Sigil Magic

A sigil is a symbol created for a specific magical purpose. The idea behind creating a sigil is that while your conscious mind can get bogged down in internal chatter, an abstract symbol can be recognised and reacted to by your subconscious mind. The sigil is a way of programming your unconscious mind to work on a particular problem. You could create a sigil to help you lose weight or to gain confidence – it’s entirely personal and can be as simple or as complicated as you like.

Sigil magic is the act of creating and charging a sigil to accomplish a specific goal. You can use the techniques I’ve outlined below on their own, or you can encorporate sigils into another kind of magic like carving sigils into candles for candle magic.

How to create a sigil

So how do you create your own sigils? There are a few different techniques, but they all start with a specific goal or wish. Decide exactly what it is that you are hoping to achieve and write it out in a sentence. Read over your sentence and examine any ways that it might be unclear or ambiguous, and reword it if necessary. You should avoid using negative words in it, just like creating a positive affirmation. Many people advise beginning the sentence with the words “my will to” to make it sound all the more definite. For example;

My will to save one hundred pounds.

Now you have to turn this sentence into a sigil. Go through the sentence and identify any letters that are repeated in it. Either remove all such letters, or remove all but the first instance of each letter.

By removing all duplicated letters you get;

My wi t av hr p.

Or by removing all but the first instance of each letter you get;

My wil to save n hudr p.

The first method gives you a smaller range of letters to work with which will make your sigil simpler and easier to create. We’ll use the first sentence for the rest of this example.

To create a sigil using your remaining letters, stop viewing them as letters! Instead think of them as random shapes and play about with them, seeing how you can merge them together to create a shape that appeals to you. You can try sketching them out on paper, drawing them on the computer, cutting them out and physically mixing them about or any other way that you imagine.

I personally have a big thing for symmetry, so my sigil above has rotational symmetry but yours doesn’t have to – the important thing is that it appeals to you. You should aim to spend a while crafting it – don’t just sketch something out in two minutes and call it a day. Sigil magic, just like any other kind, works with energy, and the more personal energy you put into it, the more you get out.

An alternative way to turn your letters into a sigil is to map them out in a grid – similar to the way you might turn your name into numbers.

This is a much simpler, but less personal sigil. Again it’s totally up to you which way you want to do things. The first method allows you to put more personal energy into the actual creation of the sigil, but you can still do a couple of different things to ‘charge’ the sigil whichever way you design it.

Charging A Sigil

The object of these different methods is not to imbue the sigil with energy as you would normally charge other items, but to absorb it into your subconscious. The simplest way of doing this is to place it somewhere that it is seen every day. The reasoning is that you become so familiar with the sigil that you stop consciously noticing it when your eyes happen to come across it. Although you don’t really realise you’re seeing it, your subconscious mind still acknowledges it, and as I said above, it’s the subconscious that makes this form of magic work.

The corollary to this is that you mustn’t dwell on it; don’t make yourself look at it, or remind yourself of what it stands for. You should aim to completely forget the sentence you started with so that the sigil becomes a truly abstract symbol.

Another, faster method of implanting the sigil into your subconscious is by meditation. Hold your sigil in your hands and look at it – as a picture and nothing more. Chaos magicians say you should enter a state of ecstatic gnosis – which is basically the state of being focussed on one single thought, with all others thrust out. Let your focus be the image in front of you, and allow all thoughts of its meaning to escape your mind. You don’t have to focus quietly; chanting, drumming and dancing can all be helpful when ‘charging’ a sigil as they lull the conscious mind into a quiet state.

When you feel you have reached the peak of your focus – when the subconscious mind is most receptive – make sure you are looking at your sigil. When the moment has passed – forget about it completely. Destroy the image, make yourself think about something completely different (what groceries do you need to pick up?), go and do something entirely mundane. The reason for this abrupt change is that once the sigil is implanted in your subconscious, you want to close the doors so that you absorb the sigil and nothing else. Let your mind do the work for you while you get on with everyday life.