Stark Naked Sorcery

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.

— Good Omens

It is not uncommon that some types of Ritual Magic must be carried out au naturel, even if the working has no aspects of Sex Magic to it. The reasons for this vary, whether because it is 'closer to nature' or the clothing somehow getting in the way, but getting nude is a common way to indicate that magic is about to happen. While it understandably occurs in most Sex Magic (if only for practical reasons), it could be a part of nearly any type of ritual spell-casting.

Often associated with a Witch Classic, though other types of mages may have reasons to do this. Could involve a Nude Nature Dance, especially if the ritual is conducted by a group.

The term skyclad — meaning "wearing only air" — is often applied, especially in recent works. While nudity has long been associated with magic and witchcraft, this word actually comes from modern neo-paganism, specifically the mid-20th century works of Gerald Gardner (the founder of Wicca). Gardner probably got the term from a direct translation of the Sanskrit word Digambara (literally "sky-wearing"), referring to a sub-sect of Jainism in which monks are discouraged from having any possessions, including clothing.

If nudity is necessary for the magic to work, it might be a form of Conditional Powers or a Magic Prerequisite. Compare Full-Frontal Assault and Posthuman Nudism. May overlap with Sinister Nudity if The Dark Arts are involved.

Contrast to Armor and Magic Don't Mix, where a specific type of apparel cannot be worn by wizards if they wish to cast spells, and Magical Barefooter, in which the lack of footwear indicates a tie to nature.

This only applies to mages from societies/species with a nudity taboo, so examples such as unicorns in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic don't count.

No Real Life Examples, Please!, even though this trope is Truth in Television for a number of real-life mystical traditions.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• EDENS ZERO: In the manga's final arcs, it's explained that a person's Ether Gear is at its most effective when they are stark naked, since the flow of Ether in one's body is hindered by clothing or bondage. This turns out to be the key to Rebecca's time-reversing Ether Gear in Universe Zero, a Merged Reality where she's blocked off from her Time Travel powers until she takes off all her clothes.

Comic Books

• The Books of Magic: When Sir Timothy recalls summoning demons to sell his childhood memories to, we see that he apparently did so naked. Since Sir Timothy is... not the most physically impressive man, this is just another thing that serves to make him look pathetic despite his magical power.
• Heroes for Hire: In Issue #8 of Vol 3, the team is facing Mooks armed with demonic weapons, so Paladin summons Satana Hellstrom to assist them. While she does have a spell to banish the demonic influence, the ritual requires "A certain amount of nudity". Cue Paladin having to protect a naked Satana from goons as he cracks jokes about the situation. After the spell is done and the fight is over, she doesn't bother dressing before talking to the team and both Paladin and Spider-Man can't help but stare while Misty Knight finds the whole thing to be uncomfortable.
  Mystic Knight: Why is Satana wearing remarkably little clothing even for her impressive standards?
  Paladin: She was casting some kind of banishment thing and... she needed the freedom?
• JLA: During the "Obsidian Age" arc, the regular Justice League was seemingly killed on a mission, and thus a team of alternates were brought in to cover for them. During his time on the team, Jason Blood decided to beef up the mystical wards on the Watchtower, which required him to strip down, much to the delight of newcomers Hawkgirl and Faith.
  Faith: Now that's something you don't see every day.
  Hawkgirl: Though you'd like to.
• Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose: One of the many covens is the Skyclad Coven, which does all of its magic in the buff.
• Young Justice: Empress performs a skyclad ritual to try and divine the location of who killed her father.

Fan Works

• Vow of Nudity: Unsurprisingly for this series, when Fiora conducts a ritual to sacrifice Haara to the demon lord, she does so naked. (This proves to be a bad idea when she gets sucked into the demon realm along with her would-be victim).

Film — Live-Action

• Practical Magic: Discussed and implied when Sally has to leave her daughters with her aunts during the summer solstice when they (supposedly) have an obligation to attend a witch celebration where nudity is involved. Becomes a Brick Joke later when the daughters mention doing exactly what their mother didn't want them to do.
  Sally: Fine, but I do not want them dancing naked under the full moon.
  Aunt Jet: Of course not, dear. The nudity is entirely optional, as you well remember!
• The VVitch:
  • After the witch kills the baby Samuel, she makes a "flying ointment" using his blood (and possibly other parts), smears it across her body and broomstick, and then flies into the sky.
  • At the end of the film, Thomasin comes upon a coven of witches who are chanting and gyrating around a fire while naked. They eventually rise into the air, and Thomasin, who disrobed before going into the woods, rises into the air with them.

