Magic: The Gathering's original art director says one of its most famous expansions was a protest against the Satanic Panic: 'I was getting really tired of the judgmental, holier-than-thou attitude coming from a lot of conservative so-called Christians'

A cowboy painfully dissolves into tetrominoes — (Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

Back in August 1994, not long after Doom had pulled PC gaming blinking into the spotlight, Magic: The Gathering released a small expansion named The Dark. Comprising just 119 cards, the set was unique for how it upended the traditional depiction of Magic's mana colours. Most notably, it radically reinterpreted white mana cards—normally presented as angelic and peaceful—with scenes of religious fanaticism and violence.

It has long been believed that the cards' designs were influenced by the Satanic Panic, which Magic itself was caught up in after its release in 1993. But only recently has this been confirmed. Just before Halloween, Magic's original art director Jesper Myrfors took to Facebook and laid out the design philosophy behind the cards, writing "The Magic: The Gathering release The Dark was 100% a commentary on the evils and hypocrisy of bigoted right wing Christians.

"Having gone through the idiotic Satanic Panic of the '80s and then listening to their moronic and unfounded pearl clutching arguments that MTG promoted 'devil worship' I had had enough and decided to hold up a mirror to them," Myrfors continued. This, he says, is why White is "represented as dangerous, dogmatic and unempathetic in the set," adding that "White in The Dark glorifies ignorance, mob mentality and violence against those who are different."

Posted by jesper.myrfors on

As time passed, all of this "bubbled up" in Myrfors, until he eventually decided to "poke back" at the religious right. And an opportunity quickly arose. The release of Magic's third expansion, Legends, saw the game explode in popularity, to the point where Wizards of the Coast had an "internal panic" because they lacked something to follow it up.

Hence, Myrfors quickly set about producing The Dark, confident that Wizards of the Coast would accept it because "the clock was ticking". Not only was he right, The Dark seemed to chime with unspoken sentiments the rest of the team had. "I’m sure they could tell what the direction of the set was. But all of them had lived through the Satanic Panic too. We’d all been victims of those false accusations, so I think everyone appreciated it on some level."

A more modern example of what Myrfors saw during the Satanic Panic is Stephen Dollins, a former pro-wrestler and self-proclaimed "prophet" who has accused everything from Pokemon Cards to the Tooth Fairy as being linked to Satanism. One of Dollins' earliest targets was Magic, where he suggested that the mana circle on the reverse of Magic's cards was evidence of hidden pentagrams. "He pointed to the mana circle on the back and what 'they' did," Myrfors explains, with 'they' referring to Magic's purportedly devil-worshipping design team. "But for the record, there is no 'they'. I was 100% in charge of the look and feel of that game."

As for why Myrfors has chosen to reveal this information now, he doesn't say explicitly. But in his original Facebook post, he writes about how he sees history repeating itself:

"The truth is that people who view themselves as virtuous and righteous can be as deadly and dangerous as any blood sacrificing devil cult when they forget the message of love that is supposed to be the foundation of their belief system," he wrote in the original Facebook post. "We can see that replaying today with MAGA."

Elaborating further, Myrfors says the name of the expansion pack was "a reference to the Dark Ages, when the Church had full control of the population, when wise women and folk healers were burned as witches, education was only for the very elite and anybody who spoke up or strayed from the herd was killed in horrific ways." He worries that "even today people are trying to bring those dark days back. I was shining a light on them with this set."

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Stephen Dollins was one of the inspirations for The Dark expansion, but Myrfors was just using him as a modern example of the Satanic Panic.

TOPICS

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.