of concepts”, completely untouchable by other Abstracts and by any concept, a being described as “the barrier between dichotomies”. He was actually created by both Lord Chaos and Master Order, two of the Abstracts contained within Eternity. So, what did Doctor Strange do in order to defeat this beyond untouchable foe? Using his ability to channel god-like beings, Stephen channeled the power of both Lord Chaos and Master Order together, using this double amplification simultaneously to finally not only affect, manipulate, blast, and overwhelm the In-Betweener, but turn the fight entirely around and make relatively quick work of him in very little time. In a pinch, there’s nothing stopping the Sorcerer Supreme from replicating this once more.

Telepathy

Doctor Strange is more than capable of selectively speaking directly into people’s heads with his own thoughts through telepathy, something that is especially basic for magicians. Despite being immobilized by Diablo, Strange could broadcast thoughts to him, and even when a group of sorcerers called the Outcasts were verbally mystically silenced, they could still speak telepathically. Despite Maya Lopez being deaf, he’s been able to speak to her vocally by telepathically transmitting what he says to her. Mystics can basically form telepathic mind links, but sometimes this link can actually transfer the mental and spiritual pain being done to the person you’ve linked with. These connections are still incredibly potent, since a ritual can enhance them to even work across time and into the past. Plus, he can imbue devices with telepathy, like enchanting a phone to allow someone to mentally call him up. Because of Doctor Strange’s telepathy, he’s been able to communicate with characters like Namor, Jessica Drew, Adam Warlock, Wong, Hulk, and Emma Frost.

With the thought-cast Vishanti Spell of Communications, he can project his vocal messages across long distances as a light projection to specific people, even going across dimensions and the limitless void of time and space. Plus, Strange can send messages to all radios, mental, and spiritual planes, along with sending out messages across all known mystical wavelengths. Once, Strange sent a sending message to Earth while the three Fear Lords were distracted. He’s made a call through the Infinity Stones to gather the wielders of them together. Or, he can just send out a massive psychic flare across all of New York City to deliver psychic cries for help. Through telepathic communication, Doctor Strange can feed mental images, mentally projected maps, and entire battleplans to several people at once. He can even “tap into” telepathic communications between other people to stealthily listen in on their conversations. These mental calls can be practical too, such as when he called out to the Ancient One to create a mental link, visualizing it as a magic bridge between them to help guide Strange back home.

Cloaking

Odds are if you’re a Marvel writer in charge of writing for a hero team and you got Doctor Strange in your roster, that means you have a free stealth master! Doctor Strange’s cloaking spells are facilitated by his control over illusions, but what they end up doing is magically masking the target to render them both entirely silent and invisible. This is able to affect multiple people at once, and he’s worked together with other characters like Emma Frost to cast this over big teams. By cloaking, Strange isn’t masking your auras or energy fields, but rather scrambling you to a “different frequency”, which can hide him even from detection by a rewritten universe Daredevil’s Radar Sense.

He’s got great control over his cloaks too, since he can selectively drop a cloaking spell specifically for Hawkeye, teleport his team into a ship that he has cloaked, hide entire buildings in mystic fog, and he can cast simple teleportation rites to small objects that don’t set off magical detections. While the then-cosmically omnipresent Dormammu could easily see past Stephen’s cloaking spell, he still managed to magically deceive him. Doctor Doom’s cloaking spell allowed him to bypass Strange’s detections to get the jump on him, and Doctor Strange says that Doom is a strong enough sorcerer that he’s able to hide himself from Strange’s own tracking, meaning strong sorcerers can replicate the act of hiding from magical detections. Makes sense given that the Vishanti can mask themselves from mystical tracking and Strange could cast a spell of concealment to prevent the Darkhold from being detected. He also managed to hide all his mystical artifacts from Adam Warlock, who was omnipotent with the Infinity Gauntlet, and hid his dream energy harvesting magic sash from Nightmare, who was also omnipotent.

Stephen’s fairly resilient when it comes to multitasking with his cloaks up. For example, he’s used his cloaking spell for 10 minutes to make Daredevil and Wolverine invisible sound and sight-wise while also astral projecting and teleporting them, which put an exhaustive strain on his physical body. He could also do this selectively, which exhausts him even more. He’s cloaked himself in invisibility, and placed a woman to sleep and hid her inside a mystic sphere that renders her invisible too. Strange’s spell of summoning could bring several teammates to his Sanctum while simultaneously kept under the Ward of Zhered-Na to prevent detection by Wong. Obviously, he has no shortage of uses of invisibility spells over the decades, alongside spells of deception that accomplish the same thing as his cloaking and special suits that are actually chameleon spells. Other magic users have made a small team of people invisible too.

Now, spells of concealment have been interfered with before, but cloaking spells like Perception’s Veil can prevent even Sif the All-Seeing from continuously finding and spotting him after various runs through portals. In fact, this power has led to Doctor Strange having entirely invisible battles. If you’re thinking that maybe technology could scan and detect any of these mages, they’ve actually managed to counter that too. Strange’s cloaking spell bypasses anti-cloak tech since it can’t detect magic, magic can cloak from tech scanners and senses, Doom’s tech-magic hybrid stuff makes him untraceable by Stark tech, and Baron Mordo’s magic was able to cloak out of tech detection. This was even able to cloak Angela from other Asgardians’ own detections and their tracking via tech.

Scrying

The act of scrying, in the mystic arts, is the use of magic to remotely view a location or target. Basically, unlike how most wizards can only do this through specific magic orbs, Doctor Strange has tons of options to spy on anything or anyone he wants from wherever he’s located. While this normally requires some amount of concentration to be more effective, he’s normally seen working through a special device of sorts to facilitate this from the safety of his home. While this can obviously be done through the many orbs and crystal balls he owns, Strange and other magicians are able to scry through any amount of smoke he can use to act as a “screen” of sorts. Sometimes, such as via a specialized Scrying Gem, he can concentrate to commune with and scry on other magic users of the world to send out a request or message.

However, this ability is not limited through the required use of a mystical artifact. For example, if no candles or smoke are available nearby, Strange can simply conjure mist himself to scry on other realms. From his own innate power to track magic around the world, his sorcery can create a “map” to narrow this down and locate specific people. Through this remote viewing, Stephen can sense danger, detect changes to the past and how it’ll catch up to the present, find exact moments in time where characters were plucked out of history, pierce past mystic shields to view the adversary within, and search for specific karmic threads that are holding back an Astral Body from transcendence. Or, much more simply, scrying can be used to see through the walls of the Sanctum Santorum or see and hear into buildings.

An alternative, more manual magical application that effectively accomplishes the same thing includes the time Doctor Strange sent out “astral feelers” for days to try to find people in New Orleans from his Sanctum in New York City. However, there are ways to avoid being found this way, such as setting up a spell that hides your location, which Strange only bypassed by using a specific mystic connection his friend had with his brother. The range of his scrying is absurdly impressive too, like when he was able to scry on a location half a galaxy away or on separate dimensions. He even has a bunch of magical monitors in the Sanctum for various different realms.

Truesight

No wizard worth their salt would be able to deal with half the threats they normally can without their “Truesight”, or the ability to see paranormally invisible entities or see past illusions. Innately, Doctor Strange can see unseen magical entities on a different spectrum, the magical leylines around him that are present throughout the world, see and deduce waves of dark deception meant to fool mystics, the ectoplasmic ecosystem, and generally can just see anything that’s normally invisible. He can even make ghosts visible and heard by normal people, or replicate the fact that Cyclops’ visor can see the demonic spectrum into his own eyes, gaining what is effectively demonic-detecting vision. This demon vision then allowed people to see rifts to the Realm of Cyttorak.

Through Doctor Strange’s eyes, he’s able to see through illusions and spot the demonic entities possessing a baseball team, and he can enchant glasses to see the same things he sees. Through this enchantment, Casey’s glasses let her see conspiracy theories and skeevy bartenders and lunatics and creeps, their true inner-ugly selves, and truesight can see through a demon disguised as a human, plus it sees pageant moms as monsters. This specific truesight works on the moms because they made a pact with a demon. Similarly, the Third Eye of Horus allows you to see the world as Strange sees it (as in, seeing invisible entities and energies). And, just seeing the world as Strange sees it causes normal people to be overwhelmed by terror and madness and pass out. Stephen even knows spells that allow him to make opaque surfaces transparent, kind of like “x-ray vision” magic. A previously cast spell of revelation makes a crystal less opaque to see Franklin trapped within, and he’s been able to turn an opaque microverse transparent to view the inside.

Mystical Awareness

Early on in his career and training as a magician, Doctor Strange began to gain a mystical awareness of everything around him, seeing and feeling the ethereal and being able to tell if something’s directing energy. These ectoplasmic senses, his awareness, is a skill that’s become one of his most iconic and well known powers, something that he trains and expands every single night whenever he can, which allowed him to even detect more esoteric things like breaches in dimensional barriers, reading souls, and reading psychic presences. Although, fatigue can dull these senses if it ever comes to that.

Additionally, it is possible to hide aspects of your aura by obfuscating it, like Ghost Rider. Strange’s magic also cannot detect whether a character is actually a Skrull, with there being doubt cast that specific spells to find “intentions” might not even work. But, even with those tactics, Doctor Strange can still trace characters that are difficult to magically track by following their mystic patterns whenever they use magic. Strange can generally rely on mystic emanations to find pathways and track down power sources.

His prowess with this ability became so impressive that Silver Surfer held Doctor Strange in the highest regard in terms of cosmic awareness, something comparable to beings like the Watcher, Odin, Charles Xavier, Mephisto, Doctor Doom, Mantis, Galactus, Eternity, and Death. He’s able to see Death lingering in/around a patient. Even when approaching the created worlds of the Beyonder, Strange can sense if the energies there are “wrong” and if the natural order of energies are normal, which is in addition to being able to detect life aura and minds to check if an entity has one at all. The Beyonder even says that Strange senses the ways of the multiverse and is in tune with the universe. In fact, Doctor Strange inherently has a mystic connection to all living things. Our Sorcerer Supreme’s versatile mystical awareness covers such a versatile array of detections and magic analyses that it has to be broken up into its categories to break down what this entails for his capabilities and support from other magicians’ showings:

Divination

One of Doctor Strange’s iconic abilities is simply the power to “know things”, even knowing things before they even happen. This appears to be a side effect of or loosely related to his cosmic awareness, something that allows him to “sense” information, the future, or the sudden realizations and intentions of other characters.

For example, when Doctor Strange and Reed Richards were attempting to work on Reed’s magic skills in the Sanctum Sanctorum, Stephen’s Astral Form was able to detect when Doctor Doom suddenly realized and caught onto their tricks and covert planning. When someone sought him out for help, which happens fairly often when it comes to supernatural issues, Strange could divine a person’s specific intentions for visiting him and seeking his help. In fact, when some time shunting threats were occurring, Doctor Strange was simply able to “feel” that the Cosmic Cube was involved. With those instances established, his power to “know things” extends to a bunch of different scenarios:

Context Gathering: Simple divination spells can help Strange find out if Tony’s company was taken over through “financial chicanery”. Invokes the Omnipotence of Oshur to replay events to understand the context behind Hulk’s anger. Allows Strange to determine how a foe’s powers were channeled. Is able to detect how long plant matter has been dead for.
Information Confirmation: Strange astral projects and casts a Spell of Divination to determine Inhuman children that may be the son of Thanos. Strange can tell if someone’s lying. Spell of romantic divination to see if an interdimensional alien is into him. Alright, man.
Solution Divining: Strange divining the solution to and knowledge to attack a mystical issue at its source before divining and heading to its location.
Location Tracking: Strange meditates and locates a necromancer and teleports himself and Deadpool to him. Strange divines that Z, who knows about a Watcher conspiracy, is in another room and more useful to them than a dead body nearby. Divination (location of relevant object) by other mystics. Divining locations. Voodoo ritual to divine Thanos’s location. Strange tracks and divines a specific scroll. Strange has bits of magic in his blood he uses to divine magical artifact locations on a map.
Mystical Investigation: He can divine what spells were used to murder something. Strange divines a stranger’s name. Divining a name. Magical artifacts are able to divine identities too. Could easily identify someone’s name.
Precognition: Strange divines that someone is about to break into someplace before his group does. Strange can sense pressure building in the Akashic Layer, a rise in the mystic barometer as if something is about to happen. Strange nearly takes a direct blast from a fake Silver Surfer, but he used his precognition to sense it and counter the Power Cosmic with a Seraphamic Shield.
Future Sight: Strange can apparently tell the future up to 8 days in advance and foresee a guy’s death. Strange again foresees a future death in 3 days should this guy keep stressing out. Strange foretold this guy’s arrival 3 days ahead of time. Foresees that a blockage in a person’s life force here will kill them in 8 years. Foretells the future with a feather for when a blizzard will stop, which knocks him out because the events foretold were far more involved than initially thought. Strange had a divination vision of the future. Strange reads Infinity Gauntlet Adam Warlock’s soul to show him his potential future where he destroys Strange and lives life as a god.
Weapon Analysis: An evil wizard swapped a weapon from Earth’s dimension with multiple sorcerers and divined the capabilities of a weapon.
Divination Alterations: Doctor Strange can alter divinations, such as doing so while time traveling to alter a past divination that he performed. This was a simple divination with newspaper and tea.

Ankh of Life

By passing Death’s tests, Doctor Strange was granted an Ankh meant to be indicative of his newfound lifespan. Whenever Strange would be faced with mortal danger, the Ankh appears to warn him in advance of it. This warning system through the sign of the Ankh can even work to warn him that a dangerous ritual is nearing completion, meaning that it doesn’t have to be danger to his immediate body only. The Ankh, as the symbol of enduring life, could also remove Death’s grip on Strange’s body and mind.

Mind Manipulating Magic

Messing with minds is practically one of Doctor Strange’s most well known magical abilities, something that Marvel characters that know of him are well aware of. Not only can he casually cast spells that make it so that you have to confess only the truth to him, but he also knows incantations that can easily free you from brainwashing. In the past, he’s even woven massive illusions that, with powerful telepaths like Professor Xavier performing wide mental suggestions, combo with mind manipulations to make a Kree armada suggestible to the images he conjured. So, Stephen is more than aware of how powerful mind magic can be when used in combination with other powers and is capable of partaking in mental combat.

Now, because of the wide variety of ways and sheer number of instances that mind magic have been used by our Sorcerer Supreme and other mystics, this requires subsections to organize such a massive subject:

Energy Manipulating Magic

Because a lot of magic involves numerous different ways of manipulating enchanted energy, it makes sense that Strange is not only adept at this, but that he’s messed with energy in tons of different ways. For example, if an opponent like Dormammu can simply reconstitute his energy body if you defeat him, Doctor Strange’s solution was to send and disperse his essence to a dozen different dark dimensions, diffusing and dispersing his energy so it would be impossible for him to reconstitute himself. Umar later claimed she could do something similar by blasting Dormammu’s mind, body, and soul across 10,000 hellish universes, corroborating this was a way to defeat him. And, the Ancient One achieved something like this when dealing with and banishing Morwen’s spirit across astral dimensions, where she was unable to reconstitute herself.

Energy dispersal or banishment is actually a fairly common finisher that Strange goes for to take care of threats. For example, to stop himself from being overloaded by the magic of Wrecker and Thunderball’s new weapons, Strange uses a spell to dissipate all the magic energy from the weapons, causing them to vanish. Strange tried using dark energies to disguise his aura. But, he had to be careful or his soul would be rent asunder. He casts a Shield of Seraphim and then banishes these dark energies quickly after he was interrupted, saving his life. Strange has used the Bromagdon’s Ruby Rain spell to disperse an energy attack from his nightmare self, and a conjured Absorbing Man memory entity absorbed Strange’s magic and amplified off of it. But, Strange says that spells are concepts, energy brought to life, so he disperses the Absorbing Man since he’d assimilated to magic that he can control. On top of that, he has temporarily dispersed a host of hideous force manifestations that are attacking him, using “swords of light and thunder”.

When it comes to messing with and actualizing energy in other forms, Doctor Strange has managed to form mystical energy handcuffs on the Ancient One, and other sorcerers have been able to absorb and condense magic energy from other magicians into marbleized forms. Strange can transmute ethereal energy and merge magical spheres with an ancient spell fragment to reawaken its potential. He can even conjure it in the form of a “Maelstrom of Madness”, a storm of arcane energy that a demon had to expend its strength to defend against. And, the spell known as the Crystal of Vyhagh Ar conjures a gem that can mystically amplify and diffuse Agamotto’s mystical light omnidirectionally for an AOE blast.

In fact, his control is so precise that he can just deflect Bolts of Bedevilment with his bare hands. Other wizards have been able to transfer all their mystic power into an orb without fatal effects. This allowed magic users to control its energies to make a mini-sun, expand the orb itself to shunt people into its realm, and the orb became so dense with energy that magical attacks passed through it harmlessly and got absorbed, having been reinforced against all sorcerous means of destruction… at the cost of being so physically fragile that a cup can shatter it. Doctor Strange is actually so studious about magic energy that he was able to parse the mechanics of Scythe magic, magic that weaponizes potential that he was unfamiliar with, and make use of it in the middle of combat with quick observations while deflecting and absorbing magical shots.

On top of knowing how to suppress his own magical power to avoid detection and being able to spend days purging himself of mystic aura to go into the Dark Dimension undetected, Strange knows how to filter out specific types of energy. While meditating, Strange mentally tapped into multidimensional energy from the beginning of time, distilling and choosing specific energy, which is described as the energy of the universe flowing through his mind. He’s even able to channel the energies of a Mother-Cube through him briefly, broadcasting energies of hope to Omnimax, a Devourer (of the same kind as Galactus), which hurts it.

Strange once claimed residual energy that was left unused by old gods, the Strange Academy can feed on ancient energies to empower its students, and he can draw the negative emotional energy from everyone’s (as in, everyone in NYC’s) souls and fling it at Imperator, inflicting that despair on them, even his robots. He even implies that Imperator would’ve clawed his own eyes out as a side effect. Doctor Strange can counterspell and redirect magical offensive energies back at Mordo on the fly in fights. And, when he’s affected by a spell that’s enervating (draining) him, Strange pushes past it with his willpower, reversing it on the caster to sap their strength instead.

Stephen’s control over energy is so advanced that he once crafted two entire sentient magical energy beings with powersets known as the “Strangers”. Stephen created “Vincent Stevens” and “Strange” out of mystical energies to act as proxies, with the latter helping Midnight Sons fight Zarathos. The former once possessed Hulk. Stephen went to reclaim their energies. Their powers allowed them to perform molecular alteration, be immune to non-magical mental attacks, and resurrect the dead. Vincent Stevens was innately magically lucky and was able to flare some mystic luck while gambling to win at card games, overriding the luck of other mystics playing.

Stephen’s proxy, Strange (aka Paradox, who is a magical energy being), was impressively (and perhaps inexplicably) resistant to the Sword of Bone’s magical energy manipulation, as in it can disrupt or resist magical forces and his proxy was fine. With some time spent silent and concentrating, Strange took control of the G’uranthic Guardian and forced it to attack Dormammu, despite the fact that Dormammu was previously its master. Strange took control of the Guardian by goading it into stealing his magic, allowing him to send his conscious will along with it. His powers even returned to him after previously being absorbed. Or, when Eternity’s energy was too much for his doppelganger to contain, Strange uses a spell to activate the energy inside his Counter-Earth counterpart and cause him to explode.

Absorption Spells

Another noteworthy branch of energy manipulation that definitely deserves its own section is Doctor Strange’s ability to absorb energies. He could drain the magic across Kryll City by 99%, causing the majority of magic traders in the interdimensional trading space to have trouble breathing and walking. And, he can straight up tap into the mystical planet of the Earth itself for an amplification, which he did when facing Imperator, draining the planet of its remaining magical energy (as magic was dying) to blast it at his foe while taking on a magic energy kaiju form that burned through it. His upper limit when it comes to how much energy can absorb and amplify off of is actually ludicrous. Doctor Strange previously absorbed enough power to destroy galaxies, absorbed the essence of one of Shuma’s lieutenants to become almost entirely dissimilar from his normal self in order to match Shuma-Gorath, absorbed his magic sash’s harvested dream energy to the point that he could overpower a Nightmare that grew powerful enough to overwhelm the Living Tribunal with dream energies too, and he was stated to be capable of absorbing the dead Beyonders’ omnipotent energies that turned Doctor Doom into God Emperor Doom but rejected it on principle, which is even reiterated later.

Other noteworthy things Doctor Strange has drained include magical items to leave them powerless and mundane, which includes powerful artifacts like a Wand of Watoomb. And, he absorbed the power of Yggdrasil from Aslak, but he had to give it back to Yggdrasil, otherwise he would’ve died. He once stole energy from his counterpart, one empowered by Eternity, to send himself and the other sorcerers into space. With Thor, it would’ve taken all of Thor’s Odin power to be siphoned into his hammer for Strange to fix Mjolnir. This would forever bond Thor’s life to the hammer, meaning he’d die if it broke. So, Strange called upon the forces of creation itself, which were old when the universe was young, to siphon all of Thor’s Odinforce power into Mjolnir with elder forces to mend it. This took a verbal incantation, and Thor can still use Mjolnir’s powers afterwards, meaning it’s just all his Odinforce that was targeted.

One time, time-displaced Doctor Strange purposefully let the Peregrine Child consume him in his Astral Form, putting him in his belly where he had fed on magic for numerous years. With this magic power, Strange was able to bust out of the Peregrine Child. He can also siphon the spiritual hellfire from Ghost Rider’s head, causing the Rider great pain. He’s even capable of outright ignoring nature-based attacks, like magical winds that can level mountains and blow for 100 mph, absorbing it instead since nature is a manifestation of the “primary energy”. And, his body and his spirit being separated doesn’t stop an energy link from existing, since when his body was injured, this created a connection between his body and his spirit which allowed his spirit to absorb power from his body to break the bindings that Nightmare placed on him. He was also able to drain some of Ghost Rider’s hellfire while weakened, having to endure the pain, and adds it to himself. And, he was able to take the Uni-Power out of L’matto and show it as a ball in its true form. While this can all come off as esoteric, it’s a testament to the control Strange has over his absorption techniques.

Even when he’s absorbed energy that’s tainted, Strange has ways of purging it. He can absorb the evil out of a sorcerer and into himself only to immediately exorcise it from his own body right away, alongside absorbing darkness from Aero that affected his mystic equilibrium to the point that he had to magically purify himself. And, similar to other magic users like Astrid Mordo who could drain magic powers from others after physically weakening them, Strange is able to draw life force or soul energy from others, which he once did to supply a sealing ritual. His own shields can absorb mystical bolts fired at them, and he can deflect and absorb magic attacks mid-combat while simultaneously studying their energies. Other magicians can perform absorption of their own, which includes Necromancer siphoning life energy and a soul, Urthona draining the magic energy from the Sanctum Sanctorum, vampire cultists draining life force for a ritual, and Umar draining energies from mystic barriers to nullify them. Or, when all else fails, Strange can call upon the Vishanti to take away energy reserves and banish them from threats like Thanos.

Soul Manipulating Magic

When Doctor Strange is described as a “ghost-battler”, then it should come as no surprise that he can mess with souls in countless ways only comic writers would be able to think of. And, of course, he’s able to probe souls for analysis.… or notice if you don’t currently have one. Strange is so confident in tampering with souls, in fact, that he’s warped himself and his spirit in terrible ways. This is something that Warhound Strange was able to do by “rebuilding” (as in, rewiring) his body and soul with foreign matter to make it untraceable by the Vishanti. And, he previously channeled a portion of his soul into Nighthawk (along with other volunteers) to keep him alive. He can also create protective ritual circles that are able to draw his spirit back into his body if physically breached by someone else. Offensively, Strange knows spells that can shatter souls, scattering them throughout dimensions until nothing is left, known as the Babylonian Curse of Disintegration that destroys souls so incredibly thoroughly to the point of nothing remaining. An alternate universe version of Strange stuck in Battleworld was able to conjure a gun that used astral bullets. Later, these conjured magical weapons were confirmed to have killed a Ghost Rider. And, he can channel the light of Agamotto through his hand, and then through a creature’s heart, attacking both body and soul. Then, this disperses its body on a molecular level across 1000 loci. Which, like… okay. Do what you want, Stephen.

Aside from attacks on the soul, Strange can dispel soul matter like spiritual decoys, which he said he could’ve deduced was a decoy from a simple mystic examination. Speaking of spirit forms, Strange also has enchantments that allow Agent Preston to have a spirit form and voice in the physical world despite her soul and mind currently being stuck in Deadpool’s mind, similar to when he cast the Haunted Halls of Hallorenn to call forth lingering spirits and give them a physical form. Clea once used the Claraphon’s Cleaving spell to eject Strange’s Astral Form from his vampire body and Strange himself can force people into astral states. Stephen’s been able to sort and return stolen souls and can extract soul poisons (such as this spider magic-specific poison with the right spider incantation). Similarly, he’s drawn out the negative emotional energy from the depths of everyone’s souls in New York City to weaponize it against an opponent.

Should one of his pals die and begin to ascend to the afterlife, he can actually interfere. See, Strange went out of his way to grab Howard the Duck’s soul as his Astral Form to drag him back into his body before he exited our plane of reality to the afterlife. In a more direct method of grabbing souls, he’s implied to have access to a spell that can separate Johnny Blaze from Ghost Rider, though this will only last until sunset. Revenant Moon Knight was able to hurt Clea and Umar with adamantium crescents, which is because, as Sorcerer Supreme Clea explains, he had a gestalt of thousands of souls together amplifying his power. Clea says making new combinations or formulas of spells takes a lot of work, and that old school magic doesn’t really work on revenants. So, she forms a custom spell on the spot, exorcizing the thousands of souls from Revenant Moon Knight. One time, Strange sent magic and visions directly into Adam Warlocks’ Soul Gem and his soul, defeating him by appealing to his good nature.

Naturally, after hearing all that, Doctor Strange’s threat to “pull out your soul and ram it down your throat” here now seems to have quite a bit of legitimacy backing it. He has a spell that can tear at the fabric of his own and Ghost Rider’s body. One time, Strange restrained Daniel Drumm’s spirit, which was inhabiting Luke Cage’s body, with Crimson Bands. Then, he invoked the Dark Spirit’s Pentagram of Control (likely working with the Crimson Bands to bind Daniel), Carelli’s Forced Astral Extraction, and the Ruddquin Spell of Self-Power Projection and Multiplying Power Projection in quick succession. Strange finally finishes Daniel off with the Zhadana Spell of Astral Form Destruction, ejecting and destroying Daniel’s spirit. Thus, he cast, in order: spirit-bending, soul extraction, self-amplification, and spiritual destruction before purifying Daniel’s former hosts.

Speaking of possessions, the alternate universe Strange stuck in Battleworld was able to hitch his soul onto other bodies, like Punisher and Wolverine, and he threatens the latter with suffering if he resists him. Other mystics are able to possess people with rituals, so it’s not an unfamiliar tactic to magic users. But, Stephen is on another level, since he could possess Nightmare’s body, who’s a conceptual entity composed of the essence of the Dream Dimension. Conversely, he can project into a boy’s soulscape to fight the soul-eating entities possessing him, which would later allow the boy’s soul to eventually begin healing quickly. Strange has amplified and emerged Ted Sallis, the long suppressed mind inside Man-Thing within Man-Thing’s soulscape, and he can temporarily emerge Ted’s aspect or re-suppress it. But, before doing this, he cast a protective spell over his physical body to astral project out into Possessed Man-Thing’s soulscape. He astral projected through Ghost Rider to where Danny Ketch’s life force is. And, by naturally passing through the Dark Dimension, Strange could physically enter the soulscape realm of Soulworld to find Adam Warlock. Strange could even go into more esoteric soulscapes, like going into the essence of Dormammu’s soul with his Astral Form with the combined powers of himself and Ghost Rider.

Adversaries like Agatha Harkness could rip out Wong’s Astral Form from Chthon’s realm and slice it in half with magic, and Silver Dagger was able to conjure soul burning mystic fire and magic restraints to affect Clea’s soul. Laurent could cast a spell to merge with the soul of his twin brother to amplify himself, and normally a human body will die from being unable to hold two souls, but them being twins makes it less taxing. Doctor Doom even knows magic that can dispel the guilt-reliving effects of a Penance Stare on Jericho Drumm’s soul. Xandu planned to link and merge his soul with the Ruby of Domination. And, obviously, Strange has superior sorcery over Mordo, who could steal souls, possess people, and commit physical and spiritual murder with black magic. But, our mystic master has his own tricks, like how he could forcefully emerge the spirit of a Khonshu priest from Moon Knight should his willpower not resist it. Or, in a much simpler example, he can force a demon possessing a woman to emerge and appear before him.

And, should Doctor Strange get his hands on your soul, he can lock it away in tons of different ways. He sealed the Ancient One’s soul inside of a bottle and claimed to be able to perform “soul traps” to seal souls in crystalline structures or place minds inside of the Astral Plane as possible solutions to separate Preston’s essence from Deadpool’s head. Ghosts themselves can be ritually bound to a specific area, and past sorcerers are competent enough to shunt a person’s soul out of their body and seal it in a totem, which can later grow animated due to the soul inside it. In that instance, Doc Samson could analyse the totem to see that the ghost’s consciousness is spread throughout the body with no central site of the self. He claims if he breaks the body down into components, then that’d do the same for the psyche so they can put the personality back together physically, freeing the soul from the seal. Suffice to say, Doctor Strange should be studious enough to understand and manipulate these deep intricacies of the soul.

Spacetime Manipulating Magic

Manipulating the forces of magic under the right training will eventually grant a skilled enough sorcerer access to tampering with the laws of time and space. To Doctor Strange, tugging at the delicate balance of temporal or spatial forces is simply another part of his toolkit that he uses to pull off some of his most historically absurd feats. While it is possible for time to be made more fluid if Stephen messes with time to a enough of a degree, making himself more prone to temporal attack, he’s got more than enough contingencies and skill with it to make this kind of risk mostly negligible. Let’s break this wide powerset down into different categories:

Anti-Butterfly Effect Magic: This is the defense against the present being changed by alterations made to the past. Strange attempts to prepare to send back the past heroes from 1943 to their time by building a mystic wall in the present to keep the realignment of time without them at bay so nothing goes wrong via butterfly effect. Strange can detect changes to the timeline in the past via scrying and how it’s beginning to catch up to the present. Strange is creating a barrier to prevent these changes from affecting the present. The Sanctum has this container, which is the wall Strange built to contain the Gulf of Time’s wave of changes from affecting the present due to the heroes being plucked out of time by the Cosmic Cube.
Spatial Restoration: When Spider-Man messed up the dynamic of Strange’s spell while he was fighting a weakened Dormammu, this interrupted magic that Strange intended as a sacrifice play to bend and disrupt spacetime around them until they were “scattered to the multi-dimensional winds”. This shunted him and Spidey outside of time and space and into the void that existed before them that’s “outside the physical”. Despite having no physical form, Strange fully physically reconstitutes both his and Spider-Man’s physical forms and, later, restores them to their realm in terms of space, but not time since he can’t do both simultaneously. Strange healed an interdimensional fracture caused by Mojo. Uses the Shades of the Seraphim to seal a breach in Eternity, and also slices some creatures in half with said sealing, spatially cutting them.
Spatial Manipulation: Hurls a viral storm back through a “hyper-spatial aperture” and then strengthens the dimensional walls. Strange hides his Strange Academy’s location via spatial compression displacement enchantment. Spell of Revelation reveals a tear in space in the Nexus of Realities. Magic can perform rips in spacetime. Strange can stitch up holes in reality. Enlarging a dimensional pinpoint, making a small hole in space grow much larger. Uses transmigration through a singularity to escape the Vishanti’s dimension, though the transmigration spell he used forced him to forgo control of what universe he ended up in. Creates a null space where he can control directionality.
Vibration Manipulation: Strange surrounded himself in an ethereal magnetic vortex, from which emanates the endless, overwhelming vibrations of pure energy, a sound “beyond the very fabric of sound itself” to make the senses of various mystics reel from this attack.
Quantum State Restoration: After restoring himself and Spider-Man to their realm in terms of space, but not time, this leaves them in a Schrödinger’s Cat inter-quantum state between moments of time, to the point that Spidey leaping away gets him lost across his timeline. While Spidey is lost in a quantum state between points in time, Strange manages to find Peter as he’s lost in this state from a billion of years in the future and imbues him with a Spell of Becoming that would guide Peter along his personal timeline so that he can return to the present unharmed and out of this quantum state. Not only does this return Peter to the present, but it also implies that Doctor Strange restored his own Schrödinger’s Cat state before helping him out.
Time Travel: Strange gives Peter five minutes back in time in the past to spend with Uncle Ben as a gift through a mystical little artifact. Warren, another mystic, can use time travel magic. Time-travel spells used by Warren Traveler, and he can warp through spacetime. Strange takes the time-traveling Peter back to his Sanctum in the past to heal Peter but cannot allow himself to see his past self or else the timespace continuum would be at risk, so he goes further into the past. Strange travels back in time to stop himself from discovering something. He can’t talk with himself, so he alters a past divination. He pops back in the present, which is worse via the butterfly effect. Strange mentions a time travel spell sardonically. Doctor Strange can time travel. Gauntlet Thanos blasts Strange with a clap across the galaxy that BFRs him via time maelstrom. Thanos did this to try to send Strange to the beginning of time, Strange then barely grasps some time period with a spell, but Clea helps him with it so they’re not all the way back at the beginning. Then, Strange finds a scroll that has a worthiness defensive spell. He uses the scroll to break free of Thanos’s time maelstrom and returns to the present via a Sorcerer Supreme anchor. The Spell of Yesterdays lets the caster’s subjects, who are not moving, to time travel back to a specific memory. It’s a verbal ritual with a somewhat involved casting. Strange can send people back in time. Sends many people from “all ages” back to their original time periods. Doctor Strange is able to time travel. Sends Mordo’s soul back and forth through time. Strange sends vikings and natives back to their original time periods. Alongside Kushala, uses a chant to open a portal back to the 1800s where Kushala comes from. By accessing Dylan’s memories, Strange taps into the future and sees himself through Dylan’s eyes. Strange manages to find Peter Parker while Peter’s lost in a time-fluctuating state from a billion years in the future. Rintrah’s weaving magic connected to Strange across ages, millions of years in the past.
Temporal Restoration & Defenses: When time ruptures across the planet, Doctor Strange struggles to hold its wave back but does so just long enough to shunt a group of heroes back in time to fix this. Strange repairs a rip in the temporal fabric to the past with a spell.
Timeline Slicing Contingency: At one point many years ago, Strange severed a week from his personal timeline, cutting it from his life span, hiding it as a contingency in case he ever died, so a temporal remnant could get his affairs in order. This temporal remnant was kept specifically to investigate his murder. Time-displaced Strange calls himself a temporal ghost, and he only has a few days before he ceases to exist.
Time Manipulation: Strange can manipulate time, using it to bypass a time slow, that’s so effective that it’s mistaken as a time stop, by speeding his personal time up. This same manipulation speeds his travel speed up too, which he can conversely also time-slow down. Agamotto can reverse spells in time. Timespace magic. This example is a time slow spell. If Strange probes the byways of time, he’ll discover Dweller’s influence on recent events. Manipulating and reversing the flow of time that had slowed to an almost halt. Daimon Hellstrom fast forwarded a castle to the future where it’s daytime to kill vampires. This was Strange’s plan. Strange slows localized time around the woman to a near stop to stop her from ringing the bell that empowers Ikonn. Doctor Strange was once able to channel a past Dormammu’s power in order to blast a future Dormammu. Tossed Aster and Shanzar into another dimension, while also displacing them in time. In fact, with the Time Stone, Strange was able to use time reversal to reverse Peter Quill’s death. Strange uses Agamotto to call upon the powers that rule the fourth dimension in order to make time pass much more slowly for the Omegatron, making it so that 5 seconds becomes “countless years” relative to him.
Time Stops: Has a spell that stops time for everything except his thoughts. Strange stops time casually. This time freeze is still going on as he finishes his appointment with Gwenpool, though Strange comments that a half-second has passed somehow. Thanos suggests that Strange can unfreeze characters a galaxy away if he time stops them. Strange can temporarily freeze time. Freezes an entity in time and space with psychic lightning. Doctor Strange could casually stop time across the entire planet, even stating that he could keep this going indefinitely and freeze Thor and Loki in time. Even more impressively, the plan at the end of the novel was for Strange to freeze Asgard’s entire dimension in time to break fate by avoiding Ragnarok, and it’s then revealed he had the entire universe frozen in time throughout the entire book.
Reality Warping-Based Time Manipulation: Evil sorcerer creates a localized barrier over a city that warps reality to “turn back time”, reverting cars into carriages (“ancient/older” versions of objects and characters) and such, and removing the desire to leave this location. This villain plans to spread this barrier over the world over time. The villain’s “past” spell reverted the then-Mutant Wanda into an actual witch with sorcery, and the villain’s spell nullified Storm’s weather powers. Strange is freed when villain sorcerers are out of commission, breaking their concentration on those spells containing him. Strange’s memory was unaffected by this “past” spell. Strange senses that Magik can manipulate time and mystically uses her as a conduit to undo the “past” warping spell. Basically, he took control of the villain’s spell and reversed time back to before it was cast so it never happened. Being at the Nexus of this allowed their memories of this arc to remain ripple-proof despite it technically having never happened.

Dimensional Travel

One of Doctor Strange’s most well known abilities is his ability to teleport or portal across dimensions, something that’s prominent in almost every depiction of him across his media appearances. Even early on, he’s passed through hundreds of sorcerous dimensions. While sometimes Doctor Strange’s teleportation being spammed uses stamina and causes damage to interdimensional walls or subtle planes, a master mystic knows how to play around these limitations. His dimensional travel not only allows him to travel through magical realms across the multiverse, but this ability to portal to other dimensions lets him travel even to and out of newly made pocket dimensions or worlds he’s never been to. He knows to teleport mystics out of the way should their attacks be redirected.

And, there are tons of variants, as any mystic worth their salt should know how to teleport. Teleportation spells can be a warp through spacetime, dissolving physical essence into light, or shortcuts through nonlinear dimensions without a high cost. This can be done with a visualized thought and it’s an instantaneous form of transportation, meaning it can be accomplished nonverbally. Sometimes travel to alternate realities via wormholes is described as a change of frequency, a dimensional shift, moving between atoms too. Should Doctor Strange astral project, he’s still capable of traveling across realities and even shunting people to other realms. Having time travel energy on you can cause a slight delay in Strange finding you across dimensions, but that’s only if he forgets to take this into account. Strange can even sublimate himself into an alternate layer of reality, walking between two worlds where he could hear the singing of magical tech systems that ran Bigbox, talking to the consciousness of the fail-safe system to negotiate and come to an agreement.

Sometimes, invocations are said by Strange to forcibly transport himself or others to other places if he is in danger, such as invoking Kalfu to take himself and Doctor Voodoo to the Swamps of Ogun. So, this power is especially useful for necessary retreats. Other tactical uses involve the usage of portals to redirect magic blasts to other locations or conjure portals into the sun’s core from Earth to redirect its pressurized solar plasma. And, if you have portal powers, Doctor Strange can not only seal dimensional doorways, but he can take control of your portals. He once cast a spell so that no one born on Earth can pass through a portal. He’s been able to make a one-way portal work both ways and actively change the destinations of other portals he didn’t create. Plus, he can swap portals around so that you forget which goes to the destination you want.

Or, he can use the Lance of Oshtur, hurled by Hoggoth’s hand, to smite enemy portals. Of course, if you can alter teleportation energies, interfere with this magic to disable it, or negate it, this can be an issue for Strange. Though, conversely, he does know that any spells that travel across dimensions weaken to the point of simply being deflectable with a Shield of Seraphim, and teleportation energies can be tracked or detected. And, certain teleportation spells can be interrupted during casting. So, he’s more than aware of any counters. During dire situations, Stephen knows that he can invoke a form of his teleportation power to swap places with people, doing this so stealthily that not even Dormammu with Eternity’s omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience could notice. He’s even forced enemies back into the dimensional aperture that they came through and then “locks the door,” closing said aperture. He can even part open reality to follow foes to other dimensions without being detected.

When it comes to the actual mechanics, teleportation spells typically work off of a radius of effect, as targeted teleportation spells for a few people in a group takes more focus. But, he can still accomplish this to teleport a ton of his friends over to him from across the globe or forcibly summon adversaries to specific locations. Though, through his other detections, this is useful for teleporting to specific people as well. These can also be accomplished through the use of magic circles, though these obviously require more work. Strange himself has gotten so good at teleportation that a villain once tried to portal to another location to get away from him, but Stephen got there first and was already there on the other side. He can accomplish dimensional travel with mere claps or thoughts, even bringing avatars of Shuma-Gorath with him in the process. Even while his tibia was broken in two different places, injuries cannot stop Stephen from teleporting himself from the bottom of the Hudson River back to the safety of his Sanctum. By using every iota of his power, Strange could even create portals with his power nearly fully drained. There are honestly so many examples of Doctor Strange using portals, gateways, warping spacetime, and teleporting that it’d be a ludicrously long list if written out in full. So, we’ll separate out noteworthy examples according to their range and applications:

Dimensional Banishment

And, if Doctor Strange can travel to other dimensions and use his teleportation on others, it’s only natural that this would allow the Sorcerer Supreme to banish foes to other dimensions or back where they came from. Also known as “Battlefield Removal” or “BFR”, this is the act of imprisoning or sending an opponent to a place so far away that you don’t need to worry about their escape or return. With either spells for demonic banishment or simply sending characters to specific locations like the Dungeon Dimension, Doctor Strange’s go-to if he can’t beat a foe permanently will have him default to this technique. This isn’t just for sending characters to dimensions either, for Strange can send the Hulk to another planet, forcibly summon Thanos back down to Earth, or blast Mordo countless galaxies away.

In fact, one of his stronger tactics through the use of banishment allows him to deal with opponents that can fully reconstitute themselves. After defeating Dormammu, he sent his essence into a dozen different dark dimensions, diffusing and dispersing his energy so it would be impossible for him to reconstitute himself. In the past, the Ancient One once also achieved a similar anti-reconstitution banishment on Morwen. Strange knows spells that can shatter and scatter souls throughout dimensions too. When Dormammu took over Doctor Strange’s physical body, he even threatened to shatter his Astral Form’s being all over this continuum, and by channeling the light of Agamotto through his hand, and then through a creature’s heart, he could attack both their body and soul. As a result, this disperses its body on a molecular level across 1000 loci. He was even able to channel a past Dormammu’s power to blast a future Dormammu to scatter his essence across infinite realities. So, this should work not only on dispelling dream beings, banishing energy in general, and energy beings like Dormammu, but on physical and spiritual bodies. His banishment spells have been cast on Nightwalkers, who are beings so intangible that even Peter Parker as an immaterial, phasing time spirit couldn’t interact with them. Strange’s banishments can even work against Ikonn, a member of the Octessence, Chthon, while using a woman’s pure soul, Set, while using a Cosmic Cube, and the Vishanti, with powerful magic rings.

Basically, if Strange can simply send you somewhere else to avoid dealing with you, he will. Or, he’ll forcibly bring you to locations he’s familiar with like the Astral Plane for battlefield control or a home field advantage. He can even extend this effect to a massive AOE blast around him, which he used to banish a demon that fed off of his anger and brute force. One of Doctor Strange’s more famous uses of this is when he famously banished Hulk to the Crossroads between realities. Strange’s banishment spell in this instance included a fail-safe that triggered if Hulk is dissatisfied in the dimension he ends up in that shunts him back to the Crossroads, meaning he can imbue portions of specifically triggered banishment magic inside of subconscious minds.

This wouldn’t really be the last time Stephen sends Hulk to other dimensions or between dimensions (where he has no way out), so he’s aware that this isn’t a permanent tactic he can totally rely on for some opponents. For especially powerful entities, sometimes teamwork is necessary, like when he set up a Group Spell of Dimension Reversal to BFR a Celestial with various powerful mystics and Strange working together, and doing so seals the rift to our world thoroughly. And, the Sorcerer Supreme can simply think and a Conjurer’s Cone will send people to another dimension, meaning he can shunt you away with a thought. Hell, the Beyonder even said that Strange might’ve been able to keep him constantly inebriated (drunk) and in a pocket dimension for years. If he’s feeling particularly nasty, he’ll just dip you into a hellscape for a couple seconds to traumatise you, or he can aim for effectiveness and simply make you “begone”.

Interdimensional Shunting: Only magic can counter Dark Dimension magic, which Strange does to BFR these Dark Dimension entities away to other dimensions to avoid reconstituting Dormammu’s essence. Banished a quantum-manipulating villain into a dream dimension. The Ancient One banishing entities to the Dark Dimension. Hurls a viral storm back through a “hyper-spatial aperture” and then strengthens the dimensional walls. Forcibly ejects Hood from the Astral Plane despite Hood currently wielding the Space and Reality gem. Banishment back through an opened portal to another plane with Flames of Faltine and Winds of Watoomb. This seals the portal. Banishes Xandu to be imprisoned in a nether dimension. BFR through an interdimensional portal and closing it. Banishing from the Dream Dimension. Strange tries banishing mirror conjured duplicates back to the bi-dimensional plane. Spell to shunt enemies to a netherworld. Strange sends a sending which transports Juggernaut into the Crimson Cosmos dimension. Made a vortex to seal Mordred back into “lost Limbo”.

Specific Dimensions

Basically, Doctor Strange can send you to any dimension he’s ever visited or seen. He’s banished a Shuma-Gorath avatar to the Beyond, a realm beyond time and matter. Strange banishes Captain America to the Realm of Mortan’l’s Insanity, where Cap has to battle his own mind via madness and nightmare inducement. Strange shunts a man to a beetle dimension. Banishes several characters across God Emperor Doom’s Battleworld. Pulls a soul into the Astral Plane and then paralyzes it with the Hands of Cyttorak. The Ancient One banished Kaluu to Limbo. Strange sent Black Cat to Karnilla’s realm. Strange uses magic to confuse this entity on which gateway in a dimension is the path to Earth’s dimension before banishing it to the Dimension of No Return. This dimension causes beings to be lost in its loops of infinity. BFRs a man to the Dark Dimension where the Mindless Ones are.

Strange BFRs Godzilla to the Astral Plane, though admits Godzilla will break out soon. Strange uses the Winds of Watoomb to send a knight into the Fangs of Farallah to shunt him to a realm where his worst fears take form. Mordo shunted both himself and Strange to the Nexus of All Realities, which touches all realities, with an automatic spell of protection. BFRs a monster to the Dark Dimension. While amplified by mystical energies, Doom banished Franklin Richards to Hell. And, using Strange’s teachings, Reed Richards teleported the Fantastic Four out of Hell with an artifact. Cast a spell to send a group of demons out of the main reality back to the Death Dimension.

Return Banishments

This is the act of sending invading forces back to their home dimension. Invokes the Seven Suns of Cinnibus to block the forces of Limbo, then banishes it with the Gates of Gaea. After invoking the Vishanti, Strange banishes these spirits back to their plane. Strange completes a spell that conjures energy tentacles to banish D’Spayre once the entity is distracted, which he struggles to complete while disrupted by D’Spayre’s machinations as it’d have taken days otherwise. Temporary banishment incantation on 12th Dimension entities. The Spell of Cosmic Banishment is dimensional BFR that can banish souls to their homeworld or banish people to Limbo. Holding a magical artifact lets this activate just by pointing at someone. Crimson Bands to restrain a group of fiends then he banishes fiends as a combo.

Item Banishment

Doctor Strange can target specific items to send them away to another dimension or location. Strange isolated a nanotechnology infection in a temporal null void. Casey used rudimentary spells to vanish (this is revealed to actually be BFR later) objects, like an entire van or papers. Casey’s abuse of the vanishing spell “broke a treaty”, since it was shunting objects to a dimension populated by one entity. This abuse disallows the spell from working. To confront the entity, Casey uses the Vanishing Spell on herself and Strange, revealing that it’s a Spell of Transference. Abuse of this spell will eventually lead to the entity sealing off its dimension. Strange deduces weapons are being mystically replaced and swapped with other-dimensional replacements by a wizard. Said evil wizard swapped a weapon from Earth’s dimension with multiple sorcerers and divined the capabilities of the weapon. Baron Mordo magically separated Angela from her hammer. Strange zapped clothes away from attackers.

Summoning Spells

Naturally, a sorcerer should know techniques that call upon pals or simply bring in and direct evil monsters at people you don’t like. Like many casters, Doctor Strange can summon a giant tentacle demon, tendrils from a portal to restrain Aslak, green tentacles from portals, or forcibly summon a demon now that he knows his name. Clea herself could summon a demon to fight a Revenant Moon Knight. There’s also rituals that take a little while or other magicals means to call in entire characters like bringing in Satana from Hell or summoning the Hulk from the Crossroads after detecting a spark of Bruce’s mind within him. But, it’s worth noting that sometimes characters don’t have to respond to summons that aren’t forceful, like how Clea didn’t respond to mystic summons or, you know, it won’t work if other sorcerers are currently dead, but these calls can reach the Void between dimensions.

And, he can actually summon non-demonic creatures too. While leading the Black Priests, Strange could unleash an AOE magic ritual composed of mystical entities that grab multiple Black Swans. Valtorr, when invoked, calls forth clouds, summons lightning, and summons snakes. Strange can summon a magic spider, and said spider unlocks the memories of Talia for Strange to peer into. He even once summoned Agamotto, Oshtur, and Hoggoth to grant him sanctuary during a battle exploding on enemies that defy physical and supernatural laws. But, sometimes there’s villainous spells that Strange realistically wouldn’t do, such as the one that summons forth Surtr and Ymir, Asgardian giants that are planetary threats. They’re made of pure fire and ice and can reconstruct their bodies respectively. While this is normally a villainous spell, the invocation can be found in the Book of Vishanti. Other adversarial examples from villains include Berenson’s specific ritual summoning a gorgon-like entity or other villains summoning a dragon of pure energy that he can’t counterspell without going after the summoners first.

Thankfully, summoning extends to his own personal belongings too, like how he can actually summon physical money to be withdrawn from his bank account. How convenient! But, it doesn’t stop there. Through specific spells, Doctor Strange and other mystics can summon items through the air out of rooms or another person’s hands. In fact, if Stephen simply doesn’t want to deal with you wielding an item that could cause him trouble, he can just cast the M’Casta Spell of Item Transference to teleport items to his hands, only requiring a stance on the ground and a thought. He used this to casually end a negotiation when someone tried using a briefcase with important contents as a bargaining chip, simply teleporting the briefcase out of her hands and into his own. Magical item theft really is as easy as that. Conversely, he’s used his magic to give Blade all of his previous weaponry and equipment back.

Conjuring

Part of magic that everyone understands is that wizards can simply will things into existence. This is what’s known in the magic world as “conjuring”, what Spider-Man calls “making things out of thin air”, something with which Doctor Strange has no shortage of ideas to draw from in a pinch. Here are some of the many examples he’s done or that other sorcerers have come up with:

This motherfucker can easily summon infinite wealth. Why does he not do this more often?

Sleeping Spells

Strange can casually put someone to sleep with a spell. This is a fairly rudimentary and common tactic of his if he wants to avoid a fight or calm someone down into unconsciousness out of mercy, which he can accomplish by waving his hands. Additionally, he can perform sleep spells in his Astral Form with verbal incantations on a group of people, and there’s even an explicit, vocalized spell for mid-combat use with the Mists of Morpheus, which knocks a person out on a level of unconsciousness beyond normal sleep, behaving more like sedation.

Strange can apply this through conjured mist or blasting it at others in the form of a Bolt of Bedevilment to entrance and knock out crowds of people. Notably, Strange can cast the Mists of Morpheus silently despite the verbal components needed, which can break through magic barriers conjured to block them. Other spells like the Silent Spell of Seraphim can accomplish this result without any words, only a gesture and thought. These magicks definitely help when you need the Hulk to take some naptime, even keeping him asleep while standing up with a Spell of Somnambulance. On the other hand, if Strange manages to naturally bore someone to sleep, he has a handy Spell of Minor Disturbance to wake you up with.

Dream Spells

Doctor Strange, ever prepared as always, has spells in place on himself to prevent others from entering his dreams. These spells of protection are actually a common practice by other magicians just in case Nightmare (the conceptual entity) tries to cause any issues at night, alongside general mystic protections for when he sleeps. On top of those contingencies, Strange is able to seal gateways made between two dreams, and any sorcerer can travel to or between dreams themselves via the Dream Dimension.

Unfortunately, Nightmare can sometimes find ways around all of that. Thankfully, Stephen is a quick thinker and was able to come up with a custom spell on the fly by making an incision in the magical leylines around him. By doing so, he was able to forcibly make people around the world have a good night’s sleep so that he was the only person currently dreaming, having stolen 4 billion nightmares (as there’s roughly 4 billion people asleep at a time on Earth according to him) from everyone sleeping around the world (that he had to then outrun). This was enough to depower Nightmare, since the world being asleep and having nightmares is how his power level fluctuates. While inside the Dream Dimension itself, Doctor Strange has been shown to have the capability of both creating and manipulating the dream lands within and dispelling manipulated dream environments and dream-manipulating ripples. Strange himself has even reasserted dreams to exist after they stopped existing all across the Dream Dimension and recreated it, which is linked to humanity’s collective unconscious.

However, through perhaps the strongest application of dream energy by Strange with the help of his magic sash, he was able to overwhelm Nightmare, and this was after Nightmare was able to defeat Abstracts and the Living Tribunal by simply dreaming that he could beat them. After duping the omnipotent Nightmare, Strange, after harnessing some of the dream energy and making “a dream come true”, says dreams can conjure up entire universes, and that just because Nightmare used everyone’s dreams, doesn’t mean they can be controlled, as dreams are unpredictable. This is backed up by how Nightmare said dreams defy reality to his own whims to amplify to absurd levels and how he required Strange’s connection to all living things, Stephen’s dreams serving as the necessary link. Thus, Strange shrinks down, depowers, weakens, and seals away Nightmare, and explains that dreams are magical and that he has a better grasp and understanding over manipulating dreams because he takes action on them rather than convincing himself they’re true without doing anything like Nightmare, restoring everything back to the way it was using the magic that comes from these energies.