Literature

• Discworld suggests that the myth of witches performing rites skyclad was invented by pervy old men with active imaginations. Some younger witches attempt it but usually give it up after one or two bouts of hypothermia.
  Not actually naked, or skyclad as it was rather delightfully called, because Magrat had no illusions about the shape of her own body and the older witches seemed solid across the hems, and anyway that wasn't absolutely necessary. The books said that the old-time witches had sometimes danced in their shifts. Magrat had wondered about how you danced in shifts. Perhaps there wasn’t room for them all to dance at once, she'd thought.
• Good Omens discusses and subverts this when introducing us to Anathema's witchcraft. Anathema is a "practical occultist" who most certainly is not nude when she does her spellwork. But, as the narrator puts it:
  Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.
• In The Kalevala, Lemminkäinen boasts to his mother that three sorcerers have once tried to bewitch him, presumably under circumstances which were the most favorable for their magic. That included them not having a stitch on.
• The Malloreon: When the villain was an ordinary priestess in the Grolim Religion of Evil, she started performing the ritual Human Sacrifices in the nude with extra Sex Magic elements, purely out of personal Hemo Erotic sadism. Even the other Grolims were creeped out.
• Otherverse: While not strictly necessary, the Awakening ritual that a person undergoes to become a practitioner is most often done naked because it's seen as baring yourself honestly as much as possible to the spirits.
• Skyclad: As the title implies, the main character is only able to use her abilities while naked.
• Snow, Glass, Apples: To create the poisoned apples, the queen has to perform the ritual in the nude at the top of a tower in the middle of autumn and is accordingly unhappy about it. At least she makes sure that no servants are anywhere near the tower during the ritual, preserving some of her dignity.
• The Summoning: Sorceress of Faith: Chapter 2: the protagonist is working a skyclad Wiccan ritual to tap into her latent magical powers:
  Standing nude
  [...]
  she lit the candles, drew the outer circle, summoned guardian spirits
• The Traitor Son Cycle: Ghause Muriens is an expy of Morgause and Morgan Le Fay and one of the most powerful sorcerers in the series. At 50 years old, though not the World's Most Beautiful Woman of her youth, Ghause has a figure and face that still puts almost every other woman to shame and she loves to flaunt it by doing magic skyclad.
• Vampirocracy: Played With. Leon takes part in a ritual to remove his negative energy with the help of his Wiccan Love Interest Amy and her coven. He's surprised when one of the Wiccans, Rosie, nonchalantly undresses right in front of him, and he assumes that they're all going to disrobe, but the others explain that it's not necessary and Rosie is simply very "earthy" and "traditional" when it comes to these Wiccan rituals.
• Whateley Universe:
  • When the dark wizard Abaris attempts to kidnap Witch Mabel in order to steal her Essence to power his own spells, the ritual used requires him to be skyclad (supposedly). When the spell seizes the non-magical mutant Tink instead, she immediately dubs him Pervert Man.
  • Downplayed example: when Kodiak (Wyatt Cody) loses contact with his Avatar spirit, he turns to Professor Grimes for help. While Grimes herself remains clothed, Wyatt needs to enter a protective circle wearing only a loincloth in order to summon The Primal Kodiak, who appears in a separate circle.
  • In Anomaly's origin story the leader of Matt's coven specifically states that minors would not be taking part in the later portion of the ceremony, as it would be performed skyclad.

Live-Action TV

• Not the Nine O'Clock News: A sketch deals with Satanism in suburban Britain. An interviewer speaks to two Satanists in their living room, who practice a monthly ritual where they head out to countryside, strip naked, and "passionately ravish each other till dawn". This may or may not help summon demons, but they see that as a side benefit, as it were.
  Satanist: Well, every full moon we do go up to the Heath at midnight, and we do strip ourselves completely naked, and we do passionately ravish each other till dawn.
  Interviewer: And this helps summon up the forces of Evil, does it?
  Satanist: Who cares?
• Xena: Warrior Princess: The Amazons have a spiritual purification ritual where they heal their emotional wounds and cleanse their souls. It's performed in a "purging hut" where they lay naked on a table while other (clothed) women perform various rituals. Gabrielle undergoes it in "The Bitter Suite" as she's grieving for the death of her child. In "Adventures in the Sin Trade II", Xena reminisces on how she once ambushed the Amazon Queen Cyane while she was undergoing said ritual, thinking she'd be easy prey in such a vulnerable position. She was wrong and ended up being on the end of a Full-Frontal Assault, in which Cyane not only defeated Xena but also stole her clothing in the process, forcing Xena to flee in the buff.

Magazines

• Playboy: Played for Comedy in a single panel cartoon in which a young girl comes into the kitchen to find her mother kneeling on the floor, completely naked. There's a pentagram on the floor in front of her, with lit candles at the five points. The caption beneath the cartoon reads: "Not now, sweetie. Mommie's casting a spell on Robert Redford."

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: There is surprisingly little of such magic in the third-party Book of Erotic Fantasy. The sole exception has a good reason for this: the life shell spell creates a barrier around the caster preventing any non-living matter from going through, be they weapons or clothes, magic or not. Logically, one has to be naked in order to cast it.
• Mage: The Awakening: Like most of everything, skyclad casting can be used to help spellcasting if it has the correct symbolism for the spell. Furthermore, the Sodality of the Tor, a Legacy based on British witchcraft, uses skyclad dancing as part of its initiations and rituals.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Ritual Magic always requires more elaborate Magic Prerequisites than lesser spells. "The Awakening of the Slumbering Earth Dragon" requires the ritualist to be naked and painted with woad, along with several precious ingredients, but has the power to unleash an earthquake.

Theatre

• The Rite of Spring: Some productions feature the young girls doing a Nude Nature Dance while performing the pagan ritual to summon spring.

Video Games

• Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel: Reyvateils connected to the Wills of Ar Ciel can temporarily turn their clothes into more magical power.
• Bayonetta: The titular character's clothes are actually made out of her Magic Hair, which is used as a medium for her powers. As such, the more powerful attacks she uses, the more she strips, becoming completely naked whenever she summons a demon. This also applies to Jeanne.

Webcomics

• Arthur, King of Time and Space: Appears (sort of) twice, once when all the main characters are involved in a ritual arranged by Merlin (represented by stick figures to keep the strip family friendly) and once when we just see their reaction to an off-panel ritual they've interrupted, with Guinevere asking "Why is it never people you'd want to see naked?"
• Wayward Sons: Justified. Cassandra has the power to invoke prophetic holograms, which generate huge amounts of heat. Thus, she does her prophecy stuff in the water, naked.

Western Animation

• Robot Chicken: In a sketch parodying Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother's wand isn't working, so she decides to use dark magic, complete with her taking her clothes off to reveal her elderly and sagging body, and her (censored) breasts flapping about. It turns out her wand was just turned the wrong way and she didn't need the dark magic.

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