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Sigils / Protective wording

05:26 / 10.03.04

I am after some help with forming Sigils please.

I read with interest another thread where somebody mentioned that they had requested a new car and as a result, an old lady ran into his/her current car, and the person was able to claim on their insurance

The only down side was the trauma to the old lady. The questioner asked whether it would be okay to include a statement like "as long as it harms none", to prevent his/her Sigils having any adverse affect on anybody else

All well and good

Now I am probably wrong here but I am sure somewhere I read that Sigils (like hypnotic suggestions) should be phrased in the positive.

For example:

You would write

"I will be pain free"

rather than

"I will NOT feel pain"

If this is the case (and I admit I might be totally wrong here), then it would be difficult to include a wording that would ensure nobody else was harmed?

I know that the aforementioned "as long as it harms none" isn't really a negation as such but it still niggles at the back of my mind that this wording still isn't ideal

Has anybody read (what I admit might be incorrect) anything about not using negations in Sigils or any suggestions on how to word protective measures to ensure no harm is done to any other when casting the Sigil?

16:48 / 10.03.04

I'm bumping this as I have a number of Sigils just waiting for sending off and I want to ensure as much as possible that I don't cause harm to anybody inadvertantly

By the way, is there any limit or time restraints on how many Sigils you should issue in a week?

Besides having a sore wrist etc ;-)

thanks.....any advice would be greatly appreciated

Joe

18:39 / 10.03.04

Yes and yes on the notion of phrasing your sigils in a positive way.
Try not to include negative words in there.

I think maybe 'no one will be harmed in the process of achieving this goal' might be better than 'as long as it harms none,' since the latter almost seems like you're pleading with the universe ("I want this on the condition that it will hurt no one" - meaning that leaves the universe with the option 'hey, the only way for you to get this is to hurt someone, so if it's all or nothing, buddy, then youy get nothing'). The former phrasing seems to take the reins of control: This WILL happen and no one will be hurt in the process.

As for how many per day/week, I try to limit them to one per day or one per every few days when I have a bunch of sigils lined up. I just feel like the act of doing 1 uses up some energy and you need to give yourself time to get that energy back up again.

18:40 / 10.03.04

Also, you're entirely right about the hypnotic suggestions/affirmations thing. Don't phrase those in the negative either.

19:16 / 10.03.04

thanks

much appreciated. If anybody else would like to add anything, any funny anecdotes or words of warning where they went wrong in their 'wordage ', please let me know by sharing on here

Hunterwolf, thanks again

so the "No one will be harmed......" whilst containing a 'no' is not a negation? Forgive my ignorance but this linguistic minefield hurts my head and I would HATE to cause harm to anybody due to my ignorance

Thanks

20:24 / 10.03.04

I see your point about the presence of the word "no" - I'm not sure if I think it's truly a problem or not, especially in the phrase "no one".

Maybe "only positive things will happen to people as a result of this goal being achieved"? But how can we guarantee to ALL people?

22:14 / 10.03.04

Maybe "The outcome of this sigil will be harmless to all."

22:22 / 10.03.04

Ooops.

But how can we guarantee to ALL people?

Yeah it is a bit of a grey area that one. Aha : "The outcome of this sigil will only affect myself." Na, it still doesn't do it. All you can hope is that if anyone is affected it's because they don't like the positive things that you acheive, and that's not your problem, it's their own jealousy. Try and remember that nothing pleases everyone.

I'd break the rules being chaos orientated and say : "Any negative vibrations resulting from this sigil will only affect myself."

The negative words in this case are a safeguard to protect everyone, i don't think the powers that be will be too upset by this.

22:40 / 10.03.04

Well, if your motives are truly honorable, then the outcome should be harmless, right? Or is it that the universe will always seek balance. Too much good requires some bad...?

Just a couple of thoughts...

05:43 / 11.03.04

thanks folks

I have tied myself up here in a linguistic maze

thanks for all the advice though and I will limit myself to the more mundane sigils that are purely directed at my acquiring certain abilities until I am confident in the wording.

Please keep adding suggestions or any funny or scarey anecdotes of your own Sigil usage if you have any spare time

Thanks

Joe

06:44 / 11.03.04

Now thats an interesting question LVX23.. If you base your work on the belief that you are only affecting your own mind, the former could very well be "correct". But if you are changing the universe itself, the question of balance would come up. Regardless of this though, my experience is that as long as your motives are honorable you should be ok. No harm in positive wording though.

05:37 / 12.03.04

Been discussing this issue over the last 24 hours with a few people. To prevent injury or harm to others, they suggested the following be tagged onto my sigils:

"Without" harming anyone or anything

or

'AVOIDING' harm to anything or anyone

the second one definately intuitively has less negative connotations, for me.....what do others think?????????

