[Opinion] Why people make sigils so complicated: a response

[pixel_fortune]

"Process-oriented magicians" vs "goal-oriented magicians" might be the only idea worth extracting from it.

A response to @Pyrokar 's question
Post in thread 'Sigils Daily' [Help] - Sigils Daily

Not targeting you Pixel

Totally fine, I get that you're using my posts just because they're examples we've both seen. Similarly, please read the following as just me analysing the question from a few angles (it's interesting to think about!), not a defensive tirade

but im getting a lot of mixed signals about sigils these days from outside the chaos paradigm.

almost like folks either don't know whats the purpose, or just attaching purpose of their own

like every day a sigil for the lunar whatevers, or the one about getting sigils from a tree, why?

don't get me wrong i attach my own purpose to sigils a LOT, im just trying to wrap my head around it

So there's a few things going on here! Firstly, there's obviously a lot of ill-informed, non-serious clickbait bullshit around but I think we can just agree on that and put it aside.

2. A sigil is a very very broad concept that wasn't invented by AAS. It is just an information-dense symbol. It has as many magical uses as writing does. If you thought the only use of writing in magic was to write sacred names around a Triangle of Manifestation, you would be baffled by Conjure-style petition papers, but they're just using the same medium for completely different purposes. So you're partially bothered because you think something is a silly version of AAS-sigils, when it's really a normal version of a different kind of sigil

(I was talking about AAS style sigils in the Lunation post, but not in the tree post).

3. Chaos magic is about finding the practice that most resonates with you, that you are most able to charge with belief and energy. It doesn't mean find the practice that most resonates with Pyrokar (read with tongue in cheek, but some of your confusion is just "why do people like different things to me?" Idk people just enjoy different things)


4. Yes, attaching additional purposes. Magically/spiritually, many people like to feel they are aligned with something external to themselves. Liber Resh is a form of that, as are daily planetary invocations, and anything based on the lunar cycle

(Monist religious people don't need that so much because everything is just aligned to God)

The tree thing - that's sightly different, but still has the added purpose of relationship building to spirits in your local area. Asking a friend to contribute to a project you're working on strengthens your friendship, even if you could have done it without their contribution. (Eg my partner made a little videogame and had a friend write the musical stings for it. He could have just found stock music online, but it's nice to include friends in your work!)

(Again we are not just talking about tree and Lunation, I am using them as examples, because "aligning yourself with external" is such a common motivation)

Non-magically, it can just be helpful to have a structure. If I want to practice sigils daily, but I don't want to just flail around doing random, unfocused shit, then finding a structure to keep it focused would be a good thing. This just normal productivity/ habit building advice. (This is the specific reason I suggested it to OP, and also because "every day indefinitely" is setting themselves up for failure. A project with a clear beginning and end is psychologically a lot better than one you start daily then kind of trail off, feeling guilty about how you're not maintaining it).

Conversely, if my main purpose was getting to understand the Mansions of the Moon better, then I could just read about one each day, but I would solidify my learning a lot more if I also found a way to apply that knowledge every day, with a small working. (Some people learn tarot by drawing a daily card and then writing a haiku about the card. That's another way of enhancing learning by applying it to something)

I don't really see a reason why a practice shouldn't serve multiple purposes? I see the value of a single purpose, too, but I don't think either is inherently better than the other

5. You may be looking at things purely from a results perspective, but a lot of people do magic for reasons beyond results. So your model might be "what method requires the least effort - but still get results" but mine is "what method is the most beautiful/interesting/meaningful - but still gets results".

"Needlessly complicated" is a value judgement. It implies simplicity is inherently better than complexity, and it's not (I mean, for the scientific method, yes, for a surgeon, yes, but not for an artistic and spiritual practice. Why didn't Escher just draw a single black dot on a white piece of paper? Aren't all his tesseracting staircases needlessly complicated? Why eat a delicious and complex restaurant meal when you only need plain chicken breast and spinach?)

I write a lot of my own invocations, not because it's necessary, but because I enjoy it as a creative process. People bake their own bread even though it's more expensive and time consuming than buying it. They experiment with recipes even though the bread they make now is already perfectly good.

We could call this "process-oriented magicians" vs "goal-oriented magicians".


