Friends,
I am sorry for the long delay in getting this promised post up.
When I promised another post on this topic, I had thoughts of writing something detailed an in depth about Sigils and crafting them and notes upon my process. My brain had other ideas…
ADHD struck with a vengeance and several ideas pushed themselves to the forefront of my brain all at once, and then some of my social media streams took precedence as I was inspired to create and propagate some visual charms, or memes, related to Queer rights and current events. (More on these ideas later…) I had promised something further on sigils, and the imp of perversity that lives in the neurons and folds of my brain would not let me work on any other topics in depth until I had written and posted *something*
Now, this post is more a set of a few general notes about Sigils, and a few notes about how I am approaching them at present, along with some resources. There are an almost ridiculous amount of articles, video’s, essays, and assorted other pieces of content on the how-to of Sigils… and you can skip to the end for a list of resources if you like for things along those lines.
Sigils, of course, have been around for centuries. Many medieval grimoires have compilations of such symbols for working with various powers and spirits. In modern times though, the work of artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare, and the field of Chaos Magick, have moved the idea of sigils more in the direction of an crafted image representing a particular desired outcome. One of the ideas that is discussed in this stream of sigil work is a sort of fix it and forgetting the sigil and it’s meaning. Early in my own Witchcraft journey through a lack of confidence in my own artistic abilities related to drawing combined with a personal skepticism (at the time) towards the idea of fixing and then forgetting the resulting image led me to not pursue this worthy field of occult study.
In my recent experiments with sigil making, I’ve come to realize that this forgetting is not necessarily a total erasing of the sigil or it’s meaning and creation from memory. It’s more of a charge and release, leaving the sigil to do its work in the inner and outer worlds. Thus the often seen, but as I am coming to appreciate not absolutely required, destruction of the physical sigil. I’ve seen references to the creation of an Alphabet of Desire utilizing sigil techniques and will be working on learning more about these ideas.
Whatever format or technique for crafting the sigil that I am using, I am learning to lean into the work and not be afraid to stray from the format of one technique if my intuition and inspiration move me in another direction. As I was working on one of a small but growing collection of personal sigils I had started with the technique of writing out the desire sentence, eliminating duplicate consonants and vowels, and was creating the symbol… when I ran into a brief roadblock. Try as I might I could get the symbol to feel completed. At one point I ended up starting over just jotting down symbols related to the goal of the desire statement… and I realized that some of these needed to go into the framework I had created from the letters left from my sentence of desire. So I mixed and matched these ideas and techniques until that mysterious something in my mind and spirit ‘clicked’ and I knew the sigil was complete.
I suspect this will end up being a topic I return to again as I practice more with sigils in my work. So I will add it to the Chrysalis Craft Notes section as well…
RESOURCES
How To Make A Sigil – a Witchcraft 101 post from Scarlet Ravenswood’s Arcane Alchemy blog and site
Sigils: Scribbles to Forget or Spirits to Remember an excellent musing on the topic from Marshall (aka) The Witch of Southern Light on his blog at Patheos
Sigil Making With Marshall The Witch of Southern Light – a colaboration video between Marshall and the prolific Youtube creator Olivia The Witch of Wonderlust
The Basics of Sigil Making – another excellent video from The Witch of Wonderlust channel
Author and Artist Laura Tempest Zakroff is rather prolific in the area of Sigil work and has written a couple of books on the topic (that I have yet to read, once to TBR pile has been whittled down to a manageable size I will be checking her work out) as well as having gifted several public use Sigils to the community. While I would normally advise caution on using sigils created by someone else and posted to the Web, Ms Zakroff is a widely trusted person in our community.
6 Minutes of Witchcraft with Laura Tempest Zakroff: Effective Sigil Witchery & Magick – from her Youtube 6 Minutes series
What’s In A Sign? Deciphering Sigils, Symbols, & More – from her blog A Modern Traditional Witch on Patheos
Tea Time: Sigils, Shared Magic & Effective Witchcraft – also from her blog on Patheos
RESOURCES (General online Resources)
The first Two are generaly useful articles on the topic that helped me in my first researches. The third is an interesting online Sigil Generator, there are actual a number of these tools floating about the internet, and could be a very useful tool in ones Phone or Tablet….
How To Make a Sigil and Charge It – from Tantric Pagans(dot)com
Chrysalis 