07:22 / 12.03.04

I'm bumping this for purely selfish reasons

Has anybody got any opinion whether "avoiding harm to anyone or anything" is a good enough and positive enough suggestion to ensure Sigils hurt nobody else?

My reason for asking is that I have a number of Sigils ready to go but that need a proviso that nobody else should suffer

I feel that the "avoiding harm to anyone or anything" is about as positive a comment we can get but obviously, I am interested in others with more experience, commenting on such

I am NOT a person who would launch a Sigil without thinking of t's impact on others

Avoiding harm to anyone or anything" is pretty positively stated and I think it is okay but obviously, I am open to your ideas

Joe

14:37 / 12.03.04

I think this is a worthwhile question, and I don't recall it being discussed in such detail before in my 3-ish years here. Anyone else care to chime in on this? Are we overthinking it? Maybe sigil casting doesn't require this much attention to eliminating negative consequences, since we can trust the universe to balance it all out well...

15:10 / 12.03.04

yeah.. I think youre right wolf.. I think the intention behind it may play a part though.. Make sure you know what you want. Also, make sure there is a "no-harm" route. You know, if its very unlikely that you suddenly retrieve a large sum of money and you do a sigil saying that you want it, your will(or whatever you want to call it) may find a strange way to satisfy your wish. Thus increasing the probability of harm

08:48 / 13.03.04

Thanks for the kind words

Please keep thinking on this issue as it might be important for all of us who utilise Sigils

Cheers

Joe

14:36 / 13.03.04

I totally agree with Hunter about the over-thinking thing. Like Nike says "Just do it". In the sigilisation process, what seems to me to be most important is the forgetting and letting go of desire. This seems to me to the hardest part, but the most interesting, the "sweet spot" in the system. IMO Joe, and anyone here is free to slap me down if they disagree with me, no one can tell you how to do it - you have to figure it out for yourself. And that means lots of experiementation and creativity. Try sigils, if they don't work, try candle magic. If that doesn't work, try Enochian. If that doesn't work, try qabalistic tailsmen. If none of it works, fuck us all off for a bunch of loons and go and join CISCOP. Also remember there's more to magick than just sorcery, for me anyway. All these systems are different ways of approaching and understanding the world, and injecting *something* back into your life, and it's worth keeping an eye open to these larger meanings ie. why do you want to do this stuff in the first place? If it works, what then? What link does it have with wider currents of meaning in your life? I'm not asking for an answer, just a few thoughts to play with.

07:17 / 15.03.04

thanks

Yeah I get your point

my reason for dabbling is for a number of reasons

Mid Life Crisis being the most salient

Basically, I have reached a point in my life where I need something exciting or at least different to get my teeth into. Not really sure enough as yet as to whether I should go the whole hog and jump into Ceremonial stuff as yet. I am not brave enough to handle an encounter with a deity or thought form or whatever.......just dipping my toes into the Creative Universe and watching the results

I am a coward by nature and I could not (as yet) get too involved in Enochian stuff but I like reading about it and you people that do do this stuff have my admiration. Sigils and meditation are all I have done to date but that is still exciting enough for me at present

Hence my questioning about how to correctly phrase them.

Anyway thanks for some excellent replies to date.......most appreciated

Joe

08:15 / 15.03.04

Joe

I don't do Enochian either, my mention of it was just illustrative. I think worrying about how to correctly phrase sigils is pretty much a waste of time to be honest, because these things, when they work, don't work in a "input A here = Output B here" kind of way. Who know's what's going to happen? If anything. I got some of my best results through having this stuff fail for me, because it meant I a) tried other things and b) stopped trusting simplistic explantions which I read and used my own judgement.

Put it this way - if you can make someone's head expolode as a side effect of your magick, at least you won't have any problems believeing that it works.

21:21 / 15.03.04

Interesting that this hasn't come up before. I've heard in many places that in magic of any sort, including prayer, one is best to avoid negatives. The reasoning is simple enough, your subconscious won't hear the negation, so the magick is not likely to either.

I like "avoiding" as a good word for this. Its an action, not a negation. That gets around the problem neatly.

Actually, I think something of this nature did come up before, as I recall the idea of a "rider clause" sigil to attach to other workings. Basicly, spend the effort once to come up with a good sigil for "and nobody will ever get hurt from this sorcery so my karma remains squeeky clean, thanks" and then attach/combine that sigil to your new intent one. Seems an efficient way to go about it, I thought. Maybe make it in the form of a circle or some such, so that it can contain the new sigil inside it. Its like sending your sigil off with a protective shell around it to avoid trouble. This is some high tech stuff, here