6. You're also (I think) mixing up function with your aesthetic preferences. Minimalism has functional values around not wasting your money on low quality junk, and it has an aesthetic of white, bare walls. It makes a certain amount of sense to judge someone for buying a bunch of plastic junk they don't need, but if someone is thoughtful with their purchases and then paints their walls in a million psychedelic colours, that's just an aesthetic difference.

So someone who adds things they don't understand to their practice because they saw it on tiktok, who throws everything but the kitchen sink in with no thought to how they function is uhh making mistakes, but someone who has a complex practice based on things they have a strong understanding of, who knows their purpose and selects many things that work well together to match that purpose - disliking that is an aesthetic preference. (Cf point 3)

(I'm not claiming to be 100% column B and 0% column A, but it's like the difference between a hoarder and a sincere collector. They might look similar from the outside - especially to someone who doesn't understand why anyone would collect garden gnomes - but the internal emotional state is totally different - one is miserable and out of control, the other has pride, knowledge, and love for their hobby)

when's the last time we saw a simple, elegant sigil?

This is just selection bias. People share what they think might be new info to others. Naturally, that will be the odd exceptions. People post way more photos of themselves on holidays than photos of themselves at their computer answering work emails; it doesn't mean no-one sits at their computer and answers work emails anymore.

It would be very annoying (to me) if the forum was filled up with tutorials for the vanilla LBRP and so on

 

[Vandheer]

What is an AAS style sigil? Do you mean Austin Osman Spare?

 

[pixel_fortune]

What is an AAS style sigil? Do you mean Austin Osman Spare?

Sorry, yes. I specifically mean turning an intent into a symbol, then charging and releasing that symbol to achieve the intent (i'd include for eg Jan Fries method of automatic drawing to get the sigil, rather than just breaking down the letters of the statement of intent)

An example of a use that's not really related to AAS would be to sigilise a principle of your magical belief system and carve it into a piece of wood and display it prominently in your temple space. Or any pre-AAS uses, which is... extensive, anything carved into trees and standing stones is potentially a sigil.

The difference to me between a sigil and a glyph or other symbol is that a sigil is something you create to represent your chosen meaning. A glyph is something that you didn't create, that is an existing symbol set (eg Agrippa's planetary seals are not sigils - although maybe they were sigils when he originally created them for himself, to represent his intended meaning)

 

[Pyrokar]

A couple of things i think are pretty debatable there

but overall i am satisfied.

- not with the "others" mind you,
just your own view of things i can accept.

Also my stance is not entirely the way it's attributed to me lol
but that's just for the audience you obviously* knew that already.

however the tree thing is redundant
i will die on that hill

 

[pixel_fortune]

- not with the "others" mind you,

Yeah, just because you can see a good reason someone might do something, doesn't mean they actually HAVE a good reason

 

[Pyrokar]

well that. yes.

maybe im the bad guy but no way in hell do the posers
actually put the thought or tact you did.
would be a much prettier world if it was so.

 

[HoldAll]

Good idea to open your own thread for this as a reply your answer would have been way too complex for the original thread.

I have this theory that a sigil does not have an independent, objective significance on its own, only the meaning we attach to it, for example as a vehicle for a chaos magic Sentence of Desire or as a 'call sign' for an entity, therefore I must confess that I was slightly mystified by your tutorial on tree sigils because they would simply represent random patterns without any specific meaning whatsoever; maybe they woud be better suited for divination purposes because of their very randomness, dunno. I admit that entity sigils can be pretty arbitrary as well - I dimly remember reading somewhere that an author mixed up the sigils for demon X and demon Y, and people still got the correct spirit they wantend to contact despite using the wrong 'call sign'. So according to my theory, using some sigil without knowing what it does or whom it is supposed to conjure would either be entirely unsuccessful or yield completely arbitrary results, like weird feelings or strange effects without any significance whatsoever.

In my mind, sigils are for specific desires and specific events (as points in time, for example) you want to occur, not for generalised conditions like robust health, good luck, or long-term processes like success in business (a talisman or working with an entity may be more appropriate for this purpose). However, I find the idea of using several sigils for a more complex task also appealing… Gordon White first came up with the idea of 'shoaling' in his "Chaos Protocols" (later repeated by Aidan Wachter in his "Six Ways"), which some people have since interpreted as throwing a load of sigils at a single desired outcome and hope one of them would stick, but I think what White originally had in mind was carefully analyzing the factors and requirements for a certain result and then engineering the relevant Sentence of Desire accordingly.