Transmogrification Spells

One of the many iconic uses of magic is to simply turn something or someone into something else. Hell, Doctor Strange messing up certain spells can result in the planet being turned into jelly. Considering that the Vishanti themselves can manipulate matter on an atomic level, various applications of transmogrification or transmutation magic should be especially potent coming from Strange. Below are some of the many different uses provided by him and other magicians:

Petrification: This villain cast a petrification spell on multiple people. Petrification spell cast by an Asgardian Enchantress in the past. Clea uses the Stone Prison of Umar to turn the men into stone. Doctor Strange telekinetically lifts an Asgardian corpse and turns it into a statue.
Energy Transmutation: The turning of elements or energy into something else. Strange recalls a spell for transmogrifying flames, which turns fire into flowers. Transmogrification of Fire variant can turn fire into harmless flowers or other things. Strange transmutes ethereal energy and merges magical spheres with an ancient spell fragment to reawaken it. Strange uses an elemental transformation spell to turn magic spikes into blossoms.
Diffusing Transmutation: Basically, this is the division of one object into many different objects. While this instance was done in a pocket dimension’s simulated reality, Strange transmogrifies a large chunk of rubble into magic butterflies. Strange used magic blasts and slices to destroy security bots, some of which had their shrapnel transmogrified into flower petals with said magic slice. Stephen transmogrifies an enchanted gun into bugs and claims he’ll never use another gun. Strange casts a spell on the Kree Universal Weapon. The spell split the weapon up into multiple portions between Captain Marvel, War Machine, Spider-Woman, and Hazmat. Has “a few” spells that can separate Pandemonium’s body into its separate component demons that make him up, but he doesn’t want to separate them so as to not kill the possessed humans. Wanda finishes Strange’s incantations and revives Thor from the bag of glass shards.
Creature Transmutation: Luke Cage claims Strange can turn people into bunnies. The demon transmutes some X-Men into animals with a spell for familiars, which weakens them. Strange says he can undo this, and he does so easily with a somatic gesture. Strange knows the Shapeshifting Magic of Omnicoopa to alter forms and create replicas of previous ones. He does this to create a fly creature that’s actually a bag of soul poison. Magik claims she can turn characters into toads. Strange claims he can discorporate Wong into a screaming ball of tentacled agony. Sorceress turns men into monsters. Clea turned a group of men into snakes. Transmutes scalpels thrown at him into doves.
Emotional Transmutation: Other mystics have fear transmuted into flowers and anger soothed.
Size Manipulation: Uses a spell called Pym Particulates, shrinking the rocks that restrained Conan. Magically reverts Margali to her true size. Strange shrinks and stores all of his magical artifacts in the Eye of Agamotto, which he managed to hide from a currently omnipotent Adam Warlock. Mystically enlarged bacteria have been used offensively against Strange. Thanos transmuted Hulk to the size of a Barbie doll but Strange put him back to normal. Using the Ancient One’s magic knowledge, Wong grew to kaiju size to fistfight a Faltinian.
Matter Manipulation: Reverses the polarity of an antimatter reverse dimension and on himself and Clea to normal matter. Mordo shifts a room’s substance into that of a separate reality. Can magically alter inanimate matter to pass for human remains. Turned a soap bubble into a crystal ball.

Elemental Spells

Naturally, a mage like Doctor Strange has otherworldly control over the elements of the world. There’s classics like fire and ice magic that can be manifested in the form of named spells, as previously discussed. But, much like how nearly every RPG uses elemental mechanics to add variety to their battle systems, the elements are a wide-reaching umbrella of different substances at the whim of a master magician. Doctor Strange himself has even said that the fundamental forces of nature wielded by others, in relation to Magneto for this conversation, equate to the physical, mental, and spiritual. Thus, we’ll break down various examples of these into different categories below:

Containment Spells

Sometimes, a sorcerer needs a “stop” button that they can place on their foes. Be it through sealing, stasis, or immobilization, Doctor Strange knows a ton of different containment spells that can prevent any threats to his being from escaping or even moving outright. Sometimes, these can even be used as precautionary or defensive measures, such as when Stephen used a containment spell on a miniscule bomb that Hank Pym was helping him extract from Luke Cage’s vital organs. And, villainous sorcerers like Cyrus Black were able to trap Strange himself in a spell of containment to stop incantations.

Other times, sorcerers are able to place or release mystical seals or arcane locks onto doors or furniture to fully prevent them from being opened or entered normally. Or, Strange can skip just sealing a door and uses the Sphere of Cyttorak to seal an entire chamber. Sometimes, containment spells will involve trapping an entity in a magical construct or prison, like when Clea transferred Zelma’s emotional bliss to a demon to contain it more easily in a ball of magic or when Xandu was able to keep Strange trapped in a mystical cage. A shattered orb made of magical energy, when Strange reconstructed it around Hulk and his mount, was even able to fully immobilize and contain them.

In terms of how Doctor Strange applies seals, one of the first things he’s witnessed characters in the past was Wong tossing a massive pile of pre-made blessing seals that were able to entirely halt a swarm of spirits from attacking them for 45 seconds. Since then, he’s known that sealing is a versatile and typically a finishing move for even gargantuan threats, like when he instructed Sorcerer Supreme Brother Voodoo to seal Dormammu in the Dark Dimension or considered sealing Nightmare away while fighting him in his own realm. Strange’s sealing spells can even close up giant tears in the ground with combo’d spells like the Vapors of Valtorr and the Shield of Seraphim normally, and he even adds that he knows four other different sealing spells.

Or, more simply, seals can be used to trap the essence of a demon in amber, and they can even seal away and contain Margali’s wand, disconnecting her from it to depower her with the Circle of Cyttorak. He can also cast spells on the Hollow that binds them into a giant tree amalgamation for ages to come, as time spells would wear off eventually. He could also place an unbreakable Seal of Permanence, though it requires a lengthy incantation, casting the spell from memory. But, when he does so it vanishes from the Book of Vishanti. He can even form shackles that mystically bind Nightmare while Nightmare is in his own dimension. And, he’s previously trapped one of his doppelgangers into a “crust of energy”, petrifying it.

Other potent variations of containment involve magic that can incur stasis, or the act of encasing a being in a frozen state where they’re completely unable to think or act. For example, this villain knew a spell described as “an energy lock that moves power uphill”, which would effectively have left Strange hovering forever on the brink of oblivion so she could keep him in a display case, but Strange enchanted this all his power and this spell into a piano to cast this exact spell on her instead. Against some more noteworthy foes and characters, Stephen was able to keep characters like Silver Dagger, Orini, a weakened Umar, and a Dark Elf along with the coffin they were inside of all in stasis before. Practical uses of stasis were able to keep a grievously paralyzed woman in a stasis field to keep her stable to treat her, and Doctor Strange can hold genetic samples he needs in stasis as well. Magical talismans in the past could replicate stasis effects too, such as when one talisman held two characters in stasis within a block of energy.

However, even with all these options, Strange can just hold entities in place with a magic “hold” command. As in, he has spells specifically for inducing immobility in anyone he’s facing. Basically speaking, these spells can just stop you from moving or acting outright. The Ancient One could immobilize a small army for a day, for example. Strange was once intercepted before he could cast a spell, but it seems to be the same effect he was trying to do anyway, which is to freeze a guy strong enough to contend with Loki in place. He’s been able to wave his hands and chant to stop even the Hulk in his tracks with an immobility spell, he’s casted spells capable of rendering an entire planet’s population unable to leave, and he’s managed to paralyze souls in the Astral Plane with the Hands of Cyttorak. One time, he was facing an Old One whose state of being was infinitely changing and forever the same, one that could not be trapped, beaten, or even touched, declaring that Doctor Strange could not “find their end”. However, Strange retorted that he could bar their way, mystically freezing their state to prevent them from changing or fluctuating outright at all, meaning he can stop “change” itself with immobility magic.

Exorcism & Anti-Demonic Spells

Demons don’t ever really want to hear the name “Doctor Strange” when they learn who they’re facing. Any sorcerer worth their salt knows how to exorcise and banish unholy entities, something that Spider-Man and Tony Stark know are a regular job for Strange. This is such an ancient practice, that there are even exorcism counterspells that are so old that Strange doesn’t even know them. He performed an exorcism on Cyrus Black’s followers, siphoning the Ichor of Ish’lzog from all of them before taking the Ichor from Black himself, Strange could customize a spell to make a bottle imp demon shatter into pieces, and Strange can even dispel demons in his “invisible ectoplasmic form”, meaning his Astral Form. Doctor Doom can exorcise and banish demonic possessions, though he explains that improperly doing this can actually kill the host body too. And, he can purify and exorcise demons from a man’s life force and use the Omnipotence of the Octessence to free people demonized by Pandemonium, but it takes a lot out of him.

Even the Ancient One, his former mentor, blessed this lady so that she won’t have demons pursue her so long as she’s true of heart, and his blessing protected her and Strange from a powerful Three Ringed Vishanti blast conducted through Dormmamu-invoked Baron Mordo since her heart was pure. Corelli’s Exorcism Reversal Battle Attack can also multi-target and undo various possessions at once, and this even once worked on Agamotto himself. Hell, it doesn’t really matter what powerful entities come his way. Strange has forced Zarathos out of Johnny Blaze’s body, Sorcerer Supreme Brother Voodoo used magic to expel and seal Nightmare beyond a gate, and Strange used Corelli’s Advanced Purification Spell on Daniel Drumm after he possessed several Avengers in quick succession. And, Strange once cast a massive barrier where he and Jericho Drumm trap Hood’s demon form in a magic circle that he can’t escape, sealing and revealing Dormammu as Sorcerer Supreme Jericho exorcises him back home out of The Hood. He also knows an exorcism spell that’s only painful for the possessor, which Nightmare is successfully threatened by.

In terms of his anti-demon traps, Strange could form a demon ritual circle trap on the ground, which ensnares a demon in a bubble the demon can’t escape from (as in, it’s impenetrable to demons) but he and his friends’ own weapons can poke through. Strange kept and reshaped this demon ensnarement trap in the form of chain restraints too. These aren’t even just limited to specifically demons either. Strange and Wong banished the possession via Mordo of a herd of sheep, the act of which inflicted physical harm on Mordo back where he was controlling them from. And, Strange once removed an interdimensional entity from a mind and banished it through mystical surgery. But, let’s say Doctor Strange does end up possessed by a demon. What then? Well, Strange previously offered himself up as a host for a demon in exchange for an innocent girl, and the demon accepted and said he’ll “tear this universe apart” with the addition of Strange’s power… except Stephen’s soul not only resisted the demonic possession, but he locked away the demon within the very depths of his spirit to the point that the entity was rendered a totally harmless passenger in his soul.

Healing & Regeneration Spells

Naturally, being a mage means that you should have at least some sort of healing magic in your back pocket in case of emergencies. In the past, Strange’s magic and the magic of other sorcerers have been able to heal the usual minor injuries, like injured arms, a broken tibia, head injuries, slow attempts to heal shattered hands, various stab wounds, broken jaw and cheekbones, and general open wounds. But, being a doctor, Stephen knows how to be more proficient with how he heals people with magic, such as casting a spell that temporarily pumps Tony’s failing heart for him, stabilizing vital signs, knitting ligaments back together, or verbally and somatically casting the Teresing Boost Spell of Health with a touch, which can enhance a body’s ability to fight off disease and injury temporarily to allow people to live through normally fatal wounds. Even villains like Mordo have been able to heal a child that was near death back to working health with magic he learned from the Ancient One, and characters like Satana know magic that can numb pain and heal Daredevil from a mortal bullet wound while restoring torn fabric, which Strange is familiar with but insists can’t heal everything. Strange also knows spells that can make bodies impervious to physical pain outright, plus multiple spells to revive unconscious people.

Stephen is also capable of healing his physical stamina or the stamina of other beings. He once restored a defeated giant bird’s vigor and pain outright to act as a mount for his team with renewed energy. And, Strange knows a reinvigoration spell that can remove the exhaustion of 37 hours without sleep. This is especially impressive since magicians seem to have more stamina than most people. For example, Clea was able to stay awake conjuring a spell for 2 days straight, and Strange’s physical body was able to stay in a trance while his Astral Self was wandering the Astral Plane for 3 days straight. He’s sent “astral feelers” out for days to try and locate people in specific locations like New Orleans from his Sanctum in New York City, and Strange knows a Spell of Rejuvenation that could restore his strength after having been near death, allowing him to remain active for up to one or two more days.

During active combat, Doctor Strange consistently is able to fight for days on end, like when he’s fighting aliens in Eternity’s realm for days, going for days without sleep fighting supernatural forces, and fighting an army of Doombots for days. Similarly, other mystics have gone without sleep doing magic work for a full week, like Jericho Drumm when he was Sorcerer Supreme. One time, when he received a presumed magic puzzle box, he first mystically examined it for 3 hours, then he spent 4 weeks exhausting arcane volumes and every spell he knew and hundreds of new ones, before eventually going for 40 days and nights, having gone some of that time without food or sleep. He was also once tortured constantly and left with just some nutrient paste only once each day for 73 days all endured without his magic. Additionally, Strange is able to restore his spent stamina by absorbing mystic energies.

His healing rites also go far beyond just the physical, since Doctor Strange can heal people “metaphysically” or treat “magical ailments”. He can heal people’s auras that are experiencing psychic shock or wounds, even with herbs that he owns. Stephen has performed surgery on his own body to tend to it after it was physically and mystically wounded, and he can work with other magicians to magically bolster the life force of even esoteric beings like Eternity. And, Strange has been able to heal diseased souls in the past, heal Astral Forms, and magic is able to heal souls in general and lengthen lives. He can grant the dying Ancient One up to a week off his personal lifeline to stabilize him too.

Previously, Doctor Strange has explained that healing life force works with the law of thermodynamics, meaning to heal something, it costs something else like having another person suffer for the sake of equivalent exchange. Basically, if your legs get mauled and have their life force healed, then someone else will get their legs mauled in the same way later. This can be used to heal things like someone dying from A.L.S., but this would transfer to some other random person later, so he hesitates to brute force a healing this way. Also, he can’t cure cancer, as it’s apparently a magical limitation.

Now, this is a nice way to have some writers not solve every problem with magic, but this explanation isn’t entirely in line with the more absurd instances of healing Strange has performed. Like, let’s say you’re Kaelicius who’s just killed Doctor Strange and sown his hands onto your arms, but Stephen is still coming after you (we’ll explain in a bit). Well, by casting a healing spell of regeneration on his own stolen hands, Strange was able to convert all of Kaelicius’s body and entirely physically reform and regenerate from his hands, killing his foe. But, his feats of regeneration and revival have actually gone beyond this:

Physical Resurrection of the Dead

Energy beings Stephen previously created can perform resurrections of the dead. Sometimes he claims that he can’t (or won’t) raise the dead if they’re killed by mundane means, but this is something writers seem to go back and forth on. Strange once resurrected Las Vegas’s population, but… this drew forth Mephisto, backfiring. Strange also knows a general “Spell of Revival”. Cultists of the Hand had previously conducted a ritual to revive Echo / Ronin from a stab wound, something alluded to as being mysticism. Strange once was able to enter a zen state where he slowed his life processes down to fool Man-Thing into believing he died, mimicking death so perfectly that it almost became real and nearly dragged him to Death’s Domain before he pulled his consciousness back into his body to snap out of it.

Another time, Doctor Strange was riddled with bullets and declared outright dead, but he ended up reviving with glowing eyes and a demonic physique. He corrupted an entire room of heroes and villains before reverting back to normal, which was all a result of Zom’s remaining influence from World War Hulk storyline, where he allowed the demon to possess him.

Bodily Reconstitution

These are instances and support for Doctor Strange being able to completely reconstitute his physical body from pieces and from nothing. One time, when facing Stygyro, the Planes of Pohldahk were cast upon Stephen to spatially collapse him into a 2-D form before having his existence shattered into a million shards. By casting the Flames of the Faltine, he was able to remerge himself completely and revert back to 3-D form. Another time, Strange recognized a spell that appeared to mystically dice Spider-Ham into cubes and said that he knew how to put him back together. One of his most impressive feats, however, was after he was shunted with Spider-Man outside of time and space and into the void that existed before time and space that’s “outside the physical”. Despite having no physical form, Strange’s essence was able to fully reconstitute both his and Spider-Man’s physical bodies and forms. And, later, he restores them to their realm in terms of space, but not time since he can’t do both simultaneously.

As supporting evidence, after bringing his spirit back to the past, Strange returns his and Peter Parker’s astral bodies to physical form from insubstantiality, and he heals Peter’s essence within this specific room (so as to avoid a time paradox with his past self). Peter loses physicality the moment he pokes his hand outside this room, as Strange warns him not to leave before he can treat his Astral Body’s damage. He can then heal Peter back to normal this way because it’s not his time and this method is a “magical cure for a magical ills”. In terms of when someone is trying to negate regeneration similar to this, Galactus can only try to keep himself intact because Strange’s will and mystic aura are allowing his resurrection to be possible in the first place. He says the Vishanti can be called upon to assist Galactus in reconstituting himself, a reconstitution Mistress Death was actively trying to prevent. Wanda finishes Strange’s incantations and revives Thor from the bag of glass shards. He’s even been able to regenerate himself from Dormammu nearly erasing him from existence.

Soul Healing

Strange purged the power of the Hand from Punisher, or as he calls it, the “Abscission of Ectoplasmic Necro-Mucus, each globule of which is a highly unstable other-dimensionally empowered tumor”, describing the process as brain surgery that will dispose of a bomb that can obliterate the human soul. This basically means he has the means to remove spiritual infections or dangerous growths. More impressively, by absorbing Dormmamu’s power from his fired bolts with the Wings of Needless Sorrow, Strange used the stolen magical energy to reconstitute his nearly drained Astral Form. This restored him after having used his full power to break free from Crimson Bands, leaving his Astral Form almost entirely drained and absurdly tiny.

Temporal Timeline Slice Revival

We talked about this before in the Spacetime Manipulation section, but it’s worth reiterating it here as a form of temporal resurrection. At one point many years ago, Strange severed a week from his personal timeline, cutting it from his life span, hiding it as a contingency in case he ever died, so a temporal remnant could get his affairs in order. This temporal remnant was kept specifically to investigate his own murder. In this state, Strange calls himself a temporal ghost, and he only has a few days left to come back to life before he ceases to exist. He ended up resolving this by regenerating through his stolen hands through Kaelicius’s body, thus saving him from nonexistence.

Enchantments

Even a regular ol’ butterknife can become an enchanted sword with the right magic cast by Doctor Strange. This kind of magical application can go far beyond making something a more powerful and mystical version of itself, like how Stephen can mask items he wears, like bands or the Eye of Agamotto. Other items, like a sword he plucked out of Deadpool’s back, can be enchanted so that it automatically immolates and banishes zombies to “the other side”, though it doesn’t activate if you catch the blade in your hands.

Speaking of “the other side”, Strange once enchanted the skull of one of Gwenpool’s deceased friends, which made it capable of summoning his ghost for her at any time. An alternate universe version of Doctor Strange was even able to imbue Punisher’s guns and bullets with magic and astral bullets. Other mystics like Alice Gulliver could also enchant her guns and bullets with invisible hexes and spells, and Kaluu used a combination of mind control and invincible, enchanted weaponry to create his own mystical army. Very basically, if it’s a form of magic that Strange has experience with, it’s potentially possible for him to suffuse the effect of that magic into any mundane item he has on-hand.

Stat Amplification

Magic allows Doctor Strange to increase his physical capabilities tremendously, boosting his strength, speed, or stamina with mystic energy. Strange can amplify himself to full power, which often makes him glow gold, giving him the physical might of planet level power or the durability to no-sell Captain Marvel’s strongest punches, and it can also indirectly boost his magical capabilities for spells that require more sustenance such as banishment. Strange can also imbue others with enhanced stats, such as when he aged a boy to adulthood to grant him power. Sorcerer Supremes can charge up wands with magical power for spell-stabbing to send it flying forward to attack beings like Arachnix Demons.

Technology Manipulation

Despite it seeming like magic is incompatible with technology to a degree, this isn’t really the case for magicians. Mordo has been able to magically tap into phone conversations from thousands of dimensions away and appear out of them. Strange himself could enchant phones to telepathically call him, control the Iron Man Model-Prime Armor to restrain Kulan Gath and cease all motor function, magically shut off lights and cameras while mystically deleting recording footage, and he knows spells that can disable every mechanical device on an alien ship.

Other mystics are even capable of using their magical mental manipulations to affect Tony Stark’s assistant AI, Friday. And, when merged with Mister Misery, Strange’s magically imbued punches were able to sever Imperator’s technological connection to his Empirikul soldiers, shutting down the shielding tech that he was supplying. And, the Bigbox fail-safe is a mix of magic and technology, so Strange sublimated himself into an alternate layer of reality, walking between two worlds, where he could actually understand the singing of the magical systems that ran Bigbox, communing with the consciousness of the fail-safe system in a negotiation.

Telekinesis

If you’re a wizard and you can’t move things around without touching them, then what are we doing, man? Thankfully, Doctor Strange has telekinesis locked down, having made constant casual use of it throughout his tenure as a magic user. Of course, telekinesis is primarily fueled through the use of magic, which allows him to wield blades without holding onto them, but this also means a lack of magic will disallow it. Not only can Strange use this power and spells of levitation to stop people from falling to death, he can use it on characters to lift them into the air at his whim. He and his fellow magicians have done this to break up fights between Iron Man and Namor, hold back collapsing buildings, move cats out of a room, slam open doors, halt incoming bullets, facilitate flight even without the Cloak of Levitation, and bring flying characters back down to the ground.

Naturally, telekinetic powers can be used offensively too, such as the incredibly common use of flinging characters away or towards obstacles, with Strange himself using it to fling tons of cars at once, induce geokinesis to block beams with stone debris from the ground, or part a crowd of people. And, despite being chained up by King of Hell Ghost Rider, Strange used a telekinetic spell to command Johnny to cease his attack, flinging him away. Stephen is also aware that stronger incantations of a levitation spell on someone can hurt them.

He’s weaponized this in order to make giant spiders spasm, utter curses that make slime mimics explode, and he’s been able to deliberately target a Venom symbiote within old man Dylan Brock, tearing it out of him and isolating it in a containment barrier. Doctor Strange can also do this to simply disassemble anything you own in seconds, like when he mystically dismantled a rocket launcher’s missile before it hit a plane or disassembled Ghost’s gun before he could use it. Or, he can telekinetically guide knives through the air to slice off necklaces with artifacts and then bring them back over to Strange himself.

Firing any sort of projectile at a magician with this ability isn’t a good idea either. Doctor Strange could redirect the trajectory of a golf ball, demons could redirect a baseball’s path through the air with a somatic spell, Mordo hijacked a steering wheel telekinetically and remotely, and the invocation of the Space-Bending Summoning of K’thalgoth redirected already fired and unmoving tranquilizers into a Skrull Black Widow’s neck to neutralize her. With telekinesis, Strange can easily deflect meteors or spears thrown at him with his fingers, or he could halt and redirect spears through midair altogether. Colodor’s Reversal Spell can redirect offensive enchantments with a verbal incantation, though it can’t be cast with a shield of any kind. But, regardless of that spell, Wanda was able to redirect a targeted flame attack with telekinesis herself and also redirect the molten liquid spilling out of a container.

Power Nullification

Even though some writers try not to make Strange have an answer to every situation, he does, in fact, have several abilities to just turn your powers off or mess with your ability to speak. Much like how Baron Mordo cast the Clamp of Cyttorak to prevent Stephen from speaking specific things and cloaked the visible construct (which the Ancient One released him from), and a rewritten universe version of Strange used this on his main universe self to bind his mouth shut outright so he can’t perform verbal incantations. Likewise, Strange has an enchantment that seals lips, along with examples from other mystics. Basically, Doctor Strange “can and will remove a person’s ability to speak”, which he can attempt to cast or use to prevent characters from saying specific names. Dormammu himself has even placed a spell of literal silence on a large group of wizards called the Outcasts that supported a prior old regency, nullifying their voices. However, this silencing spell was not enough to prevent telepathic thought-speech or magic that didn’t require verbal components.

But, the real meat and potatoes of nullification-based magic comes in the form of what it can cancel out or negate independently from prior named spells in earlier sections. To start, Doctor Strange is actually able to revert or manipulate transformations or shapeshifting. He’s reverted vampires from their bat form to their human form, a shapeshifting mystic from bird form to human form, and he’s outright prevented a shapeshifting eldritch Old One from constantly shifting shapes and being untouchable by preventing change outright and making them tangible. With help from other mystics, Strange was even able to undo and transfer back the Man-Thing transformation from one person back onto Ted Sallis. He did this by counterspelling the transfer spell Thog had cast alone that changed the host for that state in the first place. Additionally, while he can’t permanently remove the Hulk state from Bruce outright, Strange can revert the Hulk back to Bruce Banner and turn Bruce Banner into the Hulk. If there’s a magical contract in play, Clea has previously created a magical union dissolver that allows you to nullify them by ripping them apart… which she did to her union with Strange.

He’s also outright been able to purify necromantic magic powers from someone, conjure a Sphere of Nullification where magical powers are canceled out briefly, undo magical dimensional vortexes, exorcise power out of L’matto (the Uni-Power) and condense it into an energy ball, force black magic out of people, and nullify all of Dream Weaver’s powers that were bestowed upon her. With the Ancient One’s magic knowledge, Zelma could nullify Faltinian powers to immobilize them. In fact, he can even forcibly separate Johnny Blaze from his Spirit of Vengeance with a spell, which would last until sunset. Inversely, Strange can even restore mystic powers. Additionally, Doctor Strange can just dispel magic in general. He’s cast spells to dispel and remove magical wings from a horse, something another magic user could mystically undo and revert.

This should be replicable by Strange, and is effectively an example of “counterspelling a counterspell”. In spite of being much weaker than her, Strange was able to dissolve Shazana’s spell. And, Strange easily undid Umar’s spell on the Sanctum Sanctorum. Similarly, as a result of Black Cat’s bad luck powers, Peter Parker was afflicted with manipulated bad luck on his aura, which Doctor Strange was able to purge and remove. Although, because the power was less magical and more scientific and gene mutation-based, this affected the originating point of the bad luck, nullifying Black Cat’s bad luck powers outright and mutating it to be other cat-based powers. It’s noteworthy that he was able to purge it at all, since when Black Cat artificially replicated these bad luck powers later on, magic from the former Strange villain Xander would passively transmute on impact due to her bad luck canceling out his magic manipulating and altering local quantum probability fields.

Perhaps most impressively, Doctor Strange can sever mystic connections and power sources should he need to. He can remove a person’s connection to mystic forces of the universe, stripping them of their magic. This instance is mentioned again in a handbook, where it’s stated Strange can strip someone of their magical powers. Mr. Plotnick once linked himself to the Seven Sons of Cinnibus, who reside in the Dimension in the Celestial Concordance, and Strange says he will sever this connection. Stephen cuts off Plotnick from the Cinnibus by plucking off the conduit at the base of his Astral Form, then severing it with a magic pair of scissors. Strange has nullified the energy absorption link Omegatron was sustaining to siphon the energy Anything Man was generating anytime he fought someone, alongside nullifying the powers it was granting him. And, he attempted to sever a televangelist from Nightmare’s influence, but the spell was countered.

One time, Xandu made it so that, in his personal realm created through the Wand of Watoomb, only he could use his powers and Strange and Spidey could not use their own powers against him. Despite this, Strange cast an invisible spell on himself and Spider-Man with a silent, non-somatic incantation to exchange and completely swap Spidey and Strange’s powersets. This was a loophole so that they could technically use another person’s powers in this realm. They swap the powers back later, but not before you got to see Stephen firing webs and Peter flinging magic blasts from his web-shooters. Similarly, Strange here steals power from Satannish’s underlings to use against him, though has Wanda alter probabilities to increase the likelihood of success. Then, he transfers Night Shift’s powers to the Avengers West Coast.

Even more potent than that, Loki’s bestowed powers via Asgardian Magic allows Absorbing Man to absorb the concept or purpose of substances. However, Absorbing Man cannot grasp onto or assimilate to Gamma as it lacks substance even beyond that, yet Strange could prepare a room in the Sanctum on its own plane of existence that renders Gamma meaningless, disallowing the Hulk from emerging at all.

Spells of Restoration

Magic can do far more than just heal injuries or damage. Through Doctor Strange’s knowledge of and casting of spells of restoration, he’s been able to restore a woman trapped in a corrupted demon form back to normal, restore corrupted mindless thralls, and use a Spell of Rejuvenation to undo aging manipulation, which he implies took some time from his natural lifespan. He can, obviously, apply these to himself too, such as when he was able to fully restore his own strength after having been in a near death state, something that would last a day or two. This can go even further, such as restoring a bar that the Beyonder reality warped carelessly when trying to fix it back to normal. And, through a spell now recorded in the Book of Vishanti, Loki, as Sorcerer Supreme, used the ancient spell known as the Exile of Singhsoon (which Strange was aware of) to bring back magic after it had died on Earth.

Damage Transferral

So, not everyone’s perfect. Sorcerer Supremes can pick up on bad habits too. See, Doctor Strange and Wong had been working together for years now to constantly mystically transfer (with verbal incantations) all of Stephen’s pain, which included and healed injuries, magical mutations, and spiritual infections, shoving it back down into the cellar of the Sanctum Sanctorum. Although, sometimes Wong would secretly transfer this to a secret group of disciples in the Himalayas that willingly volunteered to bear these magical tolls without Strange knowing. Why did Wong do this? Well, he and Strange kinda started to notice that all of Stephen’s siphoned pain began to… congeal into a sentient mass of suffering that they were struggling to contain in the cellar (its name is Mister Misery, by the way). Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Thus, throughout the years, Wong would mystically transfer injuries and magical penalties to disciples around the world instead to keep Doctor Strange spry and capable. Such tolls include Atlantean black magic, which caused eyes to bleed black blood to such a degree that he thought it would kill him. But, although he still suffered some of that cost, his disciples split off the mortal ramifications of such a casting. Various disciples even died for this, which Stephen definitely disapproved of even though it was a voluntary act. Thus, he dismissed and rejected this tactic when it came to using innocent people for this transferral.

However, this magic can work inversely, with disciples and friends like Zelma instead lending Strange their magic this way. Disappointingly, this didn’t end up making a Spirit Bomb. On another occasion much earlier on, Mephisto and Satannish protected themselves from Strange forcibly merging them, so he tapped into Mephista’s powers to be able to affect them with an inverse of that. By mystically connecting their essences, he made it so that if they attacked the other, the opponent would suffer both the same damage and effect. What this means is that Strange has the tools and tactics to attempt to weaponize his damage transferral magicks in a confrontation.

Conduits

What does Doctor Strange’s magic acting as a “conduit” even mean? Put simply, it means that his magic can be used as either a power source, a middleman to channel energy, a customized magic activation condition, or a catalyst to unlock potential in another power. For example, mystical power sources can be used by magicians in order to draw energy from another dimension. Doctor Strange was additionally able to conjure conduits that would transport different characters to the exact locations they needed to be in order to confront Thanos as soon as the battle started. Umar once allowed her magical power to be used as a magic source linked to wands that she gave to her enforcers, effectively granting them a portion of her powers. When Doctor Strange specifically used Betty Ross as a conduit for his magic, this was able to act as the mystical catalyst needed to open the Green Door to banish Moridun, but it should be noted that this is not normally replicable or reachable by him.

After channeling Chaos and Order, Strange’s magic was able to finally affect the In-Betweener and even turn his own power against him, who can affect dichotomies and ideas “in-between” dualities like reality and fiction, as they countered him directly, even after his spells were being ignored due to his conceptual physiology and controlled and overwritten. And, Doctor Strange was once able to channel a past Dormammu’s power in order to blast a future Dormammu, scattering his essence across infinite realities. Strange is able to change which Hell Dimension Pandemonium’s body is linked to, making him get gibbed by Mephisto. Strange’s magic could even power up Carol’s body to Binary Form or channel Mjolnir to travel across time. He can even use this in combination with other powers, like using his Astral body as a conduit to draw off Kaecilius’ energies.

Power Bargaining

So, you know all those entities whose names Doctor Strange belts out during spells or offhandedly mentions having met? He can actually call upon some of them during fights, channeling their power to strengthen him beyond his peak. Strange once bargained with the Trinity of Ashes to obtain more power and said that the magic of the Trinity is far beyond what he had when he was the Harvestman, Lady Death’s servant. This allowed Trinity Strange to be able to match Warhound Strange in a power clash. He can also call upon the Vishanti Trinity in order to try to blast his opponents. By channeling the full power of the Vishanti through himself, Strange used this to produce a mystical equivalent of centrifugal force that sent demons off in many dimensional directions.

The Dark Arts

Despite how Doctor Strange is more casually known as a protector and a full blown hero, he does have some…“moral flexibility” and is willing to turn to black magic as a last resort if it serves the greater good. And, he’s even had a time in his career as a mystic when he formally trained in black magic under Kaluu. But, what is “dark magic” anyway? Schools of magic that fall under this umbrella include necromancy, which involves the zombification or revenant states of corpses that can be potent enough to render zombies completely sentient.

Blood magic also falls under this label, which can sorcerously taint blood and render it impure or capture souls. And, more obviously, anything involving the invocation of hellish forces is black magic, like when Susan Storm was literally sent to Hell, dark arts bypassing her forcefields and negating Reed’s elasticity to be able to break his limbs in the process. This ended up summoning soldiers from Hell and even summoning Mephisto, though it cost the caster her soul. But, Doctor Strange can cast a variant of this by evoking Satannish in order to drag an alien warrior to Hell.

All of this power, as you can see, can usually come at a cost. For example, Stephen was once infected with lycanthropy so his body would rampage due to a side effect of some dark magic while his soul was caged away. The cure to purify him of this lycanthropy was a blood spell that required Satana’s sacrifice, through releasing all her magic energy, to dispel and free his body and spirit. So, it’s not really his go-to, but should he need to, Doctor Strange will use all the resources available to him. This would include:

Blood Bible

Strange owns an unholy Blood Bible for emergencies, which he used to cast dark magic against a knockoff Doctor Fate. This magic summoned tendrils from the Old Ones from the Abyss in order to absolutely stomp him and his entire knockoff Justice League, including the Superman knockoff that beat Hulk with tentacles from a portal. This act appeared to corrupt Strange and have him lose control, but he was still able to use it to decay and disintegrate this entire team. Tony ended up releasing some kind of pulse that reverses this effect and knocked Stephen out of this state.

Atlantean Black Magic

Doctor Strange stopped Dormammu in some way using Atlantean black magic, which he succeeded at but it made his eyes bleed out. Strange uses the Atlantean black magic again later, which unknowingly is instead having its physical toll redirected to secret disciples he doesn’t know about. But, this spell still takes some toll on him (via bleeding eyes) and it causes darkness to blast and wrap through multiple entities. He thought it would kill him, but the major toll was split from him.

Chaos Magic

The invocation of Chaos Magic was able to blast and harm an entity that was “the power of change” who could control the outcome of, maintain control over, and absorb all directed “catastrophe” magic, as it has “no control” over Chaos Magic. Its Chaos was so potent that it acted as a “poison” to an agent of change, so it had to disperse to avoid the effects, severing the magic absorption pipeline. Strange could even use Chaos Magic in other ways to freeze a moment in time. This is backed up by other statements that Chaos Magic “shatters probability” and bypasses magical defenses, and it’s a primordial magic, one capable of reversing fields of non-causality, making laws of physics malleable, sealing and affecting souls, warping quantum probability fields, and it’s connected to the chaotic fabric of the universe.

Strange himself has rectified and studied Chaos Magic to better understand it, how it works, and its origins as well after speaking on it authoritatively before, implying he continuously studies it. Clea also knows Chaos Magic’s mechanics intricately and can cast it herself, speaking authoritatively on it. It’s even a course taught at Strange Academy. Once, Strange could even banish Chthon, who granted Wanda, the most famous Chaos Magic user, her abilities in the first place. Speaking of which, her Chaos Magic was only previously unstable due to her mental state and concentration, but Agatha Harkness has since tutored her on how to better control it. Chaos Magic is what allowed her to alter and rewrite the whole of reality with “No More Mutants”, which Doctor Strange defended against at ground zero with Emma Frost.

Black Priest Words

During the Incursion saga where interdimensional planetary collisions were an eventual multiversal threat, several factions were running rampant on other realities. One of these groups was the Black Priests, a collective hivemind of regenerative aliens with their own mystical “language”. Later on, the Black Priests were revealed to have a sort of guide or leader working behind the scenes, which naturally ended up being Doctor Strange! Having trained under this faction, Stephen learned how to complete entire sentences to magically enforce their “words” on reality, rather than needing to coordinate separate pieces of a statement like the hivemind. Like the mystic savant that he is, the Doctor ended up learning how to speak “all” of the Black Priest words, granting him the ability to use their extraordinarily potent “spells”.

The way the “Words” work is less like magic, and more like “reality displacement”. What the Black Priests are doing is attacking the tangible world with language, manipulating the base code of everything and reordering the sequence of matter. What this is implying is that this is an informationally potent reality manipulation language, which makes sense given that the Black Priests live in a temple in the nothing-space of destroyed universes within the Superflow. Strange even refers to this temple as another “Sanctum”, one where they have “mirrors” to view the multiverse. See, the Superflow is a dimensional conduit composed of “pure information”.

This informational potency is further backed up by the Collector, who says the universe is like a simulation, comparing Infinity Stones like the Soul Stone to being pure information acting as hard drives that store information. Thus, editing the “source code” of reality can warp reality, and the Collector goes even further to say “we’re all information”. So, every listed ability derived from the “Words” of the Black Priests below would have that level of potency at a base level:

Dismemberment: Using their words, Black Priests can fire magical blasts that cleanly slice, mystically sever, and separate Inhuman bodies into segmented pieces.
Explosion Manipulation: Black Priests can kill with a single word, as in making you explode. This can even be done on a far grander scale with their word for “life” to destroy alternate Earths, an “accomplishment” achieved upwards of three times, which is possible with just one of their helmets.
Ice Manipulation: Black Priest words were able to briefly flash-freeze Thor’s arm and Mjolnir before he managed to break out of it.
Fire Manipulation: Black Priests were able to incinerate alternate universe versions of Magneto, Captain Marvel, and Black Bolt down to skeletons, which is replicated against Black Swans. They can achieve a similar, vaporizing effect with an AOE blast to reduce surrounding characters down to skeletons too.
Immobilization: By speaking Black Priest words, Doctor Strange was able to forcibly induce immobility in several heroes to the point that they could only speak, including Thor.
Forcefields: Black Priests are able to speak words that form a mystical barrier to block beam attacks.
Dimensional Travel: Black Priests wrote a tome that opens a portal which leads to the interdimensional Library of Worlds.
Cloaking Spells: Black Priests were able to invisibly mask a book out of view from normal people and even mystics that lacked a particular spark of talent.

Miscellaneous Spells

Naturally, there’s far too many spells with one-off abilities to list in individual sections across Doctor Strange’s decades of comic book history, so we’ll list out every weird little magical effect that he’s achieved that are worth bringing up or noting. Considering his track record of recalling spells, he should be capable of remembering that he’s shown off all of these abilities:

Gravity Manipulation: Turns off gravity for kids birthday parties and… having sex with Elektra.
Mending Spells: Helped to mystically reconstruct a city and can mend shattered objects. Strange mystically repairs damage to the Sanctum Sanctorum. Strange can’t magically mend Thor’s hammer through lack of trying, he just lacks Odin’s life energies contained within so his attempt could depower or break it. Spells of restoration and forgetfulness to fix up an environment as if nothing happened or was out of the ordinary. Magically repairs a shattered window and debris. Magically stitched the Amphora back together and sealed it with a spell. He can even repair a completely torn up home he trashed in seconds as if nothing happened.
Pain Imperviousness Spell: Stephen once cast a spell over Wong that made his body impervious to physical pain. This instance, he admits, was a bit of a rush job.
Translation Spells: Spells that are simple and auto-translate languages so everyone can understand each other in their native tongues. Doctor Strange knows a couple of translation spells that even allow him to understand interdimensional entities. Spells of Translation are instant and somatically cast. Casts a translation incantation. Casting yet another translation spell. Once again, he knows a translation spell.
Probability Manipulation: Casts a spell that causes guns to jam and backfire. Strange deduces a man’s luck may be due to latent mystical abilities. Vincent Stevens was able to flare some mystic luck while gambling to win at card games, overriding the luck of other mystic lucksmiths playing, with luck described as the stepbrother of magic, and Vincent Stevens is only a portion of Strange’s magic actualized as an energy being. Stephen on his own has unnatural, magical luck himself.
Fate Manipulation: Doctor Strange’s part in the plan to stop Asgard’s dimension in time to avoid the prophecy of Ragnarok would have been breaking fate.
Animation Spells: Doctor Strange animates random objects with a spell he needs sustained concentration for, then he can de-animate them at will. Strange’s apprentice screws up and animates a trash monster that grows so long as it consumes things, but luckily Stephen de-animates the trash monster with a spell of dissolution to have it fall apart.
Body Puppetry Spells: Strange took control of Mordo’s muscles to prevent him from moving. Controlled a thief’s fingers to force him to drop stolen books.
Anti-Evil Spells: Spells cast on a structure that prevent those with evil intent from entering a tower. Conjuring a symbol of the Vishanti makes it so evil sorcerers can’t stand to look at it. Absorbs all the evil out of a sorcerer and into himself, quickly exorcising it from his own body right away.
Anti-Undead Spell: Knows a spell turns living corpses, like zombies or reanimated vampires, into dust.
Incantation of Oblivion: Only the Living Tribunal can cast a full Incantation of Oblivion, which can shatter a world. Strange’s version, though lesser in power, causes Varnae to see oblivion, behold it with his inner eye, and remember what it was like to spend 500 years in a state of nothingness.
Ribbons of Nihility: Strange was able to survive this spell, which put him in an undetectable void cube of nothingness, a non-location, removing him from the material world and breaking out of it, a sorcerous void from which no minor mystic can survive even for an instant.
Blu’Dakkor Spell: These spells stain the soul and cause the death of the caster, requiring the spirits of 40 men and one righteous man. This particular spell requires Strange to be on the alternate Earth to invoke, which he considers as an option against multiversal incursion instances. We never see what this is though.
Wild Magic: Stephen knows about Wild Magic, which lets anyone basically come up with any custom spell they want, although this is something he’s wary of and can be used by anyone when it’s in play.
Aura-Linking: It’s possible for Marvel mystics to connect auras together in order to alert other mystics that are linked to you in case of emergencies.
Fourth Wall Interaction: Doctor Strange breaks the fourth wall by sensing and grabbing at comic book speech bubbles before manipulating them as magical components.
Dismemberment: Strange recognizes a spell that seems to mystically dice Spider-Ham into cubes.
Light of Purity: Attempts to use the “Light of Purity” against dark creatures, but the blood on his hands and the guilt in his heart weakens the effect.
Fusion Spells: Nearly merging Mephisto and Satannish back together. Spell that can block an Astral Self from re-merging with the physical body that can be bypassed by another spell. Spell to remerge dimensionally fragmented versions of Lunatik’s whole.
Spell of Transferral: Clea once invoked a spell of transferral that a villain planned to use in order to transfer all of “the glory and majesty and horror” that comes with being Master of the Mystic Arts, effectively inducing a massive information dump that’s described as “universe upon universe”, which overwhelms the villain into unconsciousness.
Spell of Inverse Revivification: A simple spell of inverse revivification moves a dead intruder back through its life to retrace his steps via a projection of his movements.
Cologner’s Spell of Preparation: Cleans the soul of negative energies with an item of power, an incantation, and attunement to Eternity’s vibrations.
Garteek’s Halo Spell of the Previous: A spell that visualizes an event that just occurred for mystical crime scene investigation cast with somatic and thought-based components.
Yoovies Spell of Itemized Protection: Strange’s magic artifacts in the wrong hands could make the multiverse suffer. So, this spell protects items from being burgled with a cast of an aura around them, which is ideal against burglars or mid-level demons but might struggle against powerful magical forces.
Vishanti Spell of Self-Worth and Cleanliness: Restores a person’s physical appearance and their environment with a somatic gesture.
Moral Alignment Inversion Spell: Doctor Strange works with Wanda to create order magic (Stephen’s portion) and chaos magic respectively that could invert Red Onslaught to put Xavier’s dormant mind in charge instead of Red Skull, but he gets interrupted by a Sentinel. Wanda and Strange need full concentration for their inversion spell, which leaves them defenseless. Doom can also take Strange’s place to conjure the “Order” for the inversion spell. Once successful, this was able to emerge Xavier’s dormant mind temporarily. This specifically targeted the good in Xavier to dominate over Red Skull’s evil, but it ended up with the side effect of mentally swapping the moral alignments of the villains and heroes to be heroic and dark respectively. However, this requires two sorcerers to cast.
Rituals of Valtorr: The Rituals of Valtorr, if improperly executed, could spread chaos around the globe.
Age Manipulation Magic: Strange can age a boy up to adulthood and grant him power. This lady ages to death mystically, and this same power ages Strange’s spells to death too. Mordo’s mook mystically ages a door to disintegrate it to bypass a seal. Flames of the Faltine are draining and leeched by the age magic. Mordo’s aging magic works on spells since spells weaken with age.
Phasing Spells: Strange magically alters a door so selective people can phase through while others can’t open it regularly. Strange mystically renders a collapsing wall intangible. Phasing through the Sanctum’s window. Strange phases two thugs through a wall. Strange can transform his physical body into a shadowy self, rendering it immune to all physical harm even when he’s disconnected from it. Strange casually phases through a wall. Strange phases through a portrait of himself. Phasing through the Sanctum’s window again. Phasing through a wall. Turned Spider-Man both invisible and intangible. Casts a spell to turn himself intangible.
Talons of Farallah: Mystically amplified by the Sanctum, Urthona uses the Talons of Farallah to mystically grab onto a spaceship at a planetary distance, but Strange breaks free and uses this spell’s own force to bring himself down from orbit.
Vipers of Valtorr: Cyrus’s Vipers of Valtorr tendrils bypass through a mystic screen from Strange.
Sense Manipulating Magic: Wizard has a spell that makes him unable to hear the cognitohazard name of the Unnameable One. Strange cast a spell so he nor his allies would be able to know the name of the Unnameable One in the past to avoid its mental influence. Casts a spell that deflects people from looking or listening to Strange. Strange cuts off D’Spayre’s five senses to restrain him.
Body Swap Magic: Clea casts a clothing and physical form swap spell. Clea’s spell allowed her to switch physical form with Sara. This was a temporary body swap.
Levitation Spells: Strange can levitate even without the cloak. He can cast this on others and give them the ability to fly.
Directional Command Spell: Strange once forced Spider-Man to follow his Astral Form.
Death Trance Breaker: Can break people out of death trances.
Creation: Entities Stephen created can manipulate and alter molecules.

Now, obviously, Doctor Strange hasn’t performed literally every spell or magic trick ever in Marvel history. But, as the Master of the Mystic Arts and Sorcerer Supreme, it’s viable to suggest that he might know how to replicate the magic cast by other magic users throughout Marvel. If he knows a character well, this can seem even more viable, and even then that would likely mean he’s “aware” of the sorcery they’ve tried out given how studious Strange is of all mystic arts. Anyhow, this is what other magic users have achieved:

Magical Amplifications: Medico Mistico empowers his fists magically.
Strength Sapping: Enchantress’s spell makes Valkyrie weaken and feel pain from fighting women.
Transmutation: Doom transmutes Human Torch’s fire into snow. Dormammu used a crystalline spell to transmute Hulk into a crystal statue, and Umar can undo this enchantment. Nicholas Scratch can transmute stone into glass or blood into other things. Black Knight was petrified by Enchantress. Black Knight’s enchanted sword dispels the transmogrified form of a man while shunting a demon away.
Shapeshifting: This mystic boy shapeshifts into a bird entity.
Possession: Doom is possessing and speaking through Valeria through a demonic magic circle with demon magic he bargained for.
Meditation: The Meditation Spell of Vadir cast by Brother Voodoo can induce him into a meditative state.
Containment Spells: Dormammu set up a protective spell to hold back a Mindless One interdimensional invasion to extort the living world with his demands. Dormammu uses a spell of containment that induces pain to restrain Strange, which Namor breaks free from later with physical force after being revitalized with water. Though Stephen claims he could have devised a counterspell given more time.
Conjuration: Doom can also grow energy vines from surfaces to restrain the Thing. Wanda conjured her children into existence through Hex Powers. Umar once made a man out of clay with an enchantment and she slipped a behavioral modification spell in the 7th layer of his aura. Warren conjures a mystical wolf construct. Medico Mistico makes it rain sharks.
Summoning: Wanda summons Dormammu into Xavier’s memoryscape to fight Strange. Sorcerer spirit summons forth invisible entities.
Water Manipulation: Dormammu used a dehydration spell on Namor to weaken him. Redblade casts a dehydration spell.
Fire Manipulation: This shop has a hex that will burn someone to a crisp if Warren tries to use any magical nonsense towards the shopkeeper.
Acid Manipulation: Kaoz has magically acidic spit and a magic plate in his head.
Light Manipulation: Rabum Alal (aka Doom) casts such a bright light that it blinds Black Swans. Saying Dormammu’s name shorts out lights everywhere and lights candles.
Sense Manipulation: Brother Voodoo casts a spell of blindness. Vertigo is a spell from a villain that exploits equilibrium to make things fall, like Shuma-Gorath and his weakness to equilibrium manipulation.
Pain Manipulation: Mephista cast a spell that made Satannish and Mephisto feel each other’s pain and magic effects. This evil wizard king put sorcerous growths on a prisoner to feed off of its pain. Dormammu uses a spell of containment to induce pain.
Translations: Brother Voodoo is able to commune with and command animals and plants.
Mind Reading: Nicholas Scratch can read minds.
Mind Manipulation: Love-spells can sap willpower. Enchantress enforced Red Onslaught to feel love despite being pure hate incarnate. Enchantress cast a spell on Valkyrie so she wasn’t as effective in combat against women. This magic spell prevents her from harming women. Doctor Doom knows magic that can dispel the guilt-reliving effects of a Penance Stare on Brother Voodoo.
Memory Manipulation: Wanda is able to share memories via a conjured geometric construct.
Biology Manipulation: Wanda removes Magneto’s mouth.
Age Manipulation: Zhered-Na could magically extend lifespans by over 20,000 years.
Necromancy: Necromancy spell on graveyard for zombies. Undead entities have specific energy signatures. Zombie Washington uses black magic to siphon the necromantic magic out of two fellow zombies to amplify himself. Thanos once gave Wade a necromantic spell of undeath for eternal life. Wade is brought back to life via a mix of necromancy and tech.
Curse Removal: This talisman can dispel the curse of the wendigo via a spell.
Death Manipulation: A necromancy spellbook allows for a small pocket of space that gradually grows over time that acts as a gateway to the Land of the Dead, which induces instant death on anyone that stepped foot inside, as confirmed by Doctor Strange.
Non-Physical Interaction: Black Knight’s enchanted sword harms a magically intangible demon and dispels the corrupted form of a man while shunting the demon away.
Sealing: Angered gods sealed a Hellphyr entity inside of a book. Magic sigils can be used to mystically lock doors.
Evil Warding: This stronghold has protective spells to ward off evil.
Teleportation Warding: Sinclair’s stronghold has mystical protections against teleportation, which the Sanctum could theoretically employ.
Immersion: Baron Mordo magically steps out of a mirror.
Dimensional Banishment: Some witches used a spell of liberation to free Shuma Gorath onto Earth. This can be reversed if read by someone with a pure heart to banish people to Hell.
Time Travel: Black Knight’s soul and sword are shunted into the 12th Century and can possess his ancestor despite his physical body being petrified.
Future Sight: Future probing spell cast by Loki.
Scientific Interactions: The Fantastic Four survive their ship crashing with Sue’s shields up after Doom puts up a “no-science zone” to nullify all technology in Latverian airspace. It’s unknown if this is magic or a device though. Laptops and a program can artificially induce a magic circle ritual.
Power Nullification: Wanda using Chaos Magic can reverse the ability and power energy siphon from Rogue to return it to everyone she took it from. A spell was cast on the Ancient One to un-ascend him from the Astral Plane and make him mortal again, weakening him. Wanda’s Chaos Magic burst as a child interrupted the magic of numerous sorcerers near her.
Invincibility: Black Knight’s origins with an indestructible blade forged by Merlin’s magic from a fallen star which makes him and his armor invincible to anything that isn’t the same substance.
Cloaking: Wanda casts a cloaking spell on She-Hulk that makes it so that none of She-Hulk’s enemies would recognize her as Jen. Strange performed a counterspell on this hex later, since this spell was accidentally making it so She-Hulk could not switch forms at will. Marie believes her spell can hide their location from being tracked as Strange is actively trying to do just that.
Probability Manipulation: Wanda can alter probability. Wanda causes a gun to jam and backfire with her probability manipulation hex magic. Wanda can boost luck powers and block probability altering fields. Wanda’s probability hexes can be used for offense. Probability hex to make the villain trip on the stairs. This character unknowingly possesses mystical luck, and Doctor Strange notices his innate luck. Domino has low level probability manipulation compared to Wanda, whose luck casually beats odds that are a billion-to-one. Wanda can cause events so unlikely that the best computers on Earth would be incapable of calculating the odds against them. Hex power can turn the impossible into an absolute fact. Wanda is able to negate Black Cat’s bad luck manipulation. Wanda’s blocked a Celestial drone’s probability field. Wanda alters probability so that Iron Man guesses Spectrum’s electromagnetic frequency on the first try, and there are infinite possible electromagnetic frequencies. Wanda changed the probability of rockets activating to zero. Changed the probability of an arrow in flight suddenly losing all its momentum from “one in millions” to “one in one”.
Causality Manipulation: Wanda controls and reorders causality. “No More Mutants” which breached the walls of causality, causing the Chaos Wave.
Fate Manipulation: Rintrah’s old mentor used Weaver Magic to see life threads that could tell someone’s entire history when touched and could mess with the threads to manipulate fate, which should allow for creations of more favorable fates.
Reality Warping: Chaos Magic can manipulate reality and Wanda reshaped the world.
Concept Manipulation: Loki’s bestowed powers via Asgardian Magic allows Absorbing Man to absorb the concept or purpose of substances.
Existence Erasure: Agatha Harkness erased Wanda’s Hex Power-conjured children. Wanda nullifies an arrow shot into her and erases Hawkeye from existence. Wanda can erase you from existence with a thought.

