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Sigils, what they are and how to use them

The use of Sigils in Magick was pioneered by Austin Osman Spare earlier this century. Essentially any method of sigilization is a way of transforming your "Statement of intent" into an abstract and otherwise meaningless symbol for the purpose of increasing the chances of success in Magick. This can either be an drawn image or a mantra for singing or chanting. Often in ritual it useful to use both. Sigils do not need a ritual in order to work however. All they need is to be fired in a state of gnosis. Gnosis will be discussed later, first you will need a good accurate Statement of Intent.

Getting the right statement of intent

Getting the statement of intent correct is the most important part of all magick. Its no good your magick working if what you asked for wasn't really what you wanted. So how do you write a good statement of intent? First, take a minute or two to think about the situation. Let's use an example.

Fred has just got his mock exam results for his A-Levels. Oh dear. He failed Maths, Physics and Chemistry, but got a "C" in General Studies. Not too good. Fred is a Chaos Magician however, and decides to use magick. He begins to think of a statement of intent. "I want to pass my A-Levels" was his first attempt, but this was rushed, and to make the magick work he would have to put in a lot of study. Its no good casting a spell and then not doing the ground work. You need to make sure you can set as many factors up in the spells favour in order to ensure success.(1) On reflection Fred realises that his marks in Maths and Physics are just too bad to recover from, being just 15% and 8% respectively. His mark in Chemistry was 30% which was only just a fail. After talking to his teachers he realises that he's never really wanted to do Maths and Physics anyway, he just did them because they went with Chemistry! Fred decides to concentrate on getting his Chemistry passed this year and his teachers agree that if he can put enough effort in to get at least a "D" then they'll let him do the subjects he really wanted to do next year. Fred thinks about his magickal course of action. "It is my will that I pass A Level Chemistry" is his new statement of intent. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than before. At least Fred has the ability to do the study required to get the Chemistry result, especially now that he's dropped Maths and Physics!

Making a Sigil

OK, onto the bit you've been waiting for, how to make Sigils. First list all letters in the statement of intent, and then reduce the list so that you have a new list where there is only one of each letter. Two methods are given below.

Delete all repeated letters, so you are left with one of each letter.
Delete pairs of letters, so you are left with one each of letters appearing an odd number of times.

"IT IS MY WILL THAT I PASS A LEVEL CHEMISTRY" reduces to "ITSMYWLHAPEVCR" in the first method or to "WHAIPCHE" in the second method.

Next combine all these letters together to form some strange looking symbol. Now this symbol may look a bit of a mess, so spend some time tidying it up. Forget the letters it is came from, just play around with it until it forms a pleasingly occult looking sigil. Fig 1 below comes from the letters "ITSMYWLHAPEVCR" and Fig 2 is derived from the letters "WHAIPCHE".

*** FIG 1 *** *** FIG 2 ***

Gnosis

So Fred is at home with his sigil (He only used one of the two methods outlined above, and his sigil looked different to my examples because he designed it, not me). What does he do with it. First, he memorises it so that he can visualise it without looking at it. Second he burns his material copy. (Note you don't have to burn them, you can destroy them anyway you like, including throwing them in the bin or recycling. Burning them just appeals to my theatrical nature.

The only thing left for Fred to do is to fire the Sigil in a state of gnosis. When in a state of gnosis you must then release the sigil. You could for example sit still for an hour holding the image of the sigil in you head and blocking out all other thoughts for this period, and then send it shooting into space. Or you could visualise it disappearing into space just as you climax in sex(2). It could be the trance like state that can be reached by the ecstatic dancing to shamanic drumming or the correct kind of dance music. If you used your sigilized letters to form a Mantra instead of an image, you could reach gnosis by the repeated chanting of this Mantra.

And that is all there is to it! No gods. No spirits. No rituals. Of course, you can if you desire use these things with sigils. In fact using sigils to create spirits is particularly powerful. These spirits are generically termed servitors.

(1) There is a mathematical reason for this given in Liber Kaos by Pete Carroll. I won't go into it here since Pete explains it far better than I could. Treat reading this book as homework...

(2) Presuming the Law permits the act of sex you are using. The Author of this page does not intend to encourage or support any unlawful activity. This does not mean he will not campaign to change laws he does not agree with however. Remember though, whatever your age, it is legal to practise sex by yourself

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This Page was written by Frater Mithrondal 1232 on 20 May 1998. Last updated 20/05/1998.

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