BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Temple >

Sigils sigils everywhere.

  
 
Vadrice
01:54 / 13.08.02
I had one of those half asleep moments the other day where I lay in bed, staring at a small vase on top of the dresser, and I started seeing sigils everywhere.
It was wonderful. Everything I saw reduced to a sigil. the vase. the desk. The idea of containment in the desk...

and then thoughts. I started seeing them too... in that odd sort of imaginitive seeing. A sigil encompasing menopause. War. Homosexuality.

I sat up, looked myself in the mirror and grinned.


I was reminded of this by the labels thread over in the Head Shop.
Conotation. A label grows to include more than it's original intention.
Sort of like a fungus growing on an idea.
As per the discussion in the thread, homosexuality first came to mind.

Now to the point.

Meta-sigils.
Sigils intended to alter other sigils. Feesable? Been done? If so, Why don't we take things- (homosexuality for instance) and reduce them to sigils, and then have them... cleaned off? remove prejudices and groths that are hatefull?
 
 
the Fool
03:17 / 13.08.02
I think it would be difficult to reduce 'homosexuality' to a sigil, a single thought. It is a chorus of voices, all different. I think it is greatly diminished by your notion of reduction.

Homophobia is better notion to mutate as it is a meme. Being gay is not a meme, its peoples lives, and as such no magician (or any one else for that matter) has any right to interfer with it.
 
 
that
06:27 / 13.08.02
Uh, what he said. Fucksake, why would 'we' want to 'clean off' homosexuality? I for one am extremely happy with mine, thank you. I understand what you are getting at with the concept, but frankly, your example is both unfortunate and offensive.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
06:36 / 13.08.02
I'm having a lot of trouble understanding what it is you're suggesting here, Vadrice. Are you suggesting homosexuality could/should be turned into a sigil, in order to make others more aware of what it is? Less homophobic? I'm really not clear on the intention.
 
 
that
06:43 / 13.08.02
Mm. Sorry if I leapt to the wrong conclusion, Vadrice, and you were actually getting at what sfd says.
 
 
Naked Flame
08:04 / 13.08.02
I think we're just having a communication breakdown moment here. Well, I hope that's it, anyway. You're talking about mutating the reductive label that already exists in many heads, yes?

In a real sense, the process you're talking about has been happening in Western culture for a long time now anyway. It's a slow process of cultural confrontation, adjustment, and gradual learning. What you're talking about sounds to me like re-launching the 'brand' of homosexuality, and while it's sort of a neat idea in principle, the basic problem I see is that while you might be able to conceptualise the sigil, how do you take it apart again and tweak it?

I think I understand the importance of your insight, but I don't think there's a shortcut there to the slow process of defusing people's unreasonable fears of each other and themselves.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
08:20 / 13.08.02
"the... process of defusing people's unreasonable fears of each other and themselves"

Ah, I think I get it now. Yes, a lot of crossed wires here... Could a sigil do such a thing, though - because what you're talking about, Vadrice, is surely the quick route to a part of human evolution. Which sounds great in theory in one respect, but should such a change be forced? As you said, another sigil regarding war, or rather, the getting rid of the need/desire for war - is this a place we need to get to by ourselves? (although that arguement could be made for any effort to educate people against killing each other).

There was a woman who phoned in my local radio station recently who was basically talking about a mass meditation for world peace. The radio show host and all the other callers just took the piss out of her. No one was interested.
 
 
illmatic
08:39 / 13.08.02
What I found really interesting about your post was your experince of spontaneously seeing loadsa sigils/ turning reality into sigils - reminds me of Spare's Alaphabet of Desire. There's the implication somewhere in his writing that sigils dredged up from the unconcious are "the secret language of the psyche", expressions of our internal structures, very different than simple alphabet based sigilsied desires. Did you manage to write any of them down?
 
 
cusm
14:22 / 13.08.02
I see what you're getting at here. Take the meme, and produce a sigel for it as a means to access it. Through magickal work upon and with that sigel, you can affect that meme as it exists in the wild. It is rather like invoking the diety of homosexuality, preforming a ritual empowering it against discrimination, and banishing it again to the Aether to return to its celestrial duties. You are trying to affect the "objective" spirit of the idea, in the sense that it is the shared understanding and perception of the idea by all rather than just your experience with the idea, as is normally the case in sigel work.

Hmm. That would require either a lot of power (and I mean a LOT), or a strong connection to the high level archetypical abstraction of the idea on a broad cultural level. Magick worked from Kether, as one way to put it.
 
 
gravitybitch
14:42 / 13.08.02
Hmmm. I was wandering through an astrology site, looking at Antero Alli's writings (http://www.mcn.org/greatbear/backarticles/article1.html), and found this quote: The Mayans, another indigenous dreaming culture, have a traditional way of greeting each other when they say, "In'Lakesh," which means, "I am another yourself." Say it out loud. I am another yourself.

Perhaps a sigilization of this - everybody sees similarities (rather than their own projections)? A half-silvered mirror in which people can see Other and themselves superimposed?
 
 
Vadrice
01:00 / 14.08.02
You're talking about mutating the reductive label that already exists in many heads, yes?

yes.


the basic problem I see is that while you might be able to conceptualise the sigil, how do you take it apart again and tweak it?