Resistances

Reimu Hakurei

Magic

Magic is one of the most fundamental and universal systems in Touhou, used in facets of everything. Reimu’s divine spell techniques, as well as the powers used by evil spirits all stem from the same power, magic; everyone within Gensokyo uses magic in some form. The most common form of combat in the series, Spell Cards (which we will get to shortly), are stated to be functionally magical spells in nature, as are the various supernatural abilities humans across the franchise use. It’s noted to be an ancient, chaotic power that originates from the time before humans were around.

The performing of a spell requires six main elements, those being the caster’s “Ability”, the “Temperament” of the soul, the “Substance” of the ingredients and tools, the “Space” in which it takes place, the “Time” during which it is performed, and finally “Fortune”. Of all the elements, Fortune carries the most strength, as long as you have fortune on your side, it can cover for the other elements. On the other hand, if there’s no Fortune, even the simplest magic will fail. In order for magic of the highest level to success, fortune of the highest order is needed

Magical energy is potent enough that life forms that come in enough continuous contact with it can almost evolve in a way. When Marisa made an apiary for bees in the Forest of Magic, due to small amounts of magical power existing in all plants in the forest, the bees ended up absorbing so much latent magical energy that they gained the ability to use magic themselves, growing higher levels of sentience to make mutual agreements with humans, and eventually evolve so much that they could become a sentient living swarm monster.

Pure magical energy can be many things, a transient astral body, composed of free floating, self contained thoughts, and is capable of many things, like becoming a spirit, growing into a youkai, or simply vanishing. The consciousness of a human that slipped out of their body in death, someone’s subconscious ripped out of their dreams by a nightmare, a vestige of summer that’s so merry and cheerful it forgot it’s supposed to be winter, the final scream of a vanishing youkai that’s abandoned itself to despair, or the lingering traces of a zashiki-warashi youkai returning to its remote, faraway home. Marisa Kirisame once even (accidentally) astral projected her own consciousness after being exposed to massive amounts of magical energy over time. If her body and consciousness did not re-unite properly, her consciousness could have transformed into a dream soul.

Magic can also have a lot of interesting effects. Magic could cause a direct attack on someone, instantly killing them through using something like learning of a story/obtaining information as a trigger. There are “greater forms of magic” that are able to affect youkai that are normally immune to regular magic through falling outside the confines of regular logic, through having the supernatural substitute their own logic in counteraction.

This is all to say, magic is an all-encompassing force in Touhou, with pure magical energy being especially potent, capable of many possibilities, and weaponizing it is essential to effective combat.

Spell Cards

The single most important aspect of Spell Card Duels in Gensokyo. Spell Cards are, essentially, Special Moves that one can unleash in the heart of battle, based around their own powers and personalities. In order to use a Spell Card, one has to declare its name, so they cannot be used as unfair sneak attacks. While Spell Cards were initially represented as actual, physical cards that would be used in combat, this idea has seemingly been abandoned overtime for the idea of Spell Cards simply being named attacks, as seen across quite literally every Touhou manga, where a physical Spell Card has never been used once in the usage of a Spell Card. Even ZUN has since admitted himself that this bit of worldbuilding has since been dropped.

Of note, the Spell Card system was made with the implementation of the “Spell Card Rules”, a system that allows for fair combat between all, focusing less on brutally beating the shit out of each other, and instead allowing both parties to show off the skills in a beautiful competition, that’s still a fight on both ends. These rules allow for even relatively weak humans to challenge youkai, and for youkai to have a shot of victory against the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, and for all of this to occur nonlethally, and allow for amicable endings to duels. These rules act entirely as a way to limit the damage caused during Duels, creating a system where the beauty of the attack had more value than strength, and rejecting a system wherein only the strongest have the right to rule. As such, whenever a Touhou character utilizes a Spell Card, they’re typically not going all out, with many of the fights in the series being more casual.

However, this isn’t constant, and Spell Cards themselves are not non-lethal, it’s simply the usage of the Spell Card Rules system that everyone abides by, and the limitations applied to the cards that allow for this freeform dueling. For one, the Spell Card Rules are completely able to be broken. In the game Impossible Spell Card, the cast, Reimu included, hunts down Seija Kijin with actual killing intent, discarding the Spell Card Rules in their danmaku, and utilizing “Impossible Spell Cards” designed to be as impossible to avoid, attacking with intentionally unfair, undodgeable cards. Seija was only able to get through this event by using Cheating Tools of her own. This shows pretty clearly that the usual Spell Cards are purposefully limited as to make things fair, and that Reimu can utilize far more lethal tactics if the situation calls for it. There’s also been a variety of fights across the series that were life or death duels, like Reimu’s fight against Ibaraki-Douji (who wanted to kill and consume her), or Jo’on and Shion fighting against Dream Tenshi, who intended to destroy and remake Heaven and Earth, clearly not abiding by any kind of rules.

Beyond that, many Spell Cards are outright noted to be straight up lethal. It’s baked into the Spell Card Rules themselves that accidents can occur in combat, and Marisa Kirisame has compiled a list of Spell Cards used by various characters across the series that are fully capable of killing those they’re used on. In Grimoire of Usami, several of the Spell Cards showcased are stated to be lethal, with the second half of the book being entirely dedicated to spell cards wielded with killing intent. Reimu’s own Spell Cards have outright disintegrated Youkai in the past, and Junko’s Spell Cards are specifically devised with the intent of killing people. Spell Cards are nothing more than a system of combat, with only Rules preventing them from being lethal.

Spells

None of Reimu’s attacks in the PC-98 games qualified as “Spell Cards” and aren’t specific, named attacks, and are more so just various waves of danmaku, and will not be listed out here, so we’ll be starting with the games from the Windows era with specialized Spell Cards she utilizes.

Immaterial and Missing Power

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Orb”
- A weaker version of Reimu’s traditional Dream Seal, where she launches several multi-colored sealing projectiles at once
Dream Sign “Evil Sealing Circle”
- In a circle surrounding her, Reimu creates a gigantic pillar of energy, trapping the opponent within it until Reimu releases the attack, dealing significant damage.
Treasure Sign “Yin-Yang Orb”
- Reimu creates a magical, high damage Yin-Yang Orb construct in front of her, heavily damaging the opponent subjected to it.
Divine Spirit “Fantasy Seal”
- Reimu’s bog standard Dream Seals, a more amped up version of Fantasy Orb which does much higher damage with much larger sealing orbs.
Divine Art “Demon Binding Circle”
- A more powerful version of Evil Sealing Circle, with a greater radius of effect and higher damage
Holy Relic “Purifier Yin-Yang”
- An amplified version of Yin-Yang Orb, producing a larger, more powerful, and blue(!!!) Yin Yang Orb construct that travels a further distance, traps the opponent within it, and does heavier damage.
First Card “Dream Orb String”
- Does what it says on the tin; Reimu fires off a string of Dream Orbs in rapid succession.
Second Card “Yin-Yang Scattering”
- Reimu teleports, before tossing out a variety of Yin-Yang Orbs that scatter around, bouncing off the ground and dealing damage on contact.
Third Card “Exorcising Border”
- A variant of Reimu’s Binding/Sealing Circles with wider range that she supplements with physical attacks in between uses
- The AI really sucks at doing this one in particular so most of the footage online is just gonna be her getting her ass whooped before she can do anything #sowwy
Power Sign “Yin-Yang King Piece”
- Reimu repeatedly fires out variants of Treasure Sign “Yin-Yang Orb” that travel further distances
Dream Battle “Illusionary Moon”
- Reimu summons six yin-yang orbs surrounding her, all of which release Ofuda in various wide formations and directions, while Reimu is able to move freely
Untitled “Mysterious Flying Shrine Maiden”
- This Spell Card is capable of activating in the event Reimu is in an unconscious state, protecting her from attack, and unconsciously firing off danmaku in self defense

Imperishable Night

Dream Sign “Duplex Barrier”
- A spell card that can turn space-inside out, create a space without boundaries, and creates multiple barriers that distort the trajectory of her danmaku and limit the opponent’s movement range, and sends her danmaku in difficult to predict directions
- Reimu can create these barriers through willpower
Dream Land “Great Duplex Barrier”
- A superior variant of Duplex Barrier, which sends out more Ofuda in more difficult to dodge formations
Spirit Sign “Dream Seal -Spread-“
- Reimu unleashes massive “spreads” of Dream Seals and Ofudas, launching them out indiscriminately in huge blasts covering wide areas at once, leaving little room to move.
Scattered Spirit “Dream Seal -Worn-“
- A more potent form of the prior spell card, shooting out more attacks at once, as well as mixing in Yin-Yang Orbs as well, which cannot be erased/destroyed by even bombs.
Dream Sign “Evil-Sealing Circle”
- Reimu fires out a variety of bullets, yin yang orbs, and ofuda in very restrictive formations, limiting the opponents range of movement and forcing them to make micro-dodges.
- Seals the opponent using enchanted amulets. It may be hyperbolic, but Marisa implies that the amulets could strangle you to death. Designed to induce stressful movements.
Divine Arts “Omnidirectional Oni-Binding Circle”
- An even more difficult to dodge variant of the prior Spell Card, with more difficult movement patterns and attacking omni-directionally. In a likely hyperbolic statement, they are implied to induce instant death
Divine Arts “Omnidirectional Dragon-Slaying Circle”
- The ultimate variant of Reimu’s Circle series of Spell Cards, providing an absurdly restrictive and difficult to dodge volleys of danmaku firing omnidirectionally, as well as surrounding Reimu herself, making approach incredibly difficult.
Spirit Sign “Dream Seal -Concentrate-“
- Fires out volleys of dream seals as yin-yang orbs surround her, sending out waves of Ofuda that will sit still briefly, before locking onto their target and flying straight at them. A Spell Card that is very easy to be trapped by.
- Reimu’s amulets move as if they have a mind of their own
Migrating Spirit “Dream Seal -Marred-“
- A more evolved version of the previous Spell Card, sending out even more aggressive volleys of Ofuda.
- The charms automatically aim themselves at the target
Boundary “Duplex Danmaku Barrier”
- Creates a barrier in front of herself and behind the opponent, causing the danmaku launched into one barrier to come out the one behind the opponent, creating a tricky sequence of danamku coming from multiple directions.
Great Barrier “Hakurei Danmaku Barrier”
- Evolved version of the prior Spell Card, launching even more rows of danmaku in more difficult formations to dodge.
Divine Spirit “Dream Seal -Blink-”
- Reimu zips around the battlefield at rapid speeds, leaving behind after images as she launches volleys of Ofuda that will travel in a set direction, before locking onto the opponent and flying straight at them. Marisa states that Reimu only moves in a straight line, but somehow completely surrounds you, appearing in multiple places, messing with boundaries in such a way that it seems like there’s “countless copies” of her.
- It’s noted to be a technique that “only Reimu can do”, and is of no use as reference or trying to copy it
- …Also makes you feel like you’ve been trapped in the Reimu Dimension
“Innate Dream”
- The big one. Will be talked about later in Abilities.
- Yin-Yang Orbs automatically launch large amounts of Ofuda that slowly travel, before locking onto the opponent.

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody / Hisoutensoku

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Orb”
- In-Game Description: “Fire homing spirit orbs. Since there’s enough to easily hit a moving target, it’s easy to use in a firefight.”
Divine Spirit “Dream Seal”
- In-Game Description: “One of the ultimate forms of the Fantasy attacks. Suppresses the enemy with a huge flood of homing shots. There’s almost no blind spot, but its drawback is that it consumes a large amount of energy.”
- Fires bullets of light that forcibly seal an opponent and ignore the laws of physics. Capable of exterminating any youkai, no questions asked.
Divine Arts “Omnidirectional Oni-Binding Circle”
- In-Game Description: “Creates an expansive barrier centered around Reimu. It’s possible to counter since you’re invincible.”
- Utilizes mysterious powers to take away your freedom of movement, used to bind demons, but can also bind humans. Freedom of movement is completely lost until Reimu stops utilizing the card, though Reimu herself is similarly kept immobile.
Jewel Sign “Concealed Orbs of Light”
- In-Game Description: “Fires Yin-Yang orbs that bounce off the ground. They last a long time and follow an unusual path, so their effectiveness depends on where they’re fired from.”
Treasure Sign “Ying-Yang Orb”
- In-Game Description: “A close-range attack that fires a circular field out from the palm of the hand.”
Holy Relic “Ying-Yang Sanctifier Orb”
- In-Game Description: “A Yin-Yang orb made of immense spiritual energy. Not only is it useful as a direct attack, but the long-lasting aftereffect is powerful, too.”
- Is noted to hurt physically, and be especially hot and heavy to be hit by
- Reimu mainly uses it as a party trick
Divine Arts “Wind God Kick”
- In-Game Description: “A string of Ascension Kicks. It sets up quickly, so there’s lots of ways to use it in close combat.”
Dream Sign “Demon Binding Array”
- In-Game Description: “Creates a barrier with Reimu at the center. It’s pretty narrow but has a very strong counterattack. Even if she jumps into the air, the barrier remains for a while.”
Innate Dream
- In-Game Description: “Upon casting, seven Yin-Yang orbs appear. One lights every time you hit the enemy; when all are lit, a large-scale attack envelops the whole field.”
Prayer “Disaster-Dispelling Prayer”
- Reimu leaps around and tosses large talismans that proceed to rapidly duplicate and fire off in the direction tossed
Treasure Sign “Dancing Yin-Yang Orbs”
- Reimu teleports, before summoning 4 large Yin-Yang Orbs that circle around her before being launched and bouncing around the arena
Dream Land “Great Duplex Barrier”
- Reimu creates a barrier surrounding her that she fires Ofuda into, which then redirects and fires the Ofuda in different directions… this is kind of just the worst variation of this Spell Card, take your drunk ass home Reimu….
Light Spirit “Divine Spirit Orbs”
- Reimu fires out multiple large Dream Seals that float in place briefly, before exploding into multiple smaller Dream Seals that fire off in various directions.
“Lurking Boundary Spirits and the Mysterious Shrine Maiden”
- Reimu surrounds herself in boundaries/barriers, which then fire off other damaging barriers, energy waves, and Ofuda in various directions, leaving little space to move.

Double Spoiler

Talisman “Exorcism of the Newspaper Subscription Solicitors”
- Reimu throws out an absolutely gigantic talisman that’s used to block herself from having unsolicited photos taken of her… but is also capable of dealing severe damage, and will degrade and transform into dozens of danmaku bullets over time.
- It’s noted that Reimu creates these talismans by taking stickers, and turning them into talismans
- The Talisman says “No Newspaper Solicitation, thank you!”
Barrier “Paparazzi-Repelling Barrier”
- Reimu creates a barrier forbidding photography, as well as a massive twirling vortex of danmaku to restrict movement, while also throwing out several volleys of Ofuda constantly. Very good for repelling the Paparazzi!
Dream Sign “Dream Dimensional Rift”
- Reimu teleports around throwing out large volumes of Ofuda, before summoning a volley of Ofuda that is completely undodgeable! She’s getting really sick of those photographers!
- Reimu is able to teleport so freely it appears as if she isn’t even aware she’s doing so.

Hopeless Masquerade / Urban Legend in Limbo / Antinomy of Common Flowers

Spirit Sign “Fantasy Seal”
- Reimu’s bog standard, average Dream Seals!
Divine Arts “Omnidirectional Dragon-Slaying Circle”
- Allows Reimu to create an omnidirectional binding circle surrounding her even while floating in the air, not requiring contact with the floor! Traps any opponents caught within until the attack finishes, dealing high damage.
Treasure “Ying-Yang Asuka’i”
- Reimu creates a massive Yin Yang-Orb construct beneath her, dealing heavy damage to anyone caught within.
“The Most Powerful and Fortuitous Shrine Maiden of Incident Resolution”
- Just lets Reimu spam the living shit out of Dream Seals consistently
Weird Last Word: I Can’t Believe There Was a Shrine Maiden in That Gap!
- Opens a hole in the Hakurei Barrier, trapping the enemy within before hitting them with a variety of laser beams and a spatial cut, launching them back out the barrier through a gap afterwards.

Sunken Fossil World

Spirit Sign “Indiscriminate Exorcism Without Reason”
- Reimu leaps into the air, indiscriminately tossing spirals of multi-colored Ofuda surrounding her.
Spirit Sign “Wild Yin-Yang Dance Without Reason”
- Reimu jumps around, tossing two large Yin Yang Orbs at a time, which will bounce around briefly before exploding into blasts of omnidirectional ofuda.
Spirit Sign “Extraordinarily Absurd Indiscriminate Exorcism”
- Reimu zips around in the air, launching huge waves of Ofuda indiscriminately at higher speed and larger volumes than before.
Petroleum “Polluted Wild Yin-Yang Dance”
- Tosses out multiple large Yin-Yang orbs that bounce around, causing large eruptions in the petroleum deposits the fight takes place in.
Blood Curse “Indiscriminate Curse-Killing Exorcism”
- Flies around, tossing out massive volumes of blood infused Ofuda in large volumes, and can slam into the ground hard enough that Ofuda launches out of it for a distance.
Blood Curse “Bloodstained Wild Yin-Yang Dance”
- Same as the petroleum version, but causing eruptions of blood due to the environment instead.
“A Lid of Violence Atop the Former Hell of Blood Pools”
- Reimu creates two beams of energy which she uses to bounce multiple yin yangs off of, causing them to slowly descend from above, before transforming into waves of Ofuda upon contacting the ground, all while she flies around and tosses out volleys of Ofuda.

100th Black Market

“Full House Amulets: Bullet Money Bonus Packets”
- Throws out waves of Ofuda that slowly travel before falling rapidly to the ground

Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost

“Every Yin-Yang Orb in Stock”
- Throws out quite literally hundreds of yin-yang orbs all over the place as she fires danmaku in-between the volleys. Very appropriate name.
“No Mercy When Exorcising Devilish Beasts”
- Sends out waves of Ofuda in really annoying to dodge formations… that’s about it

Foul Detective Satori

Recollection “Dream Seal” / Recollection “Duplex Barrier” / Recollection “Narrowing Barrier of Avici”
- Reimu combines Dream Seal and Duplex Barriers in the same fashion as her ancestor to create Recollection “Narrowing Barrier of Avici”, a massive sealed barrier where space warps within and dozens of Dream Seals are launched at the person sealed within, with the attack ultimately sealing away the one contained within. When used by Reimu’s Ancestor, it appears to have sealed away Mizuchi for hundreds of years.
- Reimu is able to precisely control the movement of her fantasy seals and even create a vortex of them
- Covered in more detail in Abilities

Impossible Spell Cards

Reimu utilized a handful of Spell Cards that she used against Seija Kishin in Impossible Spell Card, when Spell Card Rules were called off against her, utilizing Spell Cards intended to be completely impossible to dodge through normal means. These cards are:

Mikuji “Rule Violation Barrier”
- Drowns the target in omnidirectional ofuda (which can seemingly be escaped through teleportation), then rapidly throws out projectiles of varying size
Persuasion Needle
- Reimu throws out waves of Persuasion Needles in between volleys of Dream Seals in a very difficult to avoid formation.

Bombs

If you’ve ever played a Touhou game, you’ll recognize these as your “panic button”, the items you use when you’re on the cusp of dying and need the map cleared of threats immediately. The most common types Reimu uses are her trademark Fantasy Seal as well as Evil-Sealing Circle, but there are many more listed below. Using a bomb grants a brief period of invulnerability and wipes out all enemy bullets on screen. In some games, bombs can also be used to transmute enemy projectiles into useful items (a notion supported by Reimu referring to Yorihime’s projectile transmutation as a bomb), and draw those items directly to the user. If used in the very moment she’s hit, referred to as “the boundary between life and death”, Reimu is able to alter the flow of time and shatter that barrier, resulting in the phenomenon colloquially known as “death bombing”, allowing Reimu to survive an attack that would normally be fatal and resurrect from the dead.

While the window of reaction is short, Reimu is fortunate enough to have a lengthier border of life and death than others, giving her some extra leeway to bring herself back from the brink. Useful as they are, she can’t rely on them forever, as her supply of bombs is limited (though they can be restocked with certain pieces of equipment) and every subsequent death bomb shortens the amount of time she has to react. That being said, if Reimu has an extra life on hand after going down, she’ll come back with replenished bombs and her death bomb window reset to its original duration. Needless to say, Reimu has amassed a wide selection of bombs over the years, starting with…

Highly Responsive to Prayers

Unnamed Bomb (Flashing lights warning)
- Lights crackle over the field and burst outward

Story of Eastern Wonderland

Type A
- Stars flicker over a projection of the crescent moon
Type B
- Spells out a series of symbols (we couldn’t translate on time, sorry), introducing a shoulder-level portrait of Reimu striking a pose
Type C
- Bleeds the screen red, then briefly flashes Reimu’s silhouette

Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream

Bomb 1
- Red clusters of energy swim upward as Reimu’s portrait flashes on the screen
Bomb 2
- Doesn’t behave as a proper bomb, but temporarily increases the size and power of Reimu’s bullets while making her invulnerable to damage

Lotus Land Story

Unnamed Bomb
- Pink stars scale the sides of the field, framing a waist-level portrait of Reimu proudly wielding her gohei

Mystic Square

Unnamed Bomb
- Large, hollow blue stars rain down over a full projection Reimu holding her ofuda and gohei

Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Spirit Sign “Dream Seal”
- Reimu’s go-to and mainstay special attack, she fires homing spirit orbs at the target. As this is a recurring attack throughout most of Reimu’s appearances, its future appearances will be listed off in rapid succession here, with unique variants of the ability saved for their own sections.
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal -Spread-“ (PCB)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal -Concentrate-“ (PCB)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Orb” (IN)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (UFO)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (TD)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (DDC)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (LoLK)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (WBaWC)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (UM)
  - Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (FW)
Evil-Sealing Circle
- An alternative to Dream Seal that excels in area coverage at the cost of having lower power, imbuing a plus-shaped field of energy onto the field that rapidly expands across the map, hitting everything
  - PCB version

Perfect Cherry Blossom

Dream Sign “Duplex Barrier”
- Use of Evil-Sealing Circle while Reimu is in a focused state will activate this instead, creating a large, spinning block that moves in tandem with Reimu, damaging everything it touches

Imperishable Night

Divine Spirit “Dream Seal -Blink-“
- A unique variant of Dream Seal that specifically activates upon death bombing. Rather than homing in on anything, they explode wildly across the field like colorful landmines

Phantasmagoria of Flower View

Spirit Sign “Hakurei Illusion”
- Reimu summons her “phantom”, who manifests in front of the enemy to throw out rings of grey ofudas that swerve over each other, followed by omnidirectional red ones. The phantom can be destroyed with enough damage.

Power-Based Bombs
Mountain of Faith and Subterranean Animism both utilize a bomb system that utilizes the “Power” System rather than Spell Cards. Seeing as these bombs draw upon 1.00 (total of 4.00) of Reimu’s Spiritual energy rather than being traditional Spell Cards, they’re a bit different to utilize. They also have no names, which is fun! Subterranean Animism’s bombs are based upon the powers of the character assisting the protagonist, though it’s unclear on if this power is lent through outside help, or the protagonist just using similar magic, seeing as the assist character is only communicating through a device. We’ll list them out for completion, however:

Unnamed Barrier(Mountain of Faith)
- Throws out a barrier that moves forward while deleting bullets on contact
Bomb A (Yukari)(Subterranean Animism)
- Turns the background into a spiraling vortex of purple and black hues while Reimu receives temporary invincibility
Bomb B (Suika)(Subterranean Animism)
- Provides Reimu a safe enclosure that deletes bullets and harms enemies on contact
Bomb C (Aya)(Subterranean Animism)
- A circular border follows Reimu, harming enemies and deleting any bullets it touches

Undefined Fantastic Object

Dream Sign “Wild Exorcism Dance”
- Fires a straight beam of 50 gorgillion UFO’s at the opponent at once, deleting attacks they encounter in the process.

Double Dealing Character

Bewitched Weapon “Merciless Purification Rod”
- Causes the Purification Rod to grow several times in size before Reimu flails it mercilessly from side to side, wiping out any projectiles it comes into contact with, doing high damage to enemies and briefly becoming invincible while doing so.

Hidden Star in Four Seasons

Spirit Sign “Dream Cherry Blossom Seal”
- Dream Seal, but with a seasonal twist

Wily Beast and Weakest Creature

Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (Otter)
- Utilizes an Otter Spirit to amplify Dream Seal’s power

Unconnected Marketeers:

Spirit Sign “Dream Seal” (with the Sutra of Dharmatic Power Ability Card)
- Boosts the power of Dream Seal using Byakuren’s Ability Card

Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost

Spirit Sign “Wildly-Fired Yin-Yang Orbs”
- Sends off a large volley of Yin-Yang Orbs
Spirit Sign “Rampaging Yin-Yang Orbs”
- An evolved version of the above Spell Card, sending out a larger volume of Yin-Yang Orbs in a spiral formation

Last Word

_{Hey, what’s that ominous elephant in the room we’re ignoring?}

A Last Word is an especially powerful Spell Card technique, which also completely nullifies the opponents ability to use bombs (Spell Cards) or access extra lives until the Last Word has ended.

Skill Cards

_{Da Youkai Bustah babyyyy}

Reimu possesses a set of Skill Cards that can be used to either enhance an existing skill or swap one out for another. These can be stacked to a max level of four, with each level enhancing the skill’s effect and overall potency.

	Hakurei Amulet	In-Game Description: “Fires multiple homing amulets. Increases shots if button is held.”
	Cautionary Border	In-Game Description: “Generates a long-lasting field by throwing amulets. Good at blocking enemy projectiles. Stuns the enemy if [they are] hit.”
	Dimensional Rift	In-Game Description: “Instantly teleport and strike at the enemy. Form of attack changes according to the button pressed.”
	Ascension Kick	In-Game Description: “A somersault kick attack. Wallslams and combos are possible, but it leaves Reimu vulnerable to attack.”
	Youkai Buster	In-Game Description: “Fires multiple amulets straight ahead. Rapid-firing with no homing abilities. Good for offensive measures.”
	Binding Border	In-Game Description: “Creates two fields around the enemy. Restricts enemy movements to the left and right or up and down. Strong against moving targets but the fields disappear if Reimu does something else.”At higher levels, adds 2 additional borders, throwing out a total of 4 at once.
	Demon-Sealing Dimensional Rift	In-Game Description: “Teleports and fires rapid needles in a wide arc. The button used determines the firing direction.”
	Sliding Ascension Kick	In-Game Description: “Slides into an Ascension Kick. Hard to use as a counter, but it hits low and reaches fairly far, so it’s good as a linker or mixup.”At higher levels, allows Reimu to follow up the first two kicks with a third, which launches the target high into the air.
	Spread Amulet	In-Game Description: “A projectile that trades the Hakurei Amulets’ homing for a heavier barrage. Since it throws a lot of amulets at once, it doesn’t seem too fuel-efficient.”
	Permanent Border	In-Game Description: “Places a barrier trap at her feet. Renders an enemy that steps on it defenseless. You can’t place more than one at once; the old one will just disappear, so be careful.”
	Instant Dimensional Rift	In-Game Description: “Creates a body double from amulets to evade attacks. If the double takes hits, it releases a barrage of amulets. Best used at close range.”
	Rain Dance	In-Game Description: “A technique that creates a short-range border from above while upside down during a jump. A close-range attack.”

System Cards

	Temperament Manifestation	Cancels the ongoing weather, and immediately manifests the forecast weather.
	Bomb	Creates a powerful shockwave that pushes opponents back, but deals no damage. Also grants the user a brief window of invulnerability after use.
	Guard Reversal	Performs a counterattack while guarding, making the user temporarily invulnerable in the process.
	Spell Amplifier	Partially fills the user’s spell card gauge, allowing them to use more spell cards in quick succession.
	Life Regenerator	Grants a lasting health recovery effect while active, but the effect instantly ends if the user is struck.
	Spirit Regenerator	Instantly refills all of the user’s available spirit upon use, and recovers part of the spirit gauge that has been “broken”.
	Spiritual Strike Talisman	Encloses the surrounding area in a magic barrier, resulting in a shockwave that pushes opponents back.
	Magic Potion	A potion brewed with mushrooms from the Forest of Magic, quickly restoring the user’s spirit power when imbibed.
	Stopwatch	This silver stopwatch freezes time for a short period upon use.
	Hakurouken	A blade that severs the user’s hesitation, instantly interrupting their current action upon use and quickly dashing towards their opponent.
	Sacrificial Doll	A doll that absorbs a portion of all damage taken, with the damage reduction increasing with further uses.
	Grimoire	A book that activates the user’s spiritual powers, filling them with magic power that increases the rate at which they regenerate spiritual power, with subsequent uses increasing the effect.
	Custom Parasol	A parasol that blocks out both sunlight and bullets by generating a forcefield in front of the user.
	Soul Torch	A tool which attracts phantoms, no matter how far away, to track down the user’s foes.
	Left-Handed Folding Fan	A folding fan belonging to Yukari Yakumo, which fills the bearer with the gap youkai’s power. Attacks from the fan are capable of instantly shattering an opponent’s guard.
	Ibuki Gourd	A gourd containing infinite sake, which replenishes two of the user’s spell cards on use.
	Tengu Fan	A fan that manipulates the wind, making the user’s body lighter and more agile just by holding it. Increases speed with each use, with further uses increasing the benefit up to four times.
	Spell-Breaking Drug	A strong poison that harms the target’s soul. Upon landing a hit, it will destroy the target’s next spell card, rendering them unable to use it.
	Yesterday’s Money	A coin carrying the distance manipulating abilities of a shinigami, freeing up space when used.
	Divine Raiment of the Dragon Fish	A garment used by dragon fish that repels wind and lightning. When used, it counters the opponent’s attack while the user briefly becomes invulnerable
	Sword of Scarlet Perception	A blade capable of manipulating the weather, which can invoke the laws of weather to immediately dispel any ongoing weather effect.
	Illness Recovery Charm	A charm from Moriya Shrine that heals the user’s wounds.
	Frozen Frog	A presumably dead frog encased in ice. Creates a patch of frozen ground on use, causing anyone who steps within the area to slip and fall.
	Dragon Star	A star-shaped hat ornament that fills the user with the power of the Dragon, enhancing their chi and making them immune to hitstun.
	Control Rod	A control rod which is used to regulate nuclear fusion. Massive increases the user’s power, but lowers their defense to compensate.
	Three Heavenly Drops	The first two uses appear to do nothing, but on the third use, the user will become completely invulnerable for 8 seconds.
	Catfish’s Great Earthquake	Summons the Giant Catfish, who causes a massive earthquake that damages everyone on ground at the moment of impact, summoner included.

Spirit Manipulation

Reimu is a natural when it comes to manipulating spiritual energy, literally; She possesses innate spiritual powers, letting her project her own spiritual energy as an attack, and even early on in the series she had the ability to manipulate natural spirits. Her innate talent in this field has also manifested itself as the ‘Law of Universal Spirit Power’, giving her a much larger pool of spiritual energy to worth with compared to other characters. She knows rituals that allow her to move souls between objects, has exorcized, banished, and sealed spirits on multiple occasions, can “destroy” the temperament comprising Tenshi’s scarlet mist, and can establish wards that keep spiritual beings such as phantoms or youkai at bay. Kasen’s ability to rip out a person’s living spirit and banish it to Avici is also something she claims to have done by “borrowing [Reimu’s] power”, but it’s not entirely clear what she means by this, or if the ability would scale back to Reimu.

Spell Card users in general also have numerous ways of harming and manipulating souls, which Reimu herself has used in the past. They’re able to “break” each other’s spirits in the midst of combat, with regular attacks inflicting spiritual damage or absorbing spiritual energy as a result, and magic itself being innately capable of harming the spirit. Certain attacks in the fighting games cause opponents to drop large amounts of spirit power or temperament, which can then be absorbed by their attacker. In Phantasmagoria of Flower View, every playable character has a passive area of effect that “activates” souls within their radius, destroying them after a short period of time. Most notably, Immaterial and Missing Power introduces attacks which, if not blocked properly, are capable of instantly draining all of an enemy’s spiritual power on hit.

Grazing

_{Gif by Ducky_Duck}

Gotta get those graze points in baby! Grazing is a mechanic that’s been integral to Touhou from the beginning, and really, it’s integral to SHMUPs and bullet hells of all kinds, but Reimu takes all sorts of interesting spins on how to weaponize it in combat! “Grazing” is somewhat of a loose term, having taken multiple meanings in how it’s applied throughout the series. The initial and primary definition of a graze being when you dodge an attack just barely, the character’s hitbox just barely grazing against the bullet. By facing the fear of death, you can gain multiple benefits by just barely avoiding attacks! It’s pretty fun when you actually get the hang of it, but don’t get too cocky or you’ll eat shit and feel like a jackass afterwards. But as Touhou tackled different mediums and genres like fighting games and weird 2D action games, “Grazing” began to encompass multiple different effects that Reimu could have through dodging and interacting with enemy attacks.

In Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, and Hisoutensoku, “Grazing” bullets constitutes dashing through them, which allows her to become briefly invulnerable to bullets during the duration of her dash, even if she directly passes through them.

In Hopeless Masquerade, Urban Legend in Limbo, and Antimony of Common Flowers, “dashing” through attacks will “graze” them, deleting the bullets and nullifying their attacks.

In Sunken Fossil World, dashing through attacks lets her “graze” them, passively transmuting them into water (or blood/oil/petroleum, depending on the surroundings), which she can use to absorb to further fuel her own healing or attacks, such as her 100% Hydro Release Spell Card.

As mentioned earlier, in Fossilized Wonders, grazing attacks can be used to charge up the Incident Gauge of the Incident Stones by generating Incident stone fragments.

With some ability cards, she even gains the ability to passively erase bullets by grazing them. It should also be noted that there’s many, MANY more effects she can utilize through grazing, often generating resources to increase meters, though they’re often tied to more specific, individual abilities, which will be covered later. Despite being such a simple concept, grazing can get a lot done!

Exorcisms (and Exterminations)

Reimu, as a Hakurei Shrine Maiden and Youkai Extermination Specialist, has had a lot of experience performing all sorts of exorcisms and exterminations. She has exorcised phantoms from locations, can use rituals to move souls to and from objects, and is easily capable of exterminating them, putting them to rest and sending them to their next life. Famously, she threatened to permanently exorcise Mizuchi Miyadeguchi, a Vengeful Spirit, making her pass on for good, which even those from the afterlife warn her not to do lightly. Reimu and Marisa even go on yearly phantom extermination rounds to thin the herds of phantoms that increase at the turn of the season, helping keep Gensokyo’s paranormal balance in check, like a couple of good GhostBusters.

Even youkai like Chokuborons can’t avoid her, with her having exorcised and exterminated them as well, and she’s even capable of exterminating Oni, having specific Spell Cards capable of binding them. For more unorthodox spirits holding onto lingering grudges, she’s been able to channel a vengeful spirit into her body to play a game of cards to help them give up their grudge and move on (though Miyoi assisted her in finding the necessary card combination to help the spirit move on). Reimu also knows of special exorcisms to remove any potential lingering curses a spirit may have left behind in a body they possessed.

Reimu is also capable of purging/exorcising energy from her own body, like the time she purges all the energy of Vengeful Spirits she was infused with out of her body simply by clapping her hands together. She’s also dispelled a curse afflicted upon her by a Contagion God with a brief ritual, using a sacred tree branch, a 1000 year old fragment of a jar with no name, and a brief vocal incantation, which immediately purified the sickness from herself. She also knew how to exorcise the curse out of others by sealing the God that caused the plague, and then showing the fragment he was sealed within to those afflicted. In more simple methods, Reimu is even aware of specific phrases capable of repelling youkai, nothing more than words needed. Hilariously, she’s also had some experience in non-supernatural exterminations, like exterminating bees.

Exterminations (and Exorcisms)

Most impressively though, is that Reimu has been capable of completely exterminating Youkai on occasions, completely annihilating them. In her fight with Kasen’s merged state while using the Onikirimaru Fragment, just as a byproduct of sealing away Kasen’s arm, Ibaraki-Douji, Kasen’s entire body was completely disintegrated/annihilated. In some cases, Reimu has been even more thorough, even rendering her victims unable to revive, despite the powerful regeneration of Youkai. She infamously permanently exterminated the Fortune Teller, cleaving his head open with her Gohei, and causing his complete and utter annihilation. Or the time she exterminated an Umatsuki Youkai, killing both the human host, and exterminating the youkai permanently as well, though it was done offscreen.

Youkai regen is especially potent, and while variable in its degree of potency across different types of Youkai, is universally impressive. Youkai are not only able to regenerate entire limbs, and do so “right away”, but also completely regenerate their bodies from complete destruction, with this being supported by Kasen Ibaraki regenerating after her body was completely disintegrated/annihilated. Even a Beast Youkai like Yuuma Toutesu, who as a Beast Youkai, would have lesser regen than an average youkai, was able to regenerate from being completely erased by Flandre Scarlet, and would have been able to replicate this. This is even further supported by Flandre herself having repeatedly regenerated her wings despite exposing them to her own erasure multiple times. This is especially impressive, seeing as youkai’s bodies are both physical and non-physical beings, not bound to the confines of the material world, existing in a state like Schrodinger’s Cat, a state of Quantum Superposition. They’re primarily spiritual entities, but most notably, the source of their being is their very information, being more information-based than humans or fairies, with youkai being able to be born from the Sea of Information itself, such as purely informational beings like Nina Watari. Despite being able to regenerate from even complete erasure, Reimu can exterminate Youkai so thoroughly, they can’t return. For some reason, Reimu has also implied that it would be “easy” for her to erase a god… sure, why the hell not.

Exorcism Aura

In Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, all playable characters are capable of generating an aura around themselves, known as an Exorcism Aura. Anything entering the aura is slowed in time, making it easier to slip past enemies and dodge incoming bullets. Of course, there are a myriad of other effects that occur depending on the nature of what enters the radius – For example, enemies and projectiles are passively drained of their spiritual energy, replenishing the user’s power over time. Spiritual enemies such as phantoms are immobilized and weakened, taking significantly increased damage while held in place and naturally passing onto the afterlife after a certain amount of time passes. While the aura isn’t permanent, it can be redeployed at a moment’s notice, typically by charging up an attack. Despite the aura’s numerous effects, Reimu herself (or the copy of herself summoned by a Boss Attack) is unaffected when coming into contact with an enemy’s Exorcism Aura.

Spatiotemporal Manipulation

Reimu has a variety of ways to manipulate space itself, through clever methods of gap creation. She’s able to create slices in space with her Gohei, and can even cause these slashes in space to extend outwards after they’ve been cut. She can send massive slices through space across long distances, seemingly opening a gap in the process, and can even create dozens of “beams” that seem to cut through space itself, and even send projectiles out of the open spaces. Reimu’s Spell Card “Duplex Barrier” can distort space, causing it so bullets that fly in straight lines have their paths distorted by the barriers, and so no matter how fast you approach Reimu, she only ever grows further away. Duplex Barrier is also capable of outright turning space inside-out, inverting it.

Reimu is also capable of generating a magic circle around herself, as all Spell Card users can do, with the magic circle able to enhance the effects of grazing, and when combined with various ability cards, even allow for additional effects like slowing down or outright stop time locally

Teleportation

Reimu is capable of teleporting mid combat, often using her teleportation to fake-out her attacks and bait and switch with different physical blows. She’s noted to be capable of teleporting around without a care in the world, to the point she’d be capable of teleporting through barriers, and is literally unbound by space. It’s even noted that Reimu’s powers let her easily access realms that would otherwise be very difficult to access, like the Land of Back Doors.

Darkness Manipulation

Reimu is capable of creating a massive field of darkness capable of subsuming her opponents in combat, as well as obscuring her location.

Boss Attack & Boss Reversal

First seen in Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream, Reimu and co. have demonstrated the ability to send “bosses” to hassle their opponent on the opposite side of the field. As seen above, these can either be a duplicate of themselves, or in Reimu’s case (at least in this particular entry), a large, crystallized variant of her iconic Yin-Yang Orb. These bosses will parade around their target’s vicinity while bombarding them with danmaku projectiles until its health is whittled to zero or a Boss Reversal is used.

A boss attack occurs when Reimu either gathers over 51,200 hit combo bonus points or manually charges her power gauge to maximum and unleashes it at the cost of using up ¾ of her gauge. If this ability is activated while there is already a Boss on Reimu’s screen, it becomes a Boss Reversal, which overrules the enemy’s Boss Attack in favor of her own, removing them from the stage to make way for her summon.

In the Windows’ generation of Phantasmagoria-likes, this ability works as a form of pseudo-duplication for Reimu complete with the same aforementioned reversal mechanic, calling upon what is referred to as her “phantom” or “other self” to keep the enemy on the backfoot against one of her spell cards.

Barrier Creation

_{She’s lucky Marisa didn’t charge up that 6A!}

One perk of being the Hakurei Shrine Maiden is having the ability to manipulate and manifest barriers of varying depth, shape and size. Whether it be for the sake of dividing land, defending herself or harming her enemies, Reimu can apply them in all sorts of ways. For active modes of defense, she can manifest a Yin-Yang Orb-adorned shield in front of her to fend off physical and magical attacks (seen above), or create a forcefield around her body that repels attackers upon contact, even from ranged attacks. The former isn’t infallible, as strong enough attacks are able to seep through its defense and cause Reimu to take chip damage, and blocking in the wrong direction or overtaxing her Spirit Gauge can cause it to shatter, momentarily leaving her vulnerable. She’s also capable of preparing barriers meant to block out specific locations, like when she wrapped Kourindou with a Shimenawa, creating a barrier around the building that youkai cannot escape.

Passively, she can call upon magic circles to soak up portions of the damage she takes, or omnidirectional barriers that do the same while using spell cards, as well as utilize several automatic forms of protection; if she’s taken significant damage from her opponent’s regular attacks, a blue barrier will automatically form around her to keep her safe from any follow-up attacks except for Spell Cards and Last Words. On the flipside, if a Spell Card or Last Word was the attack to put her in that state, a red forcefield will protect her from those as well, giving her brief respite from any and all harm. Finally, use of a charged attack will automatically grant Reimu a barrier that shields her from one hit before disappearing.

The rest are all either offensive or multi-purpose: her Rain Dance skill allows her to leap and buffet her opponent overhead with a spinning barrier; Cautionary Border erases bullets while harming whoever makes physical contact with it; Binding Border encloses two barriers—or four, if it’s max level—around her target; Permanent Border allows her to place one at her own feet or slide it towards the opponent, bursting on the next person to walk over it (except Reimu, of course), and those are just her skill cards. While we won’t be naming off all the border-related Spell Cards she uses, some of them have some handy effects, such as increasing her attack power while guarding her against long-range attacks, warping space, and allegedly inducing instant death (likely hyperbole). Without a doubt the greatest in Reimu’s repertoire, however, is the mountainous “Narrowing Barrier of Avici”, which she used to ultimately end Mizuchi’s reign of terror and bring peace to Gensokyo once more.

There’s one more protective border to talk about, but it’s a little more complex than the rest…

Supernatural Border

When Yuyuko Saigyouji stole spring from Gensokyo during Perfect Cherry Blossom, Reimu set off to reclaim Gensokyo’s spring, going about it in a rather unorthodox way – By defeating enemies, she can absorb “spring” itself from them, using it to create a supernatural border around herself. This barrier lasts for a few seconds and will negate any attack that hits Reimu while she’s in this state, creating a massive shockwave that transmutes nearby projectiles into even more cherry petals. Gathering enough cherry petals can even erase enemy attacks outright.

It’s been implied that possession of “spring” can be used to push away cold temperatures, and Yuyuko releasing all of the spring she had gathered at once caused a miniature heat wave across Gensokyo. More interestingly is the fact that Yuyuko had planned to use spring to not just make the Saigyou Ayakashi bloom, but break the seal around the tree… with that seal being her own corpse. It’s probably for the best that Reimu took spring back from her and put it where it belongs.

While Reimu is perfectly capable of absorbing the spring from her enemies, she doesn’t seem to be susceptible herself – Indeed, Reimu carried the very last traces of spring Yuyuko needed to bring her plans to fruition, implying it somehow hadn’t been stolen despite the rest of Gensokyo having their spring sucked up.

Seasonal Energy

During the Hidden Star in Four Seasons Incident, Reimu gained yet another new ability. As the seasons were going haywire, Reimu found herself capable of harnessing the natural energy of those very seasons.

Primarily, due to the Hakurei Shrine being covered in Spring, Reimu gained access to homing shots (daring today, aren’t we) but it’s through the Sub-Seasons that the seasonal powers truly shine.

Spring grants the power to transmute any nearby bullets into items for Reimu to use, as well as granting Reimu temporary invincibility. Fall has similar transmutation properties, instead increasing Reimu’s speed, and Winter increases the sheer power of her shots as well as creating a temporary barrier. In addition, they all grant Reimu extra projectiles she can fire, which can increase in power and number by collecting the “Season Items” spawned in from grazing attacks and defeating enemies.

It should be noted that this harnessing of seasons was only possible due to the actions of Okina Matara and her assistant dancers, with Okina taking away access to the seasons from Reimu and the other protagonists during their fight. However, it’s a power extremely similar to the Supernatural Border in principle, and Reimu is capable of tapping into energy of the Doyou, the boundary between seasons, during the game’s Extra Stage, implying that she can tap into the seasons naturally.

Weather Manipulation

Almost a year after the Moriya Shrine’s antagonistic introduction and its subsequent resolution, the following summer’s heat had inexplicably overstayed its welcome and afflicted Reimu with a drought localized entirely around her. It wasn’t long after that she found herself as the sole victim of a shrine-wrecking earthquake, and during her investigation into its source, Reimu quickly discovered she wasn’t alone; most of Gensokyo’s other key figures were likewise haunted by their own brands of personalized weather, and the only clue binding their cases together was the scarlet mist (no, not Remilia’s, a different kind) leaking from their bodies.

Generally speaking, Reimu’s Sunny effect is potent enough to keep rain out during cloudbursts, and although it varies from scenario to scenario whose weather is overriding whose, she was able to passively supersede Marisa’s Drizzling Rain within seconds of entering her vicinity. Eventually she deduced that not only were these red mists responsible for the local weather phenomena, but they were tailored to each person’s unique temperament. And indeed, a messenger from the heavens, Iku Nagae, confirmed this to be the case — doubly so when Tenshi Hinanawi, the mastermind behind the incident, explained its origin.

Reimu was fortunate enough to receive a free assessment from Komachi Onozuka on how Sunny weather reflects her forthright, unbiased nature, describing it as: “Hot in the daytime, cool in the night. Straight-shooting, but simultaneously inflexible, without a drop of either cruelty or kindness“. Although she was no longer trailed by her own temperament after the incident’s conclusion, she has maintained limited control over the atmosphere via literally beating the temperament out of her opponents, initiating a chain reaction where these fallen “temperament clumps” speed up the weather forecast’s rotation. When its “temperament value” reaches 100 (essentially a timer that quickly counts to that number), the currently broadcasted weather manifests, casting its effect over the battlefield until the timer hits 0, then climbs back up to the next occurrence. These effects are as follows:

Sunny: Offers free border escapes, halves flight’s stamina cost, and decreases turning radius during flight, allowing its beneficiaries to turn on a dime mid-flight.
Drizzle: Increases spell card damage by 25%.
Cloudy: Decreases the cost of using a spell card by 1, and doubles the rate at which the spell card gauge fills. Weather fades if any card is used.
Blue Sky: Allows skills to be canceled into other skills.
Hail: Doubles spirit recovery speed and increases damage of special moves by 25%.
Spring Haze: Can graze melee attacks as though they were danmaku at the cost of draining stamina.
Heavy Fog: Either combatant recovers 50% of all damage they deal to their opponent.
Snow: Any wrongblocked attack will cause an instant guard crush.
Sprinkle: All skills behave as though they are at max level.
Tempest: Increases the amount of successive airdashes both sides can perform by 1, while also increasing walking and airdashing speed.
Mountain Vapor: Shuffles and hides all cards in hand.
River Mist: Both sides uncontrollably swerve back and forth across the field.
Typhoon: Neither side will budge when attacked, but will still take damage.
Calm: A spotlight is cast upon/traded to the last person to land a hit, passively restoring health over time.
Diamond Dust: Prevents usage of ground teching, causing knocked down combatants to take 500 damage from standing up.
Dust Storm: All landed attacks are treated as counterhits, increasing their overall potency.
Scorching Sun: Attack power increases up to 35% proportionate to one’s height in the air, conversely draining health the higher they are.
Monsoon: Induces vulnerability to being wall or ground slammed upon taking a hit.
Aurora: Causes any of the above to occur, but without a visual tell.

Circadian Manipulation

To quickly explain what that terminology means, Reimu, along with several others, likely have the ability to prevent night from advancing into day. In accordance with their youkai partner’s concerns regarding the missing fragment of the full moon, one of four human-and-youkai duos set out to retrieve its missing piece and restore the moon to its proper state, and to give themselves time to properly investigate, they brought the night to a complete halt. In case you’re wondering, that’s not a figure of speech.

The exact method through which this was achieved is never disclosed, and it can reasonably be assumed that Reimu’s team accomplished it through Yukari’s manipulation of boundaries. In fact, Marisa came to this same conclusion during the Barrier Team’s scenario, but as seen above, Reimu used the word “we” as she corrected her, implying that the responsibility was shared. Moreover, any duo in the game is capable of replicating this feat without Yukari’s help, as seen in the Magic, Scarlet, and Netherworld Teams’ confessions during their respective routes, and compounding this is the fact that Kaguya’s accusation regarding it stays the same regardless of who she’s facing.

In the end, Occam’s razor should apply here and Reimu simply can do this because she does, but if further justification is needed, Yumemi has done similar things as far back as the third game, and don’t forget that Reimu has her own form of boundary manipulation similar to Yukari’s (see Boundary Manipulation above), whose ability has been used to the same effect before.

Urban Legend

As part of yet another Incident, Urban Legends from the Outside World began to manifest in Gensokyo. These Urban Legends are rumors given form, and can be formed from even the most baseless of rumors, as seen with the Kune Kune being formed out of someone believing Reisen to be the legend itself.

As long as one is able to control the rumors associated with an Urban Legend without fearing them, they can render the manifested anomalies harmless, and outright turn it into a power of their own. Many characters, Reimu included, managed to take control of certain specific Urban Legends that fit them, adding them to their powers. The Urban Legends are said to be akin to “weird ghosts” attached to those who control them, a feat reliant on matching the legend’s temperament. The more the person controlling the Urban Legend embodies said legend, even its weaknesses start to disappear.

For Reimu, this was the Sukima-Onna, or Gap Woman, a mysterious woman that watches others from the gaps in their room… In combat, this allows Reimu to utilize gaps, much like Yukari. The name of some of Reimu’s attacks with the Gap Woman seem to imply she can create gaps and cracks in the Great Hakurei Barrier, using it to trap the opponent within and deal some serious damage.

Perfect Possession

Due to the power of the Urban Legend Incident, a simple rumor spreading about people being able to possess others and fully take them over began to widely spread… causing it to manifest into reality as the Perfect Possession ability, causing the Perfect Possession Incident! Due to the Incident causing more and more rumors to spread about it, the ability and its presence became more and more powerful, becoming a truly massive deal.

Perfect Possession is a phenomenon where one is taken over by a completely different person in both mind and body, taking over someone’s personality and flesh, “everything”. Perfect Possession allows one to “replace” the body along with the spirit of who you’re controlling, almost teleporting in their place, with the people who are perfectly possessed being BFR’d and stored in the Dream World. Perfect Possession can take place by mutual consent, but it can also occur forcibly and bypass the master’s consciousness. The trick that allows you to easily possess anyone is meditation/entering a meditative state, and possessing someone the instant they’re distracted, taking over as soon as they drop their guard. When in perfect possession, the slave expels the master’s dreams and ends up in the dream world, with the expelled dream dwellers rampaging

The possessed can often be completely unaware that they’ve ever been possessed, such as when Marisa was unknowingly Perfect Possessed by Koishi Komeiji. It’s implied stupid people are more susceptible to possession, and those without proper minds / consciousness, such as Koishi Komeiji, are especially easy to possess. When people perform Perfect Possession, they share a portion of their feelings due to sharing a portion of their spirit, and from influence from the Dream World. When the possession is consensual and agreed upon, the Master and Slave can change their role at will. It’s also noted that the ability to manipulate emotions or having extreme control over one’s emotions are needed to be most effective in Perfect Possession. If an entity requires someone else to be conscious to be sustained, they will also lose consciousness if that person is possessed. When Ichrin is possessed and goes unconscious, Unzan also loses consciousness, as he cannot maintain his sense of self without Ichirin

There are some limitations to the ability though. When the Perfect Possession is consensual, the master has the power to dismiss it, but when it’s forced/compulsory, the slave does. In order to forcibly possess someone, their mental guard has to be down, and it’s implied that the Slaves who are possessed are still able to dictate what they want to do with their bodies.

Reimu trained extensively in the usage of Perfect Possession in order to be prepared to fight and take down Shion & Jo’on and their especially potent variation of the technique. After learning about the Incident, she would then spend, quite literally, the entire remainder of the Incident training with Kasen Ibaraki and Yukari Yakumo in the usage and mechanics of Perfect Possession, and fighting in 2v2 combat under the Master and Slave Possession dynamics, making her a verifiable master in the ability.

Notably though, Reimu has never shown access to the ultimate form of Perfect Possession, being “Possession Exchange “Absolute Loser”, which allows for one to take complete and utter undeniable control of an opponent forcibly, superior to an average Perfect Possession, without having to wait for a distraction . That version of the technique seems exclusive to Jo’on and Shion, and is especially powerful in their hands due to Shion’s Misfortune related abilities allowing for an instant loss to be induced. Meaning it’s unlikely she’d be able to use the most potent variant of it.

