The Method Proper
So after all that explanation, I can finally get to the work proper. The MetaSigiling, or Extended Sigil, is a method to adjectivise, goal-orient, and decipher your own intent into something that can be expanded, contracted, or even reversed. In many cases, sigils are used for very specific intentions, such as something as simple as seeing a woman in a red dress, while it takes something as evolved as a servitor to provide more intensive goals to be reached via magic. This is an attempt to bridge that gap, to provide a singularly focused sigil with specifications on reaction, without producing a proper servitor that will seek a higher purpose after a simple purpose is fulfilled.
There is a lot of literature on servitors that can be found, and the methods of creation, but that is beyond the scope of this work. In short, servitors are best used for ongoing, overly complex tasks, such as defense during astral projection, or finding occult knowledge in routine texts, whereas sigils are most effective for targeted, singular use, magics that can dissipate when complete. In many cases, I found myself needing something in between, something that can perform complex, single minded tasks, without performing cyclical feedback loops on their goals. The best way I have conceptualized this is through the ritualization of sigilization – which is where the explanation of a rite/ceremony came in. These can also act as shorthand for rituals that are used to supplement other rituals – in such cases you would otherwise require a group of people performing various tangential rites – or act as a method to provide your unconscious a blueprint to build specific astral constructs. This short hand follows, almost exactly, the type of “generic” ritual I spelled out in a previous section, with supplementary materials existing in concordance with the main intent.
Before completely undertaking this task, I suggest you gain at least a cursory knowledge of astrological processes, the houses, signs, and planets, as there is an adjacent working with this, and having that knowledge will benefit greatly in the sections subsequent.
The Sigils:
First and foremost, you need to determine what the main intent, or purpose, of the sigilization will be. This is the crux of the work, and ultimately is the “end goal” of the whole work. This sets the stage of the rest of the sigils, and should be determined first. When determining this goal, it shouldn’t be so nebulous as to be unobtainable or indecipherable, but shouldn’t be so specific that any further adjustments to the sigil would be rendered meaningless. A bad example of this intent would be, like mentioned prior, the simple intent of “seeing a woman in a red dress”. While, yes, you can specify times, locations, and obstacles, this simple of an intent would be more hindered by specifications, and may ultimately falter when fully crafted. A better example of such a sigil would be an intent along the lines of “I Will Write A Book”. While this is a clear cut intent, and can work well enough on its own, it is a nebulous enough intent that it would benefit from more specificity. While, yes, you can write out a full paragraph of a sigil and then break it down that way, I find that less fun and ultimately easier to get wrong, especially given if given enough letters, your selection for sigilization (depending on the method) will be left to one or two letter, if any at all. This selection of primary intent is important, so make sure to leave it open ended enough to be specified, but also direct enough that the intent itself isn’t lost to misunderstanding.
After the primary sigil is created, you must determine how the sigil can be adapted towards your goals. In many cases, the broad primary sigil can be powered by various other “generation” sigils, or “adaptation” sigils. Think of these as the adjectives to your nouns. The Who, What, Where, When, and How. We will not determine the “why” as that is something that is driving the primary sigil in the first place. For the Sigil “I Will Write A Book”, you can determine what the subject of the book will be, how long it should take, or even what obstacles – such as a lack of focus or knowledge base – will stump this sigil from achieving its goal. In many non-magical circles, an idea known as the SMART goal making process exists – and can be ultimately repurposed for our goals. So for this sigil to adhere to these groupings, we will adjectify it through the specification of “The Book Will Be About Sigilization”, as well as “It will be complete in four weeks.” This will prepare the sigil to motivate the individual towards these goals, as well as specify the term over which the sigil will operate. In less concrete sigils, the “time-frame” can be less specific, or even non-existent. For a primary sigil of “I Will Be Given The Knowledge Of Astronomy”, a time-specific operation is not needed, unless you are specific in which knowledge you are seeking. A General sense of “knowledge” can be accumulated over the course of years, if not decades, and thus can be less specific in the time-frame given.
Now that we have the specific of the What and When, we can turn our gaze towards protection against the obstacles that may be faced during this time period. These protective sigils operate the same as any other, however are not seeking to prevent the obstacles from happening – obstacles will always find their way into your life – but rather to find the energy to overcome these obstacles. Much in the same way various martial artists will use redirection of their opponents energy against them, we are seeking to find re-purposing of negative sources of these obstacles to drive the primary sigil. Not only is this easier in the long run – and ultimately requires less energy for the sigil to operate – but it can also be a source of motivation for the sigil.
For the primary sigil which we are currently operating with, things such as writer’s block, focus, apathy, and general lack of time available, can be general obstacles to the sigil conducting its best work. But instead of creating sigils such as “I will not face writer’s block”, or “I will lack the apathy which will pull me from the task”, you are going to use more positive wording. Appropriate curtail sigils for these obstacles would be “I am enthusiastic about writing this book” or “The topic will be easily accessible to my conscious mind” or “There is time aplenty to work on this book”. As you may well notice, these are present affirmations of the obstacles’ inverses. Other alternatives could be “Distractions are not found easily” and “Support for this task surround me”.
Placing the Sigils:
Once we have determined the primary and supporting sigils28, we are ready to construct the metasigil. The Primary sigil will operate as your “central point”. For ease of understanding, I often place each of the sigils within a singular circle, denoting the flow of operations of the sigils, but a second outer ring may be placed on any sigil if you wish to include mantras for the focal point of each sigil.29 These mantras, like those placed around the sigilizations of the names of demons and angels, can either simply name the sigil, provide various symbols associated with the sigil, or simply be a phrase that the user intends to intone when the sigil is invoked. Once you have constructed each sigil circle, you are now ready to place them in relation to each other. The central sigil – as the name implies – will be placed as the central point for the metasigil itself.
