A Beginner’s Guide to Sigil Craft “Magick has many aspects, but primarily it acts as a dramatized system of psychology” - “Pope Bob”, Robert Anton Wilson Part 4, Essays for the Discordian Occultist: the sigil. Here‟s one way of making a sigil. It‟s partly cribbed from a talk given by Grant Morrison at the Disinformation conference[1] with slight personal additional details provided by my own experiences. Sigils are a low-magick technique which will not fail to get you exactly what you need . It can become a high-magick high-magick technique but for the moment we‟ll just stick to the basics[2]. One important thing to note is that sigils always appear to work . The distinction being; if I kicked in a window, I‟d feel I knew who‟d knew who‟d done it. If I cast a sigil which aske d for that window to be broken and then discovered a few days later it was now broken, no one can prove a causal relationship between the sigil and the broken window . However I might get the impression that my sigil was involved in the process somewhere. Secondly, the following is a (in my opinion better) version of other ideas that have been kicking round recently such as, The Secret, Cosmic Ordering, and, to a lesser extent, “positive thinking”[3]. It‟s also similar to “preying,” if you think your God lives liv es within you[4]. All these above techniques have common elements. All of them are pretty much in agreement regarding the first part of the process, set your intent . The most effective Discordian occultists spend more time on step one than they ever do on step four. Step one: Decide upon your will. – All your workings should be done with pieces of paper and a pen. This is the hardest part. You need to imagine what it is you want as clearly as possible. Then refine it until you‟ve got a vision of what it is you „really‟ want. Then refine it again after you‟ve imagined the earth shifting upon its axis in order to grant this wish over the next few years. Check you‟re good with the consequences and then, refine it again. I can‟t emphasise this enough. See the fu rther reading section for more details. Once you‟re happy write it out as a single sentence: EG: I AM A HEALTHY FOURTEEN AND A HALF STONE, ENERGETIC PERSON. Notice a few things about the above. When I cast this I wanted to be 14 and a half stone. There are many ways this could have happened, some of them include ill health. Hence the words healthy and energetic. Think of those old fairy stories where someone makes a wish and there are tragic consequences. King Midas wanted everything he touched to turn to gold. He ends up regretting his wish. The difference
between your sigil becoming a blessing or a curse is in its detail. Give it lots of thought. Write and rewrite the sentence. Check the further reading section for more information. Also notice, it‟s not “I WANT TO BE” or “I AM THIS AND NOT THAT”. Negatives in sigils are just negative! If you write “I WANT TO BE A MILLIONAIRE” look forward to a life of wanting to be a millionaire. Remember what we learned in part one where you began lucid dreaming. What would happen to you if you dived into the dream world with negatives in your mind? If you truly have followed this series from part one, as opposed to most who will have just casually landed on it and curiously read to this point, why not try to lucid dream your intended future first and try it out a bit? If, for example, having lots of sexual partners gets messy in that world ditch it and come up with a better wish. It needs to feel like a world you are comfortable in. Once that‟s the case, state it as if you are already there, in that positive future. As an exercise imagine you‟re in that future calling back into the past when you wrote out this sigil. Try describing and declaring what it‟s like in as much detail as possible. No w listen out for your “imaginar y” future self shouting “I‟m the owner of a brand new convertible and I love it” or whatever. Now, write it down! Finally a note of caution here. Remember we spoke about „true will‟ in the last piece? Well, if your dreams and visions involve others do not enchant realities which compromise their true will. So, for example, don‟t put “I am married to Dave who works in accounts”. Ask for a less uncompromising: “I‟m married to a bloke like Dave who works in accounts”. This doesn‟t rule Dave out of the equation, after all who is more like Dave than Dave? However if he thinks you‟re a repulsive creature who he‟d rather vomit over than have sex with, you‟ve given the poor guy a get out and you can still get what you need . Far better to enchant someone, likehim who likes you of their own free will. It‟s not unlikely you‟ll encounter minor problems with all this but remember what you learned in part three and fear not: you will live and learn! There‟s nothing to stop you doing another sigil in the future. – Step Two: Remove the vowels and repeated letters. The first step was by far the most important part. These next bits are 1% of sigil craft and the bit you‟ve just done was the remaining 99%. However, this 1% which I‟m about to explain is the more “magick” bit. It‟ll make you feel more like „an occultist‟ and there‟s enormous value in that. This means you should check you‟re comfortable with what you‟ve just done as part of this second step. You need to feel good on both a subconscious and intuitive level about the sentence you‟re turning into a weird looking symbol. If you‟re not it‟ll come out in the process later on once the sigil i s cast. For now, I‟ll assume you are and crack on. Firstly, sigils are crafted and re-drafted by a process of elimination. Like a sculpture you‟re going to chip and chisel that sentence down until it looks like a sort of magical wingding. Begin this by removing the vowels and repeated letters, leaving yourself with a string of consonants, like so:
