We consider the formation of the optical and magnetic anisotropy in non-magnetic at room temperature, and magnetic garnets induced by spatially modulated elliptically polarized light. Experimentally, such conditions are realized by illuminating the sample with two linearly polarized coherent light beams with mutually orthogonal polarization states during the recording of holographic gratings. We develop a theoretical model by calculating the occupancies’ kinetics of anisotropic impurity centers, localized in di!erent garnet sublattices. This model is applied to the CaMnGe garnet and is compared with the experimental results, which are fairly well described. A conclusion about the possibility to record magnetic gratings in the magnetic garnet YIG : Co, is drawn by calculating the spatial profile of the photoinduced magnetic anisotropy.