Absorption

In Sunken Fossil World, Reimu has especially integral absorption abilities, she’s able to transmute enemy bullets into water, and then absorb that water into herself in order to stock it up to charge up more powerful attacks, such as a water-y version of Dream Seal utilizing a Hydro Power Release Spell Card. She can similarly absorb oil / petroleum, though if she doesn’t utilize it in attacks quickly, it will begin to be released from her. Finally, she’s also able to absorb blood, and it similarly leaks out if not utilized in time, though it also deals significantly more damage than other absorbed liquids if the power is released.

Reimu is also able to absorb the energy/powers of artifacts through contact, such as when she was able to enhance her own magical sealing attacks with the power of a single fragment of the Onikirimaru Blade. Reimu has various other forms of absorption as well, though they’re all covered in their respective ability sections, and we won’t repeat them here.

Though there’s one other form of absorption Reimu can utilize to touch upon as well…

Spiritual Realm

During Toyosatomimi no Miko’s miraculous resurrection, her reawakening caused hundreds upon hundreds of divine spirits – in truth the lowest class of living spirit – to swarm across Gensokyo as they traveled to her tomb. While investigating the origin of this incident, Reimu and company discovered that these divine spirits could be a useful tool throughout their battles. By absorbing divine spirits, Reimu can enter what is known as the “Spiritual Realm”, a place one sees in the moments just before their death. While in this strange, in-between state, Reimu’s attack power is massively enhanced, and enemy attacks will phase right through her, as she is literally in another world for a brief moment. As the Spiritual Realm is the plane one enters just before death, Reimu will automatically enter this state upon dying, giving her a few moments to continue fighting, though once the duration expires, she’ll die as normal assuming she can’t find a way to bring herself back from the brink.

Reimu’s relationship with these divine spirits is particularly interesting; Unlike other characters, whenever Reimu is in the Spiritual Realm, all nearby divine spirits will be passively drawn towards her, making it particularly easy for her to absorb them.

Popularity

After the Buddhist monk Byakuren Hijiri and Taoist hermit Toyosatomimi no Miko appeared inside Gensokyo and made their presence known to the world, the resulting conflict between all three religious factions (Shinto, Buddhism, and Taoism) necessitated a way for all parties to determine whose ideology would come out on top. That method was, of course, spell card duels, but with a slight caveat. With these duels being front and center in the public, each combatant began to amass significant amounts of popularity, with that popularity becoming a tool they could use in the fights themselves. With every action taken, Reimu will grow more and more beloved by the audience, while her opponent becomes less popular over time; As Mamizou Futatsuiwa put it, “just by punching someone in a fancy way, you gain supporters”. As demonstrated by Koishi Komeiji and Mononobe no Futo, an audience doesn’t even have to be present for the fight in order for a fighter to gain popularity, as they will begin subconsciously supporting one side regardless.

Aside from the more obvious side effects of gaining popularity, becoming more popular surrounds Reimu with a blue aura that enhances the rate at which her spiritual energy regenerates while increasing the spiritual damage dealt to her opponents. Conversely, making an opponent less popular will reduce how quickly their spirit regenerates. Gaining a large amount of popularity can also give one a presence that’s “scarier than all others”, and will significantly empower the user. When Nitori Kawashiro, someone who is far below Reimu in terms of strength, started gaining popularity, her power was amplified to the point that she was the strongest among the religious leaders.

What’s curious about these fights is that they don’t just make the user more popular. They actually drain the hope from any spectators, gradually reducing them to lifeless husks. When Reimu proved herself the most popular of all and went on to battle Hata no Kokoro, Kokoro noted that she was “overflowing with hope” and had planned to turn Reimu into her new mask of hope. Other characters have shown this as well, with Koishi Komeiji, someone who is ordinarily mindless and thus unable to feel emotions, gaining emotions on a surface level thanks to absorbing so much hope.

Berserk Roaring Mode

After the goddess Keiki Haniyasushin overtook the Animal Realm, Gensokyo found itself overrun with invading Beast Spirits, forcing Reimu into action. During this Incident, she could use these very same Beast Spirits as a means to enhance her own power, and different types of Beasts could grant her unique boosts. While the barbaric wolves and the haughty eagles would merely grant Reimu a massive boost in the power of her shots, the wishy-washy otters can create a barrier that transmutes enemy attacks into points for Reimu to collect.

Power Nullification

Reimu has the ability to easily dissolve any seal and destroy barriers by making direct contact with them, such as when she broke open a seal on one of Patchouli’s grimoires, which neither Patchouli nor Marisa could open by themselves (although it took all her power to do so). While attempting to reach the Netherworld, she managed to make the barrier separating it from Gensokyo completely disappear just by touching it, being described by Youmu as having “tore it open” and making the line between the two worlds extremely thin. The borders between worlds are not just literal borders, but also magical, conceptual, and ideological barriers that prevent travel.

Apart from breaking open seals, Reimu can also negate magic in a variety of other ways. Her ofuda are capable of negating incoming projectile attacks, and can instantly revert tsukumogami back into inanimate objects. By sticking an ofuda to an inanimate object, she can even prevent them from turning into tsukumogami in the first place. Reimu’s own seals can negate magic to an extent, as she has implicitly stated that the things she seals are drained of their magical power. Similarly, her exorcisms can drain the magic from magic items, turning them into useless scrap metal.

Across the series, Reimu has also shown the ability to nullify powers in ways common to other spell card users. For example, the use of a “Last Word” spell card can temporarily negate an opponent’s ability to use *their* spell cards. In Urban Legend in Limbo, Reimu is able to negate the power of the Occult Balls just by touching them; Doing so continually can “break” an opponent’s spell card, and force them out of the nigh-invulnerable state granted to them by the Occult Balls while also temporarily removing their ability to block attacks. In Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, beast spirits will occasionally shapeshift into different types of beast spirits, but Reimu can prevent their transformation just by staying close to them.

Sealing

When a pesky spirit or demon proves too troublesome to just exterminate outright, Reimu’s go-to method of justice is sealing. She’s sealed vengeful spirits in bottles, inside of letters, and she can even seal entire buildings by themselves. According to Marisa, Reimu doesn’t even need to defeat her opponents in order to seal them away. In spell card duels, many of her spell cards are said to seal the target on contact. Spell Cards such as Dream Seal fires bullets of light that forcibly seal an opponent and ignore the laws of physics, and are said to be capable of exterminating any youkai, no questions asked. Kasen Ibaraki even took advantage of Reimu’s sealing prowess by having the shrine maiden battle her arm (long story), using both Fantasy Seal and more conventional techniques to once again contain her evil side.

By utilizing a lengthy ritual, she can seal away the power of the gods , seemingly to the extent of causing them to lose battles they’d otherwise win. Reimu also implies that it would be “easy” for her to banish a god. Reimu can even seal a god’s divine spirit – an infinitely-spreading concept that exists wherever their associated domain does – inside of a small shard of pottery. As if getting shoved inside a cramped piece of pottery wasn’t bad enough, whatever Reimu seals will also have its magical power drained over time. In the event Reimu isn’t powerful enough to exorcise the spirit/energy contained within an item, she’s able to seal it, preventing it from exerting its power, and preventing other beings from being able to draw upon its power, like when she sealed an especially powerful Youma Book, preventing its energy from spreading and being drawn on by other books to transform.

She can also exert incredible control over her sealing blasts, utilizing her ancestor’s technique with Recollection Fantasy Seal, she can cause dozens of seals to move around in a vortex, or create nearly hundreds at once in a barrier of warped space. Combining her Fantasy Seal and Duplex Barrier techniques with the Recollection of her predecessor’s technique even allows her to create “Recollection: Narrowing Barrier of Avici”, an absolutely massive barrier that traps the victim within, sealing them away, being the same technique Reimu’s predecessor used to seal away Mizuchi, and would have sealed her away again, had Reimu not stopped the technique.

Summoning

Reimu is able to effortlessly summon spirits of all kinds, to the point that her true evocations require neither items nor a chant, just simple thoughts. Not only is she able to summon simple petty spirits, she’s also capable of evoking divine spirits, something only a real shrine maiden can do, she’s even capable of just summoning the closest spirit she can find. Her evocations are even powerful enough that she can awaken the spirits inside of objects nearby, such as when she awoke the spirit of a small animal within the planchette she used to summon a divine spirit. Reimu’s most known form of summoning however, is….

God Channeling

As expected of a Shinto Shrine Maiden, alongside being able to summon spirits, Reimu is also capable of channeling the powers and abilities of various Kami. A Shrine Maiden’s duty is to give a mouth to a god’s words, after all. While Reimu was initially very untrained in doing so, she spent three months training to do so in Silent Sinner in Blue, and became fully capable of doing so. She became skilled enough at God Summoning that she became capable of summoning the three Sumiyoshi gods, and could even do so for 12 days straight, despite the intense concentration required to do so. It’s implied that Reimu may have even been capable of doing so for weeks to a full month, as that was the original projected length of their trip. Reimu summoning a God into her body does affect her in some ways though, causing her to take on that God’s personality, and if multiple Gods are channeled into her at once, they could fight amongst themselves. The gods she’s shown herself directly able to summon are:

Ama no Iwato no Mikoto: A Kami that serves as the Guardian Spirit of mountains, stones and gates. With his power, Reimu creates a massive hole in the ground, but Yukari claims it is merely illusory in nature.
Sumiyoshi: A trinity of Gods renowned as the God of Voyages. Since Reimu channels three Gods at once, calling upon Sumiyoshi requires thrice the effort. The Sumiyoshi serve as protectors of ships, ensuring safe travels. Reimu used their power to ensure a spaceship was able to travel from Gensokyo to the Lunar Capital without issue, their power able to be used as the rocket’s fuel.
Oomagatsumi-no-Kami: The God of Great Calamities. Allows Reimu to channel all of the calamity and impurity from Oomagatsumi’s body into her ofuda, allowing her to spread impurity and the cycle of life and death to the pure lands and immortals of the Moon. She can even throw Spirit Bombs of Impurities with his power!
Kanayabiko no Mikoto: The God of Metals. Reimu can call upon him to create metals overnight, like Palladium alloy.
Misc Divine Spirits: Reimu has summoned gods in the past to obtain general information, such as helping her find vital clues to the location of her friend Kosuzu, after she went missing, the gods informing her that Tengu were present at the time, letting her discover that they were the ones to take Kosuzu.

These are the Gods we directly see Reimu herself channel, but Yorihime of the Lunar Capital possesses the same ability to call upon the Kami, and Reimu should be able to replicate her channelings.

Lord Gion: Calling upon Gion’s power allows one to seal away Gods and Goddesses.
Lord Atago: Calling upon Lord Atago allows one to generate Divine Flames that can burn up anything.
Lord Honoikazuchi: A god of rain and storms, allowing Yorihime to unleash lightning and form an eight headed dragon to attack enemies with.
Lord Kanayamahiko: Calling upon Kanayamahiko allows Yorihime to transform enemy weapons into sand and revert them back to their original state to redirect them back to the attacker.
Amatsu-Mikaboshi: Holy shit the Chaos King Marvel Comics
Ishikori-Dome no Mikoto: Channeling this God gives access to the Yata Mirror, which can deflect Marisa’s Master Spark lasers.
Ame-no-Izume no Mikoto: With a beautiful dance that stops the encroachment of night, Yorihime could make Remilia’s bullets all fail to connect with her body.
Amaterasu Oomikami: The light of the Goddess of the Sun is powerful enough to instantaneously defeat Remilia Scarlet
Izunome: A goddess capable of absorbing and purifying all impurity.

Reimu is also implied to be able to summon Kanako Yasaka and Suwako Moriya, the Goddesses of the Moriya Shrine.

Impurity

As mentioned in the God Channeling section, Reimu can call upon the power of Oomagatsumi-no-Kami, allowing her to channel all the calamity and impurity from his body into her Ofuda, or outright create an Impurity Spirit Bomb and start throwing out Impurity bullets. The potency of these bullets is so immense, that it would have brought Impurity to the entire Lunar Capital if Yorihime failed to deflect a single one. This is notable, as it would be a direct comparison to the Incident of Fossilized Wonders, where the advent of AI caused so much Life Information (which is directly stated to be Impurity) to flow into Gensokyo and the Lunar Capital, that it would have destroyed the Lunar Capital and completely sullied its impurity, something that forced them to cause the Immutability Incident to prevent that from happening. Seeing as a single one of Oomagatsumi-no-Kami’s Impurity bullets could have a similar effect on the Lunar Capital, the effects of Impurity caused during the events of Touhou 20 should be directly comparable.

Impurity is naturally the complete opposite of Purity, able to counteract and nullify Purity as a whole. which in Touhou allows for the Lunarians and Pure Lands like the Lunar Capital to remain eternal, timeless worlds free of life and death, and become outright immortal. Enough Impurity is able to taint these things, returning concepts like life and death back to them. The massive overflow of Impurity/Life Information was also too much for Yuiman, her being unable to keep up with the increasing workload and becoming overloaded by all the information, leading to her memories being put into disarray, and for her to begin hallucinating

Being exposed to massive amounts of impurity such as this is fatal to Youkai, seeing as youkai are spiritual & informational beings, information is the essence of their being. Not only is it capable of contaminating them (capable of polluting even “correct” information), destroying them and their mind, overwhelming their very existence, and causing them to “lose themselves”, the informational corruption it causes is outright capable of fully killing youkai.

Notably all of these abilities are caused directly by the influence and effect of pure information, meaning these hax are caused through a form of informational manipulation/exposure, meaning they’d likely be more potent than typical variants. Impurity does have some weaknesses however, it is able to be altered via informational manipulation, as characters like Yuiman and Ariya are able to erase Life Information/Impurity, purify it to reduce it to “harmless truth”, and trap it within space-time through prevention of change.

Boundary Manipulation

While not as talented as Yukari Yakumo, Reimu over the years has learned a variety of methods of manipulating boundaries, which in Touhou, are essentially fundamental concepts, if not more impressive. But in order to explain this power, we need to introduce a bit of a history lesson!

Within Touhou, all of existence originally started as a primordial chaos, an indistinct mess in which nothing had a form, nothing was distinct from the other, and everything just “was”… this was a state of being known as “Namelessness”. From this era, the Nameless Gods used their power to grant “Names” to everything, finally beginning to give form to things, creating distinctions. Even people such as Rinnosuke, a character whose ability is to instantly intuit and comprehend the meaning and purpose of an item through being able to understand its “Name”, cannot identify or know anything about Nameless things from the Nameless era. From a Name, would birth a Boundary.

A Boundary (also referred to as a “Border” in the series on occasion, it’s a different name for the same term) is effectively the abstraction of two concepts, acting as both the representation of them, as well as the dichotomy between them. Altering a boundary can allow one to manipulate the distinction between the associated concepts. To simplify it, you have the concept of “life” and the concept of “death” as the individual concepts representing each idea, and then you have the “Boundary of Life and Death”, which represents both of them, and the delineation between them, making it a bit more impressive than bog standard conceptual manipulation.

Manipulating Boundaries has been shown to work in many ways. Without a skyline, neither mountain nor sky could exist, without a water surface, there could be no lake. Daylight and Moonlight can be altered to merge the day and night into one thing, the boundaries between worlds can be weakened to allow travel between them more easily. Even things as simple as sleep and wakefulness have boundaries associated with them. Common sense and uncommon sense, wave and particle, master and slave, Nyuudou and Umibozu, humans and youkai, motion and stillness, light and darkness, life and death, form and emptiness. The list goes on, any concept has a boundary attached, as all of existence is built upon boundaries.

Due to this, Boundaries such as this are incredibly vital to the structure of existence, acting as the fundamental basis upon which all things lie. It was the creation of boundaries at the beginning of reality that separated the primordial chaos into the world we know today, and all of existence would collapse if those boundaries were removed. Even existence and non-existence itself is encapsulated in the Boundary of Red and White. To create a boundary is to create a new existence, while removing one conversely negates existence. At its peak, the power to control boundaries is a power comparable to that of the gods, able to fundamentally undermine reality itself.

One of Reimu’s most important jobs, and the one she actually bothers to put a bit of effort into, is maintaining the Great Hakurei Barrier that separates Gensokyo from the Outside World. The Hakurei Barrier is, in effect, the boundary between fantasy and reality, delineating one world as “real” and the other as “illusory”.

Needless to say, it’s pretty impressive that Reimu is able to repair, weaken, or even open holes in such boundaries, with the Hakurei Barrier in particular being even stronger than similar boundaries like the one between life and death, which she shattered with a mere touch. Beyond the boundaries between worlds, Reimu can manipulate other kinds of boundaries as well, like when she took a page from Yukari’s book and manipulated the border between seasons to weaponize doyou, a sort of in-between season that she used to counteract Okina Matara’s season-based powers. She can also use her barriers to manipulate enclosed boundaries, resulting in the effect of creating seemingly countless copies of herself, completely surrounding her opponent, and making it seem like she’s passed you, just to appear in front of you again. She can even create spaces entirely devoid of boundaries, which if taken at face value, she’d effectively be erasing the fundamental concepts of existence within a localized area.

Portal Creation & BFR

Likely as an extension of her boundary manipulation, Reimu can open holes in space-time, or “gaps”. Although closely associated with the powers she gained during the urban legend incident, it seems she’s had this ability as far back as Imperishable Night. They function almost identically to Yukari Yakumo’s gaps, letting Reimu instantly teleport across the battlefield or banish people into other dimensions, though they aren’t a necessity for her teleportation. Assuming they’re 1-to-1 with Yukari’s gaps, they also ought to be invisible and possess the property of barring entry to everyone but the user. Reimu also uses her gaps in more offensive ways, often trying to cleave people in half with them.

Enhanced Senses

Not necessarily her “Intuition”, which we will get to later, but Reimu has showcased very advanced sensing abilities very consistently. She’s able to sense approaching danger, reacting defensively before the threat can reach her. Even with her eyes closed and facing away, Reimu has been able to sense the exact number of youkai and phantoms approaching her from all sides, even sensing that they’re “small fry”.

She’s been able to regularly sense energies and auras of all kinds. She’s sensed the youkai energy the Night Parade Scroll’s transmits, youkai aura emanating from playing cards, a youkai aura emanating from a gemstone, she can sense faint traces of a youkai/phantom’s presence in an area after its left, if written text contains supernatural powers. Her senses are strong enough to immediately identify the type of spirit someone has summoned with just a glance, or detect “bizarre atmospheres” from those who are attempting occult summonings, also sensing when a spirit was occupying a robot dog.

Reimu’s senses are even honed enough that she’s able to know when there’s a lack of any kind of strange or spiritual presence, and can detect if a phenomena lacks “youkai or magical energies” to know if something isn’t magical in nature. Somehow, she’s even able to detect if a bone fragment is a human’s or not, and if the bone ever had a soul when it was alive.

She’s even capable of seeing Ibaraki-Douji’s “non-existent real form” to her surprise.

Non-Physical Interaction

As a Shrine Maiden who exterminates Youkai, Reimu had to figure out how to exterminate less physical threats. To date, she has been able to interact with and attack Phantoms (to the point of even grabbing them physically with her hands), Ghosts, Divine Spirits and Animal Spirits, the last of which have frequently been called out as being purely spiritual in nature and unable to engage through physical means. Reimu’s interacted with and fought Vengeful Spirits such as Mizuchi, Vengeful Spirits being souls that are embodiments of pure negative emotions, a being whose existence is nothing but a purified grudge, in a similar existence to youkai.She’s even able to interact with and beat the shit out of purely informational beings like Nina Watari, a purely informational youkai born from the Sea of Information itself.

Reimu, through her powers, is also capable of weakening the Hakurei Barrier herself, a conceptual barrier that’s the distinction of Reality and Fantasy, and can similarly effortlessly dissolve the barriers separating worlds, which are conceptual, magical and ideological barriers. Reimu is also able to interact with and fight Junko, who purified herself to just her resentment, said purification reverting something to a Nameless state, with her becoming a Nameless Being and losing all information about herself. Being nameless was the original state of all things, being the primordial soup from before concepts even existed, before things received “names” and could be identified and distinct from other things.

Even lacking a physical body cannot save you from the Shrine Maiden’s wrath. It doesn’t matter how abstract you are, if Reimu wants to put the hurt on you, she’s whoopin yo ass.

Aura

Whenever Reimu fights seriously, she’s surrounded by a sort of killing intent that instills fear and intimidation into the hearts of her foes. Even those that aren’t the target of her ire feel overwhelmed by her presence, and she’s able to induce panic in nearby enemies even if they aren’t aware of her.

Float

Reimu’s signature ability is a bit more complex and multifaceted than one may think. Reimu’s ability to Float is more all-encompassing than just simply floating in the air, it extends to how she goes about every day of her very life. Reimu’s innate ability has been referred to as many things, but really, it’s her ability to float through her life, never tied down and never held back. So what better way to quantify her ability to float, than talking about the methods through which she floats through her life?

Flight

Reimu is, obviously, capable of flight, able to freely defy gravity and soar through the air. Nothing is able to tie her down. It’s pretty simple honestly, it’s what it says on the tin.

Unpredictability

With her ability to float, Reimu is even immune to the machinations of Zanmu Nippaku, who is a mastermind capable of perfectly manipulating everyone else around her as though they’re dancing in the palm of her hand. While Reimu lost her battle with Zanmu, the point remains that Reimu’s power rendered her an ‘x-factor’ that the oni was unable to account for even with all her intelligence.

Intuition

“I’d go whether you told me to or not. My intuition is never wrong, after all.”

Reimu has an innate knack for knowing exactly where an incident is happening, and who’s at fault. In fact, even her very name is symbolic of this unusual clarity. It’s effectively a “Protagonist Sense”, but it’s instead commonly referred to as her “intuition”, which acts as a sort of sixth sense that can track… well, whatever Reimu wants it to track. It’s how she simply “knows” where to go to find clues, faraway locations, or the culprit of an incident without having to do any actual investigation. Reimu’s intuition is wide-ranging enough to cover all of Gensokyo, and even locations which exist outside of space-time entirely can be hunted down in this manner.

However, it’s also extremely precise, letting Reimu know what kind of youkai or demon a perpetrator is, instantly recognize that an illusory figure she saw is neither a ghost nor phantom, or whether or not someone is lying, and even determine someone’s intentions, and even tip her off to impending danger, or if it would be dangerous to let someone be. Her Intuition has even surprised Yukari, throwing off her calculations as Reimu determined she was the culprit rather than fighting Kosuzu. Even fairies that can bend light and sound to become undetectable to the naked eye, even to Reimu, stand no chance of evading Reimu’s intuition. She’s able to subtly get bad feelings, to know that something will go wrong soon, as well as even determine the outcome of battles, also used it to predict the immediate future, Rinnosuke believed that he could read the latent feelings of the previous users of magical artifacts if he had Reimu’s intuition, and ZUN has implied that Reimu’s intuition is what allows her to know what medium she’s currently in (such as a manga).

Even for people with similar abilities, Reimu’s intuition typically outdoes them. Yukari can also “smell” if someone is an incident’s culprit, but while her guess was only correct on a technicality (Eirin only caused the illusory sky in Imperishable Night, but she wasn’t the root cause of the incident), Reimu’s intuition correctly let her know that something was amiss. Marisa was also confident that, in order to track down Mizuchi Miyadeguchi, they needed Reimu’s intuition, implying that nobody else’s senses would’ve been able to find her (and many of Gensokyo’s denizens have similar supernatural senses). Other characters even get annoyed at her consistent intuition being able to point her in the direction of where to go. Finally, it’s worth noting that Reimu’s intuition seems to work independently of her psyche, since it’s typically depicted as being a subconscious “feeling” that guides her where she needs to go, and not even having her memories erased can throw her off the trail of a potential incident.

Reimu’s intuition, while powerful, isn’t flawless. Reimu needs something to track in order for it to work, so if there’s no single person behind an incident’s cause, her intuition stops working. In that same vein, her intuition won’t work against anything that was done unintentionally or unconsciously. In PoFV, Reimu’s focus on the blooming flowers made it impossible for her Intuition to take her to the source of the Incident, requiring her to be informed of the Incident’s true nature by Aya. When she was possessed by a beast spirit, it was implied that the possession was somehow disturbing her intuition.

Fortune

Reimu is, to put it simply, lucky to a degree that should not be possible. She’s well-recognized for her freakish luck, to the point where it’s been said that she’s the luckiest shrine maiden of all and that her luck is the luck of Gensokyo itself. That’s not just fluff, either, as Reimu states that not only does her good fortune come from the gods themselves. Several characters have stated Reimu to be especially fortunate, like Mamizou, stating her luck is too good to be beaten in games, or Miko, a Hermit capable of reading the flow of Fortune so well she can determine probabilities, stating that Reimu is exceptionally fortunate, able to literally unconsciously call upon the fortune of divine spirits, gaining good fortune without requiring the sacrifice of others. In fact, Reimu is directly stated to have the absolute best fortune out of any named character in the entire franchise, her fortune compared to being from Luck itself, this being reiterated multiple times. She may just be literally the luckiest girl alive.

What does that mean, though? What is Fortune within Touhou? To put it bluntly, Fortune is luck, and misfortune is back luck, and through being especially lucky or unlucky, your very nature can cause myriad effects. Good enough fortune can cause things to naturally occur in your favor, in the same way that misfortune will cause negative things to happen, like not getting any customers at your business the entire time a misfortune riddled person is nearby, or at worst, being unable to ever win. Fortune is even an integral element in the casting of magic, with strong enough fortune allowing for a spell to be cast, even if all other elements of the spell are lacking, and is so integral to magic that without fortune, even the simplest spells will fail. Fortune is even strong enough to manipulate the third layer of reality, the Memory Layer, the layer which is the recollection of all events that lies within all things, with good fortune literally manipulating probability itself in favor of its wielder.

In her direct showcases, Reimu’s fortune has literally done the impossible. Setting her in a maze is useless, as she’ll always choose the correct path on her first go. She’s been able to walk across a river without even realizing it, because fish jumped out of the water as she took each and every step. She’s able to consistently win at gambling effortlessly, consistently Heart of the Card’ing her way into absurdly good hands. She’s ended up exactly where she needed to be while in the middle of fighting someone. Attacks will literally swerve around her to dodge her, even if they’re lasers and bullets that fly directly straight, while her own bullets will move in impossible directions to hit their target. She’s even able to casually skew the results of a dice fall in her own favor, her fortune manipulating probability in her favor, the dice remembering the fact that she predicted how it would fall. Probability will quite literally bend in her favor so things will go her way.

Not to mention, with her having the greatest fortune in the franchise, that would mean she should gain similar effects to other especially fortune individuals. Keine Kamishirasawa is capable of mastering anything she studies through her fortune, or Momoyo Himemushi, who passively absorbs luck, including the luck from her surroundings into herself. Most notably though would be Tenshi Hinanawi, whose fortune is not only able to make people around her naturally act in her favor, but is quite literally inexhaustible! Tenshi’s amount of fortune is literally endless, unable to be expended by even Shion Yorigami, the literal Goddess of Misfortune who casually causes misfortune just by being in someone’s proximity.

Shion can even completely drain someone’s Fortune to minimum by possessing them, and cause them to instantly lose a fight, but Tenshi’s fortune is so inexhaustible even she cannot deplete it. By having superior fortune to all of these people, Reimu should have similar degrees of inexhaustible natural fortune, able to absorb latent fortune nearby, and have other similar attributes. Truly, she is an absurdly lucky woman, no wonder she can float through life so effortlessly…

Innate Dream

_{It’s like some kinda Evanescent Existence or somethin}

Reimu’s ultimate secret technique, the ultimate expression of her ability to Float, is Innate Dream, also known as “Musou Tensei”. She’s no disciple of Hokuto, but that doesn’t stop it from being any less bullshit. If you’ve ever heard of Reimu discussed in versus, it’s likely under the context of this ability. You also may have heard of this ability before translated as “Fantasy Nature” or “Fantasy Heaven”, but “Innate Dream” is the more modern, accurate translation of the name. You could call it an Evanescent Existence, even.

Innate Dream is extreme in many ways, a technique that only she can use, allowing her to “float away from all sorts of things”, and become completely unable to be attacked. She’s described as becoming “completely impossible to touch” and entering an “invisible man state”. She becomes almost transparent and ethereal, leaving wispy after images behind as she moves in a blur. While in this state, she closes her eyes, and danmaku automatically fires itself towards the enemy. In the fighting games, this technique is so powerful it’s effectively an instant KO against whoever she’s fighting (and it also has a remix of You Wa Shock, lmao). In Imperishable Night, it’s a Last Word, a technique that’s able to nullify the opponent’s ability to use bombs (Spells Cards) or extra lives. Marisa’s description of how to deal with it being “36th Stratagem Level”, a Chinese phrase referring to “all the strategies there are”, with the usage of the phrase referring to how, of all stratagems, retreat was the best counteraction.

What’s most impressive about this however, is that it’s stated by Marisa that if Innate Dream wasn’t gamified under the Spell Card Rules of combat that there’d be no way to win, and stated even further that if the attack wasn’t treated as “for play (with time limit)”, that no-one could beat her through any method, meaning that when not self-restricted, Innate Dream has no time limit attached. This is consistent both in gameplay and in lore, as in gameplay, you become completely unable to harm her through any means during the attack, and have to survive until the gamified time limit ends. This is further supported by lore, as historically, Youkai were completely incapable of defeating the Hakurei Shrine Maiden until the Spell Card Rules were enacted, to the point that Youkai were beginning to feel their meaning to exist was disappearing. There’s never been any contradictions, while Innate Dream has been active, Reimu has never been affected in any way. To put it simply, Reimu becomes immune to anything that anybody in the series is able to throw at her. What’s also notable is that even equipment she holds seems to be under the effects of Innate Dream as well, even her Gohei similarly phases with her, implying her equipment would receive a similar degree of protection.

To keep things simple, the main statements regarding Innate Dream and its immunities to everything anyone could throw at it were made during and up to the point that Touhou 6-11 were released, Grimoire of Marisa (the last time Innate Dream was spoken on majorly) being released after 11. Innate Dream’s last major appearance as a Spell Card would also be 13.5, which should reasonably allow for the statement to extend to that period as well. While these statements have never been contradicted, meaning that it should still apply to all characters to appear after this period, this section will be focusing on what abilities she would be immune to just from Touhou 6-13.5 alone.

Through her body becoming completely intangible, she’d be immune to any kind of biological manipulation or physical attacks, as well as the various kinds of magical and spiritual attacks danmaku entail. It should be noted that most characters in the series have Non-Physical Interaction and can directly interact with non-physical beings like spirits, informational beings, and Nameless Beings, and yet even Reimu becomes untouchable to them
- Youkai exist as spiritual and informational beings, and they cannot interact with Reimu in Innate Dream
- Marisa can interact with Junko, a Nameless Being, “Namelessness” being the primordial state of being before things were given “names”, proper forms, or defined, able to be distinct from other things, essentially, a state of existence before concepts existed.
Cirno’s ability to freeze things, down to Minus K temperatures, and even freeze non-physical phenomena like light or sound
Hong Meiling’s ability to manipulate qi, which is primarily used to throw qi-based projectiles
Sakuya Izayoi’s ability to stop, as well as manipulate time and space
- Sakuya’s time manipulation also includes temporal erasure, making time run in reverse, slowing things down in time, fast forwarding things in time, and merging the past, present and future into one point.
Marisa Kirisame (best girl)’s ability to use magic
- [Check the “Magic” section in Abilities earlier for more]
- Marisa is able to absorb magic
Yuyuko Saigyouji’s ability to induce death and send souls to nirvana
- Her ability is potent enough to kill even Youkai
Keine Kamishirasawa’s ability to consume or create history
Satori Komeiji’s ability to read minds
- Satori is able manipulate minds, such as using the memories she’s recalled to dump information/memories into one’s mind, and her Spell Cards have hypnotic effects to cause one to “seize” as well as unearth trauma and dig up memories
Koishi Komeiji’s ability to manipulate the subconscious, controlling the unconscious mind.
- Koishi is also noted to operate on a state of non-existence, lacking the five skandhas (those being form, sensation, perception, formation and consciousness) being a state of existence comparable to Buddhist Enlightenment, meaning even someone on that level of abstraction cannot interact with Innate Dream
Flandre Scarlet’s ability to destroy anything, which is capable of erasing beings from existence, even to the informational level, such as when she erased Yuuma
Remilia Scarlet’s Scarlet Mist, which would have erased the border between scarlet and white – the delineation between the boundary of existence and non-existence, conceptual erasure
- Remilia is also repeatedly stated to be able to manipulate fate itself, though the veracity of these claims is questionable, and she’s never provably used the ability on-screen
Mystia Lorelei’s ability to induce night blindness and confusion, cloud one’s judgement, or make someone commit suicide through her singing
Reisen Udongein Inaba (best girl)’s ability to manipulate wavelengths, which can induce insanity, create illusions, manipulate perception, and phase one out of existence. This also allows her to manipulate the waves that make up space and physical objects
Suika Ibuki’s ability to manipulate density, even of abstract concepts like people’s feelings
Sanae Kochiya’s ability to create miracles
Alice Margatroid can create effigies (aka voodoo dolls) that place a curse upon the subject whose name is attached to it, causing them to experience the effigy’s pain
- Alice confirms their legitimacy by musing that their effects were weakened due to Aya’s interference
Youmu Konpaku can extend her sword to infinite width, and Alice Margatroid’s Shanghai Dolls have lasers that can extend to infinity, and even they cannot affect her
Komachi Onozuka can manipulate distance, manipulating space to reduce infinite distances to finite ones, even for the Sanzu River. This also allows her to isolate objects in a pocket dimension wherein they are “decompressed”, split into individual pieces and allowing her to bypass physical matter and magical barriers alike
- Komachi also has a Spell Card that allows her to “life swap” with the opponent, swapping healthbars
Kaguya Houraisan’s ability to manipulate eternity and the instantaneous, allowing her to completely prevent change from occurring
Mamizou Futatsuiwa’s ability to transform an opponent into an animal
Hata no Kokoro’s ability to manipulate emotions, able to take away emotions similar to Tenshi’s Sword of Hisou and cause a village-wide emotional drought due to the loss of her Mask of Hope
Yukari Yakumo (best girl)’s ability to manipulate any and all boundaries, which in of itself extends to several abilities:
- Boundary Manipulation allows for Yukari to manipulate reality fundamentally, as everything is built upon the existence of boundaries, allowing her to do things like remove the skyline, causing neither mountain nor sky to exist, creating new existence or negating some existence. She could undermine all of reality by erasing all boundaries. It allows Yukari to, logically speaking, affect essentially anything. Reality Warping, Conceptual Manipulation, Conceptual Erasure and Boundary Manipulation.
  - [Read the Boundary Manipulation section to better understand its full capabilities]
- Yukari creating the Hakurei Barrier created new “rules” in reality, ensuring that everything within Gensokyo is the exact opposite of the Outside World, with anything contradicting that concept being incapable of passing the barrier, and can manipulate the boundary of wave and particle, altering a fundamental law in the universe in quantum mechanics, showcasing Law Manipulation
- Yukari’s ability is noted to be able to affect all of existence with her Boundary Manipulation, and she can even create and affect the boundary of reality and fantasy (or “illusion”), creating the distinction of what’s real and what’s illusory, showcasing Multiversal range, and affecting the distinction of R>F itself, essentially
- Yukari, from her conception, was designed as a meta character, with her ability able to manipulate stories, being able to kill entire genres of games like STGs, and manipulate the boundary separating the game’s world and the player’s world, implying some degree of meta-narrative control.

Everything above is simply just what’s present in Touhou 6-13.5. To be clear, while Reimu’s Innate Dream has rarely appeared post Touhou 11 era, in-universe its capabilities have never been contradicted, with it remaining as an ultimate technique that nobody can get around, and to this day remaining restricted for the sake of fair combat under Spell Card Rules. Therefore, it can be reasoned that characters after Touhou 11 and their abilities would fall under Innate Dream’s immunities as well, while more debatable. These abilities would include:

Seija Kijin’s ability to turn over anything
Raiko Horikawa’s ability to make anything follow a rhythm
Seiran’s ability to fire bullets from other dimensions
Doremy Sweet’s ability to eat, create, and destroy dreams
Sagume Kishin’s ability to invert a situation by speaking about it
Junko’s Purification, which is capable of purifying something down to a nameless state, an abstract, primordial state of existence that predates the existence of fundamental concepts
Shion Yorigami’s ability to make people unlucky, induced through Misfortune
Okina’s Life Energy & Mental Energy Manipulation (Okina gives her servants their power), which can forcibly empower one with her energy, absorb their energy or magic, and BFR them wherever she’d like
Yachie Kicchou’s ability to make one lose the will to fight back
Sannyo Komakusa’s ability to control people’s minds with tobacco smoke
Zanmu Nippaku’s ability to manipulate nothingness

If we wanted to keep going, we could, there’s dozens of other abilities across various characters in the franchise that could be noted down and be encompassed under Innate Dream’s immunities, but we feel we’ve noted down the most relevant and encompassing ones!

Resistances

Illusion Manipulation: Is perceptive enough to discern tanuki illusions from reality by eye and immediately see through one disguised as Marisa, which is impressive, as Tanuki illusions are powerful enough to trap a regular person in an illusory fake life where they’re unaware anything is different from reality. Reimu was also unimpressed by Reisen’s Spell Cards during the events of Imperishable Night, which involved several forms of misdirection and hallucinations, as well as being able to navigate and eventually break through Reisen’s hypnotic corridor, described as a “lunatic illusion”. This is also notable, as Reisen’s illusions are also created through manipulating wavelengths, which are the fundamental makeup of reality itself.
Body Puppetry & Corruption: Reimu is able to endure in the Dream World for long periods, despite the Dream World being able to corrupt the spirit, and she has a strong enough will to remain in control of her body despite the realm’s effects.
Madness Manipulation: Unaffected by Mystia’s singing, which drives people insane; was unfazed by the True Moon, whereas Youmu—who was similarly unaffected by Mystia’s singing—was driven mad and required special treatment from Eirin after gazing upon it.
Soul Absorption: Survived having her temperament absorbed by Tenshi, which was killing phantoms from the Netherworld and is further backed up by multiple statements equating temperament to spirit and phantoms.
Spirit Manipulation: Can endure spiritual explosions from Reisen; commonly fights against youkai that can consume or passively siphon off one’s spirit. Reimu’s been within the Forest of Magic several times, which has an out of control life-force that can alter the spirits of those who enter, and was fine.
Radiation Manipulation: During her prolonged battle against Okuu, Reimu suffered no ill effects from being in the epicenter of a highly radioactive burst of smoke. She’s also able to endure taking direct hits from Okuu’s nuclear fission based attacks.
Poison Manipulation: Reimu is able to hang out in areas like the Hill of the Nameless, a region filled with poisonous lilies, and the Forest of Magic, which is covered by both a dangerous miasma and mushroom spores with powerful mind-altering effects, on top of being unaffected by the Scarlet Mist, which renders most humans bedbound upon inhaling it, with its effects being comparable to a belladonna flower; emerged unscathed after being shrouded in Yamame’s poison, who can manipulate infectious diseases that cause fevers and infects those who get close to her with disease.
Matter / Anti-Matter Manipulation: Reimu can endure being hit by Yukari’s Skill Card “Universe of Matter and Anti-Matter”, creating two gaps of matter and anti-matter that collide and cause a distorting reaction.
Spatial Cutting: Reimu can fight her own Dream Self in AoCF, and can thus survive being hit by her own spatial cutting attacks.
Spatial Manipulation: Reimu’s Duplex Barrier is able to invert space, turning it inside out, and she can survive being within it.
Death Inducement: Reimu has entered Higan and survived just fine, despite the fact that as soon as you enter Higan, “you just plain die”. Any sort of physical contact with Ghosts makes one become “beckoned by Death”, and just being near a ghost will make you outright die. Reimu has physically grabbed phantoms in the past, and Yuyuko, someone Reimu has fought against and hung out with countless times, is a Ghost. Yuyuko specifically is capable of manipulating and inducing a person’s death, and can even send spirits to Nirvana through physical contact, and Reimu has battled her physically on multiple occasions.
Explosion Manipulation: Reimu can be hit by Flandre’s “Kyuu” technique in combat just fine without imploding, which “destroys” anything, causing it to explode. Her control over this ability is precise enough that she can target interior components of things, such as a lock of a door just by touching its handle.
- It should be noted that this isn’t her “Scarlet Nihility” technique, which is the one that erased Yuuma, rather just her typical “Kyuu” destruction inducement, though it is capable of erasing projectiles, so it could be argued higher.
Possession: Reimu wasn’t affected by the possession of a Choku-boron, a youkai that dissolves into sake and possesses anyone who drinks it, turning them despondent for an entire day afterwards (while Reimu did get blackout drunk from the Shinshu itself, she was not affected by the possession). Characters on a similar level as Reimu, like Byakuren, are able to resist being possessed by the average Vengeful Spirit, and while Reimu can be possessed by various Beast Spirits in WBaWC, they cannot fully control her.
Limited Memory Manipulation: While still able to be affected to a degree and occasionally falling victim to it, Reimu has been slowly gaining a resistance to memory altering effects from Miyoi Okunoda.
Extreme Cold: Reimu has repeatedly been within the presence of Phantoms, which are said to be so cold that physical contact with them can cause extreme frostbite, and that a group of them can lower the temperature of a room beyond the freezing point. She’s even held them in her hands physically. They are even considered to be very cold by Cirno, whose Spell Cards can (allegedly) reach Minus K temperatures, which Reimu has also dealt with consistently. Finally, she was fine after dueling Letty during winter, who can strengthen the natural chill of that season.
Extreme Heat: Can endure being within the Hell of Blazing Fires, the heat of which Murasa considered “unbearable” even after she had cooled it down.
Empathic Manipulation: The Primsriver Sisters’ music can make one either become completely depressed and lose all motivation or become so uplifted they can’t focus on anything but dance.
Mind Control & Soul Sealing: Reimu deflects a blow from Biten’s staff with the palm of her hand. Biten’s staff has the ability to seal away a part of their soul, allowing her to control them and make them obey, so Reimu resisted its effects. Reimu was also unaffected by the True Moon’s effects, which the Lunarians used to hypnotize and control the minds of those on Earth.
Mind Manipulation: Reimu is unaffected by the mental manipulations of phantoms, which can alter a person’s mind state when in their proximity, and even directly cause people to lose their minds.
Spiritual Transmutation & Purification: Reimu has travelled to Former Hell and travelled to Hell on many occasions, with the process of one’s soul travelling from the earth to a Hell slowly purifying and crystallizing one’s soul. Reimu was even transported to Avici as just her soul for a period of time, before returning it to her body, and remained fine.
Acausality: Reimu is unaffected by Keine devouring the history of the Human Village to seal it away, and isn’t erased/sealed from history herself.
- There is some debate amongst the team on if Keine erased the village’s history or simply “sealed it away” due to contradictory statements between TH8 and future material, but there would be a degree of acausality involved no matter what.
Misfortune Inducement / Probability Manipulation: Reimu was completely resistant to Shion’s explosive releases of Misfortune, and was able to overcome and defeat her even when constantly exposed to and surrounded by her misfortune.
Unconventional Resistance to Power Null: Magic in Touhou can still be cast if all other aspects of Magic are lacking as long as fortune is high enough; Reimu is the most fortunate character in the series and could continue to cast her magic just fine. While her Spell Cards can be temporarily nullified by a Last Word, her ability to use magic remains unaffected.
Sleep Inducement & Spiritual BFR: While initially susceptible to their effects, Reimu eventually grew resistant to Dream Souls, and can endure being hit by dozens of Doremy’s Dream Souls in Antimony of Common Flowers, which instantly put the victim to sleep and send their soul to the Dream World.
Possible Existence Erasure, Conceptual Erasure & Boundary Erasure: Reimu is capable of overlapping two boundaries to create a space without boundaries, effectively locally erasing/removing all boundaries. Despite the implications, she’s able to survive within these spaces without issue.

With Incident Stones:

Refer to Incident Stones segment

With Innate Dream, gains Immunity to:

Refer to Innate Dream segment

Forms

Doctor Strange

Zom-Possessed

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When the Green Scar Hulk returned to Earth to seek revenge on the heroes that took everything away from him, Doctor Strange, ever sentimental, did not want to outright kill the Hulk. Instead, after failing to get through to Hulk, he decided to speak to him in a language he understood: Throwing hands! Doctor Strange possessed a lockbox that contained a potion that held a fragment of Zom’s essence, an old, ultra-powerful, and extradimensional demonic foe from his past, and drank it, allowing Zom to possess him to amplify his strength and height to fight Hulk. While he’s in this form, Zom-Possessed Strange can manifest energy tendrils from his weaponized hands that can pierce into body parts and blow them up from the inside, spam demonic energy projectiles, and punch right through the Hulk’s gut. By channeling this small aspect of Zom, Strange went into a berserker rage barely capable of talking or controlling the demon.

While Stephen is able to resist this demonic influence when he saw that innocents were in danger, he admits that this much power and anger was hard to control. However, when you’re fighting on par with the Green Scar thanks to Zom, compromises are necessary… even if Hulk eventually won and knocked him out. Once the host of Zom is defeated like this, his spirit weakens, giving Wong the opportunity to use the Amphora to seal away this demonic essence before he can destroy our dimension, something Strange has done before. When he’s running around free and he isn’t sealed right away, Zom is capable of possessing technology like the Hulkbuster armor or take over devices to search data or hack them. And, naturally, he can attempt to possess characters like he did to Amadeus.

To give an idea of how much of a threat Zom really is, Dormammu and Eternity had to work together to bind and imprison him before. When Doctor Strange unleashed him into the universe in the past, he dwarfed the power of beings like Umar and this upset the delicate scales of magic so much that it required the Living Tribunal’s intervention to wave the problem away. After the World War Hulk incident, Zom’s remnants and influence remained in Strange for him to draw upon to use his hands after the Hulk broke them. However, after being killed, Strange revived under his influence and spread corruption and paralysis for a few minutes to take out a crowd of heroes and minions before Zom left again.

Magic Energy Giant

When magic was dying and Doctor Strange had to face Imperator, the one culling sorcerers across dimensions, Stephen made a last ditch effort to try to quickly overpower his foe with brute force. By forcibly draining the planet of its remaining magical energy (meaning, this use wasn’t the full force of Earth’s magic), Doctor Strange blasted it at Imperator and took on the towering form of a magical kaiju golem. While this energy-based construct does burn through its magic while being sustained, making it a timed transformation, it offers the Sorcerer Supreme a way to overwhelm unprepared enemies.

The Harvestman

Doctor Strange often makes deals with greater deities for more power or assistance, but in this case, he risked making a deal with Lady Death herself, becoming the Harvestman; Death’s counterpart to the Sorcerer Supreme. In this form, Strange is immune to pain due to being undead, able to tank hits from a Revenant Thunderstrike’s mace and casually get stabbed but be fine afterwards. He wields a scythe capable of decapitating Revenant beings, superpowered zombies possessed by thousands of souls. He also wields other powers such as telekinesis and the ability to summon the dead to aid him in battle. When battling against the Revenant Sentry, Harvestman Strange kissed Clea causing life and death energies to come against each other, and Clea says the raw output of metaphysical energy from this could wipe out Emerald City and everyone else from existence, forming a being of life/death that could equal Revenant Sentry, a being possessed by 100 million souls that was far stronger than Sorcerer Supreme Clea and Harvestman Strange a moment before.

Yggdrasil

The form Strange acquired after offering the corpse of Bats to the tree, which it deemed as a worthy offering. In return, Strange was granted the magic of Yggdrasil, letting him fight on par with and even overpower Sorcerer Supreme Loki and transmute an entire dimension. He can also summon the staff from this form to his aid whenever he wants. Initially summoned by Strange to unleash magic upon the symbiotes during King in Black, he would later attempt to give the staff back to Asgard. But that hardly matters since he ended up keeping it as part of his current tenure as…

Sorcerer Supreme of Asgard

Currently, Dr. Strange is working as the Sorcerer Supreme of Asgard. Judged by Holt, a flesh and blood interpretation of the Yggdrasil World Tree itself, Strange was deemed worthy of being Asgard’s very own Sorcerer Supreme, as Strange was stranded on Asgard due to the Bifrost Bridge being broken on account of Thor’s death. In this form, Strange has already showed immense proficiency in magics not seen in the Marvel universe, such as learning scythe magic, magic that exists in a gap between what is and what could have been, unleashing a side of magic from potential, from missed opportunities, and from events that do not happen, which Strange admits is too unpredictable and powerful, or neophyte magic, a darkness that overtakes Strange for control and lets him channel demonic powers.

He can summon various archaic weapons such as Parakkion’s Mace, Tarakkion’s Battle Axe, and Karakkion’s Broadsword, make portals from Alfheim to Heven, cast a reinvigoration spell to recharge himself after 37 hours of no sleep, stop time with the Inhalations of Tioinar, use a sliver of his astral self, make magic barriers, use Tapilliak’s Wicked Contortions to bind foes, and cast insta-healing spells that automatically repair damage to his jaw and cheekbone.

Reimu Hakurei

Baby Reimu

This isn’t a special form or anything, it’s just an official image of Reimu as a baby to celebrate the birth of ZUN’s child, and isn’t she the cutest little thing?

Not as cute as Marisa wanting uppies though #SUPERTRUTHNOVA

Vengeful Spirit

_{ow the edge}

After a long session of beating from the vengeful spirit Mizuchi Miyadeguchi (in the body of Utsuho Reiuji), Vengeful Spirits who were watching the fight decided to help Reimu in her fight because of how captivated they were – amplifying the Shrine Maiden into becoming the most powerful vengeful spirit present in the battlefield. This state massively amplifies Reimu’s power, as, now, Mizuchi was not only struggling to land blows, but even if they did, they didn’t have any effect at all. Because she was now overwhelming her opponent, Reimu managed to two-shot the possessed Utsuho, with her last attack being the Black Fantasy Seal – which is just Fantasy Seal from Hot Topic.

Support

Doctor Strange

Mister Misery

Doctor Strange is incredibly intelligent, but sometimes he doesn’t really consider the consequences of his own actions. After years of constant magical transference of his physical injuries, mystical mutations, and spiritual infections, Stephen and Wong continuously swept it down into the cellar of the Sanctum Sanctorum until it all congealed into a sentient monster literally made out of Strange’s pain and suffering. This unique entity has a highly malleable body that speaks, shapeshifts, and grows out multiple mouths and constructs, taking on numerous members of the wizard-culling Empirikul. Because it is made of suffering, Mister Misery, as he chose to call himself, can’t feel any pain, which helps when taking on threats like Imperator, someone who killed tons of Sorcerer Supremes. This being born out of black magic even fought Strange himself, who had to try to slow it down while he was low on magic with a magic sword and ice gum. In fact, elements like ice and fire can effectively fend Mister Misery off, but being made of mystical pain and backlash means he has other tools at his disposal.

He’s able to attack multiple people at once with various growths from his body, and he feeds on misery itself, a process which strengthens him. And while he can be weakened and overloaded with too much suffering until he bursts, he’s also still resilient enough to survive being partially or fully consumed. However, his biggest asset is the way that he can both possess other people and take the form of their clothing, or merge with Doctor Strange to form a malleable “armor” around him. While “bonded” to someone, he can fight on par with other sorcerers like Brother Voodoo, and Strange can use Mister Misery to magically empower his punches with explosive mystic might that can sever tech-based connections. Now, while it would be correct to assert that Mister Misery hates Doctor Strange to a homicidal extent, he still is willing to work with him to kill a common enemy because he wants to be the one to kill Stephen himself. Currently though, he’s been freed and is out there terrorizing Strange’s schools or other schmucks that come across him. You might wanna get on that, Stephen.

Bats

Once a normal basset hound, Bats is the ghostly companion of Doctor Strange, enchanted so that humans could understand him in perfect English by hearing him “Speak dog”. As a dog, Bats doesn’t require stamina or food, but due to being a dog, he constantly is asking Stephen to go on walks or get a bite to eat! Bats also has quite a few abilities, such as his ability to possess people. When Strange was turned into a Spirit of Vengeance by Mephisto, Bats took over his body and piloted Strange while having a conversation with him on the inside. More scary however, is his connection to the God of Dogs (yes, this is real). Desperate to help his owner in battle, Bats called out from the Crypt of Shadows to a god, and the God of Dogs answered! Because that exists apparently. The God of Dogs deemed Bats to be a good boy, and appointed him as his avatar. Using this power, Bats grew in size, and ripped out the vampiric soul that was possessing Doctor Strange by biting his ghost. As awesome as this power is however, Bats cannot retain this form for long, or else he could be wiped from existence.

Reimu Hakurei

The Hakurei God

The God of the Hakurei Shrine that Reimu reveres, and a God of which… almost nothing is known about. That’s right, Reimu doesn’t even know the name of the God she’s meant to worship and spread the faith of. It’s not entirely her fault though, as there are very few historical records that reveal the name of the Hakurei God, leaving it a mystery that very few people know.

The power of the Gods is heavily reliant on Faith. Faith is a reverence toward existence, fear of retribution for one’s actions and something that enriches one’s life. Essentially, the more people revere and fear the Gods, the more powerful they become. And similarly, losing Faith makes a God unable to use any of their divine virtues, something equated to death for Gods.

Based on the Yin-Yang Orb, where the Hakurei God resides, it would appear that their primary blessing is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Youkai Extermination. As such, Reimu’s constant conflicts with Youkai and the renown she has been accumulating as an exterminator themselves might be what keeps Faith in the Hakurei God flowing, even if Reimu herself doesn’t know it. That being said, it’s unlikely that any of Reimu’s abilities are reliant upon their blessing or even Faith itself, as this is never shown to be the case, and Byakuren has acknowledged that they’re heavily lacking in faith to begin with, much to their chagrin.

Genjii

_{Not a skeleton; he’s a turtle with a beard.}

In her earliest days as Shrine Maiden of the Hakurei Shrine, Reimu had yet to master the ability of flight that she displays so commonly nowadays. Back then, she had the assistance of Genjii the turtle, who had gained the power of flight after living for many years. Reimu would ride on Genjii’s shell as a platform for her earliest journeys, but turtle gramps has long since retired and now lives a comfortable life at a lake in the back of the shrine.

