Sigils and Sigil Magick
A sigil is a type of symbol used in magick,
The term has usually been used to describe the pictorial signature of a spirit, deity, angel or perhaps even demon.
In more recent times, especially since the advent of Chaos Magick, a sigil refers to the symbolic representation of a magician’s desired outcome.
The use of symbols or pictorial representations of magic goes back, arguably, to the dawn of civilisation when humans first sought to depict magical or mystical events.
The ouroboros is one of the most compelling, a symbol that has been the subject of awe and wonder for millennia. Literally meaning ‘tail-devourer’ in Greek, it has appeared in numerous forms in a wide array of contexts and geographies. In its original and most common variation, it depicts a snake eating its own tail in a closed circle.
The oldest-known ouroboros appeared on a golden shrine in the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt in the 13th Century BC, after a brief lull in traditional religion brought about by his predecessor, Akhenaten.
The symbol refers to the mystery of cyclical time, which flows back into itself. The ancient Egyptians understood time as a series of repetitive cycles, instead of something linear and constantly evolving; and central to this idea was the flooding of the Nile and the journey of the sun. - Egyptologist Jan Assmann
Known as the oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, the ouroboros represented the concept of eternity and endless return
The ouroboros also appears in other ancient traditions. In Norse mythology, the serpent Jörmungandr encircles the world with its tail in its mouth, while in Hinduism, the ouroboros forms part of the foundation upon which the Earth rests. In the more widespread Roman variant of Iranian Mithraism, Zurvan, symbolising ‘boundless time’, is depicted with an ouroboros entwined around his body, while the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl is often seen in the form of an ouroboros.
In medieval magic the term sigil was commonly used to refer to occult signs which represented various angels and demons the practitioner might summon.
Examples can be found in Grimoires like the Lesser Key of Solomon dating from mid 17th Century.
These sigils often included astrological, alchemical and alphabet-related symbols.
Some sigils were created with the use of magic (number) squares.
In The Key of Solomon and The Lesser Key of Solomon, for example, the sigils are based on the number squares created to represent the planets.
In some ways, these sigils could be seen as being ways to hide or at least disguse their meaning. A secret sign to carry the intention of the magician. In many ways the simple copying of a sigil is not a magical action, It is the understanding of the symbol and the intention behind the drawing of it that matters.
The power of symbols (sigils) is obvious.
Consider these ‘sigils’.
Each carries a message and each is a sumbol that summarises something of the intention of the products refered to. More importantly they have become so well recognised that they are considered as “super breeders” by chaos magicians. A kind of ‘viral magick’.
Chaos Magick
Artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956) developed his own unique method of creating and using sigils, which has had a huge effect on modern occultism.
Spare did not agree with medieval practice of using these, arguing that such supernatural beings were simply complexes in the unconscious, and could be actively created through the process of cradting a sigil.
Chaos magic teaches that the essence of magic is that perceptions are conditioned by beliefs, and that the world as we perceive it can be changed by deliberately changing those beliefs.
Although Spare died before chaos magic emerged, he has been described as the "grandfather of chaos magic"
At is core Chaos Magick is an attempt to subvert the traditional regimes of magickal practice and is thus built on the rejection of a need to adhere to a "single, systematized convention"
In Liber Null, the first text on Chaos Magic, the authors Peter J Caroll and Tay Sherwin wrote:
"When stripped of local symbolism and terminology, all systems show a remarkable uniformity of method. This is because all systems ultimately derive from the tradition of Shamanism. It is toward an elucidation of this tradition that the following chapters are devoted”
The central defining tenet of chaos magic is arguably the idea that belief is a tool for achieving effects.. A key idea within Chaos magick is, "nothing is true everything is permitted" which leads to the "rejection of all fixed models of reality" . Complex system like those whith Astrology, The Qabbala, Enochian Magick and the magick within Rennaisance texts are treated a symbolic and linguistic constructs that can be manipulated but have no objective truths or values within themselves.
In Chaos Magick sigils are created in a structured way by writing an intention, then condensing the letters of the statement down to form a sort of monogram - a symbolic representation of the intention.
This is then used by the magician whilst in an altered state of consciousness to “charge” or “launch” the sigil.
The key thing is that the intention, in the form of this sigil, by-passes the conscious mind and become embedded within the unconscious.
Creating a sigil - A Basic Method
The first step is to create a statement of intent. For example,
“I bring into my space the ingredients for success”
OK, not the best of statements since we’d really need to consider what some of the generalisations like “ingredients” and “success” actually mean to us. However it will suffice for this example.
From the statement remove all of the vowles and repeated consonents - which would leave….
B R N G M Y S P C T H D F
The creative challenge would then be to connect these letters together in order to create a kind of monogram. The more abstract the better.
With each drafting of the monogram the intention is restated in order to “empower” the symbol.
The final sigil will be a graphic representation of the intention and that sigil can be used within a ritual as a focus for magical practice.
This months Moot will focus on Sigil Magick and will explore ways of using sigils in your magic, meditations and musings. During this session we will go into detail about how you can create sigils using this and other methods. More importantly we will learn what to do with them once they have been created.
Alan /|\
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