In front of this central sigil will be the “protective sigils” for the central sigil. These will be the sigils you created that will help overcome the obstacles that face the sigil – things that will guide the sigil towards completion. The Hows and Whens or the M and T of SMART. These sigils will partially overlap the primary and will be arranged much in same way one reads an astrology table.
Alongside the central sigil will be the sigils that help support the primary sigil. These are the What, Who, and Wheres, or the S and R of the SMART. These sigils will accompany the primary sigil and will ultimately exist along the “same plane” as the primary sigil. When drawing them in a 2 dimensional state, I have often placed these sigil “within” the mantra circle, or at least adhered34 them to the primary circle that surrounds the primary sigil.
In some cases, depending on the accentuation of the sigils that you are informing, the secondary sigils may be placed in between the primary and secondary circles surrounding the primary sigil. In these cases, the sigils are either directly powering the primary sigil – much like a generator – or are secondary goals that exist alongside the primary sigil. For ease of clarity, this will currently be beyond the scope of this essay.
Once you have an idea as to the depth at which to place the sigils, the “direction” – or at least the degree – at which to place them is the next step. Much like astrological natal charts, the direction of the sigils act both as an aesthetic and a practical choice. In many cases, the direction the secondary sigils lie at can determine both the efficacy of the secondary sigils, and the operation which may occur on the central sigil. Like I attempted to explain in the alchemy section, a lot of this was devised because of my fascination with the alchemical codecies and practices, and thus reflects a general idea of how I interpret the metasigilization.
Ascendants, Houses, and Signs:
Simply put, you are basically building a “natal chart” for the metasigil itself, ultimately constructing the interface on which the sigils will interact with each other. Now, this will not nearly be as in depth as a proper natal chart, but will operate much in a similar fashion. The only distinction is that instead of finding out the minutes, hours, and days on which to perform the sigilizations, the two dimensional interpretation will exist alongside the 360 degree axis that a typical natal chart will be built upon.
This is where we’re going to get a little liberal with the terms and usages of the traditional Ascendant, as this will not be the “sign” that is on the horizon as you form this sigil, but rather you will be adjoining the “direction” of the sigil, the rotation of the sigils. Now this can be ultimately bypassed, as you can simply reorient the sigils in any direction on the 2 dimensional sign, but I’m including this to be more encompassing. When “directing” the sigil, you are looking for – much in the same way you would look for the associated Day and hour to line up the planetary influences – the associated sign and house that you are seeking to influence in the world. For example, if you’re attempting to create a metasigil of wealth, you’d place the Ascendant into the 10th house, or the associate Capricorn sign. However, if you’re looking to guide the sigil of wealth through your close relationships, you’re place it into the 11th house (associated with Aquarius) or the 3rd house (associated with Gemini), depending on which path you are attempting to direct the metasigil. Now, again, this is something that can be ultimately bypassed – as you’re going to eventually place each subsequent sigil in their own signs and houses – but can help the sigil be more accurate in the direction it will manifest.
After you have centered the primary sigil, and located the relationship of the secondary – and even tertiary sigils – to the primary sigil, we can now begin to place them around the outside of the primary. Much in the same way that I described how the planets interact with the various signs and houses to influence personalities and help predict future archetypes, the sigils placed around the primary sigil will interact with the primary sigil through a similar means. To be truthful, the metaphor of using the astrological houses and signs is a very loose one, and is only used as a means to explain the idea, so keep this in mind as I attempt to explain the systems at work here.
To place the sigils in the “right” location around the primary sigil takes each a touch of intuition, a touch of artistry, and a touch of mathematics. Given that each sigil interacts with the other in subtle, but manageable ways, you can direct each of the sigils towards this end by relating it to the primary sigil. Returning to the example posed in a previous section, the main sigil being “I will write a book” (hereby denoted as 1), and we had secondary sigils of “It will take four weeks” (hereby denoted as 2), “I am enthusiastic about writing this book” (hereby denoted as 3), “The topic will be easily accessible to my conscious mind” (hereby denoted as 4), and “There is time aplenty to work on this book” (hereby denoted as 5). Since there are many similarities between the representations between the signs and the houses – and there are different interpretations on how the interactions between the sigils can be performed – I am going to use an interpretation that makes the most sense for me and the way that I have aestheticized the process. I highly recommend planning where the sigils will go prior to the actual construction of the metasigil itself, as any mismarks or movements may distract from the proper metasigil’s direction. Often, I’ll plan a couple different interpretations of the metasigil before breaking out my compass and Metasigil journal to finalize the metasigil.
Since the secondary sigils 2 and 5 are associated with time, and creating a routine to provide for that time, I will place them in the 6th house. However, since they are both being placed into the 6th house, I have to adjust the positioning accordingly. Given that 5 is more associated with the primary sigil, and sigil 2 is yet another amendment to this sigil, I’m going to place 5 in the 6th house in relation to the primary sigil, and 2 in relation to the secondary sigil. As you can see in the associated figure, this looks like a chain of circles coming off of each other.35
Next, we will place the sigils 3 and 4, since they are both related to my attitude about the primary sigil. In this instance, they will be placed in different houses, and thus may remain unrelated to each other. For sigil 3, I will place it into the 4th house and place sigil 4 into the 9th house, as seen in the resulting figure.
Once you have finalized the locations of the sigils in relation to each other, I suggest taking your time to completely draw it out on the final placement of the metasigil. I keep my best ones in a journal to reference back to later, or to reuse if the metasigil is broad enough, but you can treat it as you would any other sigil. Burn it, give it to a friend, throw it away, whatever constitutes you “releasing it into the world.