Aunn Komano

Once a normal komainu statue, Aunn Komano was given life by the Secret God Okina Matara, and has since become a fellow guardian of the Hakurei Shrine, as a volunteer. Aunn can do a lot of what Reimu does, being able to utilize Ability Cards in battle and fire various danmaku patterns, but her unique ability is splitting into two bodies, allowing her to strike from multiple places at once or leave a body guarding the shrine while she goes off on adventures.

Feats

Doctor Strange

Overall

Has defended the Earth from countless supernatural threats time and time again
Is a member of the Defenders and the Avengers
Fought in the War of the Seven Spheres against the Trinity of Ashes for 5,000 years
Defeated Dracula, Baron Mordo, Dormammu, Ghost Rider, Shuma-Gorath, Satannish, Galactus, Nightmare, and the In-Betweener
Avenged his own death with the help of his past self
Served as Lady Death’s servant known as the Harvestman
Helped found the Illuminati with the likes of Iron Man, Namor, Mr. Fantastic, and Black Bolt
Became the Sorcerer Supreme of Asgard
Stated in his first ever appearance to know “all”.
Opening narration has described him as omnipotent.
Eternity considers him a worthy disciple of the Ancient One.
Strange has fought over a thousand battles.
Is considered the “unchallenged and uncontested master of the mystic arts”.
Even people who don’t believe in magic respect his abilities.
Jumped Calizuma with the boys (Hell Yeah)
Strange frequently gets asked to appear on TV.

Power

Speed

Durability

Reimu Hakurei

Overall

Every fight she ever gets into looks like this bullshit
Has maintained and protected the Great Hakurei Barrier her entire life
Is best friends and friendly rivals with Marisa Kirisame (Touhou’s best character – Kirb) and regularly contends with her
Was so dominant in combat that she was one of the main reasons the Spell Card Rules had to be put into place to give others a chance
Is the only character in the franchise to have an ability so busted that it had to be explicitly restricted in their rules of combat
Has helped mold Gensokyo into a land of acceptance to all, giving all who enter a second chance at life and a chance to coexist, truly creating a Paradise of Fantasy, and is well loved among humans and youkai
Has resolved dozens of Incidents, protecting Gensokyo and beyond from all sorts of existential threats
Has put up with Aya Shameimaru running slander articles on her Shrine constantly
Has run a fade with and defeated Sariel, Mima, Yumemi Okazaki, Yuuka Kazami, Shinki, Remilia Scarlet, Yuyuko Saigyouji, Kaguya Houraisan, Shikieiki Yamaxanadu, Kanako Yasaka, Tenshi Hinanawi, Utsuho Reiuji, Byakuren Hijiri, Toyosatomimi no Miko, Hata no Kokoro, Shimyoumaru Sukuna, Sumireko Usami, Junko, Jo’on and Shion Yorigami, Okina Matara, Keiki Haniyasushin, Chimata Tenkyuu, The Fortune Teller, Kasen Ibaraki, Mizuchi Miyadeguchi, Ariya Iwanga… and like 100 other characters man, we can’t name them all.
Has a liver of titanium
Has met the Annoying Dog of UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE fame, and Touhou as a whole inspired Toby Fox
Is part of the NicoNico Big Three alongside Miku and Haruka
Is an indie / doujin icon and massive influence across a variety of franchises, if you look deep enough, you’ll find Touhou somewhere in it.
Got referenced in Hulk vs Godzilla!

Power

Kicked a warehouse door so hard it flew off its hinges and cracked to pieces
Lifted a large hunk of Palladium Ore
Stalemated Son Biten in an extensive staff duel
Threatened to “level” Kanako’s fusion reactor, which is a rather large facility
Shattered large rocks with her danmaku (0.02 Tons of TNT, Small Building Level)
Vaporized Rika’s Evil Eye Σ in a blast of light, which was many times stronger than her original tank
Caused a massive explosion while clashing with Okuu(0.332 – 1.51 Tons of TNT, Building Level)
- Their battle grew so intense that it erupted from the underground, causing the Geyser Center to explode in an eruption that caused an earthquake throughout all of Gensokyo and launched debris all over (At Least 901.74 Kilotons of TNT, Large Town Level+)
In a bad ending of Touhou 1, Reimu’s Yin Yang Orb caused an explosion visible from the curvature of the Earth (39 Teratons of TNT, Country Level)
In another Bad Ending of Touhou 1, Reimu’s Yin Yang Orb, upon malfunctioning, created an explosion large enough to nearly instantly vaporize the Earth and (seemingly) the moon in one blast(5.8 Yottatons, Large Planet Level)
- While the endings say “Just Kidding” at the end, this likely refers to the ending being non-canonical rather than the feat being unreplicable/unusable, as feats of this level are consistent in PC-98
Destroyed the barrier separating Gensokyo and the Netherworld, thinning the lines between the two realms, with the Netherworld being an infinitely-sized space-time (Universal)
Deflected the attacks of a serious Tenshi Hinanawi, who was attacking with intent to kill (Multiversal, check Scaling)
- Everyone in the competition was using danmaku capable of killing
Killed Mokou eleven times and inflicted so much pain upon her she couldn’t continue fighting
Overpowered and defeat Shion Yorigami after she stopped holding back, releasing all her misfortune and auras at once
Defeated Sumireko Usami while she was channeling the power of 7 Occult Balls into her body, which would allow her to destroy the Hakurei Barrier, blowing herself and the barrier up(Outerversal)
- The Occult Balls are composed of matter, energy and faith from the Outside World. Sumireko had possession of the Lunar Capital Occult Ball at the time of this fight, with Miko stating that said Ball’s power was comparable to that of a White Hole, releasing infinite amounts of Occult Energy
Can weaken the Hakurei Barrier with her own power, which is the boundary determining the distinction of reality and fantasy

Speed

Reflected one of Marisa’s star danmaku from Star Dust Reverie without looking
Can dodge attacks from the likes of Kyouko Kasodani and the Prismriver Sisters, who attack using soundwaves (Supersonic)
Flew from the center of a city to the outside of it in a matter of seconds mid-fight
Dodged Okuu’s mushroom cloud explosion
Can graze Remilia’s “Spear the Gungnir”, which has speed “like a laser”
Can dodge Yumemi’s “magic” which is composed of positively charged photons and light waves (Lightspeed)
Is able to fire bullets of light for attack
Was able to consistently outspeed Ibaraki-Douji, even when their attacks were right in front of her face, who’s capable of deflecting her light bullets
Crossed Kaian Passageway 4, a passageway within the Dream World, that connects Gensokyo to the Lunar Capital, crossing an interstellar distance in the process described as “like outer space”, with it taking 6 to 8 minutes to beat this stage depending on how fast you go through dialogue (275,940c, MFTL+)
While travelling across Makai, traversed a sea of stars before eventually reaching the arm of a galaxy (5.85 Billion c, MFTL+)
Through sheer speed, was able to cross Kaguya’s Endless Corridor, which is an infinitely long corridor composed of infinitely linked gaps in spacetime (Infinite)
Is capable of catching up to the Palanquin Ship at full speed, which was capable of crossing the infinitely sized Makai in order to reach Hokkai, which resides at its edge, with the ship’s journey being said to transcend space-time (Infinite)
Can travel across the Sanzu River, a river with an infinite width filled with an infinite amount of water, which also acts as the space between all Otherworlds, a spatio-temporal realm that strongly resists travel between worlds (Infinite)
With the Gale Geta Ability Card, is able to move with Aya Shameimaru’s movement speed, with Aya being repeatedly described asthe fastest in Gensokyo
- Aya can even move so fast it requires Sakuya stopping time to be able to track her

Durability

Scaling

Doctor Strange

Marvel Icons

It should come as no surprise that Doctor Strange has fought alongside a lot of the big names in Marvel (or fought with them). Be it tussling with Asgardians, boxing his fellow Defenders, or taking on wild cards like Ghost Riders or Sentry, every opponent he’s faced knows that challenging the Master of the Mystic Arts is a fight they cannot take lightly. So, a lot of the time, various heroes will turn to him as their resident problem solver or last line of defense during a cosmic crisis or when a hero goes rogue. As such, his numerous battles with or against them allows him to easily scale to these characters.

The Mystic Cabal

Considering that Strange is the Master of the Mystic Arts and the veteran Marvel magic user that other magicians learn from or compare themselves to, it’s only natural to compare him to other sorcerers. Additionally, his tenure as Sorcerer Supreme should allow him to naturally be comparable to other wielders of the same title after it started getting passed around in recent years. This would include mystics like the Ancient One, Brother Voodoo, Doctor Doom, Scarlet Witch, and… apparently Isaac Newton was once the Sorcerer Supreme too? Regardless, this would also easily allow scaling to other magic wielders and villainous wizards that haven’t achieved the title too.

Otherworldly Invaders

As the defender of our dimension, every so often a big bad interdimensional entity will try to invade and cause problems. This happens so frequently that enormous threats end up knowing Doctor Strange well enough to understand that he’s a major player, one that requires lots of planning and contingencies to get out of the way of their plans. Many of these forces, at this point, consider him as a primary “nemesis”, which includes opponents that hail from Circles of Hell, the Dark Dimension, the Dream Dimension, and even some of the Mystic Principalities that Stephen namedrops in his spells sometimes. Fighting all these entities on a regular basis should mean he can handle them enough to scale.

Cosmic Linchpins

Be it through his regular magic managing to hold its own against them or channeling amplifications that allow Strange to fight them, the Abstracts of Marvel are no stranger to the presence, identity, and might of the Sorcerer Supreme. When a mere mortal man can hang with the very beings that define the concepts of reality themselves, his earned respect from the foundations of actuality are more than understandable. Additionally, because one of his big feats involves briefly matching a full Infinity Gauntlet, this would naturally require the cosmically fundamental gems known as the Infinity Stones, including instances when used individually or in unison, to be examined for scaling purposes as well. Either way, Doctor Strange has multiple avenues to reach their levels of mind-boggling power.

Reimu Hakurei

Gensokyo’s Fairies & Youkai

Reimu has historically kicked the ass of Gensokyo’s various low and high grade youkai not only across 30 years of games and manga, regularly effortlessly defeating all kinds of opponents both with and without Spell Card Rules. In fact, Reimu was so unstoppable in combat to the point that the Spell Card System and its Rules of Combat had to be incorporated just so Youkai could actually stand a chance in combat against her, as Reimu was so dominant in combat that Youkai were beginning to feel they were losing their purpose. Therefore, Reimu should easily scale to most small fry youkai, fairies, and average opponents in the series.

Reimu is vastly more powerful than various fodder fairies, even stronger ones like the Three Fairies of Light and the strongest fairy Cirno, who all find themselves ragdolled by her, even as a group. Fairies can:
- Sunny Milk can react to and deflect light projectiles (60%-80%c, Relativistic+)
- The Three Fairies of Light can survive mid-air natural lightning strikes
- Two rain fairies were capable of generating a localized rainstorm around Kourindou
- A single rainy season fairy generated a local rainstorm around Kourindou that was so intense it was “as if there was a white blanket [of rain] covering the area”, and that it even developed into a thunderstorm (0.5 Tons of TNT, Building Level)
- Cirno and Alice were able to survive the Goliath Doll’s massive explosion
- Cirno was able to use her ice magic to generate enough cold to create a large ice hill (49.8 Tons of TNT, City Block Level)
Reimu tackles, trips, and restrains Nitori Kawashiro easily, and has defeated her on multiple occasions.
- Nitori can also create flash floods that are tall enough to reach skyscrapers on the Outside World stage (4.8 kilotons, Small Town Level)
- Nitori Kawashiro can manipulate an entire river’s worth of water and throw it into the sky faster than a human can react (6.5-16.3 megatons, City Level)
Murasa is capable of lifting, twirling, and tossing around entire ship anchors, which, based on their size, should weigh up to approximately 15 tons, and she can throw up to 12 of these at once
Raiko Horikawa creates a large magical thunderstorm across Gensokyo
Youkai are able to alter the seasons locally
Prior to the spell card rules, battles between youkai threatened to destroy Gensokyo itself. Gensokyo contains the original form of the Yatsugatake Mountain, which is larger than Mount Fuji (At Least Mountain Level)
The Great Catfish, using a portion of the power of Meiling’s dream self, stated he would be capable of shaking the Earth and disintegrating the planet’s surface just from moving (646.57 Petatons – 61.26 Zettatons, Multi-Continental to Planet Level)
- The variance of this number depends on the calculated size of Earth in Touhou, as it’s arguably bigger than our Earth
Megumu Iizunumaru is said to possess the ability to manipulate the starry sky (Multi-Solar System)
Keine Kamishirasawa’s Were-Hakutaku form is capable of consuming and creating history, with doing so “creating the future”, altering the timeline (Universal)
Minamitsu opened a hole in the bottom of the Sanzu River(Possibly At Least 5D)
- Kutaka is capable of repairing damage to the Sanzu River, including tears that access other realms
Chiyari Tenkajin, a youkai who the protagonists can keep up with, is also capable of crossing the Sanzu(Infinite Speed)
- Even simple Beast Spirits have been able to cross the Sanzu River as well

Marisa Kirisame

Marisa Kirisame is the secondary (and true best) protagonist of Touhou, and Reimu’s best friend and consistent (friendly) rival! Reimu and Marisa regularly battled one another before the advent of Spell Card Rules in PC-98, and regularly fight afterwards, with it noted that amongst their battles, Reimu usually comes out the victor. While Marisa arguably has higher raw firepower, Reimu is able to easily keep up with her and regularly overcome Marisa, forcing her to constantly train to keep up. Marisa even notes that she relies on the rules of Danmaku against Reimu, and the trick to winning against Reimu is beating her before she gets serious, showing at bare minimum, they’re relative stats wise.

Marisa survives falling from the top of Genbu Ravine all the way to the bottom completely unharmed
Marisa defends against and casually flicks aside a massive Onbashira (61.09085 Metric Tons)
Marisa survives a large explosion caused by Flandre
Survived getting thrown against a tree so hard it snapped it in two
Marisa and Flandre’s fight was causing localized earthquakes and tremors near the Myouren Temple
Marisa’s lasers can reach the Moon
Marisa dodges a beam of refracted natural sunlight (2.76%c, Sub-Relativistic)
Marisa’s Master Spark is stated to move at the speed of light (Light Speed)
Marisa dodges her own light-speed Master Spark after it was reflected back at her (FTL)
Marisa fires a light-speed Master Spark, jumps dozens of meters into the air, and fires another Master Spark before the first connects with its target (FTL)
Marisa’s Mini-Hakkero can vaporize entire mountains, with the only mountain in Gensokyo being Youkai Mountain, the original form of Mount Yatsugatake, which is larger than Mount Fuji (2.703 Teratons, Small Country Level)
Marisa defeated Kaguya Houraisan in a fight, and Kaguya was shocked by Marisa’s strength, stating that she was comparable to members of the Lunar Capital.

Incident Resolvers

_{Sorry for the lack of Sanae; she didn’t have a TH9 render to use.}

Reimu scaling to her fellow incident resolvers is a no-brainer; not only have they shared the same experiences and overcome the same threats, but they’ve fought and matched each other numerous times, with Reimu having multiple victories under her belt against everyone here. On top of that, several of her Ability Cards can lend her the stats and/or abilities of some of them.

With enough focus, Youmu can cut out sound itself (Supersonic)
Sumireko Usami can react to and dodge cloud to ground lightning attacks from Iku Nagae (Massively Hypersonic+)
Alice Margatroid is capable of dodging and moving in tandem with Patchouli Knowledge’s Spell Card, Moon & Metal Sign “Sunlight Reflector”, which uses reflected sunlight to attack
In Soku, one of Sakuya’s Spell Cards is “Light Speed “C. Ricochet “”, where she throws knives that move at the speed of light, and in order to throw knives fast enough to move at light speed, she’d have to be moving at that speed herself. (FTL)
- ‘c’ is also the shorthand notation for lightspeed in a vacuum, meaning these knives continue to ricochet at light speed. (FTL)
Sakuya is directly stated to be faster than light(FTL)
- While in context this likely refers to her time-stopping, Sakuya is shown to have a multitude of light speed feats, making this consistent.
Reisen Udongein Inaba was capable of sealing every single door within Kaguya’s infinite corridor with the exception of one, meaning she would have had to cross essentially the entire infinite corridor to lock all but one door within it (Infinite Speed)
Aya Shameimaru can pick up a small rock
Reisen and Tewi facetanked an explosion from their own marketable figure that could be seen above the tree line, with Tewi being at the epicenter (6.19 Tons of TNT, Large Building Level)
Sanae Kochiya’s Spell Card “Miracle “Daytime Guest Stars”” is capable of greatly increasing the brightness of stars, to the point that they’re visible during the day (6.81 – 13.62 Ronnatons, Large Planet Level)
Sakuya is capable of merging the past, present and future of the timeline all into a single point (Universal)
Sakuya is capable of manipulating “imaginary vertical time”
Youmu can channel channel enough energy in her blade to make it infinite in width, before then swinging said blade (Infinite Speed, Possibly Infinite Lifting Strength)

Gensokyo’s Greatest Threats

Over the years Reimu has fought and defeated various threats of all kinds, ranging from powerful magicians, celestials, and even gods, and proved to be more than a match for them, often surprising them with her power and capabilities. Many of these characters Reimu has either directly defeated in combat or defeated someone far beyond their capabilities, making scaling to these ranges quite easy.

Byakuren was able to surprise Flandre and throw her through the roof of her temple
Byakuren blocked an attack from Flandre whose shockwaves fractured the ground dozens of feet beneath them
Mizuchi Miyadeguchi blows up the Hakurei Shrine, leveling it
Seiga is stated to have the power to fight off the messengers of Hell, the Kishins. The Kishin Suiki can move all of the water in Gensokyo to create a water pillar that dwarfs mountains (1.17 gigatons, Large Mountain Level)
The Hell of Blazing Fires’ energy is the same energy as the sun, with its temperature and heat being regulated by Utsuho, and she has the power to completely reignite it (91.5 Petatons, Multi-Continent Level)
Utsuho can create a Subterranean Sun, a real miniature star through nuclear fusion (2.9 Exatons, Multi-Continent Level)
Utsuho claimed that her Nuclear Fusion powers would allow her to “melt every corner of the surface”
Reimu has defeated Yumemi in combat before the creation of Spell Card Rules. Yumemi was capable of putting the moon in Geosynchronous Orbit of the Earth (109.7 Zettatons, Planet Level)
Random celestials are capable of sustaining the light of entire stars for up to a year or more (115.7 Yottatons, Large Planet Level)
Byakuren can cause the entire sky, including the stars, to rotate at speed so high that it appears as nothing but a blur(28.465 Foe, Solar System Level)
- Multi-Stellar Lifting Strength
Reimu defeated Shinki before the advent of Spell Card Rules, Shinki being the Goddess and Creator of Makai, a realm containing a massive starry sky, constellations, a galaxy, and is even stated to be an infinitely sized realm (Galaxy – Infinite Universal)
Reimu has defeated Kaguya Houraisan in a fight, Kaguya being capable of creating an infinite corridor made up of infinitely linked miniscule pieces of spacetime(Infinite Universal)
- While breaking the spell of the endless night, Kaguya caused the moon to “jerk forward with frightening speed and disappear beyond the horizon”
- Reimu was capable of repeatedly killing Fujiwara no Mokou in combat (she lived it’s okay) in an all out fight, even to the point of inflicting so much pain upon her she didn’t want to continue fighting. Mokou has fought with and killed Kaguya for centuries.
  - Mokou is noted to “never hold back” in her fights, that she never has, and it’s her way of life
Dream Tenshi begins exerting her power, and begins literally shaking the Heavens itself, forcing Shion and Joon to go all out, before Tenshi threatens to destroy all of Heaven, Earth and recreate the entire world, before trying to kill them (108,717 Centillion x Uni / Infinite Universal / Multiversal+)
Doremy Sweet is capable of creating, erasing, and destroying entire dreams, containing entire worlds equal to reality, including infinitely sized spaces like the Netherworld, and transcendent realms like the Outside World (Infinite Universal – Outerversal)

The Scarlet Sisters

Reimu has generally proven superior to vampire Remilia Scarlet on many occasions, defeating her in duels multiple times, defeating opponents considered stronger than her (such as Oni), and has even physically overpowered her by putting her in an armbar headlock she couldn’t escape. More recently, Reimu has also obtained the Scarlet Devil Incident Stone, which has a direct copy of Remilia’s magical power, and can even replicate her Scarlet Mist, further cementing scaling. Reimu has also contended with Remilia’s sister, Flandre Scarlet on multiple occasions, who’s stated to be even more powerful than her. After their first fight, Reimu left Flandre so exhausted that she “couldn’t even shoot smoke anymore”.

Devas of the Mountain

The Devas, or rather, the Oni, are some of the strongest residents in all of Gensokyo, and Reimu’s had quite a few clashes with them. Reimu has fought Suika Ibuki, the High Tension Japanese Goblin on several occasions, and her Innate Dream is strong enough to one-shot Suika in the fighting games. Yuugi Hosighuma, the physically strongest Oni of them all, considers Reimu good enough in a fight that she was willing to go all out against her, and even came out exhausted after her fight, though so was Reimu.

They also similarly had a fight in Lotus Eaters, with Reimu causing Yuugi pain with a strike to the head, and it implied that they continued to fight after the chapter ended (though Yuugi was also able to knock Reimu flat on her ass with a surprise kick from behind). Reimu also believes herself to be fully capable of exterminating Onis without issue, and has exterminated many in the past. Reimu was also able to outpace Kasen Ibaraki, and with the empowerment of the Onikirimaru, could completely disintegrate her. While Reimu likely isn’t exactly as physically strong as an Oni, her magical power and extermination abilities are fully capable of matching and exterminating them, which should allow her to scale.

Ibaraki-Douji punched the ground hard enough to fracture it in a large surrounding area
Kasen Ibaraki one-tapped a lightning lizard, and facetanked death explosion at point blank radius, and was completely unaffected(2.873 Kilotons, Small Town Level)
- Said lightning lizard was capable of causing spontaneous combustion within humans, as well as creating a localized fire that can nearly instantly burn a house to the ground (220.37 Tons of TNT, Multi City Block)
Kasen’s pet, Mukou, can generate a large thunderstorm cloud.
Kasen’s Dragon, Koutei, is capable of generating a large storm cloud over the Hakurei shrine (549.382 tons of TNT, Multi-City Block+)
Yuugi can generate enough heat to burn up entire human villages in an instant, just by raising her hands (55.065 – 110.13 Kilotons of TNT, Town Level)
Suika is stated to be able to “tear down” Youkai Mountain by herself, with Youkai Mountain being confirmed as the original form of the Yatsugatake Mountain, which was even larger than Mount Fuji (Mountain Level)
Suika is capable of tossing around miniature orbs containing the mass of black holes within them(238.5 Petatons of TNT, Multi-Continental)
- These orbs then transform into massive black holes which collapse shortly afterwards (2073.8 Quettatons of TNT, Large Star Level)
Suika Ibuki shattered all of the Heavens in order to destroy the Moon’s reflection, a feat performed extremely casually, just as a threat. (108,717 Centillion x Uni / Infinite Universal / Multiversal+)
- Suika then used her density manipulation power to restore the heavens, piecing it back together after annihilating it, with it noted as being in a “very short” period of time that very few witnessed(MFTL+, 223.5 Octotrigintillion C – Infinite Speed)
  - This speed value would also apply to the act of Suika destroying the moon, with it noting the destruction was “sudden”
Okina implies that Yuugi, when serious, may be even stronger than Flandre Scarlet
Hermits such as Kasen are capable of creating a Senkai, which is essentially an extradimensional pocket dimension which is able to be expanded to large sizes. They can contain large mountainous regions, as well as a planet with a moon, and even starry skies, with a statement that they can be “expanded infinitely into any nook or cranny” (Large Planet – Multi Solar System, up to Infinite Universal)
Kasen is able to use an incantation to open a hole in the Hakurei Barrier to allow passage to the Outside World

Yukari Yakumo

Yukari Yakumo is the single strongest youkai in Gensokyo, and one of the strongest characters in all of Touhou. Reimu and her have battled on a few occasions, with Yukari often implied to be holding back in their duels. However, at Reimu’s absolute strongest, even Yukari is unable to affect her in Innate Dream, and Reimu’s strongest spells are fully capable of incapacitating her. With the Incident Stones, Reimu also gains the magical power of one of Yukari’s equals, Okina Matara, further supporting scaling.

Yukari regularly uses exploding trains as a form of attack (0.75 tons of TNT, Building Level)
Yukari provides Reimu a shield against Okuu’s Spell, “The Crow Who Stole the Sun”, which was a star several times larger than the mountains in the foreground(156.67 Tons of TNT – 252.49 Tons of TNT, Multi-City Block)
- This value gets even higher when accounting for Okuu’s stars being real stars (1.1 Petatons of TNT, Continental)
- Okuu’s Artificial Sun dispersed the massive vortex of Vengeful Spirits, which extended from the the top of Youkai Mountain, up to the clouds, and was darkening the entire sky
- The blast also vaporized a large chunk of stone on impact, leaving a large crater (162.47 Kilotons of TNT, Large Town Level)
Yukari is said to be fully capable of creating or destroying Gensokyo (At Least Mountain Level, likely far higher)
Is said to have created several constellations, including ones like the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt (Solar System – Multi-Solar System)
Yukari is, similar to Doremy, capable of creating dreams that are “eternally expanding” (Infinite Universal – Outerversal)
Ran and Chen move FTE
Yukari’s Spell Card, Outer Force “Infinite Superspeed Flying Object”, is able to fire lasers at infinite superspeeds, taking it at face value (Infinite Speed)
Ran Yakumo, Yukari’s Shikigami, who is reliant on her power, was capable of comprehending and calculating the Sanzu River enough in order to make a mathematical formula that calculates the width of the river, even noted to take several thousands of formulae, and the equation is so complicated that nobody else can verify it. This means that Ran was capable of comprehending and perceiving infinite information, and even properly solving the equation. (Infinite Speed)
- Yukari Yakumo is stated to be even more intelligent and capable of even more complex calculations than Ran, and can do what Ran is capable of (and more) “in an instant” (Infinite Speed)
It’s said that there aren’t really any youkai in Gensokyo who could stand against Yukari
Yukari is the creator of the Great Hakurei Barrier, which is the distinction between fantasy and reality, determining Gensokyo as an illusory less real world compared to the Outside World (Outerversal)
Yukari’s Boundary Manipulation is powerful enough to fundamentally undermine reality, as all of existence is built upon the existence of Boundaries, and with Yukari being capable of erasing all boundaries, she could reduce all of existence to nothing but a single enormous object(Multiversal+ – Outerversal)
- Boundary Manipulation’s power is noted to be “immeasurable”, and that it exerts a pressure upon the user that they must be able to withstand.
- Seeing as Yukari can manipulate all boundaries, and could erase all of them, she would reasonably be able to affect the Boundary of Red and White, existence and non-existence itself, like Remilia Scarlet. (Multiversal+ – Outerversal)
Yukari’s ability is directly compared to that of the Gods, with the Dragon God being capable of creating everything in existence through being made of the three perfect elements, and spreading the seven colors of the rainbow, which are directly tied to the gods. Boundaries also notably encompass the “colors”, such as red, white and black, further supporting the scaling. (Multiversal+ – Outerversal)

The Incident Stones

The Incident Stones are some truly powerful artifacts, containing the magical power of a wide variety of characters, offering scaling routes to some especially powerful foes and phenomena!

The Blue Season Incident Stone directly provides the magical power of Okina Matara:
- Okina folded basically every relevant fairy in the franchise without ever getting out of her chair, including the Hell Fairy, Clownpiece
  - Clownpiece can create miniature moons
- Okina can remake Gensokyo from the ground up (At Least Mountain Level)
- Okina’s magical power overflowing within the fairies caused the seasons around Gensokyo to rapidly oscillate and change into disarray
- Through the power amp provided by Okina, Sumireko was able to fight off the Dream world versions of Hecatia Lapislazuli and Junkowhile they were trying to kill Sumireko
  - Hecatia was stated to be the strongest character in the series during the events of Touhou 15, providing significant upscaling/scaling to characters like Yukari, Suika or Yuugi.
The Scarlet Devil Incident Stone has a direct copy of Remilia’s magical power, and can replicate the Scarlet Mist (Multiversal+ – Outerversal)
The Creature Red Incident Stone contains Saki’s aura and magical power, and Saki is not only the physically strongest Beast Spirit, but was also able to push Reimu to exhaustion in a fight even when Reimu was amplified by a Beast Spirit, implying a further amp in power with this stone.

Cosmology

Marvel Comics

The Universe

The universe is quite the big place, with more stars and planets than anyone can really grasp a picture of. In real life, the observable universe as we know it spans about 93 billion light-years in diameter and theories range to basically any finite number above that all the way to infinity. Marvel’s universe isn’t dissimilar from that, in that we have statements of the universe being at least a trillion light-years in radius, having its population of centillions of living beings insinuating that the size is up to 100 Octooctogintilion times larger than our universe, and with cosmically attuned characters stating it’s infinite.

In more recent times, the universe has seemed to only get larger. According to Galactus, an alt. Earth that an evil Sue Storm is from exists within the Earth-616 universe as part of the expanded region of space after the Reckoning War, where the universe was restored to its original size of being 10x larger than what we’d seen up until now. Per Reed, another Earth exists within their own universe because “with enough space–and enough time–random fluctuations dictate that every possible structure must be formed!” In fact it’s more than just infinite, but trans-finite in size, lacking borders or outer edges. And that’s all just referring to 3-D space. Like our universe Marvel’s universe has a temporal dimension to it, but Marvel takes it further by suggesting that the 4th dimension is a part of a congruence of spheres where each is nestled inside the other in an infinite convergent series.

The Multiverse

From Dr. Strange himself, we learn that there are an infinite number of dimensions. Beyond that, we start reaching the higher, numbered spatial dimensions. There is a 5th Dimension, the 6th Dimension, the 11 Dimensions of String Theory, a 12th, 13th, 16th, 18th, hundreds of levels of reality, thousands of planes of reality, and even an endless number of dimensions. Cosmic beings can ascend and do battle on countless levels of reality, each layered on top of one another in an infinite stack of spatial dimensions with each infinitely larger than the last. It may even be a trans-finite stack of higher dimensions to wave functions containing all possible worlds, with the multiverse including at least a population up to a googolplex of lives. Across an impossible distance and at the very edge of the universe is The Rip, an event line where all space, time, matter, and energy run out and collapse, where the laws of physics no longer apply. All space, time, and dimensions meet here before moving beyond the cosmic threshold.

The Splinter Realms

To expand more on Limbo’s cosmic importance we’ll have to briefly discuss The Splinter Realms, as Limbo exists as the very center of these hellish dimensions. When Hell-Lords are called upon from the Splinter Realms, it is described as them being summoned from the boundless twilight that holds sway beyond the frayed edges of existence. Beyond the cosmic confines of mere consciousness. It exists beyond the Outer Planes, being born when an unknown but massive plane of existence had shattered and each of its fragments became the realms that form the Splinter Realms, and later the underworlds of various mythologies would be counted among these dimensions. Many of the original rulers of each of these realms were born from the collective Primal Evil early in Earth’s existence, with humanity’s collective beliefs and stories forming and shaping the individuality of the many devils we know today plague the Marvel universe such as Mephisto and Satannish, but they all still share/split the same worship and belief in the collective belief of a single lord of evil. All these realms are separated by endless walls from one another, though as shown by Mephisto they can be tunneled/broken through.

As with the Inner and Outer Planes, physics don’t really exist in the Splinter Realms. Gravity doesn’t exist as it’s known on Earth, and just like Limbo, time moves in different ways across these realms. The Dark Dimension, the largest fragment of that original Splinter Realm, is stated to possess more spatial dimensions than man’s universe and exists beyond the trans-finite multiverse, and the Faltine contains even more than the Dark Dimension. Mephisto’s domain, The Lower Depths, is a whole universe containing planets and galaxies and is also stated to be beyond concepts that already exist outside man’s understanding as an untouchable, paradoxical realm. Nightmare’s Dream Dimension is quite literally a direct manifestation of the collective psyche, straddling the line between the Splinter Realms and the Far Realms. The Devil’s Advocacy exists where all the infernal domains intersect with one another on the metaphysical plane, acting as the meeting place between Hell-Lords to discuss their schemes. The Dark Dimension is the largest of the Splinter Realms of which there are thousands, and is called The “Multiverse-spanning”. And, Limbo is the center of the Splinter Realm, which transcends all realities and interfaces with all planes of existence. From Limbo, you can access all time and space, the whole of creation itself.

The Astral Plane

The Astral Plane, the domain of Oshtur, contains and exists beyond physical space as a realm of idea, thought, and narrative. A substrate of the 616, abstractions of the mind are contained and represented here as a loci of informational potential in an infinite psychic matrix where physical matter struggles to endure without mental strength. It contains an infinite gray space that acts as the bedrock layer to the infinite reaches of the Astral Plane. In this idea-space, one can see that all creatures are intrinsically connected in the abstract, not dissimilar from a hive mind and can even be seen as a single entity. It contains whole timelines and multiverses in potential. It is the bedrock layer of creation from which an infinite number of layers of reality extend upwards from it. This extradimensional plane is not an afterlife, despite what first impressions may be, as it’s actually a “subtle realm” with intra-dimensional depths that connects to the Dark Dimension.

More specifically, the Astral Plane is a metaphysical dimension layered on top of the main universe, as in layered atop our reality, with Astral Projection being akin to ascension. It’s a phantom plane of existence parallel to ours, held apart by a membrane, which sorcerers can use to mess with the baseline reality from the Astral Plane. The reason they can do this is because the Astral Plane is beyond this plane of reality, accessible by dimensional folds. Further elaboration states that “beyond” is in reference to how this plane is beyond the boundaries of our reality, a plane of existence just beyond the baseline reality.

The Dream Dimension

While sometimes the Dream Dimension is stated as linking to humanity’s collective unconscious, Nightmare himself says there are an infinite number of powerful realms, and Strange semi-confirms this by saying Nightmare wants to take over every physical and metaphysical realm. Nightmare calls the Dream Dimension an “endless expanse”, one where he can conjure infinite hallways, all of which contain astral seas. The Dream Dimension itself exists far beyond the Outer Planes in a closeby, similar location to the Dark Dimension. This would mean, much like the Dark Dimension, this would be multiverse-spanning, and it exists beyond time and space.

And, this realm, as mentioned earlier, straddles the line between the Splinter Realms and the Far Realms. This is supported by how Nightmare’s influence was increasing the ebb and flow between his dimension and the main one, threatening to bleed over. And, Nightmare is a conceptual entity, as much a part of all existence as Eternity himself, which is important as dreams as a general thing that exists can cease to exist or be recreated within the Dream Dimension when it’s manipulated. And, because Nightmare’s conceptual body is composed of the essence of the Dream Dimension, this would imply that it’s “unreal”, since his body had an “unreal” nature that needed to be actualized to be attackable and absorbable.

The Superflow

But, beyond all that are the Universal Abstracts, embodiments of the wider cosmos manifesting at a more local, universal level. Each of these entities are conceptual beings embodying fundamental ideas at a level beyond our understanding. Even infinite-dimensional beings and sentient universes like the infant Beyonder are viewed as insignificant to said Abstracts and higher level mystical beings, “only” on the level of partial incarnations akin to shadows of their true form. All reality is transcended even by just the Manifestation Bodies of Abstracts, of which an Abstract may possess a trans-finite number of such M-Bodies. What is visible of Universal Abstracts is merely the iceberg of cosmic dimensions. In truth, they have no dimensions at all, lacking boundaries entirely.

The divider between realities and full scope of the eighth iteration of the multiverse is only really seen when you look outwards and see the Superflow, a conceptual and informational space acting as the walls between alternate timelines, of which there are infinite in number. It acts as a dimensional conduit composed of “pure information”. And, it’s an arterial dimensional between-space, an otherspace that exists between the universes of the multiverse and connects them, where conceptual abstracts reside and make war with one another with metaphors. From the smallest quark to the largest space god, creation is fundamentally made from information in a space where dreams are made from. If one were to break down the Superflow, one would turn the multiverse into a universe, not unlike the First Firmament that started the cosmic cycle. Conversely, information fortifies the Superflow and empowers Abstracts and Eternity’s being. The Superflow is also impossibly vast and difficult to manipulate, as hosts to universal manifestations of The Phoenix Force and wielders of the Infinity Gauntlet have died attempting to bridge the gap between universes or merge timelines together.

On this note, we should also address the nature of how Abstracts manifest within universes vs multiversal manifestations. The full multiversal incarnation of Abstracts like Eternity stand above any universal incarnation of other Abstracts. For another (albeit potentially dubiously canon) example, the Brothers representing the Marvel and DC universes were treated unambiguously as above The Living Tribunal of that universe, but the multiversal manifestation of the Tribunal held them effortlessly within his hand, treated as merely parts of the greater scheme of things that the Living Tribunal oversaw.

Eternity

Containing all the previous universes, bulk spaces, spiritual realms, and layers would naturally be the wider omniverse. So, what kind of vessel embodies everyone, everything, all levels of creation, and defines reality as a reflection of his consciousness? This would be Eternity, who is essentially the idea that all of creation is actually just one giant, godlike guy. Sporting an infinite consciousness, various locations throughout time and space operate as his vital organs. For example, Earth itself acts as Eternity’s heart, which is why detonating it is often a cosmic threat, and the Superflow behaves as a form of Eternity’s mind. His body is the embodiment and manifestation of all things, including ever-expanding quantum spacetime, magic, worlds within worlds, dimensions folding into themselves, universes being born, all energy, all matter, and the void that precedes the birth of form, which is only a fraction of Eternity. He contains all of the conceptual abstract beings within himself as the sum of all of them, putting him at the top of the cosmic abstract power hierarchy, but below the Living Tribunal. Because of how all-encompassing Eternity is, sometimes when a character claims the universe is in danger, they mean that Eternity is in peril from the current threat since he’s the manifestation of the life force of the universe. Characters that planned to absorb Eternity’s essence end up ruling over all of creation, gaining the power to rewrite it to their image.

This isn’t all, though. Doctor Strange claims that, via his mystic studies, he’s learned that the reality within Eternity is like a “cosmic dream and fantasy” compared to what’s outside of him. This is backed up by numerous statements, where existence within Eternity is likened to dreams and beings within Eternity are mere flickering thoughts in his endless consciousness. One time, to support all of this, Doctor Strange was falling beyond space, time, dreams, thought, life, and death before finally landing by Eternity. Eternity himself refers to reality being, but a dream and dreams are binding, every soul is a part of him and, furthermore, he is a cell of a higher multiversal Eternity, a cosmic lineage stretching back to the first story. The Eternity Mask itself is a living piece of our reality, as in Eternity. There’s mentions of four dimensions of time, with all of this being “narrative”. Every story is a piece of the whole, and everything is made of narrative. As an entity, Eternity is beyond the bounds of reality, being beyond time, space, and transcends all levels of reality and dream, making him the “most powerful entity in the multiverse”. In fact, characters usurping Eternity transcend to a higher plane of existence.

Overspace

Overspace is the meeting place of cosmic Abstracts and the “home” of naturally-occuring Abstracts like Dominions, which are beings or collectives that have reached such a high level of intelligence or perform such an incredible feat or evolution they undergo apotheosis and reach Overspace. Typically, this location is visualized as a white void where you can find all of the Abstracts, including Eternity and sometimes the Living Tribunal. Yet again, it is described as above The Beyond and is unbound by the linearity and time that limits Beyonders. But its spiritual aspects aren’t to be ignored as souls that have passed on also flow through Overspace before moving onto the higher spheres of creation (though potential spiritual/informational vivisection on the way may be very unpleasant). It doesn’t simply exist as a layer atop the Macroverse given what we’ve seen of the latter’s farthest edges, with it also being stated to be above and apart from the Macroverse and other parts of reality entirely.

Overspace is also known by its other name: “The Junction to Everywhere”, a name shared by The Crossroads. But unlike that realm, which we know to have been created by an Elder God in the Seventh Cosmos, The Junction to Everywhere’s creation is attributed to the Sixth Cosmos, the Inventor of Science (also stated as such in the Storm scan). And given the inherent magic nature of its adjacent realm, The Well Beyond Worlds, and science’s opposition to it as seen in G.O.D.S, this is the likely domain of The-Natural-Order-of-Things, the Abstract embodying science and pursuit of knowledge itself.

What is Doctor Strange’s Place in the Cosmic Hierarchy?

Doctor Strange has numerous directly powerful feats of affecting, containing, or shielding from threats that threaten everything noted above up into Overspace itself. He’s shielded all of creation itself from the Nexus of all Realities shattered, which acts as a gateway between all realities in Marvel, which there are an infinite number of.

For beyond multiversal feats, he was stated to have the power to hold the essence of Eternity itself, and proved so when he moved its consciousness into Storm to be held, and as mentioned in the Eternity section, Eternity’s consciousness is infinite, and the Superflow itself acts as Eternity’s mind, already bumping up Strange to Superflow/Eternity level.

For peak upper end showings with artifacts and amps, Doctor Strange has counterbalanced Adam Warlock wielding the Infinity Gauntlet, which can make even the mightiest of abstracts mere servants to its power and can render Eternity as catatonic, and with a magic sash, he was able to warp reality by tapping into the dreams of every living being to defeat Nightmare, who grew to be so powerful, he defeated all of the abstracts including the Living Tribunal, who also resides within Overspace as one of the prime abstracts. So overall, Doctor Strange firmly reaches high into Outerversal level at his best.

Touhou Project

The Multiverse

Touhou’s general multiverse has far more moving parts than one would expect, so we’ve got a lot of groundwork to cover first. This section will cover various elements of what Touhou’s “multiverse” would entail, and the various bits and pieces of connective tissue it carries, as even things as simple as “how does reality itself work?” doesn’t have a simple answer, because of course things can’t ever be simple! However, here’s the most comprehensive, yet concise coverage on Touhou’s cosmology we could cook up!

Belief & Wavelengths

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Reality in Touhou is, at its most fundamental level, defined not by space-time or the laws of physics, but by one’s own beliefs and the way in which they perceive the world. Even on the scale of an individual person, it’s not uncommon for thoughts to spontaneously manifest into reality, for a person’s desires to create magical objects like an Occult Ball, or the devotion from fervent worship in the Outside World providing the incredible power of those Occult Balls, or for their lingering sins to cause flowers to bloom. Actions undertaken in dreams may have their consequences carry over to reality. A person’s personal safety stems from the depths of their faith, and is even the main force behind why some youkai have highly specific weaknesses (eg; Oni are only weak to sardine heads because people have faith that it’ll repel them, and vampires are only weak to crosses if the human truly has religious faith within the cross, and truly believe it will repel them, as non-believers cannot use this method). Humans can even transform into youkai through nothing but strong emotions such as their resentment or attachment, making it extremely clear that one’s perception of the self shapes the essence of the self. This is to say nothing of youkai, beings who are governed almost entirely by their mentality, and will cease to exist should they deny their thoughts and emotions. Some youkai can even “bind” entire worlds together through nothing but their regrets. Even things like the Hakurei Barrier react explicitly to the consciousness of any living thing.

The manipulation of belief as a whole is integral to the very existence of many beings in the series. The Urban Legend Incident was a major example of this, where the power of belief became even more dangerous, resulting in simple circulating rumors providing enough belief to manifest them in reality. Supernatural beings can easily be brought into existence through rumors and legends about them spreading, so long as they’re believed and circulated, they can be born. No matter where those rumors are spread, even those circulated entirely online can bring these creatures to reality, with Hasshaku-sama being a notable example. Collective belief can even empower specific phenomena, as the rumors circulating around Perfect Possession simply lead to Perfect Possession itself becoming even more powerful as a phenomenon. This can be so problematic that if a dangerous enough story begins to be spread, efforts will be taken to weaken its effect to stop a deadly new entity from taking shape, and that if a rumor about the end of the world spread enough, it would eventually come true. One can spread rumors about a currently manifested Urban Legend, and if those rumors pick up and are similarly spread and believed, that belief will change the details of the Urban Legend, allowing for one to render manifested legends harmless if desired.

However, when this phenomenon is scaled up across the entire setting, then the broader implications of its existence become clear. The premise of the series is an excellent example; Gods and youkai started dying out en masse specifically because the majority of the Outside World stopped believing in them, not because of any one person’s belief. Conversely, the existence of individual occultists who still believe in youkai, such as Sumireko Usami, is not enough to override the much more widespread belief that they don’t exist. Even within Gensokyo itself, without the continued belief and fear the humans within the Human Village hold towards youkai, they would literally cease to exist, the moment they’re deemed to be superstitions rather than real, they’d simply disappear, the explanation of them becoming reality. Gensokyo’s purpose as a refuge for everything that has been “forgotten” or otherwise deemed fictional in the Outside World extends not just to lost items and supernatural beings, as even real world humans can fall victim to the tides of belief, with Prince Shoutoku passing into fantasy and entering Gensokyo as Toyosatomimi no Miko, after the legends and historical records of his existence came under question and began to be believed as false.

Even the very shape and form of the gods themselves can be further shaped and altered by belief itself, taking on more human names and appearances as the ways they were perceived and depicted changed. Not even simple “tropes” like the idea of a Vlad Vampire – but has been stated to extend to entire concepts, as something like war would pass into fantasy and enter Gensokyo if it ever ceased to exist in the Outside World, and it’s implied this could extend to death as well, showing that they too are governed by belief. Even religion itself – not just individual gods and antiquated beliefs – was on the verge of passing into fantasy for a time. Fundamental forces such as space-time, fate, and causality are merely the byproducts of one’s observation and will. In fact, it’s been said that the entire world is determined by people’s observation, which leads to a phenomenon wherein every single person is experiencing their own unique reality. Those different perspectives are the size of the world itself, and the diversity in those views is the size of the universe. Belief is even able to affect the most primordial state of being, that of Namelessness, as if a Nameless object is found by humanity, the belief and cognition of humans giving that item a name attributes it to that concept, making it “become” that thing, capable of even affecting the Nameless gods that could be contained within.

It should be emphasized that these are not merely metaphors for the subjectivity of truth and similar themes. Youkai and gods vanishing from existence due to a lack of belief and objects spontaneously manifesting from thought all show that willpower can in fact shape reality in a very literal sense. However, there is another way to prove this. Wavelengths are a topic that is frequently brought up in Touhou in regards to one’s mentality and sanity; Reisen’s main power is focused around this premise, as she can hypnotise people or drive them mad by altering the wavelengths that govern their psyche. After all, a person’s thoughts are made of wavelengths, and they are the main factor in determining one’s personality. Light and electromagnetism are also made of waves, though these kinds of waves still have connections to one’s mental state – the waves that make up electromagnetism are the same ones Reisen uses to induce insanity.

However, those wavelengths aren’t just limited to thoughts. They shape all of existence, just like the thoughts that they comprise. By altering wavelengths, Reisen can cause hallucinations to materialize into reality, or do the inverse and cause tangible objects to become illusory, phasing right through people. She can even erase things from existence outright just by tuning wavelengths in a specific way, suggesting that an object’s fundamental existence is determined by their wavelengths, an idea further supported by the existence of “physical waves” Reisen can manipulate and the fact that both people and objects are also made of waves. This extends not just to individual people and objects, but to, well, everything. Space and time are determined solely by the interference of wavelengths, as is magic, a force which “unifies everything” and is indirectly compared to the more “scientific” frameworks present in worlds without magic. Additionally, magic in its natural state is a “transient astral body” composed of self-contained thoughts, so this is yet another example of how both thoughts themselves can bend reality (in the form of magic, which is the basis for all supernatural powers), and wavelengths are what govern those thoughts. In fact, the world being a physical place made up of matter and particles and whatnot is a mere illusion – Both Otherworlds and the Outside World are made entirely of wavelengths, meaning reality is fundamentally non-physical and mental at nature on every level, making even regular humans like Maribel and Renko akin to phantoms.

To reiterate, wavelengths are what make up the thoughts of humans and youkai, and by manipulating the substance of those thoughts, it is possible to control matter, space, time, magic, and potentially everything else in existence.

Briefly returning to the topic of magic being made of thoughts and wavelengths, we can once again use this to prove how thoughts shape reality. This is not to say that all magic is proof of this concept – As Miyoi stated, the “transient astral body” and self-contained thoughts she spoke of are pure magical energy, rather than any one specific use of magic itself. However, even with this caveat, magical energy by itself is capable of all sorts of things, such as granting new abilities and manipulating emotions, transforming inanimate objects into living things, or interfering with the atmosphere to create magical storms. Magical energy is even connected to a youkai’s lifeforce, which could potentially explain why a youkai’s perception is so vital to their existence. As raw magic is nothing but a collection of thoughts, then it stands to reason that all of these supernatural abilities are the result of those thoughts.

Last but not least, we once again come to the topic of living spirits. Of the five skandhas that make up the soul, four in particular pop out – Sensation, perception, formation, and consciousness. They all deal with different aspects of human mentality in one way or another, and beings who lack the five skandhas have no mind or emotions to speak of at all. As we discussed earlier, the five skandhas – and the living spirit that they comprise – are responsible for shaping the world itself. Living spirits are also compared to the Akashic Record, are a person’s conscious mind, make up their desires, and can even erase a person from existence if suppressed, further proving how thoughts and consciousness govern the world. The Dream World, which we will touch on momentarily, is made up of the memories of the substance that makes up the soul, again showing that these mental forces are responsible for governing every last bit of reality – Even down to the collective unconsciousness as described by Carl Jung. This is strongly supported by the implication that, if dreams are the subconscious, then the majority of the world is made up of dreams and one who rules over dreams could rule over the world, clearly suggesting that reality is composed of the subconscious itself.

In conclusion, reality in Touhou is both shaped by and composed of thoughts at every level, spanning from physical phenomena such as matter, space and the simple distance between places, to metaphysical aspects of the world such as time, fate, causality, the collective unconscious, and even the lines between reality and fantasy.

Otherworlds

“Otherworld” is a catchall term for the wide variety of, what else, other worlds that exist in Touhou. Anything that exists outside of the earth and moon is considered an Otherworld, including Gensokyo. An Otherworld is not a place that is physically hard to reach, such as outer space or the deep sea, and is typically blocked off by magical, conceptual, and ideological barriers. The Hakurei Barrier is the most obvious example and most powerful of these barriers, but other barriers seem to work on similar principles to it. Due to these barriers, travel between Otherworlds is impossible unless one possesses some sort of special ability, or meets specific requirements (such as being sufficiently strong).

Each Otherworld is its own separate dimension, and it is implied that each is its own separate space-time continuum as well. Seiran’s ability to fire bullets from another dimension is described as creating portals to “another world”. Miko, in attempting to use the Occult Balls’ space-time transfer ability, discovered that it did not work in her own personal dimension of Senkai and that it must be used in Gensokyo instead, suggesting the two are not the same space-time. When traveling into the Otherworld of Makai, the Palanquin Ship was said to have “transcended space-time”, an obvious necessity when traveling to a spatio-temporally separate realm.

When Maribel Hearn inadvertently fell into an Otherworld, she wound up missing for two weeks. However, once she was rescued and safely returned to the Outside World, she remarked that only a few moments had passed from her perspective, showing that the flow of time can alter radically between individual worlds. Even outside of time, these worlds can have different laws of physics and the like, as shown by how some worlds are stated to be governed by particles different from those governing the Outside World.

While many Otherworlds are home to supernatural beings, the basis for their existence is surprisingly scientific. During Maribel’s journeys into various worlds, her partner Renko believed she was actually seeing brane worlds, with the narration confirming this to be the case. Yumemi Okazaki, a scientist from a world parallel to Gensokyo, stated that her own world had long ago proven the existence of the theory of everything; This world is completely devoid of magic and is seemingly governed solely by the laws of physics, juxtaposed against Gensokyo, which is governed by magic and other supernal forces. However, these states of being are not necessarily in opposition with each other, as worlds that are a mixture of the two are known to exist.

Though Otherworlds are mostly separate from each other, there are some cases in which they can intersect. Rainbows are one such example of a place where this is possible, and locations such as Muenzuka and the Road of Reconsideration can cause unwitting passerby to fall into another world due to the existence of overlapping barriers. Though the exact number of Otherworlds out there is unclear, it has been stated to be a “countless” number. However, there is a method to potentially find out a more “exact” number of Otherworlds, and that can be found out through…

Gods

It’s been established that for as many Buddhas, there are Pure Lands (equated to there are as many Gods as there are Heavens), so it’s important to come to the distinction of exactly how many Gods truly exist in Touhou as a whole to help come to a decision on the baseline Multiverse’s total scope.

Gods are capable of existing in, quite literally, everything. It’s stated ad nauseum that Gods exist in every single thing. Even items as small as books or semi-conductors? They have gods in them. There is a god to everything, and through those gods you can hear the object’s voice. Rocks, trees, and mountains, rivers, and waterfalls, divinity can be found in all things. The very basis of gods dwelling within all things is the basis of Tsukumogami! Most impressively though, is that gods are able to exist in not just objects, but even phenomena; even words can contain Gods.

The terms for a God’s shrine can be shockingly simple as well. Even simple offertory shelves can serve the same purpose as a full blown shrine, all that’s needed is a little decoration and a vessel for the God. They aren’t confined to any one single place, but instead all sorts of places. They put no emotion nor thought into this notion, as they simply will always exist wherever there is a place for them to exist. An example would be Lord Daikoku, who resides anywhere that food is prepared. This allows for Gods to easily perpetuate.

Notably, Gods are inextricably tied to faith, a god’s power is determined by the amount of faith humans have in them. Gods who are very popular amongst people have succeeded in gaining far greater power than when they had less shrines built in their honor. Conversely, when people lose faith in gods, they will lose their powers, and once there is nobody who remembers them, they will disappear from existence, being rendered forgotten, a fiction, even. Faith can also change Gods’ forms over time, as gods that once represented natural phenomena grew to take on more human-like names and appearances as fear of the phenomena weakened and it was associated less with the divine. Most notably, faith can even create gods, with things being worshipped as if they were gods manifesting gods in relation to them. This even extends to literal fictional beings being able to be manifested into reality as a new god, should they gain faith.

