GRAFFITI SIGIL MAGICK: NOTES FOR AN IDEA.
I do not know if t he idea of doing graffiti sigil magick exists in any of the myriad of books out there on sigil magick or magick based on popular culture, but in my case it sprang to life in a posting of French graffiti artists being given access to the walls of a school before renovations on the building were to be done. They had been allowed to create an “owner” authorized symbol of their passion that would be
destroyed during the renovations. I had done the posting on impulsive whim and grew from there. Graffiti is any writing or drawings that have been brush painted, spray painted or drawn illegally or without the appropriate permission of the owner on a surface like a wall, floor, ceiling or external surface of a railway car and quite often within public view. I have known quite a few brilliant graffiti artists over the years and one element of their work always stood out above the others: the risk of discovery and arrest by the police. The young me n I have known seemed to me to be addicted to the rush of adrenaline that we nt with that risk of arrest (along with knowing that the artwork would be see n by hundreds if not thousands of people). So the emotional element of the creation of graffiti art is very ve ry powerful. And the power of that emotion is what struck me as I made that Facebook posting of French g raffiti artists and it led to an idea about sigil magick done as graffiti. I believe that magick is fuelled fue lled by, or propelled by emotion, so if you we re to design a sigil or series ser ies of sigils with the intent of painting them big, bright and colourful on a wall, floor, or ceiling of a structure and endure the emotions that go along with such an act (the risk of being arrested by the police) that that might fire off the sigil in powerful ways. I am sure that chaos magicians will find and develop their own way of performing this that suits their artistic temperament, but I will describe a few things that occur to me that might give them an idea of where to start. 1) Desire and Location: I believe that your desire could be tied to the location you choose for the graffiti sigil. A desire that involves moving forward with something might be better served by painting the graffiti sigil on a moving structure like a railway car or perhaps a delivery truck. Or painting it to a fixed structure that is a storage building or manufacturing plant or a public building or existing piece of signage. The permanence or impermanence of the sigil may also be a factor (painting in spray acrylic versus a medium that is water soluble). Also, a quickly drawn graffiti sigil done with one’s finger in the dirt on the side of a truck or other
vehicle may create a certain emotional state that might serve the intent better (but I am just spit balling ideas here).
2) Location and Risk: certain locations will have more risk involved than others. Painting your graffiti sigil at a remote, abandoned structure and at ground level will have less heart pounding risk than painting it in the middle of an o pen plaza at 11:00 in the eve ning and at the top of a ladder or hanging off of the side of the building on a rope in a harness. Or during the day surrounded by patrons. 3) Ceremony: would introducing a sense of ceremony or r itual serve your intention or desire? A sanctification of the act, or perhaps invoking of certain spirits or deities to help or acknowledge the act or to simply get your inner mojo sparking? 4) Sigil Size, Colour, Medium and Composition: because you are no longer dealing with sigils on wee pieces of paper, but now on a grander scale should more artistic care be taken? For an example I cite Grant Morrison and his “super-sigil” comic of The Invisi bles as a finely crafted
piece of literary sigil work. So then should we consider the actual emotional context of the colours to be used, the style of painting the sigil, the size of the sigil on the structure or its height from the ground and all of this relative to the desire or intent? Would the desire/intent of it be bette r served by painting it on the g round or ceiling rather than on a wall? And the choice of the medium to paint with I think may be a factor (it’s symbolism to you or to the desire). Acrylic spray paint or acrylic brush paint or chalk or water colour? An extreme example might be a sigil done with hostile intent or contempt for something symbolized in the medium of feces (shit) or very aromatic gar bage. 5) Image Clarity or Obfuscation: you can, of course, paint your sigil clear as you want, but another thought occurred to me and that is that a sigil done in a location that is well travelled by the public will have less likely long term survivability than one done off the beaten track. There are other factors involved, like who owns the structure you painted it on and what is their feeling about graffiti art? But what if you wer e to disguise the sigil as something else? A sigil, that looks like an occult sigil might have a very short life span on a wall that is well travelled by the public, versus one that looks like something less blatant and that complements the ambience of the area. Also, you could design the sigil relative to the location so that parts of it are painted onto several different surfaces, so that viewed in passing, they look like nothing but some random markings, but if you stand (or maybe kneel) in this one spot, then and only then do you see the sigil. 6) Firing the Sigil: the risk of arrest by the police is what really got me thinking of this as a viable bit of sigil magick. I don’t know about you, but even now at 59 years of age I am still on my guard
around the RCMP. That emotional tension of being discovered, that stress of being caught... I think that it could be extremely powerful and could fire off the sigil into the unconscious for you. So if you did a bit of
homework and got an idea of when and how often the police patrol the are a you want to do the sigil in and then time the creation and completion of that sigil to maximize your emotional stress relative to the police, that you m ight have one deadly powerful sigil. On a slightly different level, you could still opt to fire the sigil using masturbation if you chose, with the added fear/thrill of discovery, arrest and being featured prominently in the next day’s newspapers being like adding nitro-methane fuel to your mini- van’s gas tank. And do not forget to plan out your escape route from the police and actually walk that route a few times so you know it well. Rem ember, when the adrenaline is pumping your reasoning goes out the door. I am not a graffiti artist myself and so I will most likely never do this myself, but as a young guy I t agged shit like the rest of the young guys in my town. So I think that this one is the domain of the young and daring. Change what you want here. Use it or not, it is up to you.