A very similar methodology is described in Adam Blackthorne's chapter "The Unfreezing Ritual" in "Stillness and Light" by Damon Brand. In this ritual, you combine the powers of different angels to tackle a task from different angles (bit of a jingle there *lol). It's a more structured approach than White's in that the ritual has a well-defined sequence - first an angel to losen up a situation, then another one to exploit its increased fluidity in order to nudge things in a differet direction, then planting a seed for the result you want to occur, etc.; instead of a sequence, you could also choose a more 'hierarchical' approach and try to work from the initial conditions upwards, so to speak, or follow a strategy of escalation (I called this a 'cascade'). I once played this through using a hypothetical purpose other than 'unfreezing', and it turned out to be a real chore to any find suitable angels in the GoM books, so sigils are definitely more convenient as they offer more leeway for customizing the various components for the overall working.

The downside of this 'reality engineering' is of course that you lay out exactly how a result will occur (instead of leaving the details to a servitor or other spirit) while completely misjudging the situation or problem. Then again, your desire may in fact entail a definite way of it coming about - say you want a promotion by prevailing over your main competitor but you also hate this person and want him/her to quit the company and want his/her corner office, too, and a new company car to boot. Simply analyzing issues for shoaling or cascad purposes is a revelation in itself and a great exercise, definitely recommended!

 

[SkullTraill]

Sorry, yes. I specifically mean turning an intent into a symbol, then charging and releasing that symbol to achieve the intent (i'd include for eg Jan Fries method of automatic drawing to get the sigil, rather than just breaking down the letters of the statement of intent)

An example of a use that's not really related to AAS would be to sigilise a principle of your magical belief system and carve it into a piece of wood and display it prominently in your temple space. Or any pre-AAS uses, which is... extensive, anything carved into trees and standing stones is potentially a sigil.

The difference to me between a sigil and a glyph or other symbol is that a sigil is something you create to represent your chosen meaning. A glyph is something that you didn't create, that is an existing symbol set (eg Agrippa's planetary seals are not sigils - although maybe they were sigils when he originally created them for himself, to represent his intended meaning)

I'm sorry I still don't get why you're saying AAS and not AOS? What does AAS actually stand for?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I have this theory that a sigil does not have an independent, objective significance on its own, only the meaning we attach to it, for example as a vehicle for a chaos magic Sentence of Desire or as a 'call sign' for an entity

I am of this opinion with regard to all magical working; if you choose an entity/ritual/whatever it should resonate in some way with the intent/desire, preferably as instinctively as possible, since magic does not work at the level of the conscious mind. The conscious mind is more or less the guy who inscribes his curse on a piece of lead and drops it down the well

The downside of this 'reality engineering' is of course that you lay out exactly how a result will occur (instead of leaving the details to a servitor or other spirit) while completely misjudging the situation or problem. Then again, your desire may in fact entail a definite way of it coming about - say you want a promotion by prevailing over your main competitor but you also hate this person and want him/her to quit the company and want his/her corner office, too, and a new company car to boot. Simply analyzing issues for shoaling or cascade purposes is a revelation in itself and a great exercise, definitely recommended!

My research has led me to the fact that there are two kinds of entropy (closely related). The first is thermodynamic entropy, which is the total number of possible outcomes, and the second is informational entropy, which is our personal ignorance about those outcomes. To give our magic the greatest chance of success we must maximise both of these for what we would consider a successful result. The first, to make sure we have the largest number of successful outcomes to choose from, and the second to make sure that any successful outcomes are not limited by our knowledge about anything which might derail the successful path/timeline.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

I have this theory that a sigil does not have an independent, objective significance on its own, only the meaning we attach to it,

That's exactly it. Sigils are just a method to direct the will of the user. The meaning of the symbol is only as deep as the user's thoughts about it when it comes to individually created sigils; collectively created things like the DKMU's Ellis are different in that it's the combined will of all the users going into it's meaning.

Personally, I scry the symbol based on the intent of my sigils to create them, so the symbols are my ideal designs for my own workings, since scrying is a lot more connected to the unconscious mind and higher self than writing a bunch of letters and mashing them together, at least in my opinion.

 

[pixel_fortune]

I'm sorry I still don't get why you're saying AAS and not AOS? What does AAS actually stand for?

