Ok, so you haven’t read Liber Null, Practical Sigil Magic, The Grey Book, Visual Magick, or anything else on sigil magick, and don’t have any money and/or hate books anyway. May this brief bit of fluff aid you in some way.
History
Sigilization, or sigil magick, is generally attributed to Austin Osman Spare. I feel he got the idea from drawing up monograms as a child, or perhaps from looking at watermarks on paper.
End of History Section.
Theory
The general idea is that magick functions on a subconscious or deep mind level, and that the logical or discursive mind only hinders the manifestation of results. It does this by 1) “Lust of Result,” and 2) constantly denying the possibility of manifestation — i.e., “I can’t get laid ‘cos I’m a bastard!,” or “I’m stupid and clumsy and have no social graces, therefore I can’t be a waiter, even though I really really want to be one.” There are other reasons, but I’m not going to go into them here.
Therefore sigil magick seeks to implant and embed directions or desires into the deep mind in a way that goes unnoticed or unopposed by the rational or discursive mind.
Practice
Take a statement of desire, containing no negative words, and write it out.
I WANT TO FUCK BOOTSY COLLINS (used as an example only)
But no, that’s not quite right…too vague…
I WILL FUCK BOOTSY COLLINS
Yes, that’s better. Forceful is good.
Eliminate repeat letters.
IWLFUCKBOTSYN
Now make the letters into a monogram of sorts.
___________
\ /|\ /
\ / | \ /
\/ | \/ diagram simplified for ASCII
(|)
___________ Anyway, you use all the letters left over and make a little picture.
This is your seed,” if you will.
Now, forget all about Bootsy for awhile, and take you little picture and PLANT IT!
There are a variety of ways to do this, and we’ll look at some.
- Gaze at the sigil, whilst jerking off or fucking, it will embed when you come.
- Gaze at the sigil, and hurt yourself.
- Gaze at the sigil, and hold your breath ’till you pass out. It embeds when your head strikes the altar.
- Strongly visualize killing someone you hate. Then visualize your sigil.
- Strongly visualize making someone you love very happy, and visualize your sigil.
- Combine any or all of the above. The more contradictory, the better.
- Meditate to vacuity, and when vacuous, visualize sigil.
Obviously there are many ways to do this particular Magick Trick, just as there are as many rabbits as there are hats to pull them from. The most important bits to keep in mind are: make you sigil non-representative of your desire, try to forget what the sigil is for, and I recommend destroying your sigil as soon as you plant it.
I will also be heretical here, and say one should not record their experiments with sigil magick, and if they do, keep the records extremely vague. One good way to do this is to seal the paper used to work up your sigil (perhaps the finished and charged sigil as well) in an envelope marked only with the date performed. Don’t open the envelopes for at least six months. Still, I think that fast create/embed/destroy cycles work best.
Let me know of any questions, as well as fun or especially painful tales that arise from these practices. These will be collected in a future article, called “Sigils as Harbingers of Personal Apocalypse” to be assembled when enough tales of mind-rending horror amass.
This has been the Fireclown,
for Curious Yellow (Z)
Biblios Siglios
Book of Results, by Ray Sherwin
Practical Sigil Magic, by Frater U.:D.:
The Grey Book, by TOPY
Visual Magick, by Jan Fries
Stealing the Fire From Heaven, by Stephen Mace
and the Papa Zos Sigilicular Masterwork,
The Book of Pleasure (Self Love), by Austin Osman Spare
This article is copyright 1995 by Red Temple Press. May be replicated freely, but please include this note.
Red Temple Press
2300 Market st. #47
San Francisco, CA 94117 USA
dagaz@netcom.com
Image credit: Aaron Muszalski
