I remember reading in a pre-mending book that planes will often touch, intersect, and even share the same space in some spots. I also read that these planar events have a significant effect on magic on either plane. I was wondering if this is still canon.

I would say it's theoretically still canon but Creative don't really want to explore it and like to keep their planes separated. It was definitely true before the Mending, and there is no concrete evidence that it has changed. The only source I can come up with that might suggest that planes are more isolated than before the Mending is 'Stone and Blood' from the EDM short stories. In it, Nahiri experiences the effects of the Mending as follows:

Spoiler

She pushed against the walls of the world, experimentally, and tried to move in that unreal direction only Planeswalkers could sense. She felt the walls of the world around her—she was still a Planeswalker, whatever had happened to her body—but as she probed them, those walls proved far firmer than she remembered. They had been a soap bubble; now they were a barrier that would take will and time to overcome. Was she so diminished?

But no. No. She pushed, the way she always had. The problem wasn't strength. The walls really were higher, thicker. The Blind Eternities were less connected to this place than they had been when she arrived. The shape of the universe had changed, while she fell. She could feel it.

It's not quite clear what that means for planes touching each other, artificial or natural portals, planeshifting engines etc., though. Spatial Merging exists as a card and even has Chandra on it, but gameplay and storyline segregation is a thing, so maybe it's not 100% proof. But I'll just assume the things you describe are still canon until stated otherwise, and frankly, I think Creative would gain nothing from saying planes can't touch and intersect anymore. They don't need to bring it up in their stories if they don't want to, and not only would it needlessly take away options that they might want to use in the future, it would also ruin a lot of the mystery and wonder of the multiverse as a whole (let's call it 'off-screen coolness' of the setting). Even if they've killed the storyline, I like the idea that all those awesome things could still happen somewhere out there and the interesting aspects that they have pushed out of Magic still flourish in the backwater districts of the multiverse (planes touching, male angels, Timmerian Fiends, Elder Land Wurms, you name it).

"Creative don't really want to explore it"

I suggest creative team to self-disassemble.

"Yeah, we will divide all characters on Mary Sues and insignificant little chumps like political leaders, and let nothing to stand in it's way ! Green philosophy of acceptance should be a physical law !"

"But hey, no one ever tried to magically hatch 10 million naga eggs, and forcibly awoke one with a spark, or create a mechanism to extract a spark from an equipping planeswalker when he is dying, or meld into one body with a planeswalker, or create a flash drive for his soul carryable by planeswalker, or just go the hard way and INVENT interplanar portals as Phyrexians did, or just cheat this stupid system somehow ?"

"No ! It is impossible, because story - we, really - does not need it !"

I don't get your point here. Additionally, invoking "Mary Sue" in any criticism just makes me take whatever point you did have that much less seriously.

As for the thread topic, it hasn't popped up Post-Mending. Aside from Alara's reconvergence and Agyrem becoming a "metaplane" removed from Ravnica, there isn't much too planes touching.

1) I am just saying that "only planeswalkers can travel between planes" is enforced. This enforcement seems weird, artificial, and unfair to characters who weren't just lucky enough to be born with a spark. There should be ways to abuse it, but MTG writers just say "Status Quo is God.".
2) Planeswalkers are descriptied as both the most powerful mages possible and only beings able to travel through planes They are also equipped with state-of-the-art plot armor. While they were even more powerful before that event... how was it called, again? they were closer to gods then to normal characters, so stuff didn't got better. Now, Gideon* cannot fight a neverending swarm of eldrazi alone, but he still does it. Because he is a Mary Sue. He is supposed to win when he can't, just because Creative wants drama and epicness to raise to highest level possible, but not to lose their precious Gideon*.
One may say he is still godlike-powered, but successfully hides that fact by giving dark, heavy looks of seriousness to everyone.

* Pick any planeswalker.

They did it to make walkers more special and to stop people from constantly asking why phyrexia hasnt just devoured the multiverse with their planar portal technology.