Oh my god because brain broken I guess? (it was probably thinking "Austin Ausmin Spare" or just vaguely thinking about the irrelevant Argenteum Astrum or something, idk)

When Vandheer questioned it, I thought they just meant i'd used an acronym without explaining and then moved it to an out of context thread

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

it was probably thinking "Austin Ausmin Spare"

I don't know why but I read that as "Austin Autism Spare" and now I can't stop laughing.

I think the main thing is that sigils sort of fell away from mainstream practices then came back with the rise of chaos magic in a new form, and the older methods are not really well caught up with the modern paradigm of it. Things just got different and people aren't quite sure how to reconcile the two sides of it.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

I'm sorry I still don't get why you're saying AAS and not AOS? What does AAS actually stand for?

Austin Assman Spare? Osman I think is his correct name. Personally, I think he created a sound system in everyday language to be a sigil or talisman.

 

[Aeternus]

Austin Assman Spare? Osman I think is his correct name. Personally, I think he created a sound system in everyday language to be a sigil or talisman.

Who knows? After all, there is the Pythagorean method on which each letter has a number associated and also power.

So, it may work this way. The "Power of Words"

Edit: Pythagoras numerology, forgot to type it

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

There are a couple Words of Power (GoM I think) books that seem fair.
Modern Magick likewise delves into this, Lesson Seven I believe

 

[Aeternus]

There are a couple Words of Power (GoM I think) books that seem fair.
Modern Magick likewise delves into this, Lesson Seven I believe

That's good to know . Will do some research, for sure

 

[Xenophon]

Who knows? After all, there is the Pythagorean method on which each letter has a number associated and also power.

So, it may work this way. The "Power of Words"

Edit: Pythagoras numerology, forgot to type it

What is required for a successful gematria, if anyone knows? Hebrew has one. Greek magick, apparently. Some claim the runes do, though as far as I know it was Burneus (sic?) who cooked up a system for this in the age of Gustavus Adolphus, whose tutor he had been. Kenneth Grant says English has no workable gematria to date.

 

[HoldAll]

There are a couple Words of Power (GoM I think) books that seem fair.
Modern Magick likewise delves into this, Lesson Seven I believe

"The power of words" and "words of power" (meaning barbarous names, voces magicae and so on) are two different concepts. "Mystical Words of Power" by Damon Brand uses mainly Hebrew god names and obscure angels, they are not really words of power as used in the PGM. Returning to the original topic of this thread, I guess you could use words of power and/or gematria in sigil construction but I feel that would overload an otherwise elegantly simple method. Barbarous names derive their power from being dramatically declaimed, not by mashing up them up and adding them randomly to a jumble of letters that subsequenty gets dissolved to form a non-verbal graphic representation of a specific desire.

 

[Aeternus]

What is required for a successful gematria, if anyone knows? Hebrew has one. Greek magick, apparently. Some claim the runes do, though as far as I know it was Burneus (sic?) who cooked up a system for this in the age of Gustavus Adolphus, whose tutor he had been. Kenneth Grant says English has no workable gematria to date.

There are various models for sacred gematria. Even ancient egyptian temples have the sacred gematria model.

One successful example of gematria is the Golden Ratio that can be reached with the help of a specific number and shape sequence. Investigated it and it is wonderful .

As for the runes, some of them have their own gematria models such as the symbolism they geometrically hold. For example, the Thurisaz rune is having a spike out of it, symbolizing cutting tools, swords and sharp objects.

The Manaz rune can also have its own magical geometry since its image shows the United aspects of both the Right side of the brain as well as the Left One.

That is my theory and analysis for the moment

 

[Xenophon]

There are various models for sacred gematria. Even ancient egyptian temples have the sacred gematria model.

One successful example of gematria is the Golden Ratio that can be reached with the help of a specific number and shape sequence. Investigated it and it is wonderful .

As for the runes, some of them have their own gematria models such as the symbolism they geometrically hold. For example, the Thurisaz rune is having a spike out of it, symbolizing cutting tools, swords and sharp objects.

The Manaz rune can also have its own magical geometry since its image shows the United aspects of both the Right side of the brain as well as the Left One.

That is my theory and analysis for the moment

I meant the practice of assigning numbers to letters. Qabbalists show pretty convincingly that that with Hebrew letters indicates some illuminating correspondences. (Kenneth Grant made a career of that plus repeating the same stale dozen Crowley anecdotes.) Folks don't seem to have the same success with English letters rendered as numbers. Or so Grant and some others opine.