Thoughts on Sigil Creation

Working with sigil creation is something I have a passion for. Probably because that's where my hyperlexia, visual arts, and magic come together. As I'm willing to bet is the case for many people in my generation and the generation before us, I was introduced to sigil work through my days of chaos magick. Specifically, my introduction was the Austin Osman Spare method. There are many methods. I've worked with several, and eventually the things I learned evolved into what is "my" method. That doesn't mean I created the method. Many other people, working with many methods, did. It just means it's the method I use.

Sometimes, depending on the exact work I'm doing, I do stick with a specific method. My views on what is called magic have changed a lot over the years. I actually kind of dislike the word now. I feel it carries a lot of misunderstandings and assumptions, even within groups of people who identify themselves as being practitioners of various forms of it. The word is still useful, though, so I use it when I need it. I do separate it from purely devotional practice, and what I see as my magical work is very results-focused. There will be times when sigils that look like they're descended from King Solomon's seals are needed. There are times when sigils that don't really look like anything recognizable are needed. There are certainly situations in which I will say, "That's not how magic works," but those situations are almost always going to be about someone's serious misunderstandings about the very nature of it rather than about the methods someone uses. When it comes to the details of how the work is done, it's likely to be more, "That method isn't the best for that goal," or maybe, "That method doesn't really belong in that system." 

Along with that, I have my personal preferences on how these things are carried out. If someone else is getting the results they're after at a cost they are aware of and are paying for themself, they can go right ahead with something that I don't feel would be a good decision for myself. So I'm not frowning at the very existence of sigil-generating computer programs when I say that's not something I feel would be effective in my work. For me, the best way is still creating sigils by hand.

Why am I talking about sigils? Because I said in my post of the banishing ritual that what you do at each of the cardinal points is your personal choice, and I have sigils that I use when I call to the entities. What this post is really about is the method I use for creating sigils that work as seals, rather than something like a spell contained in a string of consonants that have been piled together. Though this method can sometimes work in place of that, too. 

There's a combination here of the "write it out, drop the vowels and repeat letters" way of doing it and the intuitive "draw shapes and symbols that carry significance that express your intent" way. Instead of sharing exactly what I'm working with, I drew a couple of examples real quick.

Those are two names. Given the general focus of this blog, I wouldn't be surprised if you can easily tell what the first one is. If you can, and you're searching in it for the letters, I'm guessing you're not finding them. I'll explain why.

The reason I suspect the first one isn't too difficult to identify is because I create them to turn the written name into a stylized visual representation of the entity. With the knowledge of what I'm writing about in this blog, the list of likely figures gets real short real fast. The second one is less obvious without more information. It makes sense with the knowledge of the name.

But where are the letters? While the second one is The Name, the first one is Well Known Epithet. Okay, so that might be enough to keep you guessing whether or not you can be sure of what letters you're looking for. Here's the last bit...they aren't Latin letters. You probably wouldn't start sorting out the letters even if I told you exactly which ones were used.

If it's a sigil I will repeatedly use, I learned years ago that the Latin letters get in the way of not focusing on what the words are. Sometimes I use constructed alphabets. Sometimes, if it is appropriate for the work being done, I use alphabets from cultures that do not use the Latin alphabet in their native writing. Also, I take out repeat letters but leave vowels in. Or sometimes I do take vowels out. It depends on how things are working when I'm putting it all together. If I've got something good working except for needed to fit an A in, and taking an O as the only other vowel out wouldn't hurt it, A and O get thrown out. 

Sometimes I just need different letters. That may mean I change alphabets, or it may mean I change names. I kind of had an idea of how I wanted that first one to work, and I knew it was possible with the alphabet I chose, but it wasn't anywhere near working with The Name. Switching to Well Known Epithet gave me exactly what I needed. With the second one, I had a similar issue turned the other way around. The Name gave me good shapes to work with, but I was picturing things about the entity based on a particular epithet and just couldn't get it to come together in a way that worked for me. Changing the epithet I was associating The Name with to a different one the entity is also known as suddenly made the same letters start falling into place.

Epithet switching is something I advise being cautious with. It wasn't an issue in drawing a couple of examples for this post, but it could be an issue for actual work. If an entity has five or six epithets that are just slightly different wordings of the same praise, it may not be a big risk. If an entity has twelve epithets that are associated with four different roles that entity acts in, though...well, it's like calling your own mother and asking to speak to your aunt. She may fill the roles of both mother and aunt, but she's not your aunt, and the whole thing can get silly and/confusing. With these kinds of entities, the risks can sometimes be a lot bigger than with one's close relatives.