MHLTYFRNDSGCP
An example of my weight loss sigil in its early stages
Step three: Combine the letters into one big pattern and begin reducing it into a simpler image. This bit is where most people get in a tizz. Remember the most difficult part of the process was over once you‟d finished step one. There are no rules as to how you go about combining the letters but I find it best to jumble them all into one big squiggle. The main picture is an example of the one we‟re looking at. Ultimately it was successful and I used a revised version to hit my target weight of 13.5 a year later. This is down from my initial 18.5 stone. Keep re-drawing it and omitting details as you go along. The point of this process is to lose sight of what it is the sigil means. Keep drawing until the exact point of your work is irrelevant to you. Get really bored of the process and lose sight of why it is you‟re bothering with such super stitious nonsense. Make it look more and more “magickal” to you. Hit a point where it starts to become a labour of love which is totally detached from your initial intent. The finished product must look perfect and beautiful. It represents the total of your efforts. This is now a sigil, yet to be cast. It represents a thought which you are about to plant into the collective dreamworld so it can start to descend into the world of objective reality and your future.
Not quite but almost the finished product
Treasure it a bit. Don‟t cast it straight away. Be pleased with it. Step Four: Cast it. People are divided upon how exactly you should do this. You‟re looking for an intens e transcendental experience where you can focus on this image and force it through your mind into the magical dream world while you are fully conscious. Pain, meditation, orgasm, psychedelic-transcendental drugs or all
of the above combined are popular met hods. Whichever you‟re best at. Combine the intense experience with a good solid look at the sigil. Then close your eyes and think of it. Project it into your minds eye and out into the cosmos. Then destroy the paper it is drawn on and forget all about it. One simple way, which I use, is with a candle. Have the sigil drawn on a piece of paper. Burn it and then let the flame burn (but not harm) your fingertips. At that precise moment close your eyes and picture it in your mind. There we are, it‟s cast. The p ain should have done enough to distract you and send it neatly into the world of ideas… There are numerous other methods[5] but the most important part is, as I said, step 1. Once you’ve cast your sigil you must then aid its descent into the real world. If you asked for a new job, get applying for them. If you wanted to lose weight like I did, stop eating those chocolate cakes. 23 Nick Margerrison. – FURTHER READING: Any fairy tale where a wish is granted. Any story featuring a Djinn in a bottle who grants wishes. The story of King Midas. – FOOTNOTES: [1] Very easy to find illicit copies online, or why not pur chase it from the Disinfo store? Disinfo Towers could do with another French Maid to help out around here… [2] This series‟s three previous essays provide a bit of background to what you‟re about to do. The next essay in this series will deal with theory. Most guides to occultism and magick love theory but, in the main, we‟ve held off on it in these essays.There‟s plenty of time to get nicely bogged down in all that in part 5 which is an extensive and obligatory ramble ‟round the hill tops of Discordian occult theology. Don‟t worry we can hold our own on that score. [3] Austin Osman Spare is often cited as the originator of the modern sigil but the technique does appear to go back all the way to our ancient ancestors who would draw their prey on cave walls before going out on the hunt. [4] Again, practice first, theory second. I‟ll come to all that in part 5. For the moment though it is vital that you do not “prey” to ANY non-corporeal entities as part of your early occult dabbling. You run the risk of literally becoming their “prey”. [5] We‟ll get nicely bogged down in the theology of all this in part 5. I‟ll be really frank here, however you want to cast it is alwa ys up to you. I‟ve always used the candle and fire method and it‟s never
seemed to fail. Some people also like to display them but I believe this is not very Discordian. All my sigils are destroyed as part of the process. That said, this essay really is a first step guide to a much bigger debate, as you‟re likely to learn from the comments section below.