There’s also the existence of the Yaoyorozu no Kami, or the 8 Million Gods, a group of gods also referred to as the Myriad Gods, which is said to be such a large group that 8 Million is actually a misnomer, and their true number is far beyond that. It’s also noted that Japanese Gods are capable of multiplying infinitely, as long as they have the space to do so, acting as an endlessly spreading idea. Japanese Gods can be split into an endless number of parts, and have their power remain unaffected, which can allow for multiple gods to occupy the same shrine. It’s quite literally impossible to run out of them. Very interestingly, is that multiple separate gods together can be combined and worshipped as another entity, such as the God Sumiyoshi, which is actually three separate gods worshipped together, acting as a single, individual god. Meaning that separate gods together can create entirely new ones.

The real smoking gun however, is directly from the mouth of Akyu no Hieda, one of the more knowledgeable characters in the franchise, who directly states that the World is Infinite, it is made up of the infinite, and is filled with an infinite amount of truths. Ran Yakumo, one of the most intelligent characters in the franchise, also notes that an infinite amount of solid objects can be created with equations that neither converge nor diverge. With all of the aforementioned information, how easily gods are created, how they exist in literally everything – even words – how gods can infinitely multiply, how different gods can merge together and create new ones, and the very fact that the world is infinite, made of the infinite, and filled with an infinite amount of truths, and infinite objects can exist, simply put, there should be an infinite amount of Gods! Therefore, there would be an infinite amount of Pure Lands / Heavens, concretely making Touhou’s Multiverse not just countless, but outright infinite!

Layers of Reality

_{Those fucking layers that I hate}

Touhou’s cosmology, beyond physical space and higher dimensions, is governed by three separate layers. As explained by Reimu, the world can be divided into the physical, mental, and memory layers. The physical layer concerns itself with the material world and everything contained within it, particularly phenomena falling under the laws of physics (such as gravity). Beyond the physical lies the mental layer, which moves with the spirit, and includes magic and sorcery under its purview; Emotions such as frustration and relief are said to lie here, showing that the mind also exists on this layer. Reimu also implies that the mental layer’s purpose is to explain the outcomes created by the memory layer, though it’s not clear what she means by this. It is through these two layers which youkai conceive of the world.

Finally, there is the memory layer, which is said to dominate probability and fate. The memory stores the recollection of events stored within all things. Events that are recorded in the memory layer cannot occur again, as that would imply they have been “forgotten” and thus removed from the memory layer, which is impossible. For example, when a die is rolled, it will “remember” the result of that roll. Because it remembers that result, the odds of rolling the same result even under identical conditions is lower than one might expect, making it impossible to predict the future with certainty. The memory layer always continues to build up, and as such, its existence ensures that loops cannot occur. However, those with exceptional fortune are able to bypass this by manipulating the memory stored within individual objects (eg; Reimu can manipulate the memory of the dice she rolls to make the results favor her, regardless of what was rolled in the past).

Sea of Information

_{Yadda Yadda “Shin Megami Tensei” Something Something “Devil Summoning”}

A more recent cosmological facet, the Sea of Information is a connective network between all worlds that’s quite literally the flow of information. It can be accessed through computer networks set up within realms, and using AI – the ghosts of collective intelligence – to serve as mediators between other worlds in a shared information network. The Sea can also be accessed/flows into information processing zones, such as the Asama Purifying Mountain, which is a “crucible of information”. The Sea of Information is noted to contain and contains countless streams of life information (also known as impurity), containing the information of “all things”, and that all things can be learned through it.

The Sea of Information is capable of giving birth to new youkai, with Sumireko developing a Channeler AI in the Outside World that produces the substance from the memories of living creatures in an attempt to summon forth youkai from the sea, and with Nina Watari being a purely informational being that was born from the Sea of Information, after being exposed to so much information within the Sanctuary contained in the Asama Purifying Mountain.

The Sea is somewhat victim to the information currently exposed to it, and collective belief can affect the state of information itself. Such as when the Outside World underwent the advent of AI, it resulted in so much much “truth” being debased and falsified that it became considered fiction, and that information started “passing into fantasy” and flowing into Gensokyo, with the overflow of information even affecting the Asama Purifying Mountain, and the corrupt misinformation within being able to corrupt and even kill youkai.… When Sumireko was trying to channel the sea, the dissemination of information resulted in virtual images of herself manifesting in Gensokyo.

Potential Spatial Dimensions

There’s been some debate over the years in terms of if Touhou’s multiverse has concrete spatial dimensions, so we decided to do some deep dives to determine any potential arguments of interest.

What’s With Those 11D Arguments?

To put it bluntly, Touhou has made very, very consistent and elaborate descriptions of Brane Cosmology and how it applies to cosmology. The story of Dr. Latency’s Freak Report thoroughly establishes that Touhou’s various Otherworld’s exist as “brane worlds”, and when Maribel is able to see into these worlds using her Boundary Manipulation, with these worlds referred to as “branes”, and that the worlds are composed of very thin membranes. The Sanzu River exists as the boundary between these membranes, the bulk containing them, exposed to the flow of its river. Brane Cosmology is very clearly baked into how a lot of the baseline multiverse operates, but what makes it more impressive is that the same characters have directly referred to the existence of strings as well, with Renko explicitly studying them. It should be noted that branes as a whole are directly tied to strings and string theory, being fundamental objects within the framework.

The entire basis of Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream’s plot is that Yumemi is attempting to disprove the widespread belief in the Grand Unified Theory from her world, Grand Unified Theory (GUT) being a unification of many cosmological theories such as Theory of Everything and String Theory, implying additional dimensions of space. Renko is also noted directly to study in “super-unified physics”, which might be referring to the same theory Yumemi refers to. Sakuya Izayoi is also capable of manipulating Imaginary Time, a rather complicated concept which can imply multiple dimensions of time, and could tie further into string theory.

Through all of this together, it’s pretty clear and obvious that if nothing else, brane cosmology is very blatantly part of the cosmology, and there’s clearly some higher dimensions at play, with the Sanzu River (which we will elaborate on more later) clearly acting as a higher dimensional bulk for 5-D. How about the string theory stuff? It’s not exactly super elaborated on, but with the extensive coverage on brane cosmology, strings known to exist in the cosmology, and the consistency of the Grand Unified Theory and things like the manipulation of Imaginary Time, String Theory’s application of 10-11 Spatial Dimensions isn’t too far off.

Got Anything New?

Outside of the aforementioned Brane Cosmology & String Theory yap, Touhou very extensively utilizes quantum mechanics in its cosmology in ways that imply something potentially very impressive.

The Schrodinger’s Cat theorem is noted to be explicitly canon to Touhou’s cosmology, as it’s one of the in-universe explanation for how youkai operate and an aspect of their existence, being in a state of quantum superposition, a quantumly unobservable state. Gensokyo has been referred to as a “Quantum World” on multiple occasions, and its barrier explicitly utilizes non-euclidean space. Rinnosuke has noted that he’s read a book from the Outside World about Quantum Uncertainty, and how everything in the world is determined by probabilities. This is furthered by Eirin Yakogokoro, the most intelligent character in the franchise, specifying that the world works off of quantum probabilities, in which every theoretically possible event that can occur, will occur. Yukari Yakumo is capable of manipulating the boundary of wave & particle, showcasing Wave-Particle Duality. As established earlier, wavelengths are the primary makeup of reality itself, and this theorem was ultimately made by Renko, with her theory explicitly being based upon the Copenhagen Interpretation, using it as the basis to prove her theory that all of reality is composed of wavelengths, and that fundamental particles don’t traditionally exist in the way we believe them to.

What does all this mean or relate to anything? Well, generally, it showcases Touhou having very consistent and intense usage of quantum mechanics in its world and cosmos as a whole, but most interestingly is the combination of the Schrodinger’s Cat hypothesis being real, alongside Copenhagen Interpretation, and the other aforementioned aspects. In order for these theories to exist in conjunction with one another, would require the existence of not just Schrodinger’s Equation, but most notably Hilbert Space, an infinite dimensional space heavily tied to quantum mechanics. If taken at face value, it could imply an incredibly complex baseline multiverse, though the fact Touhou has yet to directly mention Hilbert Space itself, just simply many connected theories and hypotheses presents an issue with its usability.

Summary

Touhou does clearly make consistent use of real world cosmological concepts in its cosmology, in high and low detail. Brane Cosmology relating to 5-Dimensional space is concrete and undeniable, and String Theory for 10 to 11 spatial dimensions is decently supported, though needs some external information. Infinite-Dimensional, while potentially possible, requires a lot of external connecting of dots and isn’t directly mentioned, making it – currently – a very absurdly generous end to consider.

We will emphasize however, that outside of the brane cosmology aspects, much of this is somewhat speculative and could use some more directly stated context and clarification. But the series’ consistent usage of these aspects and connective tissue of them all definitely opens the possibility for discussion on their validity, so we wanted to open the doors a bit and showcase what the arguments were, especially since they’ve floated around in the Touhou debating space for so long. Your mileage may vary on the arguments, just know that they aren’t being leaned on too heavily or taken super strongly into account here, we simply wanted to present some of our more interesting findings!

Major Realms

This section will cover major relevant realms in the wider Multiverse, specific places that are consistently important to Touhou as a franchise, and will often be important to other notable locations, and thus need more specialized breakdowns. We’ll focus only on the most important realms to discussion, however.

Gensokyo

Gensokyo is the main setting of Touhou, created by three sages centuries ago in order to preserve the existence of youkai. It is primarily based on the Yatsugatake mountain range in Japan, and many of its landmarks directly correlate to real-world locations, such as Youkai Mountain being the Yatsugatake’s original form from before it was torn down by Sakuyahime in a fit of jealous rage. Though physically small, it’s possible to reach numerous Otherworlds through Gensokyo, such as Former Hell, Higan, Heaven, the Netherworld, and Makai, should one be able to bypass the barriers restricting access. Even the Dream World can be traveled to from Gensokyo through the use of Kaian Passageways, though these are only opened and maintained by the ruler of the Dream World. Gensokyo is also implied to contain “spiritual or temporal rooms where the flow of time gets out of control”.

Gensokyo is separated from the Outside World by an immensely powerful barrier, known as the Great Hakurei Barrier, which not only designates the two worlds as entirely separate, but the former as fantasy and the latter as reality. Due to the barrier, passage between the two worlds is completely impossible save for those with special techniques (such as Yukari’s boundary manipulation). The barrier is not merely a physical wall, but a non-euclidean structure which causes space to loop as one approaches the perceived “edge”, leaving you right back where you started when you turn around. Despite isolating Gensokyo from the rest of the world, the barrier is constructed in such a way that air, water, and sunlight may pass through it, and if an object from Gensokyo vanishes, then a corresponding object from the Outside World will fill its place.

The barrier also acts as an explanation for how the supernatural and illogical may persist in Gensokyo despite the Outside World having long rejected such things. Beyond its functions as the separation between reality and fantasy, the barrier also separates “common sense” from “uncommon sense”, leaving all that is logical in the Outside World and leaving the unreasonable and impossible inside Gensokyo. As a consequence of this, it can be said that the Outside World’s insanity is turned into Gensokyo’s common sense, and vice-versa. Contradictory objects which impossibly embody more than one logical state, such as the Occult Balls, are extraordinarily dangerous to the barrier as a result, and can easily destroy it if left unchecked.

Hell

Hell is but one of many afterlives the dead may end up in, representing an eternity of torment for sinners and, in recent years, an abundance of red tape and poor bureaucracy. It was once simply an underground space, much like an enormous cave, but with an ever-growing number of souls flowing in, Hell has since been expanded to accommodate a much larger number of the vengeful spirits and oni who call it home. In its current state, Hell is an infinitely vast plane – Or rather, a series of separate planes, as there are actual several Hells! We know that Earth and the Moon each have their own hell, as well as all “Otherworlds” having a collective Hell, but there’s also been other Hells seen across the series such as Avici and the Animal Realm, making there a currently unknown quantity of these realms. These individual realms are different Otherworlds in their own right. Even these individual hells, such as Avici or the Animal Realm, are also infinite in scope, meaning Hell as a whole is effectively a countless number of infinitely large Otherworlds. Despite that, Hell’s more powerful denizens are able to create new Hells as often as they wish, seemingly without limit. As far as its physical properties go, most Hells obviously vary in this regard, but they’re all generally devoid of life (to the point where ghosts are the closest things to living beings there), are filled with heavy karmic winds, and are shrouded in deep darkness as a result of Houyi shooting down what was once Hell’s sun.

One of Hell’s more curious properties is that it is completely empty, filled with naught but nothingness – Not just in the sense that there’s nothing there, but in the sense that traveling there will obliterate your physical body and cause people to simply vanish. It’s possible that this is a byproduct of Zanmu Nippaku’s ability to manipulate nothingness, as she was the one who proposed and participated in the creation of New Hell, and she’s more than capable of reducing whatever she desires to an empty void. Additionally, Hell cannot be left through one’s own power, leaving them stranded there unless they’re given permission to leave by certain powerful individuals. This was even able to trap Mamizou Futatsuiwa, who can easily enter the Outside World from Gensokyo.

While it has been implied that gods such as Hecatia can create an “infinite” number of Hells, in turn suggesting that Hell is big enough to accommodate an infinite multiverse, this is not the case. The wiki erroneously translated that statement as “infinite”, when in reality the kanji for infinite are not present, and the original text says something more along the lines of “create as many worlds as they want”, which does at least support Hell being a local multiverse of it’s own though!.

The Netherworld

The Netherworld is the world where the guiltless dead end up, passing the time as phantoms until they achieve nirvana or reincarnate. It is believed that the Netherworld is a vast, empty plane, with the only notable landmark being Yuyuko’s mansion, Hakugyokurou. That emptiness befits the Netherworld’s pure nature, as it is one of many “pure lands” in which life and death cease to exist. The Netherworld, like the other afterlives, is immeasurably vast, being so big that it seemingly won’t end no matter how fast one flies. It’s supposedly even larger than Hell, which would make the Netherworld infinite by extension. The Netherworld also appears to operate on different laws of physics compared to Gensokyo, as the speed of sound is slower there.

Although the Netherworld was once an Otherworld much like the other afterlives, after Reimu shattered the boundary of life and death separating it from Gensokyo, the barrier between the two worlds has become extremely thin, so much so that it’s possible to travel to and from the Netherworld simply by flying there. This has resulted in an excess of phantoms flowing into Gensokyo, requiring regular extermination to keep their numbers low (like when you leave your front door open and your house is swarmed with bugs). While Yukari was supposed to repair the barrier between the two, she never got around to it, and the worlds remain connected to this day. This means that it’s possible that Gensokyo and the Netherworld now share the same space, being a shared space-time continuum, although the series itself insists they are still different worlds, so YMMV.

Heaven

Heaven is the ultimate goal of those who seek to reach enlightenment, most often taoist hermits who ascend to become celestials at the end of several lifetimes worth of training. It has been referred to as Paradise or the Astral Plane, though from a cosmological perspective, it’s more akin to outer space – In fact, it’s completely possible to enter Heaven just by climbing past the pinnacle of Youkai Mountain, should one possess sufficient strength. While inside Heaven, it’s shown to contain stars and countless galaxies, suggesting it is at least cosmic in size, but that’s underselling it a bit. A single Heaven can contain gods such as Amitabha, who dwarfs the observable universe to an absurd degree, being 6 x 10^125 yojana tall! Furthermore, Heaven as a whole is said to be “limitless”, and it is supposedly larger than even the infinitely-large Netherworld (which is already larger than the infinitely large Hell?…), which means Heaven is likely infinite as well.

Much like Hell, Heaven is composed of multiple separate planes, though how many is not exactly clear (Yuyuko only suggests the number is a vague “many”). However, there is one possible way to measure this – In Gensokyo Geography, it is claimed that alongside there being a Pure Land for every Buddha, that there are as many Heavens as there are gods. Touhou’s gods are referred to as the Yaoyorozu no Kami, or the Eight Million Gods, though eight million is a vast underestimation of their true number. According to Rinnosuke, the “ya” in their name does not literally mean eight, but represents a number far too high to count, existing only one step below “kyuu”, or infinity. Even native gods, which make up a fraction of the total gods that exist, are so numerous that one can exterminate them endlessly without their numbers dwindling. As mentioned before in the “Gods” section of the blog, beyond the Yaoyorozu, there being an infinite number of Gods is reasonable, meaning that it’s likely there could be an infinite amount of Heavens in total as well!

As a brief aside, while the section quoted above talks about Buddhas, this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not also talking about the Yaoyorozu no Kami. Touhou is implied to follow honji suijaku to some extent, or the theory that kami in Shinto are in truth Buddhas in disguise, one example of such being the sun god Amaterasu. Kasen Ibaraki supports this idea by claiming that Buddhas and divine spirits are one and the same, and that Buddha himself is merely another god. Thus, whether or not “as many Heavens as there are gods” is referring to kami or Buddhas is irrelevant, as they are the same thing.

We will note however, that the way Gensokyo Geography’s statement is interpreted could be read a few ways. One reading could imply that there’s both a Heaven for every God, as well as a Pure Land for every Buddha (with them being functionally the same thing in Touhou, it would mean an infinite amount of both), but another reading of the sentence potentially mean that there’s only a Pure Land for every God, and Heaven is just one of those Pure Lands, or that there’s simply a Heaven for every God, and not both simultaneously. While this wouldn’t affect the size of Touhou’s multiverse at large – as no matter what there’s going to be an infinite amount of worlds – how you read the statement could potentially affect if Heaven would be another infinite multiverse or not. However, between Heaven being larger than an infinite space that’s already larger than another infinite space, containing multiple realms, and the Gensokyo Geography statement, we think Heaven at its largest potentially being an infinite multiverse is a reasonable interpretation, and that it’s likely that there’s a Pure Land for every Buddha as well as a Heaven for every God!

Land of Back Doors

The realm of Okina Matara, a realm filled with countless doors as a means of travelling just about anywhere instantly. The doors can access anywhere in existence, so long as there’s a door no one is watching, and Okina herself is noted to “lurk behind all things in creation”. These doors have been opened far and wide, and Okina herself has even been able to access the Dream World, showing that the LoBD’s reach is massive and all encompassing. Seeing as there’s an infinite amount of realities that exist, this realm would also need to be infinite in size to account for the infinite potential un-watched doors at any point. The realm also notably appears to hold a galaxy as well. At minimum it’s an infinitely sized space that can access anywhere in creation… but if it’s a bulkspace to the entire cosmology? That is, as of now, unclear.

Transcendent Realms

This is where the especially important realms lie, the realms that have a special relationship with other realms, or the entire multiverse at large, that imply higher degrees of transcendence!

The Hakurei Barrier
& The Outside World

The Outside World is the place that exists beyond the Hakurei Barrier, representing the reality opposite to Gensokyo’s fantasy. It is, for all intents and purposes, meant to mirror the real world as we see it, devoid of any supernatural forces or entities. It’s the universe as we know it. Throughout most of the series, it is parallel to our reality, although the Hifuu CDs take place in the not-too-distant future where moon travel is commonplace, the world is wracked with ecological devastation, children no longer smile, and world governments are committing mass genocide as a means of population control (so like, 5 years in the future, tops).

From the perspective of the Outside World, Gensokyo is nothing more than fiction. After all, the two worlds are separated along the “boundary of reality and fantasy”, designating the Outside World as the “real” world, and Gensokyo as an “illusory” world. Due to this barrier, all things that have been forgotten, debunked, or otherwise deemed “not real” will pass into Gensokyo, a process often described as “passing into fantasy”. Gensokyo is home to anything that has become an illusion in the Outside World, such as how Prince Shoutoku resurrected in Gensokyo as Toyosatomimi no Miko as soon as his existence was considered lies and “fiction” by the Outside World. ZUN has once said that “what was real is becoming an illusion” in regards to things passing into Gensokyo. A creature becoming extinct, no longer believed to exist, is also capable of becoming illusory and passing into Gensokyo, with many creatures extinct in the Outside World now existing in Gensokyo. This extends even to objects, as objects only enter Gensokyo when they’ve been forgotten about completely by humanity. Even entire landmarks can pass into fantasy after being deemed to no longer be real, like Mount Minakimi as the Asama Purifying Mountain, or the original form of Mount Yasukagatake. To the rare few Outside World denizens who can peer into Gensokyo through specific, unique powers, the world still appears infinitely small, even if they view their own world as finite – In other words, even an infinite difference in size is quite literally nothing to the Outside World.

Gensokyo’s own denizens are also aware of this difference in existential status. Byakuren once implied that Sumireko, a human from the Outside World, would see Gensokyo as nothing but a fleeting, ephemeral dream. Miko supports this by wondering how it is that Sumireko could even perceive Gensokyo at all, let alone enter it, and Futo similarly wonders how Sumireko could see a realm like Gensokyo, which is naught but a dream to her. Throughout the series, characters and objects are described as “nonexistent” relative to the Outside World, becoming “god-like existences” upon being forgotten – A fitting comparison, as gods quite literally cease to exist when being forgotten. The term “fantasy” itself refers to things that have been deemed nonexistent, implying that all things that “pass into fantasy” (ie; enter Gensokyo) simply do not exist anymore. Even more fundamental things, such as actual information, can end up passing into Gensokyo, as the advent of AI resulted in so much information being debased and believed to be fiction rather than truth, that it flooded into Gensokyo en masse. Rinnosuke once claimed that Gensokyo and everything in it – including himself and other living things – are “illusory existences”, before claiming that illusions themselves are but part of a system of “less real” things, including fantasy, delusions, predictions, and virtuality. Given that he describes this as a sort of ranking, it’s possible that each level is more or less real than the one below or above it, with the Outside World existing at the top of this hierarchy.

However, it is also possible to view the Outside World through a metafictional angle. ZUN himself has even confirmed that its existence is a “meta element” of the series. This can most clearly be seen in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, where Aya presents an in-universe column of music comments on songs from the games themselves (noting that they are strangely familiar) written by the head priest of the Hakurei Shrine, additionally telling the reader not to overthink their true identity. Of course, the head priest of the Hakurei Shrine is none other than ZUN himself. This is surprisingly consistent, as he once gave a letter to Marisa Kirisame during one of his “trips” into Gensokyo. In the afterword of The Grimoire of Usami, ZUN claims to have intended to write a story about a simple fireworks show, but that the denizens of Gensokyo “weren’t going to let that happen”. His music has even been played at in-universe concerts (purportedly composed by a band of humans from the Outside World), and Hieda no Akyuu owns a collection of soundtracks from the PC-98 games.

This is not limited to just ZUN, however; Official publications have claimed that Touhou as a series is viewed in the Outside World in much the same way we view it – As games and manga. The other people who’ve worked on Touhou in the past are not exempt from this, as Kosuzu Motoori once held an interview with the person making an out-of-universe figurine of her. And, just to prove that this isn’t some non-canon advertisement, she outright shows off the very same merchandise being advertised in that interview in a chapter of Forbidden Scrollery, claiming it came from the Outside World. Strange Creators of Outer World is a magazine supposedly written by those who see Gensokyo in their hallucinations, already having one foot inside Gensokyo and being unable to return to the “real world”, making them the “strange creators” of the “outer world” the magazine’s title refers to. In response to an interviewer claiming that the Hakurei Shrine is the point of connection between the game world and real world, and that including “reality” in the game was an element of metafiction, ZUN affirmed this claim by stating that connecting reality and fantasy is something that happens fairly often in the series.

In conclusion, the Outside World sees Gensokyo as fictional, dream-like, illusory, nonexistent, and any other word you can conjure up that means “not real”, and they are literally separated by the conceptual delineation of “reality” and “fantasy/illusion” itself. The author canonically exists in the same setting as his work, and his creations in turn recognize their own fictional existence, further demonstrating a delineation between the “reality” represented by the Outside World and the “fantasy” represented by Gensokyo. It is an extremely clear cut case of reality-fiction transcendence, and as such, is Outerversal.

Anti-Feats?

Also, while there’s some buzz about potential “anti-feats” being struck for Touhou’s R>F scaling based on VSBW’s standards for “disqualifiers” that we’d like to tackle as well, to show that none of them are actual issues that fall under those standards. To start, Yukari creating the Hakurei Barrier, which acts as the delineation of Reality and Fantasy itself, isn’t a disqualifier. At the time she created the barrier, not only was she within the Outside World – Youkai still existed in reality and weren’t fully deemed fictional, they were just beginning to be and slowly waning in power, she was not yet a fictional existence or anything like that.

Sumireko’s instance of nearly destroying the Hakurei Barrier with the Occult Orbs similarly wouldn’t be a disqualifier, as the Occult Orbs are made from matter, energy, and devotion/faith originating from the Outside World, making their energy sources originate from the higher reality of the Outside World, something that is explicitly not a disqualifier by VSBW’s standards. Sumireko also was going to perform this feat within the Outside World, the higher reality, similarly avoiding any anti-feats. The Occult Orbs being able to transport characters in and out of Gensokyo to the Outside World, and being able to destroy the Hakurei Barrier would be completely reasonable and not break any rules with this context.

A major point of contention are the feats in which characters are able to directly affect or bypass the Hakurei Barrier in some means, or cosmology wiping feats that affect the barrier. To put it simply, all of these feats are performed through some means of Boundary Manipulation and affecting Boundaries. Yukari being able to create or destroy the barrier, Reimu being able to weaken the Hakurei Barrier, Remilia’s Scarlet Mist being able to pass through the barrier, etc. All of these abilities are some form of manipulation of boundaries, boundary manipulation being an in-universe power system that manipulates and controls the boundaries that make up all of existence. Every aspect of existence, including the boundary of reality and fantasy that makes the R>F distinction, is a type of boundary. The Scarlet Mist was going to remove the border/boundary between Scarlet and White, Yukari is able to remove all boundaries, Reimu was weakening the boundary of reality and fantasy, etc. Characters being able to affect and destroy constructs of this size through boundary manipulation would fall under similar standards that are not disqualified under VSBW’s standards, and thus be protected, and leave those feats and cosmology as valid.

In general, every instance of characters interacting with or affecting this barrier follows a standard set forward by VSBW’s strict standards for R>F, or has an explanation/reasoning that fits within those standards.

The Lunar Capital

Now that the Hakurei Barrier has been established, it’s time to go over a similar plane of reality, The Lunar Capital. Similar to Gensokyo, the Capital is a dimension sealed away by a barrier that distincts the real moon and the illusory moon, creating the “real” moon in the Outside World, and the “illusory” moon of the Lunar Capital seen in Gensokyo. The Lunar Capital resides on the dark side of the moon, behind the moon barrier. On the outside of the barrier, is a lifeless, desolate world, but inside of the barrier is a pure ocean and the Lunar Capital city itself. Functionally the barrier between the two moons operates in the same sense as the Hakurei Barrier of Gensokyo, determining what’s “real” and what’s “illusory”.

While the Lunar Capital is a separate dimension from Gensokyo, they are still intrinsically connected in ways. While the Lunar Capital is typically sealed from access from Gensokyo, Yukari has bypassed that barrier seal by dissolving the boundary between the true and illusory moon, allowing for traversal between the two, such as entering the Lunar Capital (the illusory moon) through a reflection of the moon in the sky within a lake. The way Remilia and the rest of the gang were able to reach the Lunar Capital from Gensokyo was because they flew a rocket into space, and reached the boundary of the illusory and real moons, flying through the passageway that opened, which is only created during a full moon. Eirin even notes that the moon that they’ll reach, won’t be the same one that the humans in the Outside World reached.

This intrinsic connection is furthered, as it’s noted by Marisa that during their entire trip on the spaceship from Gensokyo to the Lunar Capital, that they never once travelled outside of the Hakurei Barrier during the trip. During Marisa and Yorihime’s fight, Yorihime reflecting Marisa’s Master Spark results in a sparkle in the atmosphere of the moon that could be seen from Gensokyo due to an opening in the Capital’s usual defenses.

What’s the point of all this? Well, it helps in further substantiating the difference of Gensokyo and the Outside World being that of an R>F distinction, but also showcases that other “un-real” realms show a degree of connection to one another. The illusory world and the illusory moon both exist on a similar “level” of reality, and despite being dimensionally sealed from one another, can still interact with one another through sharing that same level, showing that the level of this distinction is beyond just a single simple sealed dimension.

The Sanzu River

The Sanzu River is the passage between this life and the next, with departed souls starting on Shigan, the side of the land of the living, crossing the river to be judged and shuffled off to a different afterlife once they reach Higan, which is on the opposite side of the river. In order to cross the river, one must first be ferried by a shinigami, who will require payment equivalent to the value of one’s life; Failure to pay the toll will result in the unfortunate soul being dumped in the waters to be devoured by prehistoric fish. One can’t simply skip the ferry, either, as the Sanzu is infinitely wide naturally, and infinite specifically for still living beings, and contains an infinite reserve of water, requiring the distance-manipulating abilities of a shinigami to cross in most cases. Ran Yakumo, a mathematical genius, has also calculated the exact correlation between a soul’s “value” and the river’s width, once again confirming that its width is infinite in the process, with the natural, 0 payment state of the river being infinite. Despite being a location one can reach from Gensokyo, the Sanzu River is not connected to it at all, and actually exists outside of the Hakurei Barrier entirely.

However, the river is far more important to Touhou’s cosmological structure than it would appear at first glance, it’s not just the boundary between the living realms and afterlifes. When Maribel Hearn’s ability to cross worlds first began to awaken, she noted that she felt some sort of resistance that prevented her from crossing between worlds on a whim. She believes that the origin of this pushback is the Sanzu River; If each brane world can be considered a dyed object exposed to the flow of a river, then the river must separate them spatially, preventing any overlap. However, the patterns dyed on those objects can “flow” down the river and onto another object, where they are viewed as foreign contaminants to be eliminated. Obviously, one can’t directly oppose the flow of the river, but Maribel’s ability to hop between worlds is implied to take advantage of that flow, letting her effectively ride the currents of the river into other dimensions and other time periods. Punching a hole into the river allows for one to open up portals into other realms, showing the spatial connection further. This river is, of course, the Sanzu River, which as shown above, contains yet separates the myriad worlds that make up Touhou’s multiverse.

In short, the Sanzu River can be considered an infinite space which embeds all other Otherworlds – which are brane worlds – within its waters, an infinite amount of worlds held amongst its waves, acting as a sort of bulk space, a greater infinity to the infinite set. Not to mention, it’s also capable of containing a transcendent realm like the Outside World as a single realm amongst its waves, making its scope even more impressive.

Dreams

Dreams are the visions one sees as they fall asleep, entire worlds reflecting one’s thoughts, desires, and fears. Although commonly mistaken for purely mental constructs, dreams are actually physical in nature. This is most clearly seen in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, where Doremy Sweet, the self-proclaimed ruler of the Dream World, assisted the Lunarians in their flight from the Lunar Capital by recreating their home inside of a dream. This replica was so convincing, that most Lunarians never even noticed the difference during their stay. This is strongly supported by many statements that claim dreams are equivalent to reality itself, that a person’s dream self is shown to be equal in capability to their real selves, and the Dream World, where all dreams are stored, is stated to be “the opposite side of the same coin” relative to reality.

As for what dreams contain, although they have never been given an officially stated size, we do know that dreamers can “go anywhere” within their confines, suggesting a vast scope. You do not even need to be personally aware of a location in order to find it inside your dream, as Sumireko Usami can travel to locales such as the Netherworld in her dreams despite never going there in real life. One can also see celestial bodies such as the earth, moon, and stars contained within a single dream, implying they are at least cosmic in scope, an interpretation supported by Kasen’s statement that dreams are entire realities in and of themselves. Additionally, we can see recreations of various worlds inside dreams, such as the aforementioned Netherworld, Gensokyo, and Outside World, so dreams must be at least as large as these locations in order to accommodate their existence.

Of particular note are dream souls, the dreams that one was supposed to see separated from them and floating freely as a type of phantom. Word of god describes them as the image of one’s dream, and in turn, dreams are but realities viewed by dream souls. Curiously, it also appears that individuals can exist and act as their own dream souls, as when Marisa was trapped inside the Dream World and forced to do battle with her own magical energy, she did so as a disembodied dream soul.

The Dream World

The Dream World is the world one finds themselves in as they fall asleep, acting as the container for any and all dreams one experiences in their lifetime, and the entire collective of all dreams. To those not already familiar with its existence, it has been mistaken for a world inside one’s head, but it is indeed a real location one can travel to, most frequently whenever they sleep and their soul drifts within its boundaries. Despite that, and the fact that individual dreams are indeed physical, the Dream World itself is not a physical realm, and those with physical bodies are seen as foreign intruders. It is here that the dreams of all living things are recorded.

As the name implies, the Dream World stores all the dreams of living things. This is best seen in Violet Detector, where Sumireko Usami is repeatedly attacked inside the Dream World and battles against many other people’s dream selves. Yet, as revealed in Curiosities of Lotus Asia, those battles were actually experienced by the real versions of those characters as dreams they saw whilst sleeping. Additionally, despite the entire game taking place inside the Dream World, each “stage” is regarded as a singular dream. When Reimu and Marisa both passed out cold and started dreaming, Kasen noted that they were both on a journey through the Dream World, and Eirin’s drugs which induce specific dreams could potentially trap one inside the Dream World.

As mentioned above, the ruler of the Dream World was once able to recreate the Lunar Capital inside a specially-constructed dream while they fled from the real moon. During this evacuation, the Lunarians were in truth inside the Dream World itself, which became a serious problem when Hecatia Lapislazuli sealed off the entire realm to trap them inside. After all, the Dream World is a place where emotions run rampant, gradually wearing away at one’s mind until their very sense of self is dissolved. One must possess a strong will to maintain control of themselves in the Dream World, and those who stay trapped there for too long may be replaced by their dream self; A nightmarish scenario where your dreams become reality, and your “real” self becomes nothing more than a dream.

At bare minimum, the Dream World is a bulkspace containing all the dreams of all living things, across infinite potential realities, there’s infinite potential dreamers, ensuring an infinite amount of dream worlds. Which is impressive when even a single dream is on the level of the Outside World. Through the implication by the statement that one can go anywhere and anyplace within a dream, it’s not impossible the Sanzu River could fall under that as well.

The Dream World, despite being a non-physical place, is nonetheless one of the most vital parts of the cosmology’s continued existence. That is because it actually functions as Touhou’s version of the collective unconscious, with ZUN saying multiple times that it is extremely similar to Carl Jung’s theories. You can do cursory research about it here, but according to Jung, the collective unconscious is a collection of primordial images – or “archetypes” – that act as the basic stock of the subconscious, independently of any outside acquisitions or influences (in effect, things that are innate to the psyche, rather than learned from lived experiences) and living within the “deeper layers of the unconscious”.

It is the matrix of all thought, mythology, philosophy, and metaphysical statements, dating back to our earliest ancestors, and is identical across all individuals. People are distinguished from each other only by the creation of a “persona”, a small portion of the collective unconscious which one performs, embodies, and identifies with. This is shown within Touhou, as it’s possible for humans to share their consciousness through the Dream World, with influence from the Dream World itself capable of sharing emotions and portions of one’s spirit when manipulated through Perfect Possession, and it being the same realm that everyone sees in their dreams, showing an intrinsic connection to the minds of all beings.

When Marisa was trapped inside the Dream World, she was assailed by a manifestation of her own magical energy – an aspect of her living spirit – which was a “transient astral body” composed of self-contained free-floating thoughts, though it also appears to be sentient in and of itself. The fate of such astral bodies is not set in stone, and can take the form of any number of individual thoughts or ephemera in reality; However, the magical energy was also Marisa herself, implying that the “Marisa” seen in the rest of the chapter was merely a dream soul (ie; her subconscious), both of which are separate from her physical body. Had she not broken out of her dreamlike state, it’s implied she would have been erased from existence or reincarnated as a youkai.

This is extremely similar to how Jung described the collective unconscious! Tying this back to the living spirit once more, Miko’s statement comparing the living spirit to an Akashic Record of the self further implies the Dream World is the collective unconscious; The Akashic Record is the collection of all events, thoughts, and words to ever occurred in past, present, or future, stored in an immaterial mental plane. As we’ve established before, living spirits are part of the fundamental makeup of existence, and the Dream World is the memories of the substance that makes up living spirits. That is to say, the Dream World is the recorded memory of all thoughts, past, present, and future. All of this is, again, strongly indicative of the Dream World’s role as the collective unconscious.

As discussed earlier, the boundary between reality in fiction is dictated by one’s thoughts, as all of reality is shaped by cognition and the subconscious. Those subconscious thoughts are dreams themselves, and those dreams are in turn recorded and stored within the Dream World. The Dream World is made up of the memories of the substance that make up the living spirit, which as we’ve discussed, are but different aspects of thought and perception, the very same ones that shape the world itself. If you take the statement of the Dream World being the “mental world” to mean that it’s the same as the mental layer of reality, then that would insinuate the Dream World is the place where all those thoughts originate from and are stored, and considering how inextricably tied to the mind, spirit and magic the Dream World is, this clocks.

The individuality of humans is nothing more than a byproduct of the dreams that had already been prepared for them in advance, suggesting that the thoughts that dictate reality have “existed” inside the Dream World well before they were even thought of, similar to how the collective unconscious is the matrix of thoughts that exist prior to and independently of their conception by humans. If you take these layers of reality further, this would similarly place the Dream World above other places in the cosmology. The Physical Layer, as established earlier, moves in accordance with physics, all living things, etc, but most notably even encompasses things like the water of river flows, the specific attribute of what the Sanzu River is, just a big spatiotemporal river, placing the Dream World as even more impressive than it cosmologically.

Finally, The Dream World is a place where the lines between what is dream and what is reality are blurred; This is best shown in Touhou’s many references to the Butterfly Dream, a story in which a man dreams he is a butterfly, and upon waking, begins to question if he truly was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or if he is a butterfly dreaming he is a man. The story, despite being an apocryphal tale meant to demonstrate the false dichotomy between dreams and reality, genuinely did happen in Touhou, as the original author was in fact trapped inside the Dream World, and other characters in similar situations have also described it as a butterfly dream. There’s even medicine one can take in order to forcefully recreate the butterfly dream, which bases itself on the inner workings of the Dream World and the “other self” that dwells there. This implies the Dream World is a place where the distinction between dreams and reality is meaningless, making it impossible to discern one from the other.

TL;DR

Seeing as Touhou’s cosmology isn’t super known nor super elaborated on in many places, we gave a rather detailed and thorough coverage of it above to support the interpretation presented in this blog. But for those who want to know a more simplified cliffnotes version:

Touhou’s Multiverse is vast, likely containing an infinite amount of Otherworlds, the Outside World existing in a state of reality-fiction transcendence with less real realms such as Gensokyo and the Lunar Capital, and the Sanzu River further encompasses the entire multiverse as a bulkspace, including the transcendent Outside World. All of this being on the physical layer of reality. From there, the Dream World acts as not only the bulkspace for all dreams, which are equal in size and scope to reality, a single dream world able to be infinite in size and contain perfect replicas of realms like the Outside World, but it’s also the collective unconscious, and with Touhou’s cosmology being built on belief, that makes it the most important and foundational realm that can affect all of reality, with it notably operating on the Mental Layer of reality, the second layer after the Physical Layer, this all collectively puts Touhou well into the Outerversal ranges.

Weaknesses

Doctor Strange

Magic comes at a cost, especially for someone like Dr. Strange. Sometimes in order to retain his full power, even just using a few minor spells comes with weird drawbacks, such as not being able to taste or smell for a few weeks. Magic can also be incredibly taxing on him, with it being stated that it can drain mental and physical stamina upon use, which is hard on certain spells that need heavy sustenance. Magic is about intention, and Strange’s exhaustion and fear can cause spells to be miscast, such as sending someone to the wrong location due to low stamina. Sometimes, Strange is unable to wield the power needed for a spell even when he can channel the source, possibly due to it being drawn from other dimensions, though these are more random occurrences. In general, magic at Strange’s level requires lots of focus and precision, and even the slightest off-balance can make even basic spells hard to concentrate on, and he can only expend so much energy into spells such as portals or spells of binding.

As a result, sometimes team settings or constant multi-tasking can make or break Strange, as there are ample instances of his concentration being broken by various attacks. Clea harming Strange broke his levitation spell, a loud sonic scrambler disallows Strange from concentrating on spells, Man-Thing’s attacks break Strange’s concentration, and his Winds of Watoomb has been interrupted. Sometimes, consequences of spells gone wrong could be catastrophic. Being in places where magic is primal such as the Fifth Cosmos makes magic even harder to control without randomly killing one of his teammates. Some powers or abilities are outright inaccessible or things that Strange avoids to use on people, such as erasing minds, destroying someone’s demons, or meddling with time, though some of these have been used in recent times such as stopping time despite being stated to be off-limits beforehand.

The mantle of the Sorcerer Supreme is most at risk if Strange were to lose both of his hands, which would cause him to lose the mantle, his very soul, and his magic power, which was achieved by catching Strange off-guard by Kaelicius, the apprentice of Baron Mordo. One might think that astral projection can circumvent this, but Strange in his astral form while his body is dead is classified as “undead”, and the mantle of the Sorcerer Supreme will ask to be transferred to someone else. This is important, because Strange very much relies on his hands and his voice for spellcasting. When World War Hulk broke Strange’s hands, it severely limited his magical options, though he can still cast a verbal fire spell to burn himself and Black Bolt. Binding his hands is also an option, from magical handcuffs to mystically and silently binding, and low mystic energies can also make it difficult for him to use his hands. However, there are some odd workarounds for weaknesses like this. For one, he can still use the Eye of Agamotto and the Cloak with a thought, and thought-based magic can still be used even when silent, and when Strange’s time-displaced duplicate spawned after his death, he was able to cast a healing spell of regeneration on Kaelicius’s hands (which were the original Strange’s hands to convert and reform over Strange’s stolen hands. Because they were Strange’s hands, the spell regenerated Strange back to life, but in doing so converted and killed Kaelicius. Basically, a regen-based telefrag.

But what happens when there is no magic period? Simply put, Doctor Strange’s spells won’t work if there is no magic around him. Without mystical energy around him that he channels and redirects, he has almost no spells, can’t fly, and can’t teleport or use telekinesis. Magic dying similarly affects magical abilities related to artifacts such as the Eye of Agamotto, the Grimoire of Watoomb, magical artifacts around the world, etc. Magic dying in any capacity at the subatomic level cuts him off from magic entirely. And when Strange is without his magic, he is very much a sitting duck. Sure, he still has his intellect and surprising amount of skill, but he is very much human, and all the weaknesses and limitations of a human come into play.

A recent weakness to Doctor Strange is the meta-metallic metal known as Mysterium, which completely negates magic. Just being stabbed with a dagger of Mysterium cut off Strange from everything; the Trinity, Sorcerer Supreme, the world’s magic, the Vishanti, and the Aether completely. While Strange isn’t necessarily helpless without his magic, it still leaves him extremely vulnerable and he is still human, meaning that anything from stabbing him to physically overpowering him could do the job. Another thing that can affect Strange’s magic is distance, as the farther away he is from his source of power, the harder it is to use spells, having to cling onto Asgardian magic while he was in Asgard due to how far away he was.

As for more weaknesses on the good doctor himself, here is a list of things that in the past, have affected Doctor Strange, some just as much as he has resisted:

Astral Projection Counters: The Titan, a persona controlling Starship Hulk, could force Strange’s astral form out of his body. The risk of astral projection is that Strange leaves his body vulnerable to being attacked. Titan begins to absorb Strange’s astral form, which pulls in Strange’s physical form, only being held back by Doc Samson. Strange’s astral form gets trapped inside of his body through black magic, so he asks Wong to bring out the Karkuthi to read an incantation to free it. Killing Strange’s spirit kills his body, and he outran astral buffalo and returns to his body before it can be destroyed to leave his spirit wandering forever. Nightmare trapped Strange’s astral essence in his dark realm, separated from his physical body. It is possible to trap his astral form with a force-field that can prevent it from leaving. His Astral Form was affected by a dimension that made things denser, more compressed, and reversed, making him tangible. Trapped in his astral form in the mirror, confirms that his soul is inside and his body will die if he’s not rescued soon.

Out-Magicked Instances: Wanda turns Strange’s own magic against him to restrain him. Stephen gets overwhelmed by the Black Swans’ numbers and magical assault. Strange is immobilized by the Black Dechantment bifrost that acts as Mindless Plague conduits. While Strange normally protects his body and mind with a dozen spells designed to shield him as he sleeps. The Aged Genghis is able to bypass them. Strange’s magic is redirected. Strange’s magic is redirected again as amplified Faltine Flames that he blocks with a Shield of Seraphim. It’s insinuated by Nightmare that Strange could be trapped in the Dream Dimension by closing the doorway to the waking world. Said by the Vishanti that he could not survive “entropic bombardment” for long. This particular usage of the Images of Ikonn drew in Ikonn, who could control and turn the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak against Strange. Getting hit by the Bolts of Enthrallment of the Vishanti will rob him of his free will.

Magical Protections: Strange, while not at his peak nor on a spatial plane, detects where Kitty Pryde is but gets overwhelmed and knocked out by magical protections against magic on a special giant bullet that she’s trapped inside of. In fact, Strange can’t break Kitty Pryde’s connection to the giant bullet after she connects to phase it through the planet. Strange gets blocked from following someone through a magic gateway. Strange can’t do anything to this magicproof tank. Fighting an opponent, Marlo Chandler, who is exempt from the universe’s laws of magic, allowing her to ignore his offenses and defenses. The magical nimbus of the N’Garai protects possessed Wolverine from Strange’s go-to spells. Can’t reliably latch onto Agatha Harkness’ mind while she’s merged with Ebony to bring them back home. Cannot read the minds of those he possesses in his Astral Form who are being mind manipulated themselves. Banishes a monster to the void before remarking his spells are useless against “creatures that defy physical and supernatural laws”.

Power Nullification: Strange seals himself willingly in a genie / demonic bottle that makes his magic finite. Was vulnerable to the Sands of Nisanti’s magic nullification. Strange’s magic can be dispelled. Dormammu’s mystically forged bonds were preventing Strange from casting any enchantments, although he claims he could eventually have eventually devised a counterspell to this. Powerful enough evil entities can mask themselves from the Orb of Agamotto’s tracking abilities. Entities such as the Masked Rider can negate the Eye of Agamotto’s information gathering abilities. Morbius stole Strange’s mystical powers and knowledge with a talisman. After Spidey smashed the talisman, Strange received his arcane knowledge and magic back into himself from Morbius. Strange and Spidey got power–nulled in Xandu’s realm, an effect implied to be from the Wand of Watoomb. Strange readies a spell as his Astral Form, the Seven Rings of Raggador and Bands of Cyttorak and Fires of Fandral, though this demon dispels them easily and casts a net that traps his Astral Form and negates magic. Strange is hit with a silence spell that prevents him from speaking by the Black Swans. Tony has a zero-point system that neutralizes mystical energy projection. Without the powers of the Vishanti, he can only block two assaults before being overwhelmed. Astrid Mordo, Baron Mordo’s daughter, could mystically drain magic powers from others. She did this after physically weakening Strange first. Strange got kept trapped and magically-nulled. Strange is drained of his powers by a mystic cross. His Astral Form can’t leave and his mental powers are nullified by a spell. Even while drained of powers, Strange uses every iota of his full strength to project the portal over to the Thing on Earth from another dimension. All he had was one try though. The Outcasts mystically nullified Strange’s Winds of Watoomb. Spellproof armor nullifies Flames of the Faltine, which Strange intended to use to target and dissolve armor on an enemy. Strange had his magical energies get drained by spell leeches. Adam Warlock forces Strange’s teleportation spell to not work. Affected by mystical interference which dulls his senses. Strange can sacrifice most of his powers by renouncing his divine aid from entities like Watoomb and Ikonn, making him weaker than a novice.

Soul Attacks: While he can withstand some singing from hellfire, even tanking a beam of it, Stephen was fully incapacitated after a Penance Stare and required outside help to be revived from this state. Sorcerer Supreme Brother Voodoo is affected by the Penance Stare, which he only snaps out of after Doom dispels the effects with some of his magic. At one point, Dormammu put Strange’s soul into a rat. Strange’s soul is so powerful that Lady Death has a greater grasp on it than the average soul. Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Doom easily BFR’d Strange’s soul, though it was much weaker due to not being Sorcerer Supreme at that point. While Strange was mindhaxed by D’Spayre, his soul is being siphoned by him. Dormammu, in Strange’s body, threatens to shatter Strange’s astral being all over this continuum. Strange tries using dark energies to disguise his aura. But, he has to be careful or his soul will be rent asunder. He casts a Shield of Seraphim and then banishes these dark energies quickly after he’s interrupted, saving his life.

Possession: Without his astral body, his physical body is typically more vulnerable to possession by powerful entities. His physical body got possessed by Nightmare while he was in his Astral Form. His body was also possessed by Dormammu while his Astral Form was away.

Transmutation: Doctor Strange has been turned into a 2-Dimensional geometric form, and he was transformed into a frog while his body was vulnerable during Astral Projection.

Sealing: Nightmare has been able to seal Strange in a crystal. Strange’s soul was sealed in a crystal while his physical body was turned into a werewolf independently. Stephen’s Astral Form was imprisoned by a pentagram. Grim Reaper sucks and traps Strange’s soul in an object. Has his Astral Form / soul trapped in a mirror.

Probability Manipulation: Magic from the former Strange villain Xander would passively transmute on near-impact against Black Cat due to her bad luck device powers canceling out his magic as magic itself is manipulating and altering local quantum probability fields.

Mind Manipulation: Even with his overwhelming list of mental protections, powerful enough forces can penetrate through them if potent enough, so it’s not an outright immunity. Strange has fallen victim to the obedience disks these aliens have, and they said not even Silver Surfer could resist them. This knockoff Doctor Fate could read Strange’s mind. This demon ichor magic is used by Diablo to immobilize Strange, who says he could easily remove his ability to think but doesn’t due to not wanting zombies in his army. Nightmare makes Strange experience a dream where the Ancient One turned him away at the door instead of taking him in. The dream put Strange in a weakened state, allowing Baron Mordo to enter the Sanctum, Strange uses energy constructs. Akihiro forcibly put Strange into a telepathic link to see how he got possessed. Strange got mentally influenced to sleep. While D’Spayre’s cruel despair-ridden words didn’t incapacitate Echo because she’s deaf, it did influence and incapacitate everyone else including Strange. Mentally manipulated by Mojo alongside a lot of other characters, requiring outside help from Zarathos emerging. Z does another enforced truth revelation (an information dump of secrets) with Uatu’s Watcher eye on a group of characters, this time including on Strange. Red Skull’s telepathy (which is currently Xavier’s telepathy) starts getting into Wanda’s head and mind haxes both Strange and Wanda. This mindhax was planetary in scale, and its hate wave was telepathically altering Doctor Strange’s mood too. Strange was unable to undo the hate wave with a spell of broadcast of Wong’s self-control aura. Doreen’s duplicate uses mind control on Strange from Purple Man’s glasses. Enchantress once mindswapped Strange with Carol Danvers, and Strange says that his magic is knowledge and experience that should have moved with his mind, but instead it’s stuck in his body and Carol doesn’t know how to use it. Strange had his willpower removed by the Serpent Crown. Sleep-inducing influence in a valley is working on Strange. Galactus shows what happened to Eternity to Strange (it knocks him out cold).

Memory Manipulation: Similar to the low showings against mental manipulations, strong enough potency can bypass Strange’s mental defenses to affect his memories. Strange was affected by an I.M.D., an incantation of mass distraction spell to wipe the memory of W.A.N.D. from the Earth. The Vishanti separated the memories, psyche, and overall being of the 5,000 Warhound Strange from the normal Doctor Strange. Heart of the Universe Thanos restored the universe, with nobody but Adam Warlock remembering the events leading up to his amplification. The first Wanda reality rewrite during House of M (before the “No More Mutants” spell) affected Strange’s memories and rewrote him. This affected both him and Emma Frost so thoroughly that they needed outside help to awaken their previous memories. Had his memory suppressed by the origin of the Sentry, like every other Marvel hero. The Collector shunts everyone including Strange back to their time periods while wiping their memories of this death game. Strange once absorbed Shuma’s power but, in turn, forgot his identity.

Reality Warping: Strange is reality warped over to a fantasy scenario by the Beyonder casually. Infinity Gauntlet Magus snaps his fingers and holds Strange in stasis with Galactus. Strange’s form is transformed into vapor to be kidnapped and deformed in the Dream Dimension by Nightmare.

Cosmic Incidents: A temporal fracture in the world causes 1960s Strange to be pulled into the future, and if he stays there the whole reality will collapse. A cosmic flux disintegrates Galactus’s ship and kills Strange, Galactus, Nova, and Silver Surfer along with it.

Absorption: Heart of the Universe Thanos absorbed all of spacetime and characters, including Strange, with this encompassing abstracts like the Living Tribunal, leaving nothing left. This unleashed creature would’ve killed all mystics and feed on their energies and soul, which implies it would kill Strange for good. That creature’s absorption hospitalizes a mystic, leaving them in a comatose state. An amped Moon Knight hits Strange with a piece of the Iron Fist and MK’s followers to contain him and drain him. Had his life energy absorbed. Strange’s life force is able to be drained.

Parasitic Assimilation: Strange gets assimilated by parasitic aliens that biologically merge with hosts and alter personalities, which doesn’t affect people with altered DNA. Trying to separate the parasites kills both them and their hosts. Doctor Strange gets forcibly taken over by a symbiote. Strange needed outside help to be freed. Strange gets infected by the parasite that spreads through the pores and possesses the host.

Size Manipulation: Strange is able to be shrunken by Pym Particles.

Biological Manipulation: Nightmare biologically manipulates Strange to grow more eyes.

Vampirism: Varnae-possessed Blade bit Strange and turned him into a vampire, though his Astral Form wasn’t affected by this.

Poison: Vomits from Wong’s poisoned tea. Sorry about that, man.

Reimu Hakurei

Things aren’t always perfect in paradise, even in the life of its resident shrine maiden. Reimu can, at times, be rather lazy, having put off resolving Incidents for periods of time because she didn’t see them as an immediate threat. This laziness was initially a major character flaw which held her back from training and reaching her maximum potential for quite a while, though she’s grown more open to training in recent years and has improved her skill substantially. Kasen Ibaraki also believes her to be more prone to mistakes when she gets cocky, but this could be due to Kasen’s more biased perception of her.