Ooh, ooh! Elspeth!
...
But I'm not disagreeing with some of the sentiment. The Eldrazi plot felt hollow because 1) we couldn't actually connect to anyone and 2) nobody we might have already cared about was in real danger. Munda, Tazri, Noyan, and all the other main unwalkers from Zendikar were coughed up by the conflict and had no emotional weight for us to care even if they did buy it. Same reason Akiri fails as a commander. Lorthos died, but... that was the only notable fatality in the entire massacre.

Disclaimer: The following information was not checked or verified by anyone, and was added for and only for the lulz.

Little did you knew, Phyrexia already conquered all the planes eons ago. But after that, Phyrexians had nothing to do, so they forgot their origins and degraded to the state of calling themselves "humans", "elves" and so on. It explains similar races on diffrent planes. And "new Phyrexians" are the only pure survivors left.

End of the lulz section.

1) Yes, it su..s to be Elspeth.

2) For me, it felt hollow because cosmic horror is close to be a polar opposite of heroic fantasy. Mixing them is like mixing Byronic romanticism and Aesop's fables.

Now it just occurred to me that MTG plot writers tend to overdemonize their villains, to the point of crossing the line twice.
They made Eldrazi so powerful that their defeat seems unreal, and so alien that they look simplistic and almost funny.
They made Phyrexians so sinister and evil, that they can be almost called positive characters.
Maybe they will made Bolas so genius that we will feel no real intelligence in him ? We will know soon.

It is said that all planar portals were deactivated, so planar merging might be rarer. However, given the need for New Phyrexia to expand and the new developments on Kaladesh I think this "seperated planes" state is only a brief moment of peace before **** goes down

Where was that said?
I'm genuinely curious, as I tried tracking down the source of the related "planar portals don't work Post-Mending" belief a while back and found no source for it.

They do touch, but only if they like each other.

They do touch, but in a Not-Safe-For-Magic-The-Gathering way. All touch scenes were cut from the final version.

I know, right? People keep saying that, and I even made a thread about planar portals after the Mending a while ago, but no one has pointed me to the source of that claim so far. My guess is that people might be confusing storytelling conventions with actual in-universe rules.

Except for Rabiah, which keeps touching itself. A lot. And I guess Shandalar is quite promiscuous.

Recently, Mirrodin begun to uncontrollably touch his neighbors. What could this be ?
That soulless chunk of metal have understood the meaning and joy of touching, maybe with the help from some experts !

It was either on Doug's Tumblr or maybe a Creative Panel somewhere. I can't point to it right this minute, but it was a thing I know I either read and or heard from a Wizards of the Coast source that was not MaRo.

I think it was more likely Brady.

Fair enough, so it was some obscure Word of God then. Did they specify that somehow? Like, did the Mending just switch off all artificial and/or natural portals with the possibility that they might recover or be rebuilt, or have planar portals of any kind become completely impossible?

Sort of. It was more "the rules of the universe that allowed the magic of portals to function are no longer true." It's like if all of a sudden aether stopped being a thing on Kaladesh and they had to figure out that generating electricity through lightning rods like on Innistrad was a thing they had to use for power now. Portals just don't work any more and we either haven't seen people trying to get them working again, or those that have been working on it have not made any major breakthroughs yet.

The closest we have seen to someone sort of getting it right was Rashmi with her matter teleporter that was then stolen by Tezzeret. And even then that only sort of moved non-living matter through the Blind Eternities and freaked Saheeli Rai out.

According to Elesh Norn's flavor text, I assume that Jin-Gitaxias is hard at work trying to get any portal technology that is still lying around to function again.

Issue is that I can trust your recollection of hearing it somewhere, but others can't or won't. If any of you ever happen upon an actual source for it, I'd be more than thankful to have something to point to.

Note: I've transcribed all of the Creative panels uploaded to the Magic: The Gathering Youtube channel for a recent project, so I can safely say it isn't hosted there. That still doesn't rule out unofficial, unrecorded, or since deleted recordings of the events, but does narrow things down.



This one would be especially messy. Former employee, deleted forums and accounts, everything chips away at whether the team now would have known that he said it, not to mention whether story fans who have joined in the time since even have the ability to know he said it.