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The relics

Relics5 entries

Objects that do the magic instead of the sorcerer, which is why a student who has learned almost nothing can already fly.

A relic is not a tool. The distinction matters and the films are consistent about it: a sorcerer channels energy through their own discipline, and a relic holds power that was put into it by somebody else, usually a long time ago. That is why Stephen Strange can be dangerous within months. He is not strong. He is carrying things that are.

The interesting consequence is that relics have opinions. The Cloak chooses him. The Eye has rules he breaks. The two books at the end of this list are the same object twice, written from opposite directions, and both of them are gone by the time the credits roll on the film that introduces them.

Show detailsWhy this list is short

Kamar-Taj has a room full of these, and most are never named on screen. This collection records the ones a source identifies, which is five, rather than the ones a viewer can half remember seeing on a shelf.

If you can point at a source that names another, it takes one file to add it.

  1. Cloak of Levitation

    Cloak of Levitation

    A red cloak that flies its wearer, fights on its own initiative, and has more presence in a scene than most of the people in it.

    It is introduced doing the job of a sidekick. It carries Strange into the air, blocks for him, and in the attack on the New York Sanctum it is the reason he holds the zealots off at all, which is not a sentence you can write about most pieces of costume.

    The design choice underneath is a good one. The character’s whole problem is that he wants to be the best at everything immediately, and one of the first things the story gives him is equipment with better instincts than he has. Even reviewers who disliked the film singled it out: it has a personality, and it uses it.

    First seen inDoctor Strange

  2. Eye of Agamotto

    Eye of Agamotto

    A relic worn at the throat that can run time forwards and backwards, because there is an Infinity Stone inside it.

    Strange finds it, reads the book it is described in, and teaches himself to use it in an afternoon, which is precisely what Mordo and Wong tell him not to do. The Eye can rewind an object, loop a moment, or age something into dust, and the film is careful to show all three before it explains any of the danger.

    It is also the join between two parts of this story that had nothing to do with each other. The magic and the Infinity Stones arrive in the same object.

    Show detailsWhat it actually is

    The Eye is the housing. The power is the Time Stone, one of the six, which means a relic in a temple in Nepal had been holding a piece of the thing the next two Avengers films are entirely about.

    That is why Strange is at the centre of those films rather than an addition to them, and it is why the object stops being available after them.

    First seen inDoctor Strange

  3. Sling ring

    Sling ring

    A two-finger ring that opens a doorway anywhere the wearer can picture clearly enough.

    It is the least dramatic relic and the one that changes the most. Sorcerers do not travel, they arrive, and every fight in this part of the catalogue is shaped by the fact that anyone with a ring and a clear mental image can leave or bring an army.

    The films understand its value best when they take it away. In No Way Home, Peter Parker steals Strange’s ring and strands him in the Mirror Dimension for twelve hours, which is the entire reason the plot is allowed to go wrong.

    First seen inDoctor Strange

  4. Book of Vishanti

    Book of Vishanti

    A book of pure magic that is supposed to give a sorcerer whatever they need to defeat their enemy, and that most sorcerers believe is a myth.

    Strange says plainly that it is not real. He is wrong, and the film opens on a version of him dying while trying to reach it, in the space between universes where it is kept.

    It is written as the answer to the whole plot, and then it is destroyed within seconds of being found. That is a deliberately cruel piece of construction, and it is what forces the film’s ending to be a choice rather than a weapon.

    First seen inDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

  5. The Darkhold

    The Darkhold

    A book of corrupted magic that gives its reader everything they ask for and takes them apart while doing it.

    The Darkhold is the Book of Vishanti’s opposite and it is the one that works. It teaches dreamwalking, possession across universes, and a great deal more, and its price is not paid in energy. It is paid in the reader.

    By the time it appears in a cinema, Wanda Maximoff has already read it. The film treats that as settled backstory and spends its length on the consequences.

    Show detailsWhere it comes from, and where it ends

    It is a copy. The source of its power is a temple on Mount Wundagore built for the being who wrote it, and Wanda goes there when the copy she has is destroyed.

    At the end of the film she turns the book’s own magic against it and brings the mountain down, which destroys every copy of the Darkhold across the multiverse, and herself with them.

    First seen inDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Sources

Facts last checked on Sep 7, 2026