While Reimu’s exterminations are especially potent and can put down all kinds of opponents, she has been unable to fully exterminate some in the past, such as Yuyuko Saigyouji, nor could she put down an immortal like Fujiwara no Mokou. Although she has exterminated all manner of youkai in her line of work over the years, that doesn’t necessarily make her immune to their tricks, many of which Reimu has fallen victim to before (Innate Dream notwithstanding), and these include:

Possession: While Reimu has shown resistance against standard forms of possession, she is susceptible to stronger variants such as Mizuchi’s or Perfect Possession.

Apathy Inducement: Reimu may have had her sense of danger dulled by the energy of Miracle Mallet

Soul Removal: Reimu had her soul/living spirit ripped out of her body and sent to Avici by Kasen Ibaraki, though Kasen attributes doing so to… Reimu’s own power?…

Suffocation: Without external equipment or summons, Reimu is capable of suffocating due to lack of oxygen in anoxic zones. Though she’s also been able to breathe in space-like environments in the past, so maybe she’s just stupid?

Blindness Inducement: Wasn’t able to see well while fighting Mystia due to her spell of night blindness

Illness-Causing Curses: Reimu and much of the Human Village fell victim to an illness epidemic, which was caused by a contagious god being released by Marisa and spreading it’s curse to those it came across, the illness gave its victims a cough, and made their bodies feel weak and heavy. Reimu also became ill upon being infected by the lingering and spreading regret of a snake that became trapped in her roof, which wouldn’t have passed on its own and only grown worse if she didn’t save the snake. Once the snake was saved, she immediately lost all symptoms.

Transformation: Reimu is susceptible to Mamizou’s ability to transform / disguise opponents as animals, though only temporarily.

Absorption: Reimu was unable to defeat Yuuma Toutetsu on her own, as Yuuma’s Absorption abilities completely prevented any of her attacks from being able to damage her, simply being absorbed or healing her. It should be noted that Yuuma’s Absorption is especially potent however, not only able to absorb direct physical blows, but also magic and spiritual attacks of all kinds, and even more esoteric things like desires, misfortune, emotions, lingering resentments, and even Gods.

Immutability: Without the Incident Stones, Reimu is susceptible to the effects of Ariya’s Immutability, as in the Bad Ending of Touhou 20 she’s temporarily separated from the Incident Stones and has her memories affected.

Intoxication, Nightmare Inducement & Hallucinations: Reimu has been rather consistently affected by Miyoi Okunoda’s ability, which is a strange, multifaceted one. Miyoi is a Suima youkai, and anyone who drinks sake served by her, especially if they drink enough to become badly drunk or black out, can be affected by her abilities to induce nightmares, as well as hallucinatory illusions within a person. These hallucinations are completely subject to Miyoi’s whims and are controlled by her, and the affected can be swept into a scenario they have no control over, losing a fight to an undefeatable monster, or so wracked with fear they cannot move. These abilities specifically only affect the user’s mind, anything that happens within the hallucination/nightmare doesn’t affect their physical body, though they can experience the hallucinations while “awake”, believing it to be current reality, but passing out asleep as soon as it ends. The only release from the hallucination is to recognize what’s going on and suffer through it until you sober up, be shaken awake out of it, or be put into unconsciousness by Miyoi interrupting/ending the hallucination.

Miyoi’s nightmares/hallucinations are noted to be especially powerful, as they’re amplified by Suika’s Ibuki Gourd, transforming her into the strongest kind of Suima, which makes her ability “unmatched and unparalleled”, and is strong enough to effect supernatural entities like youkai (who don’t have traditional physical bodies) and Gods, however, it requires ingesting her alcohol to be affected. The way her ability is depicted varies on if it’s a hallucination in the moment while they’re conscious, passed out drunk / passing out, or have a nightmare as soon as they fall asleep, making a bit variable in its usage as well.
- Miyoi is capable of manipulating and erasing memories of those who she affects, as well as implanting false memories, though Reimu grows resistant to the memory manipulation over time, being the only part of the ability she partially resists.

Poison: Almost died from eating expired food and needed Eirin’s medicine to be resuscitated; was affected by a raijuu’s poison and had to be cured with corn.

Intoxication: Reimu gets blackout drunk, like, a lot. Like all the goddamn time.

Verdict

Before we begin the verdict, we’re going to establish the one and only rule we’re putting in place for this matchup’s debate, that neither Strange nor Reimu will be allowed to summon completely separate characters/heroes to their aid. This does not exclude any potential familiars or “summons” in the traditional combat sense of a monster under one’s control or a low-sentience familiar being pulled into the battle, but specifically pulling entirely separate heroes into the battle. Doctor Strange on multiple occasions has opened portals to summon various other Marvel Heroes and entities such as the Avengers, and Reimu has equipment that’s in contact with characters such as Yukari Yakumo and Okina Matara, and has means to potentially drag other allies into the fight. For the sake of a fair debate between Doctor Strange and Reimu Hakurei, we will be disallowing them to summon alternative characters into the fray. After all, we are analyzing who would win if Doctor Strange and Reimu Hakurei fought, not if Doctor Strange can beat every Touhou character or if Reimu can defeat any number of Marvel Heroes like Hulk or Thor. It’s simply beyond the scope of what we’re debating and what we’ve analyzed.

With the one and only rule established, let’s finally get into the debate, starting with…

Base Stats

Seeing as these are two characters with a wide variety of different points of scaling at differing levels and standards, we figured it would be most interesting to break this stat comparison down into three different sections, The Finite, The Infinite, and The Beyond, in order to best measure the absurd levels of power and speed they’re operating at.

The Finite

In terms of direct finite comparisons, let’s start with their power, and the best value to compare would be the biggest individual cosmos they’ve ever affected, so let’s compare the baseline calculable sizes of a Marvel Universe, to that of Touhou’s Heaven. The Marvel Universe’s size has received a variety of calculations for its size over the years due to various statements about its size. It’s been said to have a radius of at least at trillion light years, which would be 9,945x a baseline universe, but you can go much, much further than that. In Man-Thing (1974) Issue #22, it’s established that after the collapse of a portion of the multiverse, the universe was newly merged into a much larger size, one stated to contain centillions of sentient beings! Using a baseline of 2 centillion, and the fact it’s stated that a single planet in Marvel is designed to contain 2 billion people, you can math that out to find out that the universe would have to be 1e269 x Universal… or rather, 100 Octooctogintillion times Universal! That’s absolutely staggering, easily one of the largest finite AP calculations out there, and Strange would scale directly to this, as he was stated to be even more magically powerful than Dakhim, the guy who undid the damage to the multiverse and merged the universe to begin with!

Meanwhile, Reimu has fought a variety of characters who have either affected, destroyed, or re-created all of Heaven, such as Tenshi Hinanawi, whose danmaku is stated to have the power to split Heaven and Earth, which Reimu was capable of deflecting. Even Tenshi’s Dream Self shook the entirety of Heaven and was planning to destroy it and rebuild it from scratch, with Shion Yorigami overpowering Dream Tenshi to prevent her from doing so… just for Shion to similarly be steamrolled by Reimu. Reimu can also scale to Suika Ibuki, who literally blew up the entirety of Heaven, and then used her powers to piece the fragments back together to restore it! Heaven in Touhou is stated to contain the God known as Amitabha (in fact, it’s implied that Heaven is Amitabha’s specific Pure Land), and Amitabha is a very, very big guy. He’s directly stated to be 6 x 10^125 yojana tall, and in Touhou, 1 Yojana converts directly to 7 Kilometers, characters in the story even comment that that size would be ridiculously larger than the observable universe… but by how much, exactly? Well, doing the math, it would be about 1e308 x Universal… that would be 108,717 Centillion times Universal! Compared to the Marvel Universe size established earlier, that’s literally a strength gap of 1 duodecillion, handily in Reimu’s favor!

But what about speed? Using the aforementioned universe sizes, we can pretty easily determine the speeds of feats that affect these universes as well. Dr. Strange, after being sent to the edge of the universe, used the Winds of Watoomb to rapidly return back to Earth’s solar system. While the timeframe is said to be within “moments”, the dialogue implies it’s a very quick event, so we can estimate a timeframe of 5 to 1 seconds, which would require speeds of 181.7 Tretrigintillion – 980.7 Tretrigintillion times the speed of light! Absolutely absurd, so how does Reimu compare? Reimu has been able to match Suika Ibuki’s speed in combat, even dodging attacks from her mist form, and Suika was able to piece Heaven back together after she fucking blew it up, using her Density Manipulation to manipulate the fragments of Heaven into Mist to restore them. It’s noted to be an event that occurred in a very short timespan in the night, that very few people bore witness to, which is especially impressive considering how attuned to the moon Youkai are, meaning a 1 minute should be a reasonable estimate.

In order to restore the Heavens within that timeframe, Suika would have had to move at 223.5 Octotrigintillion times the speed of light! Comparing this to the Winds of Watoomb crossing the universe, it’d be a speed gap of over 257 Trillion! It should be noted that this gap may be even larger, as that’s just comparing the speed of Suika restoring the Heavens, not her destroying it, which is noted to have been a “sudden” explosion, likely being a similar 1-5 second timeframe, which could increase the value 12-60x. In short, when using solely finite, calculatable methods and universe sizes for strength and speed, Reimu completely blows Strange out of the water, and pretty cleanly wins this comparison. Reimu wins The Finite.

The Infinite

But given the nature of these characters’ multiverse, the finite is far from where it stops. Both franchises regularly tap into The Infinite, giving a variety of ways we can compare how the infinite levels of power they can both reach compare!

By way of infinite universal feats, Reimu can shatter the barriers separating Gensokyo and the Netherworld, which is an infinitely sized space-time, and scales above Sakuya, who can merge all of time, past, present, and future into a singular point. She’s also defeated Shinki, the creator of Makai, an infinitely-sized realm, and Kaguya Houraisan, who created an infinite corridor composed of infinitely linked gaps in space-time, and can contend with Miko and Kasen, Hermits capable of creating Senkais, separate sealed realms that can be extended to infinity. In general, infinitely sized universes are surprisingly common in Touhou. As for Doctor Strange, Stephen has been stated to be capable of reshaping reality on his own, and Tony Stark compared him to the Hulk himself in destructive capabilities, which bare minimum means he should be comparable to a feat like Hulk thunderclapping Nightcrawler’s dimension, which is a confirmed universe – with individual universes in Marvel being stated many, many times to be infinite in size.

In terms of Multiversal feats beyond individual infinite realms, Reimu scales to many of the heaviest hitters in Touhou! She’s beaten Tenshi Hinanawi and deflected her attacks when she’s fought with intent to kill, putting them well on the same level, and at her strongest, she also scales to Suika Ibuki, both of these characters capable of fully destroying all of the Heavens. As established before, Heaven has a particularly massive finite number attached to it, but it has been stated to be larger than the Netherworld, a realm that’s infinite in size! But most notably, it’s said to be a place that’s a collection of multiple realms, and Gensokyo Geography implies that there’s a Heaven for every God, taking into account the amount of Gods, The Heavens would actually be an infinite multiverse in of itself! On top of that, Reimu at her strongest can scale to Yukari Yakumo, who is also able to use her Boundary Manipulation is powerful enough to fundamentally undermine reality, as all of existence is built upon the existence of Boundaries, and with Yukari being capable of erasing all boundaries, she can reduce all of existence to nothing but a single enormous object. Her powers are also directly compared to that of the Gods, with the Dragon God in particular being capable of creating all of existence! Seeing as Touhou would have an infinite amount of Otherworlds due to its amount of Gods, all of these feats would be reaching infinite multiversal!

Meanwhile, Doctor Strange can shield all of creation from the collapse of the Nexus to all Realities, which encompasses the wider Marvel Multiverse, and has fought plenty of characters with similar multiversal levels of power, such as Hulk, Thor, and the Destroyer, an Odin-enchanted armor meant to fight eight Celestials at once. The Odinforce, or Odin himself, threaten the very fabric of the Multiverse by just fighting Seth, the Serpent-God of Death, with their blows rippling into every plane of reality. In the second iteration of Secret Wars, Strange was stated to have been a helpmate to God Emperor Doom in remaking creation itself, which would be the entire Marvel Omniverse in its entirety. And he’s taken down beings with the powers of the multiverse itself at their beck and call, such as Dormammu, who can absorb entire universes and routinely threatens to conquer or annihilate the multiverse at large, or Galactus, who was threatening to send creation ablaze with his fight against the Other and Scrier. Overall, Doctor Strange has many feats of his own and feats against powerful characters that threaten the Marvel multiverse on a day to day basis.

As for speed, Reimu was able to travel through and reach the end of Kaguya’s Infinite Corridor with sheer travel speed, and could catch up to the Palanquin Ship, which travelled across the entirety of the infinitely sized Makai, and the ship’s journey was stated to transcend space-time. She could even travel across the entire Sanzu River, an infinitely sized realm that acts as the bulkspace between all Otherworlds, which actively resists attempts at transit between worlds spatiotemporally. Doctor Strange can cast spells that grant infinite speed and fly through countless dimensions with both his physical and astral form, and can amplify himself with the Winds of Watoomb, which is the same power source used by speedsters such as the Blur, which allowed him to outright beat Eternity itself in a foot race. Outracing the living infinite multiverse in a race is, frankly, kind of ridiculous! Both are generally in the incalculable speed ranges, showing a tie on this aspect.

Once we start approaching comparing their multiverses in overall scope, things start to tip in favor of the Sorcerer Supreme. The Touhou Multiverse does have infinite universes and higher dimensional structures, all within the 5 to 11-Dimensional range. It even likely has multiple multiverses, between the Otherworlds, Heavens, and all of the Dream Worlds. Unfortunately, Touhou having an infinite amount of spatial dimensions is extremely generous as talked about in Cosmology, with us on the blog not feeling it’s particularly concrete currently. Even with this in mind and being very generous, and granting Touhou that extreme high-end, Marvel’s got all of this covered. Infinite universes, infinite timelines (something Touhou has never mentioned having), infinite spatial dimensions… but most notably, they’re even transfinite quantities of all of these. All the universes, timelines, and spatial dimensions are beyond just bog standard infinity! Not to mention, there’s many infinite physical and metaphysical realms before you even reach places beyond time and space. While Touhou has multiple layers to reality and a variety of other realms in its multiverse, it just falls below the scope of Marvel’s absurd baseline multiverse.

So speed is pretty even, both having feats that are incalculable in nature at their best, but power starts to favor Doctor Strange a little more at this level when things get serious, as Marvel simply has more within the boundaries of time and space compared to Touhou. Thus, The Infinite goes to Doctor Strange.

The Beyond

Past the far reaches of their multiverses however, we reach the Beyond; realms that transcend our reality and make up places with abstract beings, dreams, and astral planes. At their very best, both of these characters have shown the ability to reach, affect, and fight beings who completely transcend their entire cosmologies in a variety of ways. So how do these places compare?

In Touhou, the Great Hakurei Barrier has a pretty explicit reality>fiction distinction between the Outside World and Gensokyo, establishing them as reality and fantasy respectively. Everything within the barrier is considered a fantasy, illusionary, a fleeting dream, non-existent, or not real. The Outside World, which is on the other side of this barrier, is “reality”, or a more real state of being. Beyond that is the Sanzu River, the bulkspace that exists between all realities, separating them all, and allowing for dimensional and time travel across them, with even the Outside World contained amongst its waves. At the highest level would be the Dream World, which is the collective unconscious that shapes all reality, the place where the line between dream and reality begins to blur, containing an infinite amount of dream worlds within itself – each one equal to reality – and is on a higher layer of reality than the rest of the cosmology, putting it far above everything else.

Reimu is able to weaken this barrier between what is real and what is not real, and Reimu scales to characters that can outright destroy it such as Sumireko empowered by the Occult Orbs, and the barrier’s creator – Yukari Yakumo. Reimu is also effortlessly above Doremy Sweet, a youkai that ZUN has implied is not even particularly strong in verse, and despite that – she’s the ruler of the Dream World who’s capable of consuming, creating and destroying entire dreams. As established in the cosmology section, dreams in Touhou are completely equal to reality, able to contain infinitely sized realms like the Netherworld, and transcendent spaces like the Outside World! Remilia Scarlet’s Scarlet Mist would have passed through the Hakurei Barrier and breached into the Outside World, and was going to erase the border between Red and White, which are the very concepts of existence and non-existence, the boundary of Red and White being the very beginning of all things! Similarly, Yukari Yakumo being able to affect all of existence and her powers scaling to the Dragon God would similarly grant full, cosmology wiping scope!

As for Doctor Strange, he has numerous feats of being able to affect Eternity itself, both its M-Body and the Multiversal Eternity we are more familiar with. He can contain its infinite consciousness, perform cosmic surgery on it, and shield from its fights with the Dreaded Dormammu. Eternity in Marvel is quite complex, as Doctor Strange himself has come to learn, the reality contained in Eternity’s essence is considered a cosmic dream and fantasy, and Eternity itself is the most supreme being in the cosmos, being the final stopping point after Strange fell through space, time, dreams, thought, life, and death itself. Eternity transcends all levels of realities and dreams, including the Astral Plane, a place that exists beyond physical space that houses abstractions of the mind and houses the potential of entire multiverses and timelines, of which there are an infinite of in Marvel. Eternity would also be above the Superflow, a place where even the Universal Abstract beings embody concepts at a fundamental level that acts as a bulkspace between universes before you approach the Multiversal Abstracts. The Superflow at times has been described as the brain of Eternity, adding credence to Strange being able to affect beings on this level.

So side by side, there are a lot of similarities between their scaling. The Outside World and Astral Plane act as as transcendent realms to reality, the Sanzu River and the Superflow act as bulkspaces encompassing the wider cosmology, and the Dream World and Eternity are similarly transcendent to everything below them, embody cosmological structures that supersede time, dimensions, reality, dreams, and view all below/within it as mere fantasy, with the multiverse itself being the very thoughts of Eternity, while all of Touhou’s cosmology is shaped by the collective unconscious of the Dream World. While Marvel’s entire, full cosmology obviously gets far larger than Touhou’s entire cosmology, where Strange scales to at a base level within Marvel’s cosmology presents a very close comparison to Touhou’s cosmos! These comparisons in particular present a decent push and pull for both sides on how far they can truly go with scaling and at max power, and while there are definitely variable interpretations on both sides that could push either side to be weaker or stronger than argued here, we find that they and their arguments are comparable enough and would equal out in this regard, making The Beyond a tie.

So in conclusion, Reimu wins Finite, Strange wins Infinite, both tie Beyond, not only creating a tie across all 3 categories, but most notably showing that at their highest levels of power, they both generally match in both strength and speed! Therefore their base stats are a tie.

Utility

Neither Doctor Strange nor Reimu Hakurei would have a complete powerscaling analysis without addressing their deep bags of tricks, which have been built upon for decades. Considering the laundry list of powers from the blog, we thought it best to condense and address how either character could contend with all the hax, magic, and artifacts from their opponent, and do so in a handy-dandy table! This is to see how they could stack up in terms of actually relevant, game-changing abilities. We should note that this table will not compare and contrast every single ability that Reimu and Strange have access to, but more so just focusing on the abilities that are immediately fatal or game-changing against the other, “hax” options that can either instantly take out, or severely hinder the other.

When it comes to Doctor Strange, we first need to mention that he should know every counterspell given he’s read through the Book of the Vishanti, which houses every known counterspell (with him being able to recall specific ones from it at any point), and he can learn how to counter magic after seeing it used on him and studying it. Therefore, keep in mind that, for every power he’s displayed, Strange should know and be able to cast its associated counterspell.

DOCTOR STRANGE POWERS	DOES REIMU RESIST IT?	REIMU HAKUREI POWERS	DOES STRANGE RESIST IT?
Soul Manipulation	Resists – Can survive in the Forest of Magic which can alter the spirit, can survive having all of her spirit absorbed, can endure soul-based attacks	Spatial Cutting	Resists / Counters – His Astral Form is untethered by space and time, and he can restore himself from being spatially shattered or restore himself in terms of space. He also has his own methods to do the same thing.
Soul Removal	N/A – Kasen ripped out her soul using Reimu’s own power	Spatial Manipulation	Resists / Counters – Like spatial cutting, his Astral Form is unfettered by spacetime, and he strengthens dimensional walls, controls and seals portals, and makes and controls null spaces. He can also rip open, manipulate, and stitch up holes in reality.
Possession	Perfect Possession + Limited Resistance – Can resist lesser forms of possession, though she’s vulnerable to stronger types	Sealing	Resists – Numerous examples of his soul resisting or breaking out of sealed prisons, and Strange can remove seals manually
Exorcism	Doesn’t really apply to Reimu + is something she can do herself	Onikirimaru Dream Seals	N/A – These would likely be beyond Strange’s sealing resistance and vaporize him like they did to Kasen
Mind Manipulation	Resists – has many showings of resisting mind manipulation	Last Word(Spell & Extra Life Nullification)	Resists – Last Word doesn’t fully halt characters from using general magic, and Strange or other mystics have resisted instances of magic disruption. His Sanctum was a safe haven from magic breaking worldwide. He’s also been able to sustain Galactus’s reconstitution against Death attempting to halt it.
Memory Manipulation	Resists with Incident Stones, has limited innate resistance	Weather Manipulation	Counters – Able to dispel all known mists, clear away storms, and counter all elements he can personally control with magic
Madness Manipulation	Resists – True Moon cannot affect her	Absorption(Absorption & Custom Parasol System Card)	Resists / Counters – Able to nullify absorption links, reverse them, and restores his soul being drained with magic absorption
Information Dumps	N/A – Satori is able to dump memories in her mind normally	Perfect Possession	Resists – In order to forcibly Perfect Possess someone, you must catch them with their mental guard lowered, which Strange would be unlikely to do
Absorption	Resists – Reliable Tanuki Apprentice Ability Card prevents spiritual power being drained below 75%Counters – Has multiple means of transmuting & absorbing energy	Power Nullification	Resists – While he hasn’t resisted especially potent power nullifications, his energy creations and other mystics have interacted with weapons that disrupt magic, he took control of beings that absorbed his powers before, and his Sanctum is a stronghold against global magic disruptions
Sealing	Resists/Counters – Can break seals effortlessly, and her “Cheat Technique” can dissolve any seal	Summoning / God Channeling	Counters – Knows ways to sever outside influences on mystics and can channel his own beings
Time Manipulation	Limited – Is unaffected by time running in reverse, but has never shown resistances to other forms of time manip	Portal Creation / BFR	Counters / Resists – Mystics are able to innately resist being shunted away, and he can create his own portals, control their destinations, and seal them
Time Travel	Resistance – Reimu is unaffected by Keine erasing/sealing the history of the Human Village, meaning she should be unaffected by being Baby Thanos’d	Impurity	Resists / Counters – Strange has resisted death touches and cannot be forcibly made dead by Death due to the Ankh of Life, and he can use shields that defend against alterations to the laws of nature. Strange has a prolonged lifespan due to passing Death’s trials and can manipulate information and manipulate life information of others like Gwenpool. He’s also shielded against the recorded and memory rewriting of Spider-Man’s identity, the Ancient One’s undoing of similarly recorded rewrites of Strange’s identity by Eternity, and his implied ability to resync history under God Emperor Doom. It should be noted however, that while Strange has multiple means to counteract it, all-encompassing direct exposure to Impurity to his Astral Form could result in it getting corrupted / destroyed, killing him.
Time Stop	Counters – Also has time stop via Ability Cards & System CardsResists with Incident Stones	Time Stop(Stopwatch System Card)	Counters – Also has Time Stop and can reverse its effects
Sleep Manipulation	Resists – Dream Souls don’t affect her post AoCF	Immobilization	Counters – His mind is still able to operate while physically immobile and he should know all counterspells to his own immobility spells
Immobilization	Counters – Also has immobilization spells	Spiritual Poison(Spell Breaking Drug System Card)	Counters – He’s able to purify his soul, transfer spiritual infections away, remove types of soul poisons, and has magical antibodies for magic maladies
Power Nullification	Fortune Counters + Resists with Incident Stones	Invulnerability (8 seconds)(Three Heavenly Drops System Card)	Counters – Also should know similar spells that make things invulnerable and their respective counterspells
Superpower Swap	N/A	Soul Removal	Resists – Various instances of resisting having his soul removed or torn from his body, along with being able to act fine without a soul or simply repossess himself
Transmutation	N/A	Barriers	Counters – Able to burn, dissolve, or shatter magic barriers through numerous spells
Biology Manipulation	N/A	Mind Reading(Yellow Subterranean)	Resists / Counters – Strange can resist and reverse mental probes, resists attempted telepathic links, and cast mental shielding spells which have generally been able to defend against mental probes when cast by other mystics
Body Puppetry	Resists – Can resist the effects of the Dream World, which can take control of one’s body without a strong enough mind	Poison (Scarlet Mist Stone)	Counters – Knows spells that can purify poisons from his body along with having magical antibodies for more mystical poisons
Age Manipulation	N/A	Power Mimicry (Yellow Subterranean)	Counters – Is able to do the same thing naturally by parsing magical mechanics and learning how to cast or counterspell them mid-combat
Explosion Manipulation	Resists – Can survive being hit with Flandre’s Destruction, which causes things to explode	Hypnosis & Trauma Inducement(Yellow Subterreanean)	Resists – Has countless instances of mental defenses, even against the Mind Stone, and can cast similar effects
Telekinesis	Counters – The Psychokinesis Ability Card lets Reimu use Sumireko’s telekinesis	Guard Crushing(Left-Handed Folding Fan System Card)	Counters – Strange can layer his shields or cast multiples of them, or divine her capabilities and use precognition and danger sense to know not to guard against this, as otherwise this would work
Organ Targeting	Resists – Flandre’s destruction can target insides	Exorcism Aura	Counters – Able to manipulate his personal time to move in time slows, resist time manipulation, reverse or nullify absorption, counterspell immobilization, and resist being forcibly spiritually ascended
Battlefield Removal	Counters – Can open Gaps to traverse dimensions	Fatal Damage(Vampire Fang Ability Card)	Counters / Resists – Able to cast healing spells that allow him to keep going for a few days even after taking fatal harm, and he can reconstitute his physical body
Spatial Cutting	Resists – Can fight her Dream Self and can survive being hit with her own spatial cuts	Death Inducement (Scarlet Devil Stone & Half-Half Phantom)	Resists – Was able to cast an aura that allowed him to carry a woman that had a death-inducing touch and can counterspell the Crystals of Cyndriarr
Absolute Zero	Resists – Can endure Cirno’s ice/cold, which can reach “Minus K” temps	Boundary Weakening / Concept Weakening	Counters – By channeling Chaos and Order, Strange could manipulate the boundaries of reality and turn the tables on the In-Betweener, a concept of concepts who could effortlessly affect all reality and fantasy and trap Strange between levels of reality with his manipulation over conceptual dualities.
Matter Manipulation	Resists – Can survive Yukari’s “Universe of Matter and Anti-Matter” Skill Card	Boundary Erasure(Scarlet Devil Stone)	N/A – Can resist conceptual erasure, but Boundary Erasure is superior
Gravity Manipulation	Resists / Counters – Her flight makes her untethered by gravity	Absolute Zero(Cirno’s “Minus K” colds via Ice Fairy Ability Card)	Resists / Counters – Flames of the Faltine are able to protect him from Absolute Zero spells like the Icy Tendrils of Ikthalon, along with knowing its counterspell
Void Manipulation	Resists – Can survive creating and existing in a space without Boundaries with Duplex Barrier	Darkness Manipulation	Counters – The Eye of Agamotto constantly dispels magical darkness, and he knows some magic darkness spells himself
Damage Transferral	N/A	Radiation(Subterranean Sun Ability Card + Control Rod Skill Card)	Resists – The Eye of Agamotto protects him from radiation
Sound Manipulation	Resists – Can endure sound based attacks from various youkai	Illusions	Resists – Strange has multiple methods of seeing through illusions innately
Death Manipulation	Resists – Can be in the presence of / make contact with Phantoms and Yuyuko, who induce death, as well as enter Higan, which immediately kills those within	Fortune(Luck / Probability / Fate Manipulation)	Resists / Counters – Strange can purge manipulated luck from his soul, and his absorption, absorption negation, absorption reversal, and defenses against and applications of Chaos Magic match the potency of Reimu’s Fortune
Existence Erasure	Resists – Her Duplex Barriers can remove all boundaries, and she can endure being within themResists with Incident Stones	Imperceptibility (Pebble Hat Ability Card)	Counters – Strange can also manipulate senses and has been able to detect invisible or suppressed presences before, alongside having superior cloaking against omnipotent foes
Information Manipulation	Resists with Incident Stones	Subjective Reality(Sheep You’d Want To Count Ability Card)	Counters – Strange has been able to manipulate and warp an illusory memory world to reflect his ideas before since it ran off of imagination, and the Card turning the fight up to that point into a dream potentially opens it up to being harvested by his magic sash or manipulated and stolen by his own dream manipulations
Item Stealing	Limited – Incident Stones can return to their wielder, Ability Cards cannot be used unless purchased in a fair market trade; stealing them explicitly doesn’t work	Spiritual Damage	Resists – Countless examples of fighting in his Astral Form, resisting his soul being devoured, or taking damage from or guarding against Hellfire, which deals spiritual damage, and should be able to counterspell his own spells that induce spiritual destruction
Barrier Containment	Counters – Can destroy barriers with simple contact	Exorcisms	Counters – Also knows many ways to exorcize and it isn’t too applicable unless he attempts to allow Zom or other demons to take him over
Magical Connection Severance	Limited – Many of Reimu’s abilities are innate to her and not connected to external sources, although this could potentially cut her off from external summonings/channeling	Binding/Restriction	Counters – Countless examples of breaking out of the Crimson Bands or counterspelling them, along with breaking out of other magical restraints
Luck Manipulation	Counters/Matches with Fortune	Spiritual Absorption	Resists / Counters – Strange is able to restore his spirit by absorbing magic or energy, can nullify or reverse absorption used on him, and has resisted his soul being devoured, sealed, or removed. He can survive without his soul and can counterspell similar soul-manipulating magic. I While he can defend from it, if his Astral Form were to be absorbed all at once, it would likely kill him, however.
Fate Manipulation	Counters/Matches with Fortune	Exterminations	N/A – Strange cannot survive being annihilated all at once, and cannot prevent his regen from being negated after death
Change Manipulation	Resists with Incident Stones	Intuition	Counters – At his best, he can use the Eye of Agamotto to obscure things even from those who are completely omniscient, which is generally more impressive than Reimu’s showings of Intuition
Summons	Counter – Boss Reversal can nullify a summon and replace it with Reimu’s own	Boss Attack (Summons)	Counters – Strange can banish, seal, transmute, immobilize, or reverse time to deal with summoned bosses, who would also need to resist any of his prior hax or mental manipulations
Conceptual Manipulation	N/A	Fear Aura	Counters – Can remove the fear from an entire city, so he could do the same to himselfResists – Was able to mentally endure three Fear Lords inducing fear into him at once
Reality Warping	N/A	Regeneration / Resurrection(Various Ability Cards)	Counters – Can disperse one’s essence across dimensions / space-time, preventing them from being able to regenerate

As can be seen above, Reimu and Strange are pretty closely matched in their abilities, but there are some definitive chinks in their armor on both sides. For Strange, Reimu’s Scarlet Mist Cloaked Needles provide boundary erasure, erasure on a level too potent for Strange to resist, Exterminations being capable of instantly annihilating Strange completely and utterly and preventing him from returning, and Dream Seals amped by the Onikirimaru being fully capable of vaporizing him, body and Astral Form, providing three distinct wincons. Impurity and Soul Absorption are also potentially fatal options if he’s unable to defend against them in time.

Reimu also has the Ultramarine Orb Elixir, which would not only purify her past, make her a “pure human”, and weaken the concepts of life and death for her, but also effectively give her the most absurd future sight imaginable. The elixir would let her see all possible methods she could die in combat in advance, before allowing her to execute a flawless victory without dying once. However, it would admittedly be quite out of character for Reimu to use this Elixir to begin with, seeing as she chose to not use it canonically to begin with. Additionally, Strange can see several days in advance, potentially more, with his own future sight innately or probe the future with a spell manually or through accessing someone’s memories as more concrete, in-character methods from Stephen. And, considering he’s fought versions of himself and omniscient foes before, he should technically have experience against opponents that know this anyhow.

However, Reimu has more gaps in her armor compared to Strange, not resisting soul removal (though admittedly, her soul can act and fight on it’s own and can re-connect with her body, making this potentially unhelpful), biological manipulation, transmutation/transformation, information dumps, stronger forms of possession, time manipulation, age manipulation, superpower swapping, reality warping, and conceptual manipulation are all notable abilities that could have potentially fatal ramifications that Reimu doesn’t have a direct counter to in base. At a glance, Strange seems to have more options to use against Reimu in a direct confrontation, which should make the comparison an easy win for him, right? Well, not quite.

Before we continue though, we should touch on some other minor aspects of utility on both sides that couldn’t be properly covered in the table, before getting into the elephant that’s waiting to be addressed. Both sides have ways of dealing with the other’s attacks unrelated to directly affecting their opponent. Reimu’s grazing is able to transmute or nullify enemy attacks, and she has over a dozen Ability Cards and System Cards with different functions capable of nullifying, transmuting, or erasing enemy attacks to help take Strange’s attacks and erase or transform them into something she can absorb to them empower herself further.

She also notably has Bombs, which are functional screen nukes capable of wiping out all bullets onscreen, erasing everything the enemy has thrown out, providing brief invulnerability and dealing heavy damage. Her Death Bombs are also an excellent means of negating her own death by shattering her own personal Boundary of Life and Death to survive an otherwise fatal attack at the cost of some bombs to keep on fighting, with Death Avoidance Elixir producing a similar effect. This would avoid counting as a “resurrection” which Strange could counter, simply just preventing her from dying and avoiding an unlucky stray attack that could kill her. She has a multitude of ways to shut down and nullify Strange’s own magical attacks and use them to keep herself going without putting in much effort.

Similarly, Strange can do the same, with countless ways to continuously absorb magic into himself, negate magic absorbed into the Eye of Agamotto into nothingness, set up barriers to block or absorb magic, repel magic passively with the Book of the Vishanti, redirect energy or projectiles with portals, redirecting energy by deflecting or controlling the trajectory of the magic itself, transmute energy into other substances, or dispelling magic shots outright. And, he can use his precognition or energy reading in order to dodge and decipher whether incoming shots have special properties or infused effects to avoid taking into himself.

Additionally, from observing Reimu’s own methods of magic like the aforementioned Cards, Bombs, and Death Bombs, he should be able to replicate them mid-fight to add to his own options. Also, Strange being able to retreat to the Sanctum that he can cloak or hide in gaps of space, considering his own potent Cloaking Spells, its defense against scrying, and its many traps and rooms, means it should be able to act as a retreat spot to recharge, heal, or study. He should also have access to the Library of Worlds, a magical library located at the Beyonder’s Realm, which is far too dimensionally high and transcendent for Reimu to access at all with her own displayed dimensional travel range, giving him a definitive safe haven and location to scry on and observe her and her techniques further.

Both sides clearly have ways to interrupt each other’s attacks against one another and use the other’s attacks to their own advantage, keeping the deadlock close, but Strange having more wincons must surely keep the ball in his court, right? Well, it’s time to stop ignoring the elephant in the room, it’s time that we talk about Innate Dream, and how Reimu’s ultimate technique completely shuts down this comparison.

Innate Dream is the ultimate expression of Reimu’s ability to Float, allowing her to float away from and become unaffected by all kinds of things… it’s essentially a super potent form of phasing, becoming completely unable to be affected by anyone in Touhou, by any means. This obviously massively extends her list of resistances, even just including characters seen in the game she’s present in.

POWER	COVERED BY INNATE DREAM?
Time Manipulation	Yes: Sakuya is able to manipulate space-time in a variety of ways, stopping, slowing, reversing, and merging all of space-time, yet cannot affect Innate Dream
Age Manipulation	Yes: Sakuya is able to forcefully age things in time, yet she cannot affect Innate Dream
Absorption	Yes: Marisa can absorb magic, and Okina Matara can absorb all the magical / life energy from a person with her Back Doors, yet cannot affect Innate Dream
Time Travel / History Manipulation	Yes: Keine Kamishirasaw is capable of consuming/erasing and creating history, yet would be unable to affect Innate Dream by any means
Biological Manipulation	Yes: Reimu’s physical form becomes completely intangible and unable to be affected by normal means, meaning her biology should become unaffectable
Transformation / Transmutation	Yes: Mamizou Futatsuiwa is able to transform people into animals, and would be unable to affect Innate Dream. Various ability cards are capable of transmutative effects as well, and should be unable to affect her.
Item Stealing	Yes: When Reimu activates Innate Dream, items on her person such as her Gohei being to phase with her, meaning her arsenal would be similarly protected as she is
Possession	Yes: Various characters throughout the series (Mizuchi, Phantoms) would be unable to affect Reimu in Innate Dream
Damage Transferral	Yes: Alice Margatroid is able to create effigies to transfer damage from the effigy to its victim, and Komachi is able to swap health totals with the opponent, and neither are able to affect Reimu in Innate Dram
Reality Warping	Yes: Yukari Yakumo is unable to affect Reimu at all, despite her Boundary Manipulation being able to warp reality.
Conceptual Manipulation	Yes: Yukari Yakumo is unable to affect Reimu at all, despite her Boundary Manipulation being able to manipulate and erase concepts & boundaries.
Info Dumping	Yes: Satori Komeiji can forcibly dump memories into a person’s mind, but is unable to affect Innate Dream
Soul Removal	Yes: Tenshi can absorb one’s spirit, but can’t affect Innate Dream, and Kasen should be unable to remove Reimu’s soul while in Innate Dream.
Magical Connection Severance	Yes: Rather than being magic, Innate Dream is an “innate” ability to Reimu as a character, so magic severance would not apply, and he would be unable to affect her within it.
Superpower Swap	No known equivalent in Touhou. Theoretically, Yukari’s Boundary Manipulation is able to alter the state of things, such as transforming a particle into a wave, if taken as resisting changing a state of being, this could potentially counter it, though it’s uncertain.

With the elephant in the room known as Innate Dream finally addressed, the comparison of both magicians’ options becomes immediately obvious. So long as Reimu is sustaining her Innate Dream state through Float, nearly all of Doctor Strange’s winning options that weren’t covered by her personal resistances in base are rendered entirely moot from the absurd variety of powers from Touhou that would be covered by her power, and many abilities she needed arsenal to resist – like the Incident Stones – would now be covered by Innate Dream. If anything, there’s several abilities beyond that Reimu would become immune to that Strange himself hasn’t weaponized either, showing a vast, expansive list of immunities.

While there’s still an ability or two that Innate Dream hasn’t granted Reimu an exact immunity to, they’d be unlikely to work as well, as it’d require Strange’s magic to be able to even affect her as well. You see, Strange has actually had issues interacting with especially abstract, untouchable beings in the past. Most notably, his fight with the In-Betweener has shown Strange being unable to affect especially abstract, untouchable entities. In his fight with the In-Betweener with his own magic, all of his magic and spells would have no effect and simply pass through the entity’s body. Even when accounting for the very few powers that Innate Dream doesn’t have any documented showings resisting, there’s still the issue of just how abstract and untouchable Reimu would be in that state.

After all, it doesn’t matter how powerful or versatile you are unless you have a way to bypass Reimu’s “super intangibility”, it’s effectively a form of super potent phasing. It doesn’t relate to power, as there’s many characters who are stronger than Reimu in one way or another who can’t affect her. Various non-physical entities, from those who are spiritual, informational, and even non-existent or more abstract, cannot affect her. Characters in Touhou like Yukari Yakumo have range that can affect all of reality – the entire multiverse and cosmology – and yet cannot affect Reimu, showing that range isn’t necessarily a notable factor, as it’s not like she just floats to a higher level of existence or anything, that’s never stated anywhere in the series. What’s most notable however, is that despite Yukari’s ability to manipulate boundaries, she similarly can’t just turn off some Boundaries that would make Reimu accessible, showing the ability is immune to even conceptual and more abstract conceptual manipulating abilities. This point leads us down an interesting path, of seeing if there’s a level of “abstraction” that could potentially affect Reimu in this state. If pure power and multiverse-spanning reach can’t affect her, than what about something so abstract in its existence that not even Innate Dream could pass through it… and we came across some very interesting findings in regards to the “levels of abstraction” found in Touhou, and how they compare to Marvel!

To put it simply, boundaries were how we came to realize this, as they’re part of a major hierarchy of things of differing levels of abstraction and importance to reality itself. We discussed prior in the boundary manipulation section, but let’s recap. For all concepts that exist, there are associated “boundaries/borders” that exist as the abstraction and distinction of these concepts, acting as both the representation of those concepts, as well as the delineation between them. Manipulating a Boundary allows for one to affect those concepts in turn, showing a degree of superiority. Above even boundaries/borders, however, would be “Names”, the very things that give birth to boundaries, without Names, boundaries could not exist, but boundaries can be erased, and Names will still remain. Beyond even Names, is the most abstract state of all, “Namelessness”. Nameless things and beings are from the most primordial state of existence, the state of being when nothing was distinct from one another, nothing had form, and concepts didn’t even exist, before anything was given a Name. There have been quite a few Nameless Beings across the series (such as Junko), and multiple nameless things, alongside many characters capable of interacting with things in this Nameless state of existence… and yet even they are incapable of affecting Reimu in Innate Dream. Namelessness is currently the most abstract state of being in Touhou that we know of, with nothing beyond Innate Dream itself being more untouchable and abstract than it is, so it serves as a perfect point of comparison for “could it affect Innate Dream”?

Concepts < Boundaries/Borders < Names < Namelessness < Innate Dream

Basically, in order to land any of his magic or any potential resistance loopholes, Stephen would need to prove he has some means of affecting or interacting with Reimu in this state at all, and manage to reach a level of abstraction/transcendence on this level. This one power effectively pigeonholes Strange’s entire powerset and forces him to find any sort of answer to this absurd defense before being able to fight her without any limitations to his bag of magic tricks. With Innate Dream being so overwhelming through shutting down Strange’s options, it allows Reimu to try to land her own win conditions without worrying about being harmed or caught with something she didn’t initially resist. Not only that, but all of her equipment goes similarly untouchable along with her so long as she has them when it activates, preventing Strange from immediately trying to steal or deal with them. This means that effectively, all of Strange’s wincons get shut down by Innate Dream, but Reimu’s previously established wincons, such as her Scarlet Mist Cloaked Needles, Onikirimaru-Amped Dream Seals, and her Exterminations become even more fatal and dangerous. Seeing as Doctor Strange’s absurd variety and versatility is whittled down by Innate Dream, Reimu’s options comparatively aren’t. Surprisingly, Utility should be a solid and decisive win for Reimu Hakurei.

Strategy

In a duel with so many moving parts and a laundry list of absurd magical powers and artifacts, it’s pertinent that we end up examining how both Doctor Strange and Reimu parse through their full potential, master their magic systems, and examine how they actually fight in their stories. With how dense their lists of hax and spells are, their overall experience, trickiness, and endurance will inform us on whether they’d get stuck in choice paralysis, make optimal choices, or get a leg up on each other without purely treating them as character sheets. After all, these two aren’t gods, they’re human beings with flaws and strengths.

In terms of outright experience, it’s rather clear cut. Stephen was born waaay back in the 1930, making him… old as hell. While there was that famous magic war that he fought for over 5,000 years in, that’s since been retroactively removed from his experience as a separate version of him called Warhound Strange in recent comic book arcs. Nonetheless, let’s compare the raw numbers to our shrine maiden. Reimu’s explicit age is unconfirmed, but she’s old enough to drink, and noticeably not considered a minor by characters like Sumireko Usami, who’s a high-school age girl, which would make her at least 20 years old going by Japan’s drinking age.

While some years have passed since the first few Touhou games, and there’s notably a timeline of years passing across the various manga and games, there’s nothing exactly decisive in how long she’s been going. Regardless of how long she’s been in action for, no interpretation of Touhou’s timeline would provide Reimu enough to match the decades upon decades of life Strange has been alive and mystically active for. But, Reimu has had plenty of experience fighting or training under youkai older than her to a ridiculous degree. She’s trained under Kasen Ibaraki and Yukari Yakumo, who’re both over 1,000 years old, fought youkai in Gensokyo who’ve similarly been alive for thousands of years, and immortals like Eirin who have lived for hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of years.

But, when we compare the characters they’ve fought, Strange has fought eldritch entities and interdimensional sorcerers that range from being older than millenia, millions of years, billions of years, eons, or just “older than time” when we look at statements from Mephisto and the fact that he’s tussled with Marvel Abstracts before. And, he has, in fact, confronted his 5,000 year old Warhound self anyway and outsmarted him as well. No matter how you look at it, Strange takes experience if you’re just looking at their lifespans and opponents.

However, numbers don’t mean much if you can’t apply discipline and dedication to your craft… which is certainly what Marisa would say, but this gets into an interesting comparison between the two. It’s no question that the more studious and trained of the two is Doctor Strange. This contrast is practically baked into both of their characters. Strange’s whole character revolves around being the “Master of the Mystic Arts”, enough so that he’s famously the Sorcerer Supreme and the overall magic expert and the go-to mouthpiece for authors that need to explain anything supernatural going on in a storyline.

He’s constantly studying, meditating, expanding his awareness, training, and educating himself on mysticism to the point that he’s opened an academy to teach up-and-coming sorcerers the intricacies of various schools of magic and has personally tutored several other magic users in Marvel. Plus, he’s been a member of tons of superhero teams. If he needed to fit this all on one page of a resume, he’d be cooked. However… while Reimu’s character initially was about her lack of discipline and ambition when it came to training, given one of her main powers is tied to how she coasts through most things in life, she’s a direct challenge to characters like Strange. Marisa Kirisame is almost exactly like Doctor Strange in thematics, constantly training and studying and understanding the mechanics of magic. But, Reimu acts as a foil to her given she’s innately extremely talented to the point that Marisa regularly loses to her.

Basically, Reimu knows someone that thinks like Doctor Strange fairly well. Although, with them coming from different magic systems entirely, it’s tough to say how much this could help her. This isn’t to say Reimu never trains, she’s gotten into actually training her skillset. She’s studied under Kasen Ibaraki, Yukari Yakumo, and has even decided to train herself in summoning gods for months. But, regardless of this interesting comparison, it’s still clear on paper that Doctor Strange’s decades of studies and mystic mastery give him an excellent edge. Even Mephisto, who tried to use magic and had an innate, natural talent for it, could not become an equal to Strange without decades of study.

Now, when we get to how skilled and intelligent they are in fights, the comparison is fairly clear cut. While Reimu is certainly far more skilled and knowledgeable in more martial arts than Strange ever really was, alongside defeating Koishi Komeiji, who has super-reflexes and takes actions entirely unconsciously in a fight, it’s unlikely that a magic fight would really come down to this being the deciding factor without really specific circumstances landing them both in that kind of scenario. Additionally, Reimu’s been able to outskill and defeat Miko, who could learn a character’s entire past, present, and future, alongside reading the fluctuations of their Fortune to determine what probabilities would occur, making Strange’s precognitive and future-telling powers not total gamechangers. But, this is about where things start to grow lopsided in Stephen’s favor. Reimu’s fought off armies, but Strange has held back and fought in armies before, and he’s dealt with veterans of far longer wars, like Warhound Strange, before.

Generally speaking, Doctor Strange has fought such a wide variety of opponents and magic users throughout his years of publication that he’s tried tons of esoteric tactics and solutions to incredibly specific cosmic problems. In fights, he’s been able to dupe foes by faking entire fights or environments with illusions, set up a contingency for his own death by cutting out a week of his personal timeline, misdirected omnipotent and omniscient foes like Nightmare (at the time), Adam Warlock (at the time), and Dormammu (at the time), and once faked his own attacks being absorbed with an illusory duplicate.

Or, when facing opponents that absorb magic, he’d deliberately overfeed the absorber so they’d be easy to burst. Should his hands and mouth be bound, Strange will use his thought-activated artifacts like the Eye of Agamotto and Cloak of Levitation to try and get him out of that situation. When he needs to, Stephen will deliberately study and observe what his opponents are doing to analyze their magic or special techniques, come up with custom spells mid-fight, hold back deliberately to hide his true capabilities, or bide his time once he figures out your weakness to capitalize on it at the right time.

He can defend against sneak attacks in a trance if someone tries to go after him while he’s busy spiritually vibing, fight more strategically with limited magic, or he’ll simply… run away and teleport to safety! Just looking at the difference in tactics and skill showings between Strange and Reimu at the start of this blog makes it clear. Against someone who’s generally trickier rather than a magic energy spammer or one trick pony, Reimu has her work cut out for her compared to her normal range of opponents. Her opponents are certainly very skilled, but definitely don’t show as impressive degrees of battle IQ and absurd yet clever tactics in combat as Strange has.

However, both of their sets of skills and their long resumes of supernatural experience will mean far more if their endurance can match up to allow them to outlast each other in a fight or win a war of attrition. This even directly ties into Innate Dream itself. It’s an extraordinarily powerful defense, but the fact is that Reimu has no implications or showings of being able to hold this state indefinitely ad infinitum. What this means is that her being able to stay in Innate Dream would be limited by her best showings of stamina, so it’s important to see if Doctor Strange could wait this out by comparing the endurance showings for both characters.

From Reimu’s showings, she’s been able to spend an entire week hunting a youkai without any rest or sleep, constantly fought while traveling across across four separate dimensions, and she’s channeled three gods into her body for 12 days straight, which is triple the work of an average god summoning. That instance is even more impressive considering that the original projected length of the trip that was necessary for was estimated to last 2 weeks to an entire month. And, of course, she has various items that are able to restore health and stamina, along with being able to absorb energy for stamina restoration.

But, when you compare these showings and tools to Doctor Strange’s stamina feats, not only can he match this, but surpass it in various degrees. Not only can Strange also restore full vigor and remove pain or absorb magic energies to restore stamina, along with owning healing potions and knowing healing spells of his own to help him keep going for 1 to 2 days after receiving fatal harm, but he knows a reinvigoration spell that’s able to remove the exhaustion of going 37 hours without any sleep. Additionally, he can also cast spells that make him impervious to pain outright.

This is definitely helpful given that magicians in Marvel seem to have more stamina than normal people, like Clea staying awake conjuring a spell for 2 days straight, Strange’s physical body remaining in a trance for 3 days straight, and Jericho Drumm being able to go with no sleep while doing magic work as the Sorcerer Supreme for a full week. Strange himself has sent out “astral feelers” for days searching for people across the United States, but when it comes to active combat, he’s had repeated and consistent displays of fighting for days. He’s fought aliens in Eternity’s realm for days, went for days without sleep fighting supernatural forces, and fought an army of Doombots for days on end.

Doctor Strange can even surpass the month of channeling Reimu could’ve done as well. He was once obsessively attempting to figure out a mystical puzzle box, first mystically examining it for 3 hours, then spending 4 weeks exhausting arcane volumes and spells, before continuously trying to crack the solution for 40 days and nights, even going at least some of that time without food or sleep. This is further supported when he was kidnapped and imprisoned by aliens after losing his magic knowledge, having been tortured and starved constantly, left with only a little bit of nutrient paste once a day for 73 days without any magical backing.

On top of that, Strange has equipment that gives him limitless stamina outright, and his Astral Form doesn’t feel fatigue nor does it require sustenance like his physical body does. This puts the final nail in the coffin for stamina with a clear win in Stephen’s favor, and it gives him a notable opportunity to outlast Innate Dream. With direct comparisons in skill, experience, and endurance leaning towards the sorcerer over the shrine maiden, it’s safe to say that Doctor Strange sweeps the tertiary factors fairly definitively.

Amps

However, we’d be remiss to not account for the available different ways that both Strange and Reimu are able to give themselves boosts in power and speed to esoteric and absurd levels. Let’s talk about how they can make themselves go faster first. Being magic users, they have pretty “out there” ways of boosting speed, but they’re actually surprisingly comparable. Doctor Strange is able to use Raggadorr spells to give himself a general boost in speed. He can manipulate his personal passage of time to boost his speed to move around in a time slow, one so effective that the caster for it believes it’s a time stop.

he Winds of Watoomb can not only carry him absurd distances across the universe in moments, but it’s specifically used to grant speed boosts and superspeed to Blur, who raced from one end of the multiverse to another, raced through time itself, and kept up with Eternity in a footrace. And, Strange’s Astral Form has countless displays of flying much faster than his physical self. From Reimu’s side, she has specific items based on the speedster of Touhou, Aya Shameimaru, which are protected while she’s in Innate Dream. The Tengu Fan can be used by her to manipulate the wind for a boost in speed and agility, not too dissimilar from the Winds of Watoomb. Notably, it increases speed with each use, allowing the user to stack speed boosts up to four times.

The Gale Geta similarly is able to grant Aya-like speeds, but it has the drawback of the user only being able to do so without firing any shots. Aya’s speed is especially notable, as she’s able to move so fast that even other infinite speed characters like Sakuya Izayoi can’t track her, getting completely perception-blitzed, requiring a time-stop to even see if she’s moving at all. So, in the end, looking at their practical and functionally relevant boosts in speed, Doctor Strange and Reimu Hakurei roughly even out.

As for methods of directly amping their AP through physical or magical means, the gap begins to widen. Reimu has a handful of different ways to amplify herself. The Shard of the Onikirimaru Blade is able to substantially amplify Reimu’s sealing abilities, to the point that she could seal away Ibaraki-Douji from Kasen Ibaraki with her Dream Seals, despite Kasen’s incredible resistance to sealing abilities, to where Reimu’s own Dream Seals initially could barely harm her. The seals became so powerful that Kasen was completely annihilated just as a consequence of sealing away Ibaraki-Douji! Reimu also has access to a variety of smaller items like Ability Cards, System Cards and miscellaneous pieces of gear that provide various degrees of amps to her power.

Reimu’s most notable amps though, would be the Incident Stones, especially powerful artifacts that contain copies of the magical power and abilities of various characters and incidents throughout the series. The most notable one here would be the Blue Season Incident Stone, which is based upon the Four Seasons Incident, an event caused by the Secret God Okina Matara’s own magical power. Okina Matara is one of the most powerful characters in the verse, standing alongside Yukari Yakumo and Kasen Ibaraki as a Sage of Gensokyo, and providing enough power through magical amps to allow Sumireko to combat many bloodlusted characters across the franchise, including Hecatia Lapislazuli, who was said to be the strongest character in the series during the events of Touhou 15, providing significant upscaling to basically every feat in the franchise! Having access to this degree of magical power on top of her own would give Reimu a very impressive – if undefined – boost in power, and some prominent upscaling.

However, that’s exactly where the issue with Reimu’s amps comes in, they generally just provide significant upscaling, rather than major cosmological jumps in power. While it’s an impressive jump in power, it’s also undefined, and not exactly comparable to something like a cosmological jump, which becomes a major problem when comparing to Strange’s amps.

A lot of Doctor Strange’s options for power boosts offer jumps in power that could match Reimu’s best options. While there’s certainly no shortage of gods or past foes that Strange can try to channel or call upon, we’ll focus on the select few that offer the biggest leaps in overall raw strength and potency. In the famous feat where our Sorcerer Supreme was able to briefly match the power of the fully decked out Infinity Gauntlet, which was primarily possible through the use of every one of his most relevant and powerful magical artifacts. By hiding all of them within the Eye of Agamotto, having shrunken them down so it could act like a little storage space, there’s nothing stopping him from replicating this, especially with his wide variety of teleportation spells to bring his equipment to him or access to the Sanctum Sanctorum.

Considering that a full Infinity Gauntlet has managed to overpower Eternity to the point that Thanos could quickly and easily usurp him, alongside Gauntlet Thanos being superior to Death (an equal opposing force to Eternity), the Gauntlet briefly blocking blasts from God Emperor Doom, and Strange already matching Eternity at his normal peaks, this is already a gap in power that upscales him far beyond their prior tie in strength. However, the Artifacts do have the downside that Strange cannot actively hold their max output for long, and would eventually be overcome against the Gauntlet’s full power for too long. With the Incident Stones providing a similar massive upscale in power, those two boosts in power would – surprisingly – be comparable, and thus wouldn’t be gamechangers just yet.

This isn’t all of his amplifications, though. By channeling Lord Chaos and Master Order, Doctor Strange was able to blast and easily overwhelm the In-Betweener, someone who not only is beyond even Eternity, but was someone that Strange couldn’t affect with his own magic initially, and was easily being manipulated by at first. But, by far the most impressive level of strength involves the usage of the magic sash to harvest dream energies to make himself far more powerful than and easily depower Nightmare, who had used a vast array of dreams to simply will himself to be far stronger than Eternity and even the Living Tribunal.

The Living Tribunal is so far beyond Eternity that he can easily just snap his fingers to undo blasts from the complete Infinity Gauntlet, and is outright above Eternity in the Abstract power hierarchy. This is especially useful given that Marvel Magic cast by stronger mages allows you to shrug off magical attacks and spells from weaker casters, making it way tougher for Reimu to harm Doctor Strange at these levels. These amplifications are, thus, cosmological jumps that infinitely surpass even Reimu’s best boosts in power. He also notably has several especially potent means of magic nullification, which are effectively the complete opposite of amps, but can work on especially high cosmological levels as well. However, this isn’t the only thing we need to pay attention to when it comes to all these cosmic leapfrogs in strength. After all, we need to answer one question:

Can these amps even interact with Innate Dream in the first place?

As we established earlier in the Utility section, Innate Dream is unaffected by many layers of abstraction, resulting in a comparison looking something like this:

Concepts < Boundaries/Borders < Names < Namelessness < Innate Dream

This is the hierarchy we’ve come to. Marvel has shown that it can both match, and surpass Touhou’s cosmology in size and scope, and it has many verse systems comparable to Touhou’s, so now we should directly compare levels of abstraction, and see if there’s anything in Marvel that can reach the level of Innate Dream that could help break the deadlock!

The Sands of Nisanti / Mysterium Coin / Cantrips of the Onyx King

While not necessarily an “amp” (if anything, it’s the exact opposite!), it fits well into what we’re discussing here so we decided to fold it in. Strange has multiple means of completely nullifying and negating all magic through a few means, so let’s discuss them. The Sands of Nisanti are capable of completely nullifying all magic in the surrounding area for 3 minutes straight, with everyone affected being left only with their own physical ability if they’re to continue the fight. This magic nullification is so potent that it can even work on characters such as Loki, who’s able to use his magic to literally jump/phase into the Mystery, one of the most transcendent and abstract places in all of cosmology in order to evade enemy attacks, as near to the top as you can get! It would be on a level far beyond Namelessness, far above anything Innate Dream has been shown to phase out of, so her magical capabilities would reasonably get shut down.

This however, is the exact moment the issues roll in, as it doesn’t just nullify the opponent’s magic, it nullifies ALL magic, including the Good Doctor’s own. While Strange has endured many hits from various heavy hitters across the franchise, that’s due to his magic offering him enhanced physical capabilities, drastically boosting his durability, strength and speed. Without that magic boosting his innate physicality, Dr. Strange is, for all intents and purposes, a regular guy. While he is surprisingly skilled as a fighter, having a brown belt in martial arts, as well as having technique in Aikido, by his own admission, he won’t be fighting anyone like Iron Fist anytime soon. These showcases generally falls short to Reimu’s own, who is similarly skilled in Taijutsu, is able to fight Hong Meiling, who’s similarly a skilled practitioner of Taijutsu, as well as Koishi Komeiji, a being with super reflexes that surpass human limitation and can fight completely unconsciously. Reimu also carries several weapons on hand, like her Gohei which she’s used to fight off staff wielders in combat, as well as her Needles, which while would have their magic depowered, are still long, sharp, pointed objects capable of harm. She’d be prepped to give Strange more than enough of a fight… and that’s before getting into stats.

The most notable downside to using the Sands of Nisanti, is that while all magic is nullified, even up to Loki’s level… it doesn’t nullify a person’s innate superhuman physique. In the very same instance where Loki is depowered, he immediately wins the fight he was engaged in because he retained his Asgardian Super-Strength, and simply knocks the guy out in one punch. Which is where Strange’s issues against Reimu come in, as Reimu’s power isn’t entirely tied to magic like him.

Reimu physically is able to choke out Remilia Scarlet, who’s strong enough to rip thousand year old trees out of the ground. She causes explosions from simply clashing with her opponents. Her clashes with Okuu caused a mountain to erupt and send an earthquake throughout all of Gensokyo. She survived having a star large enough to destroy a town dropped onto her. She can survive getting blasted by Marisa’s mountain vaporizing Master Spark. She can directly punch out and trade physical blows with Tenshi Hinanawi in combat, whose strength was so intense it shook all of Heaven, and she would’ve been able to destroy it all. Most impressively, Reimu could overpower and smack around Sumireko Usami after she amplified herself with the Occult Orbs, their power flowing through her body, which would’ve destroyed the Hakurei Barrier!

To put it simply from the lowest ends to the highest ends Reimu is blowing Strange out of the water, even if you were to scale him to average Marvel Street tiers due to fighting off a regular Asgardian Assassin. Speed wise she’d be outclassing him as well, as she has plenty of light dodging feats and scaling, and can physically dodge Suika’s Mist, which can put all of Heaven back together at a shitzillion times the speed of light… The list goes on. The second Strange tries to pull a “you and me, man to (wo)man”, he’s getting his head punched off faster than he can react. The Sands of Nisanti are – surprisingly – an instant lose condition.

His other magic nullifying options are similarly flawed. The Mysterium Coin is especially potent, using a magic nullifying metal that’s from the Mystery that’s capable of severely weakening or outright depowering any magician exposed to its effects. Strange used the coin to weaken Dormammu’s power to allow the person he was inhabiting to fight back and force Dormmammu out of his body with Strange’s help, showing some powerful effects… but Strange himself is weakened and left vulnerable while holding the coin himself. He even admits it’s an incredibly risky gambit, that would potentially prevent him from using good magical counters against Reimu, while similarly not shutting down her physicality, which as established before, would be too much for him.

While the Coin and the Sands are definitely potent enough to affect Innate Dream, they’d simply leave Strange open to getting killed instantly. The Cantrips of the Onyx King are also shown to completely nullify all magic in the surrounding area for about 30 seconds, leaving only “what’s innate to them” to their capabilities. The exact degree of potency on the Cantrips is somewhat uncertain, if it would even be able to affect Innate Dream in the same way the Mysterium Coin / Sands could is unclear. There also opens some debate on Strange saying “what’s innate” to them… as Innate Dream is, very specifically, Reimu’s own Innate power, and not some external force she draws upon. Regardless of the specifics though, it runs into the same issues that the previous two nullification methods do, rendering it yet another instant loss condition, leaving Strange’s power nullification methods as not a useful method of bypassing Innate Dream.

Master Order & Lord Chaos

Before we get into what happened for Doctor Strange to feel the need to channel Master Order and Lord Chaos in the first place, we need to establish just how abstract a substance can be for his magic to still be able to interact with it normally. We know that, at a baseline, Stephen’s magic is able to blast and disperse Dormammu’s essence, something that cannot be harmed by physical might and whose physiology is that of an energy-based conceptual being. And, he’s been able to possess Nightmare’s body and is able to threaten him with pain, an “unreal” body that is both composed of the essence of the Dark Dimension and he’s an outright conceptual entity.

So, we know that magic can affect concepts in general, but we also have previously established that Strange can affect things more abstract or less substantial than concepts themselves. Stephen was able to set up rooms in the Sanctum Sanctorum that rendered Gamma meaningless, and we know Gamma has less substance than a concept since Absorbing Man can absorb the concept or purpose of things he touches, but cannot do so to Gamma due to its lack of substance.

Supporting this, Strange’s magic is able to generally affect Marvel Abstracts, conceptual entities more “abstract” than normal concepts, like the many times that his spells or cast magic could restrain, harm, or sustain Galactus, who’s more transcendent than non-Abstracts like Agamotto, who is not a physical or corporeal entity that can be hurt traditionally. In fact, the Abstracts are sustained by and utilize magic at its most fundamental form, with their M-Body avatars, not even their true bodies, being “too abstract” and “transcendant” to contend with one another in a “physical manner”.

Strange is even able to directly interface and interact with Eternity, performing surgery on him, sealing breaches in his body, and even outright merging with his essence. Eternity is something beyond the bounds of reality and is the manifestation of all things, containing all of the Abstracts within himself as the sum total of them and being at the top of the cosmic hierarchy, viewing everything within him as his thoughts or a dream. What this would mean is that Strange’s magic can interface with things that are more abstract than a concept and things that are even more abstract than that. But, this actually can go further with our good buds, Lord Chaos and Master Order. And to understand why, we need to understand the In-Betweener.

The In-Betweener is the concept of concepts, the barrier of dichotomies themselves. He was so impressive, that he was completely unable to be affected by Strange’s magic, and is also completely transcendent to Eternity. Nothing Strange could do could affect him… which required him to channel the In-Betweener’s creators, Master Order and Lord Chaos. Using their powers, he was able to relatively easily beat back the In-Betweener, overcoming all his attacks and finally gaining the ability to properly affect him, putting belt to ass as he normally does. This helps establish a hierarchy of abstractions, which looks like this:

Concepts < Lesser Abstracts < Eternity < In-Betweener < Order and Chaos

We’ll also note that you can substitute the Lesser Abstracts with Gamma, and the point would remain the same, as Gamma is similarly more abstract to regular concepts, being “more insubstantial” than a typical concept. It’s not necessarily an additional layer, and more so just a potential way to swap the abstraction layers out. Making it look more like:

Concepts < Gamma < Strange’s Normal Magic < In-Betweener < Order and Chaos

As a reminder, Innate Dream looks like this:

Concepts < Boundaries/Borders < Names < Namelessness < Innate Dream

Comparing this to the previously established levels of abstraction of Innate Dream, this actually puts Order and Chaos’ level of abstraction/transcendence as on the exact same level as Innate Dream. That means that, with their amplification, Strange would be able to gain the power of similarly abstract beings to the state of being Reimu operates in, allowing for him to have a proper means of bypassing the ability and affecting her!

Dream Energies & Magic Sash

Finally, we have Strange’s most potent amp, that being the Magic Sash. We established before, but using massive amounts of Dream Energies, Nightmare was able to grow so substantially in power that he was beginning to warp reality and exert his power to such a point that he was usurping the Abstracts, making them cower in fear in his hand. Most notably, he made the very Living Tribunal his bitch, completely outclassing him in power!

This is especially impressive, as the Tribunal is one of the most powerful forces in all of Marvel. While there are forces above him, such as the Beyonders and The One Above All, the amount of faces beyond him are very, very small, leaving him as one of the most powerful, transcendent, and abstract beings in the entire Marvel mythos. He’s absurdly powerful, to the point that his own death resulted in the series of Incursion Events that completely annihilated the Multiverse, and he’s strong enough to disable the full Infinity Gauntlet with just a snap and prohibit them from being able to be used in unison at all. Putting it bluntly, he’s on a level of abstraction and transcendence beyond anything currently seen in Touhou, a being that represents what defines the duties and laws are between the Abstracts. He would be far beyond Eternity or Order and Chaos, transcending them, the realm of spacetime, all opposing realities, all Abstract dualities and relationships, Order, Chaos, Eternity, and Death by magnitudes, acting as the very bond that links the Abstracts and Eternity together. This means that he would, at the least, be another jump in abstraction, adding further to the hierarchy established earlier.

Concepts < Lesser Abstracts < Eternity < In-Betweener < Order and Chaos < Living Tribunal

Once again, well beyond the level of abstraction that Innate Dream is shown to operate at, and thus, more than capable enough of amplifying Strange enough to bypass and interact with Innate Dream! Now, even though the storyline had Nightmare utilizing Doctor Strange’s connection to all living beings in the first place to do this, Strange still needed to collect the dream energies emanating from a bunch of those dreams with his magic sash to gather this amplification in the first place. We know it takes place before a new day starts and that he needed some time to collect the energy while misdirecting Nightmare. And, he’d need access to these dreams to harvest their energies. So, he’d probably need to take the fight to the Dream Dimension to facilitate this again, all while keeping his sash safe and gathering power from the dreams of living things that are currently asleep. Since there’s always a large amount of beings asleep at one given time, especially across a multiverse-spanning realm like the Dream Dimension, this wellspring of dreams can be tapped into. So, this amplification is not inaccessible, as Strange has all the tools he’d need to replicate this if the fight lasts too long, such as the range, connection, and dream-interfacing necessary to try this again manually. Because nothing disqualifies this amplification from being too contextual or out of reach for him to try to replicate during a fight, this power must be kept in consideration.

Summary

In conclusion, the Artifacts are matched by the Incident Stones, and are too limited of an amp to help majorly, and his power nullification methods would ensure his demise. But, channeling Master Order and Lord Chaos, or utilizing the Dream Energies provided by the Magic Sash, would amplify Strange by magnitudes beyond Reimu even with her own amps, to quite literal infinite degrees. And, this would allow him to bypass Reimu’s ultimate defense in Innate Dream to finally be able to affect her, giving him two major means to put an end to the battle. This makes Amps a decisive win for Doctor Strange.

Let’s take a brief moment to pause and summarize. Strange and Reimu are generally even in their stats at a baseline, Reimu’s Innate Dream is an overwhelming ability that shuts down almost all of Strange’s magic, arsenal and options, and opens Reimu’s wincons to be decisive threats! Despite that, Strange is far more intelligent, skilled, with superior battle IQ showings and experience, has far greater stamina, and has a couple of amps that boost him far beyond Reimu’s level, and are capable of bypassing Innate Dream.

We’ve been building a puzzle box up to this point, and now it’s finally time to solve that puzzle. Each side has all the pieces necessary to win, so the question becomes: Who can put those pieces together, solve the puzzle, and take victory for themselves? Well… that’s where our team members finally disagreed a bit! That’s right, everything up to this point was just everything that both teams agreed unilaterally on!

So now, we’ll present Reimu and Strange’s most important aspects, their decisive Trump Cards, compare their arguments, and then determine who has the highest likelihood to win this duel!

Trump Cards

Team Reimu Arguments

_{(We here at G1 all love Reimu vs Arle and Puyo Puyo, this is just for the funnies and we wanted to mention her, no hate 💖)}

This is an absurdly close fight, and it comes down to the smallest details generally, and despite Strange’s overwhelming capabilities, Reimu does have all the tools necessary to win this fight, and win it before Strange can bring the fight under his control.

For one, as established earlier, Reimu’s Innate Dream is an absurdly effective defensive tool. Once it comes into play, Strange will be hard-pressed to do anything to Reimu. 98% of Strange’s entire arsenal is either directly something that falls under Innate Dream’s immunities due to the various characters incapable of effecting her, or isn’t able to reach the same levels of abstract existence that Reimu would reside on while using the ability. Notably, seeing as Innate Dream makes her Gohei phase with her, this would reasonably apply to much of Reimu’s on hand arsenal as well, preventing Strange from being able to teleport away or remove her equipment from the fight. This gives her an unprecedented head-start against Strange, and a huge opening to be able to get off any of her winning moves, and prevent Strange from being able to eliminate many of her major wincons.

Innate Dream protecting her arsenal means that the Incident Stones would remain defended… both offering her a massive boost of upscaling due to the magical power at their beck and call… But also means that the Scarlet Devil Stone would get to play an integral role throughout the fight. The Scarlet Mist-Cloaked Needles the stone empowers Reimu with would provide a level of erasure more potent than anything Strange or his equipment have been able to resist until now. Boundary Erasure is on a level higher than average conceptual erasure, meaning the Eye of Agamotto’s defenses wouldn’t be potent enough to protect him, and with the Scarlet Mist directly able to remove the border between existence and non-existence itself, the very origin of all things, enough exposure to it would absolutely eradicate Strange on a level he couldn’t return from.

Considering Reimu can throw thousands of needles in seconds, and has an infinite supply to pull from, this could become fatal, and fast. Even if one believes a lengthy amount of exposure would be needed for the Mist to take effect, the Scarlet Devil Stone’s effect is noted to be potent and regardless, every hit, every time he’s nicked, and even if he were to absorb needles, would tick away at the timer of his own erasure. He’d have to play extremely carefully and deliberately redirect or avoid hundreds to thousands of needles lobbed at him at absurd speeds in seconds, and seeing as the Scarlet Mist can pass through barriers as potent as the Hakurei Barrier, they’d be able to pass through Strange’s barriers just as easily, removing one of his few defenses against him. Against an opponent as overwhelming as Reimu, it’ll be difficult to avoid so many hits.

Reimu’s most potent option however, would be her bread and butter Exterminations. All she needs to do is get in close and land a solid attack with her Gohei, and she’s able to completely annihilate her opponent. She’s done so to utterly and completely obliterate youkai in the past, such as the Fortune Teller, who was rapidly annihilated until nothing remained, and was unable to regenerate despite a youkai’s impressive healing factor – a healing factor generally superior to anything Strange himself has shown, able to return from complete and utter erasure. Her strongest seals, such as her Dream Seals amped by Onikirimaru, have showcased similar effects, completely disintegrating Kasen Ibaraki on contact, her body vanishing without a trace, just as a side effect of Ibaraki-Douji being sealed.

Strange has showcased an ability to regenerate parts of his body, and has been able to stave off Death claiming Galactus, but he’s never been able to hold off his own death while actively being annihilated, and never been able to regenerate from the complete and utter annihilation of his Astral Form on his own. With how fast an Extermination works, and how comparable Youkai are to Astral Forms – spiritual and informational beings, Reimu should absolutely be capable of destroying Strange’s Astral Form with a single Extermination. Seeing as youkai also exist as physical and non-physical beings at once, and exist in a state of quantum superposition, she could likely kill both the physical body and Astral Form at once, securing a victory for herself. Impurity could similarly overwhelm, corrupt, and destroy / kill his Astral Form if he’s unable to defend against it, and if he isn’t on top of his game and putting full effort into resisting absorption, Reimu could absorb his Astral Form on contact with Spiritual Realm, presenting other means of potential methods to kill him if he were to be overwhelmed as well.

Seeing how Innate Dream is able to easily phase through almost everything Strange can throw at her, he’d be hard-pressed to get away and escape, as while Strange will have to stay on the defensive, trying to escape and throw things at her, Reimu can continuously approach and phase through whatever he tosses her way, releasing a constant, oppressive wave of attacks that Strange will similarly have to fend off, until she can close the gap and get off one of her win conditions. With how easily she can pop through Strange’s barrier, with her able to effortlessly pop the barriers between Otherworlds – being conceptual, ideological and magical barriers that separate entire realities – none of Strange’s barriers would be able to hold her off as well. To put it bluntly, we also need to make it clear how truly overwhelming and oppressive Reimu’s offensive capabilities are. Danmaku Fights and Spell Card Duels are intense showcases where thousands of bullets and attacks fly across the battlefield constantly, again, look at the degrees of attacks he’d have to be defending against at once! With Impossible Spell Cards, she wouldn’t even need to give openings; she can simply dump undodgeable, unfair patterns of attacks to get the job done.

It should be addressed that while Innate Dream will carry Reimu far through this fight, Strange does have three distinct answers to it. However, all of Strange’s magic nullifying abilities being an instant death knell are also major detracting factors against him, rendering some of his best and only options that can bypass Innate Dream as an instant loss were he to use them, providing Reimu a free win on a platinum platter, making it not exactly a good counteroption, so it’s more like 2 distinct counters. However, his other two answers are much better comparatively. Channeling Master Order & Lord Chaos or channeling Dream Energies are both means to make himself infinitely stronger than Reimu, and can reach levels of abstraction equal to or far beyond what Innate Dream is capable of. These would present a massive threat to Reimu if Strange were able to achieve these states uninhibited… which is why it’s good Reimu has options to shut them down.

Seeing as they’d be operating on the same level of existence, Reimu’s sealing capabilities are absurdly impressive. She’s able to seal away (and possibly even banish and erase) gods despite how abstract and widespanning their existence is, even to the point she could seal them within objects to prevent them from being able to exert their influence, giving her a potential means to seal away Lord Chaos and Master Order directly, and hold them away from Strange for a while. It’s also notable that her sealing is able to depower Gods to the level that they’d lose fights they’d normally be able to win, which means that even if Strange were able to re-access their power, they could be significantly weakened. She also has the ability to summon Lord Gion’s powers, using his power to restrict one from summoning Gods, such as when Yorihime used him to seal away the Gods Reimu was summoning and prevent her from channeling others. Similarly, she could use this power to try and inhibit Strange from channeling in the same way, though considering the level of abstraction LC&MO are on, it’s unlikely Lord Gion could seal them away.

The Sash Reimu can handle in a similar manner. Strange can only channel dream energies through the magic sash specifically, meaning that shutting down the sash would be her ticket to preventing Strange from putting her down. With how potent her senses and intuition are, as soon as Strange begins channeling their power, it’ll be hard to keep them obscured with how powerful those energy sources are, and from there she’ll be immediately tipped off to the threats at play. Luckily for Reimu, her sealing abilities once again come in clutch. Reimu has shown herself to be directly capable of sealing away sources of power more powerful than she herself is in the event she can’t exorcise them, such as when she sealed a Youma Book in Kosuzu’s possession, and these seals are notable, as they prevent the sealed item from being able to exert / spread their energy to other things, prevent others from drawing upon their energy, and also slowly drain the objects power over-time, directly preventing Strange from being able to draw upon the energies that the sash can gather. With her being able to combine her barriers and seals to create an absolutely massive AOE to ensnare Strange and ensure she can seal the sash.

While Strange does have means to break seals, Reimu’s sealing capabilities are especially potent, especially if they’re amped by the Onikirimaru, and it means Reimu has a method to be able to shut down his strongest options that can affect her, even if she can only do so for moments. It also means she’d be able to rinse and repeat this tactic, preventing Strange from being able to utilize his strongest states, and the only things that can put Reimu down for good, opening up multiple opportunities for her to get off one of her own wincons while Strange is trying to undo her seals. Depowering the Sash also gives Reimu the opportunity to destroy it or take it from Strange, with the Scarlet Mist Needles being a solid option to potentially erase them, or one of Reimu’s own amped sealing blasts possibly just disintegrating the sash as a consequence of contact. It’s also unclear exactly how long Strange needs to properly draw upon the dream energies from the sash, in order to reach a level of strength high enough to match Nightmare when he was beyond the Tribunal. Strange spent the better length of a day tricking Nightmare with an illusion before finally flipping the tables on him and revealing his channeled dream energies and combatting him, with the timeframe of how long it took him to channel those powers within that timeframe being unclear. Reimu being able to shut down his ability to draw upon those energies at all with the unknown timeframe in account, is a massive deal.

This also presents an issue with Strange’s entire arsenal, as Reimu’s Dream Seals and attacks imbued with sealing powers could by proxy… just seal much of Strange’s arsenal. The Book of Vishanti could be sealed much like the Youma Book – removing one of his greatest resources from the field temporarily – as could many of Strange’s various mystic artifacts, as his tools don’t have traditionally shown resistances to being sealed at all. Again, while Strange has the means to break seals, when being constantly bombarded by sealing based attacks and having his tools whittled down and sealed one by one, it’s time he’s going to have to waste breaking those seals and restoring their power while Reimu encroaches, giving her more and more opportunities to overwhelm and divert his focus to land her decisive blow.

Reimu also has a variety of abilities that help assist her case further. Her Fortune is generally immensely useful due to simply being passive, a constantly exuding force in her favor that Strange would have to actively counteract and cast specific spells to work against. Reimu’s inexhaustible innate fortune will cause attacks to swerve out of the way of her on purpose, her own attacks to move in impossible directions to connect with Strange, and acting as a general useful defensive measure that’ll remain a thorn in Strange’s side throughout the entire fight. Her resistances and the showcases of her fortune against opponents shows that it’s potent enough that none of Strange’s luck affecting magic would be able to nullify it, and even his attempts to bypass her luck like Chaos Magic could still be subject to simply swerving out of her way.

Scaling to the Fortune of other characters like Tenshi through Reimu’s being directly superior, her Fortune is strong enough that people will naturally act in her favor, which could cause Strange to accidentally fall victim to performing actions that would benefit Reimu throughout the duel. Her Exorcism Circle can similarly slow-down attacks and enemies that get within its radius surrounding her, giving her an extra defense, allowing her to more easily dodge or graze attacks. It could potentially imperil Strange’s Astral Form as well, as it’s able to weaken and immobilize spiritual entities within its radius. Her Last Words, while not able to shut down Strange’s use of magic completely, could prevent him from using more complex spells due to its ability to restrict the usage of Bombs/Spell Cards, and potentially even his regeneration/restoration through it nullifying extra lives (which are just absorbing additional life-force), and seeing as Innate Dream itself is a Last Word that can trigger these effects, the entire time it’s active could be restricting Strange’s full capabilities.

While Reimu may struggle to handle some of Strange’s strongest illusions – being able to affect omniscient beings is and all is absurdly impressive – she’s still able to see through illusions that can trap one in an entirely false life, and illusions that can quite literally affect the fundamental makeup of reality itself, suggesting anything short of his best she could still see through. Her Intuition could even tip her off to Sumireko being dangerous if left alone – and sure enough, Sumireko was about to annihilate Gensokyo from the Outside World… which is a higher plane of reality, two very impressive showcases that could imply being able to work around a large amount of Strange’s trickery. Strange’s divination and future sight would be of limited use here as well, seeing as Reimu has fought characters with similar precognitive abilities like Miko, who can read the past, present and future of a person and learn everything about them through their desires, and can read the flow of Fortune to determine which probabilities are most likely, and has still come out on top! Not to mention that Reimu’s own Fortune could potentially throw off his future sight, as the very mechanics of fortune make the future indeterminate, rendering Strange’s ability to know the future of the fight less reliable.

As established earlier in Utility as well, Reimu has multiple means to nullify many of Strange’s attacks as well, her grazing is able to transmute or nullify enemy attacks, and she has over a dozen Ability Cards and System Cards with different functions capable of nullifying, transmuting, or erasing enemy attacks to help take Strange’s attacks and erase or transform them into something she can absorb to them empower herself further. She also notably has Bombs, which are functional screen nukes capable of wiping out all bullets onscreen, erasing everything the enemy has thrown out, providing brief invulnerability and dealing heavy damage. This would be more than enough to deal with most of his attacks, and even shutting down Strange being able to recall attacks from prior foes he’s faced who were especially powerful, erasing, nullifying or transmuting the attack to absorb and use it for herself… or even using the Psychokinesis Ability Card to reflect it right back at Strange.

Reimu in character in serious fights is a very no-nonsense fighter, her main leading attacks are almost always either an attempted Extermination, immobilizing the opponent, her Ofuda/Needles (source: every Touhou game ever), or Dream Seals, meaning she’s going to beeline taking Strange out as fast as possible, and leading with some of her most direct, deadly win conditions. It’ll make her chances of landing one against a Strange who has to actively plan a form of counter-attack in real time against Reimu’s onslaught and near-unbreakable defense that much easier to land. While Strange may have generally superior stamina showcases than Reimu, Reimu’s stamina isn’t anything to scoff at at all, giving her a week to potentially a month of full time to work with, not even accounting for her methods of extending that period with stamina restoring items or means of absorption to restore herself – more than enough time to buy herself a chance to land a winning blow on Strange.

There’s almost certainly plenty more we could cover, various ability interactions or possible advantages on either side, but we feel that this most succinctly summarizes the reasons for Reimu being able to take victory. In short, Strange needs to play effectively a perfect game in order to win, and while he does have the tools to do so, Reimu has the means necessary to be able to shut down his amps that allow him to bypass Innate Dream to keep herself safe and disable many of his magical tools, has much more direct and easy to land wincons that her fighting style would help make even easier to land, Innate Dream protects her from the wide majority of what Strange can throw out, and she unleashes an unimaginably oppressive offense that will make Strange maintaining a foothold very difficult.

While Strange has ways to counter many of Reimu’s options, when he’s being constantly bombarded by an intense barrage of hundreds to thousands of attacks at once, against an opponent he cannot traditionally effect through most means, who matches him in stats and speed at a baseline, who can kill him near instantly if she can get in close and land an Extermination or Onikirimaru Dream Seal, or eventually expose him to enough Scarlet Mist to do him in. Reimu has every tool she needs to completely control the battlefield with overwhelming firepower, various abilities, her fortune, and Innate Dream, and all the tools she needs to prevent the fight from spiraling into Strange’s control. While Strange absolutely can win, and has tools Reimu doesn’t have the strongest counter towards, it would require him to play the ultimate, perfect defense, without ever slipping up once and giving Reimu any kind of opening. Ultimately, The Shrine Maiden of Paradise has everything she needs to win this duel, and Exterminate the Sorcerer Supreme for good.. You could say that this Bad Apple will keep the Doctor away.

Team Strange Arguments

In order to understand what Doctor Strange’s options are for ending this fight, now that we’ve established he has a way to affect and bypass Innate Dream, we should get a handle on how this fight will go from his perspective. Putting ourselves in Strange’s shoes, it’ll be more than notable that, once Reimu activates Innate Dream, none of his typical magic or spells are gonna be doing anything. With his opponent shutting her eyes and fluctuating like how it activates in Touhou games, it’ll be clear to him that this is a state of intangibility of some kind. With his various methods of divination, assessment of non-magical powersets, fate reading Weaver Magic, the Book of Vishanti’s consultation, the Eye of Agamotto’s truth revelations, and his future sight, Stephen has more than enough methods to figure out the capabilities and mechanics of Float during the fight.

Once he understands what he’s up against with Reimu’s ace ability, one option is that Strange will know his next move should be channeling Chaos and Order. Backing this up, his fight with the In-Betweener in the first place had a practically identical set of circumstances, with his spells simply being ignored and passing through his monochrome foe before finally turning the tables on him through this power, meaning he has prior experience with this same kind of fight. In fact, by doing this, he was able to manipulate the boundaries of reality and overwhelm the In-Betweener with magic after he had been trapping him between realities and claiming he could affect all reality and fantasy, something eerily similar to how abstract boundaries are to protect him against boundary manipulations.

Even if Reimu shunts Strange through the Hakurei Barrier boundary between fantasy and reality, basically making him “fictional”, Strange has affected illusory worlds based on cognition and imagination before, along with manipulating information, meaning he should have an answer to that and a way back especially with this amplification. Additionally, should Reimu attempt to nullify or cut off this attempt at channeling, Doctor Strange should know and be aware of counterspells that negate this kind of connection severance as this kind of ability isn’t anything new to him, and the Book of the Vishanti should house all relevant and known counterspells. When also accounting for other examples of confronting magicproof foes, this kind of opponent shouldn’t be something bafflingly new to the Sorcerer Supreme. Thus, his amplification through Chaos and Order would allow him to bypass Innate Dream without too much trouble or preparation.

Option two would involve the replication of the dream energy harvest through his magic sash, which allowed him to depower and easily defeat Nightmare, who had grown powerful enough to overwhelm the Living Tribunal. To reiterate, the Living Tribunal is yet another cosmic jump in power from Eternity, and he’s more transcendent of an abstract being and fundamental than Eternity or the In-Betweener. Now, in order to obtain this amplification, Nightmare required Doctor Strange’s mystic connection to all living things and Stephen’s own dreams to serve as the link in order to put them all to sleep and take their dream energies for himself, snowballing from there and finishing the story arc with his defeat as a new day was starting.

Could Strange do this without those circumstances set up for his sash to gather dream energy? Well, Strange actually has the tools needed to replicate this, given that his own mystic connection and dreams are what’s needed to connect to all living things in the first place, supported by how Strange has the telepathic range to send messages across all mental and spiritual planes and across all known mystical wavelengths. On top of this, Doctor Strange could simply take the fight to the Dream Dimension, which he’s manipulated in its entirety before and where he was able to restore everyone’s dreams after the dimension was left devoid of them. That, alongside his access to sleeping spells that can affect multiple people at once if necessary, should be more than enough for his magic sash to begin collecting dream energy across the Dream Dimension. Reimu would also have a difficult time noticing this is happening, given Strange was able to dupe the omnipotent Nightmare in that same storyline with misdirection or how his illusions and cloaking spells have been used to dupe other omnipotent characters in the past, surpassing her own senses and intuition in potency.

Even if she did target the sash despite all of that, Stephen can remove seals, bestow or restore more power to it, allow it to soak in the Sanctum’s magic energies like what Zom’s essence did to boost back up from being sealed, or try to reverse time on it to get back to charging. Regardless, given the timespan of the original comic allowed Strange to depower Nightmare in moments, accomplishing this charge in under a day at most (which is less time than their stamina limits), she’d be on a time limit. Or, theoretically, he could use a way quicker tactic that previously let him blast Dormammu across dimensions with the eldritch energies he channeled from a past Dormammu. With this technique in his back pocket, you could even make the argument that he could channel the amplified Nightmare or even his past self for that same dream amplification practically as soon as he wants or needs to.

Either way, once he accomplishes this, Strange could use his newfound potency to affect Innate Dream with powers it doesn’t have resistances to at that point, like immobilization spells, superpower swaps to transfer the power from Reimu to himself, or any hax that are now far too potent from his amps for those resistances to halt which can now grasp onto and affect her. With Innate Dream now rendered moot, base Reimu is left open to various forms of hax that she couldn’t resist before, like tearing out her soul and preventing it from rejoining with her body, information dumps, being time stopped forever, having her damage and magical effects transferred to her after linking her to a conjured mook, or being transmutated into an animal (which could potentially bypass Death Bombs as it doesn’t technically kill her). You get the picture, basically this would include anything instantly incapacitating she didn’t resist in base in the Utility section.

And, to get around her canonical revives, Strange has faced foes that reconstitute in the same way, like his nemesis: Dormammu. His approach to Dormammu would work here too, which would be to use his various methods of blasting Reimu’s essence across different dimensions so it wouldn’t be able to gather, reform, and reconstitute her. And, with Innate Dream down, there’s nothing stopping Strange from teleporting the Scarlet Devil Stone to his hands and destroying it to get rid of a major threat to his survival now that it’s tangible. This goes double for any of her other physical items like the Onikirimaru Fragment, Gohei, or other Incident Stones to remove their offered boons and resistances whenever he decides to target them at that point.

However, there’s one big obstacle we haven’t addressed yet: Reimu’s overwhelming Fortune. This shrine maiden’s absurd luck can passively repel incoming magic shots, make it more difficult to cast spells, is unable to be completely drained by a Goddess of Misfortune, is resistant to being affected by Misfortune itself, and her luck is inexhaustible. With just his typical tricks, Stephen would have a hard time getting any of his spells to land or take effect without dealing with this shield of probability in some way. Thankfully, Doctor Strange is no novice when it comes to mystical luck. After all, luck is the stepbrother of magic and Chaos Magic is a school of magic that directly interfaces with probabilities. To start, we know Doctor Strange has his own unnatural, magical luck, and Vincent Stevens, a being made out of his own magical energy, was able to flare his own mystic luck to override the luck of other mystic lucksmiths while gambling. Strange was even able to deduce a man’s luck might be due to latent magical abilities from just a few observations.

In a straight up fight, Reimu’s more obvious energy-repelling luck will not go unnoticed, and we now have precedent that Stephen has his own internal luck that he can manipulate and affect other luck with. While he’s obviously not going to negate Reimu’s luck, this does mean that he can interface with it in various ways, something proven by how he could purge Black Cat’s bad luck from Peter’s aura and have those affects link back to her and purge her powers entirely. So, if she tries to deliberately affect his luck in any way, he can cleanse it off of his aura. And, since he can also nullify or even reverse absorption links cast upon his magic energy back on the caster normally, Strange has ever tool and interaction he needs to be able to deal with Reimu’s luck absorption, either by negating it or reversing it back upon her so that he’d be effectively siphoning from an endless well of luck. Even though Reimu’s Fortune will never run out, this will also mean he’ll never be losing any himself. Even if you argue her luck could affect the environment around him, Doctor Strange’s absorption powers have affected entire cities and even Earth itself, so this area of effect can still be dealt with.

Additionally, Wanda’s “No More Mutants” spell had a cosmic level of potency, a spell enacted by Chaos Magic specifically that Strange helped defend against with Emma Frost, an effect that breached the walls of causality. This is a pretty similar level of potency to how Shion could not affect Tenshi’s infinitely inexhaustible luck, because Wanda’s own Chaos Magic was able to let Iron Man guess Spectrum’s electromagnetic frequency on the first try amongst a literal infinite amount of frequencies. With both Fortune allowing for intentionally set outcomes and Chaos Hexes being able to turn the impossible into fact, Strange has enough going for him to not only defend against this especially powerful luck, but he’s also able to weaponize Chaos Magic himself.

Obviously, Strange is a master of all mystic arts, and he’s actively studied Chaos Magic to rectify prior stances on it, has it as a course being taught at his own Strange Academy, and Clea herself has used it and spoken authoritatively on its mechanics. More importantly, he’s weaponized it against a similar opponent. When facing an entity that was “the power of change” who could control the outcome of, control, and absorb all directed “catastrophe magic”, Strange’s blast of Chaos Magic worked as it had “no control” over it, affecting it so potently that it acted as “poison” to an agent of change, severing the magic absorption pipeline. This kind of effect is backed up by other statements that clarify Chaos Magic “shatters probability” and bypasses magical defenses, along with its powers being able to reverse fields of non-causality, boost other luck, or block probability-altering fields. In addition to his overwhelming potency from his biggest amplifications, Chaos Magic has enough going for it that it has everything it needs to break through Fortune’s defenses and land consistent shots on Reimu.

However, even with all this going for him, Strange is still going up against a character that’s a regular bullet hell player and boss battle, and Reimu has a lot of options that can outright kill him if she manages to get up close and personal with him or land shots with, namely Extermination, Scarlet Mist Needles, and Onikirimaru Dream Seals. He would need to find opportunities to pull his magic and there’s still the potential option of outlasting Innate Dream with his superior stamina and whether that’s a viable strategy. Firstly, let’s tackle the obvious factor of how Doctor Strange would deal with Danmaku, especially since barriers may not last against someone that can pop them like bubbles.

One of his biggest advantages and tactics against this, and most of Reimu’s offensive options, is his ability to continuously absorb incoming magic and energy through either the Eye of Agamotto, his own body, or outside eldritch forces with ranges we’ve established could affect massive areas all at once. This is actually something that Reimu’s struggled with before against Yuuma Toutetsu, an especially potent absorption that could drain physical, magical, and spiritual blows with zero difficulty even when making direct physical contact. Additionally, Stephen’s upper limit on his absorption would be far beyond Reimu’s through his capability to harvest dream energies that can scale above the Living Tribunal or the potential to absorb the dead Beyonder energies that turned Doom into God Emperor Doom. This, combined with Stephen being able to reconstitute his physical form entirely, regenerate from being nearly erased, and sustain Galactus’s reconstitution against Death trying to halt it means that he’s going to be incredibly tough to put down permanently, especially with his wide variety of defenses against soul attacks and how many he’s endured in the past allowing him to deal with any Danmaku that manages to slip through.

Conversely, while Reimu is dealing with all that absorption, Strange can use her very same magic energy to restore his stamina, reconstitute his Astral Form, or just redirect it somewhere else. This would mean he could banish energy to other dimensions or into portals, something that’d be especially useful against Scarlet Mist Needles, an attack he’d be able to sense the abnormal energies from and see coming through his Ankh of Life or methods of precognition. He could also end up increasing his physical or astral body’s size in order to make it so that Reimu would need to strike with much larger AOE attacks, which is extremely useful when it comes to techniques that could endanger him if he’s blasted all at once. And, should he or any of his items have all their magic drained, the Eye of Agamotto can replenish it, alongside artifacts like the Wand of Watoomb offering magic amplifications and his own magic being able to facilitate restoration, meaning there’s always an option available to keep him full on magic. On top of dispersing, transmuting, or banishing energies, the Book of the Vishanti itself will passively repel incoming spells and the Eye of Agamotto will automatically react to incoming threats. There are also examples of Doctor Strange being able to simply disperse incoming energy outright, meaning he has an extra option to avoid absorbing any harmful energies like the Scarlet Mist, something that is only fatal after 30 minutes of continuous exposure anyway.

Speaking of precognition, that power combo’d with divination and him noticing none of his shots are landing be it through Innate Dream or Fortune would naturally mean that Doctor Strange would fall back on fighting more cautiously, defensively, and playing keep away with stall tactics. Through his illusions, cloaking, and deceptive tricks, which were able to fool multiple then-omnipotent beings like Dormammu, Nightmare, Adam Warlock, and the Beyonder, who he could keep constantly inebriated within an illusion he could sustain “for years”. These illusory tricks are simply far too potent for Reimu to be able to detect with her typical sense or intuition, meaning the Sorcerer Supreme has the upper hand when it comes to battlefield control. Strange has even managed to go beyond making simple Shadow Clones, making illusions that have faked entire fights, faked having their energy absorbed, disguise a portal as himself for dupes, dupe people with disguises of characters they should know really well, fake entire locations and confrontations while faking being defeated, and test out defensive countermeasures against magic with fake attacks from his own duplicates.

For every game-winning technique Reimu may have, she’s going to be having a difficult time landing a shot on the “real” Strange or even grasping whether the location or current fight going on isn’t illusory, which he can upkeep simultaneously while cloaking himself. Using this time he’s bought for himself, Strange would be able to take the opportunity to set up his amplifications, develop counterspells to her magic the longer the fight goes on, avoid deaths from Reimu’s win conditions with fakes of himself, use misdirection to keep her distracted while setting up some other move, or even just study how Touhou magic works. By parsing this new magic system, something that he’s done mid-combat before to replicate new magicks, Doctor Strange would be able to learn techniques like Bombs, Death Bombs, any of Reimu’s Spell Cards (some of which would let him erase magic bullets), or potentially even Grazing, meaning the longer the fight stalls or goes on, the more Strange will learn and be less surprised by.

And, this is in addition to his precognitive options, with a future sight that can see several days (and potentially far further) into the future to know exactly when Innate Dream will drop if he takes the outlasting route. Plus, Strange’s ability to detect a character’s level of power or strength through his mystical awareness would also negate the “lose condition” of setting up the Sands of Nisanti or risking a play with the use of the Mysterium Coin at all, since he’d understand Reimu’s impressive physical power right off the bat.

We also can’t ignore the safe havens he has access to, like the Sanctum Sanctorum or the Library of Worlds. Not only is the Sanctum full of tons of traps so Strange can replenish his arsenal or magic in a pinch, but he can cloak both his presence there and the entire building from Reimu’s senses and tracking. And, Doctor Doom could hide from Stephen’s own absurd cosmic awareness through his strength as a sorcerer, lending credence to its potency when Strange uses it himself. While there, he has all the time in the world to nerd out and study Touhou magic, keep tabs on Reimu with the Orb of Agamotto to continue studying her, or just replenish his own stamina to avoid expending more energy than he needs to. And, with the Library of Worlds reaching the Beyonder’s Realm, Reimu doesn’t have any showings of being able to reach such a dimensionally high and transcendent realm within her own series, meaning it should be completely inaccessible to her. And, this is a serious problem when most of Reimu’s own win conditions require her to get up close and personal with Doctor Strange in the first place to land something like an Extermination. With all this in mind, it’s more than feasible that Strange would be able to use enough stall tactics and tricks to outlast Innate Dream through Reimu’s stamina limitations. No matter how you slice it, Doctor Strange has multiple avenues, options, and defensive plays available to get around Innate Dream, Fortune, and any of Reimu’s game-winning tricks with his own trickery, cautious plays, and past experiences against similarly untouchable and overwhelming foes.

Final Decision

Despite Reimu’s own solid trump cards, which could land a killing blow if she plays the fight the right way, the majority of us on the blog believe that Strange has the superior trump cards, and he has all the necessary means to be able to pull his winning moves out first or at ample opportunities. So, ultimately, Doctor Strange secures the final category for himself and wins Trump Cards. 🧙

Conclusion

“I have been accused of being unrelenting. Merciless. Perhaps I am. For I have looked into that heart of darkness. I know the chill of evil. I have clearly seen that, no matter what, sometimes the night cannot be kept at bay. So I carefully choose my battles. I fight those I can win. And make sure the ones I can’t win are worth dying for.”

Advantages:

Matches Reimu’s stats in base but gets far stronger with available amplifications
Bypasses Innate Dream by channeling Chaos and Order or using the Magic Sash
Chaos Magic, luck purging, and absorption negation gets around boons from Fortune
Illusions, cloaking, and deceptions are too potent for Reimu’s senses and intuition
Revivals are circumvented by dispersing Reimu’s essence across different dimensions
Able to remove seals and restore magic with the Eye, himself, or the Sanctum Sanctorum
Divination, the Eye, the Book of the Vishanti, and other spells can analyze Reimu’s powerset
Greater stamina, skill, and experience would allow him to outlast Innate Dream if all else fails
The longer the battle lasts, the more Strange can redirect, banish, continuously absorb, or study attacks to recover, develop counterspells, or mimic techniques like Bombs or Death Bombs
Strange’s precognition, mystic awareness, and safe havens offer ways to see tricks coming, stall, know flawed approaches, and grant reprieves to strategize or recover
Can hit that yoinky sploinky
Has the most powerful spell of all

Disadvantages:

Innate Dream stonewalls nearly every option available to Doctor Strange
Fortune makes landing or casting spells incredibly difficult
Grazing, magic erasure, magic transmutations, and Death Bombs make Reimu tough to pin down
Options like Extermination, Scarlet Mist Needles, and Onikirimaru Dream Seals would be fatal
Strange’s barriers would get bypassed or popped by Reimu on contact without issue
Will be constantly barraged by a wide variety of danmaku and Spell Cards
Reimu has enough experience against precognitive opponents that it isn’t a gamechanger
Potent power nullification like the Sands of Nisanti leaves Strange outmatched in a physical brawl
Marvel can’t spell his enchantments for shit
Really bad track record against street thugs for some reason
Massive alcoholic
A shrimp tail almost put one of the Strange researchers out of commission (they’re ok now though)

“Gensokyo is a place created for the survival of youkai. Even the humans only exist for them. But you see, if you put it the other way around… That means youkai can only exist as long as the humans do. Which is why the most powerful and valuable beings in Gensokyo are humans. In other words… the youkai can never beat us.”

Advantages:

Can match Strange’s stats at a baseline level…
Innate Dream renders Reimu immune and unaffected by the vast majority of Strange’s magic, abilities, and arsenal…
Can permanently kill Strange with her Exterminations, Scarlet Mist-Cloaked Needles, and Onikirimaru-amped Dream Seals
- Impurity and Spiritual Realm offer wincons if Strange were to be overwhelmed as well
Reimu’s Danmaku, Spell Cards, Ability Cards, Incident Stones and range present an extremely overwhelming offense that will constantly keep Strange on the backfoot
Has faced opponents with precognitive and probability reading abilities and come out on top multiple times, and fortune makes the future unpredictable, making Strange’s precog less useful
Grazing and her various methods of negating and transmuting attacks will increase her own resources while nullifying Strange’s attacks against her
Physically magnitudes stronger & faster than Strange without magic
- If Strange ever uses the Sands of Nisanti, Mysterium Coin, or Cantrips of the Onyx King she wins immediately lol
Death Bombing & Death Avoidance Elixir can allow her to survive potentially fatal blows
Can destroy any barrier Strange can put out through contact, bypassing his defenses easily
Gaps will allow her to follow him to just about anywhere he could traverse to…
Bisexual queen
Will have Bats looking like this trying to bypass Innate Dream

Disadvantages:

…But is massively weaker than any of Strange’s amps, such as the Artifacts, Dream Sash, or channeling Master Chaos and Lord Order
…But Innate Dream can be bypassed by Dream Energies & Lord Chaos and Master Order due to their transcendence/abstraction
Nearly all of her magical attacks/danmaku are completely susceptible to being absorbed, redirected, or transferred by Strange
Strange can prevent her from resurrecting through essence dispersal
… except for the Library, which is too transcendent for even Gaps to access
Her enhanced senses and intuition can be bypassed with his most potent obfuscation spells, and his strongest illusions may be too potent to be seen through
Doesn’t resist a handful of of Strange’s abilities without Innate Dream, leaving her vulnerable if he bypasses it
Inferior stamina, skill, and intelligence, which can lead to Strange outlasting her
Opium addict, massive alcoholic, and broke as hell
Marisa Kirisame managed to appear in a DEATH BATTLE episode before her

When it comes to a mage duel between two of the most overwhelming magical powerhouses in their series, their matched strength means that the ultimate question is, fittingly, whether the sorcerer or shrine maiden could out-magick the other. And, when it came down to the complex puzzle box of whether Doctor Strange could deal with Reimu’s absurd defense of Innate Dream, his experience and mystic mastery granted him not just one solution, but three. This similarly applied to Reimu, who needed to find out whether any number of her tricks could bust through the huge list of resistances and tricks Strange had. In order to put down the famed Sorcerer Supreme, she managed to also come up with three permanent solutions. Both sides were facing chances of victory in the margins of extreme difficulty! But, in the end, Doctor Strange’s superior stamina, experience, tactics, and options allow him to win more often than not in a tight magical race to victory.

Ultimately, the majority of us believe that Strange’s arguments are much more likely to provide him victory in this extremely close duel of magicks. Neither Doctor Strange nor Reimu Hakurei should be underestimated at face value. They’re genuinely veritable forces of nature despite any of their well known…uh, let’s call them mistakes and vices. But, with how much they’ve faced like countless forms of supernatural threats or cartoonishly reality-altering scenarios, they’ll be facing down a veritable otherworldly professional. They both have their work cut out for them in this fight where absurd spells and artifacts that can do a bajillion different things are flying back and forth. But, in the end, the magic tricks and indomitable perseverance of the Sorcerer Supreme comes out on top more often than not. As Strange as it is, Reimu’s chances became nothing but a dream, her victory floating into fantasy.

The winner is Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.

Final Tally

Doctor Strange (7) – Anfang, BangJang96, KrisWarlock, Mudonge, SpaceJellO, Speedy, Stationsearcher

Reimu Hakurei (2) – Kirbonic Pikmin, Loka

One response to “Death Battle Predictions: Doctor Strange VS Reimu”

TheLyingSpectre

April 30, 2026

I’m going to be honest, I really don’t agree with a good bit of Reimu’s scaling in this blog. I think the Outer & R>F arguments are just very shaky and inconsistent

also, I feel like the part about the Spell Card rules creation is missing a bit, considering it wasn’t just Reimu, but it was the Vampire Incident that had caused the Spell Card Rules to be made.

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Death Battle Predictions: Doctor Strange VS Reimu

Before We Start…

Canon Explanation & Material Used

Special Thanks & Additional Credits

Background

Doctor Strange

Reimu Hakurei

Experience & Skill

Doctor Strange

Surgery

Magic Knowledge

Overall Experience

Superhero & Teaching Experience

Magical Skills & Tactics

Hand-to-Hand Combat

Reimu Hakurei

Equipment

Doctor Strange

The Eye of Agamotto

Tracking

Scanning & Information Gathering

Teleportation

Energy Projection

Mind & Morality Manipulation

Mind Swap

Memory Erasure

Emotional Manipulation

Info Dump

Mind Reading

Communication

Clairvoyance

Conjuration

Illusion Dispelling

Magic Channeling

Scrying

Power Bestowal

Purification

Telekinesis

Dimensional Portals

Absorption

True Sight

Sense Manipulation

Magical Barrier Breakdowns

Strength Sapping

Sealing

Healing

Exorcism

Time Manipulation

Sleep Manipulation

Soul Manipulation

Paralysis Inducement

Reality Warping

Magic Restoration

Animation

The Cloak of Levitation

The Book of the Vishanti

The Wand of Watoomb

The Orb of Agamotto

The Amulet of Agamotto

The Wings of Needless Sorrow

The Darkhold

Healing Potions

Manual Weaponry

The Scalpel of Strange

The Tarot of the Secret Flame

Mysterium Coin

The Axe of Exquisite Decapitations

Magic Sash

The Sanctum Sanctorum

Miscellaneous Artifacts

The Vehicle of Volkswagen

Shuma-Gorath Floatie

Reimu Hakurei

Gohei(s)

Ofuda

Persuasion Needles

Yin-Yang Orbs

Ultramarine Orb Elixir

Lives

Ability Cards