Well, I have a few speculations, but this question was a big part of the reason I started this thread. More later, but I wanted to get some fresh ideas therein.

should such a change be forced?

yes. and no. and yes. and no.
The thought of this almost stopped me from posting this thread in the first place. You know? Consequences.
If you remove negative aspects of perceptions of homosexuality, will the positive aspects diminish, so as not to leave things ungainly?
Will other aspects of people take up the slack as far as hatred and misconception are concerned?
Will qweer folk world over feel as if thought of as more artificial/constructed/contrived?
will they actually become so?
Is it right to atempt anything so vast and... well, bigger than myself?
Could I possibly understand this proposal fully enough to answer any of these questions?
probably not.
's why I want input. Lots of input.

might as well break up the text with more italics. I mean... why not? ~cough~

Mr Illmatic, yes yes. Spare Spare. It's a very sound theory, and very exceptional considering it's relationships (perhaps what I impose in my interpritations) to Literary Reception theory, which is generally attributed to the 60s.
blah. sorry. worthless.
I don't scetch anymore. I don't like to at all. My hands are a poor substitute for my mind, I've found. Very poor.


Hmm. That would require either a lot of power (and I mean a LOT), or a strong connection to the high level archetypical abstraction of the idea on a broad cultural level. Magick worked from Kether, as one way to put it.

I believe I would disagree with the former. Of course the latter would depend where the initial sigil came from- my own temporal perspective, or something better.
The entire reason I brought this up is that it would apear to be much more a matter of finesse than power. It's the intrinsic difference between working with sigils and working with godforms.
sigils are frozen and temporarily static. They don't get pissed off, or mistrust or decide your ideas are silly or wrong.
It's just their maliability I'm worried about.
And as to the reintroduction to the sigil, well... it would just have to be made to fit in the proper hole, to use a silly simplification.

and yes, it is am imposition on objectivity, But I've used and been told of using this sort of maltese falcion aproach to that (hugely significant) problem in the past.
But in this way as well, any such action is certainly a moral consideration.


Perhaps a sigilization of this - everybody sees similarities (rather than their own projections)? A half-silvered mirror in which people can see Other and themselves superimposed?

pretty thought, but it's been done in some fassions, and it doesn't often work. Many people hate themselves, and hate reflections of themselves even more.
But... could have good applications in specific circumstances.
Again, however, there are moral considerations.

MORAL CONSIDERATIONS!



Anyway... I'm sorry for being confusing. It's a recurring problem.
You'd think I'd be getting better at explaining myself, being a communications major.
Then again... maybe that just means I'm studying what I need to learn.
 
 
cusm
14:06 / 14.08.02
Mostly, what you are suggestion is normally done on a smaller scale. For instance, a working that would affect the relations of one person or a specific group of people. It if far more difficult to affect the whole of objective reality with a working. I mean, world religions have been trying to do that for centuries, and you can see to what degree they are successful and how much energy is required to do so. I mean, in the end, its still a physics problem of needing enough energy to move the object, which in this case is rather large. Not that you can't make a dent in it, but you'll have a lot more success working on protecting a smaller target of people from discrimination.

One suggestion I have is to not try to alter the sigel for homosexuality at all. I mean, you aren't trying to change that, really. You're trying to change how others deal with it. Specificly, you seem interested in combating a different meme/sigel, that of discriminbation and hate. Perhaps if you try sigilizing the sense of blind hatred others feel in reaction to homosexuality, you'll have more immediate results. From a goetic perspective, that idea would be easy to name as a demon, which allows you to attack or banish the bound demon as a means of weakening the spirit of the idea on the objective level. I imagine you could do something similar on a sigel level without the phychic personification involved, though it will be tricky, as if you do it wrong, you'll empower the sigel rather than weaken it.

Also, keep in mind that you won't be able to summon the whole of the spirit, just a part of it at a time. I mean, what you are working with is on the level of a godform, by its sheer size alone. Sigels will allow you to access this without the messy personification issues, but its still a big target. Not to say that you can't, modern global communication is making this more of a possibility. Just that you'll have a lot more success if you try it on a small level first, then work up.
 
 
Sebastian
14:22 / 14.08.02
I'll add my own considerations and lets see what comes up.

When I saw this thread I coupled it to corporate sigils. In a sense, defusing the "sigil" of war, menopause and homosexuality, is not unlike defusing the sigil of that famous golden arched hamburger chain, but I concede is far more ambitious.

However, I mention the above because I think you can very well make a sigil that works to defuse a large and solid concept -or meme- that is predating your particular spacetime perception, but it will work magick on your perception and experience of the world only, and I do not think it will encompass the meme defusement on the entire human race through an individual, self-cosncious intention. Just check how many hamburgers you eat there, or the emotional impact the golden archs have on you, and then compare it to others that have not defused it.

I mean, you can affect your reality tunnel, your intersubjective experience, even draw others to intersect yours that are working on fusing/defusing the same "big" memes, and your "external" circumstances will move and open in that direction. And that is how magick and spells work in the intersubjective sense: loose bullets do not hit you, you deal fine with homophobic insults and discrimination until they literally disappear from your experience, you come to engulf enriching aspects of menoapuse to which common women seem to be deprived from, and although you continue to read and be informed about the human race sufferings, you seem to experience a different world, a magickal and seemingly "luckier" one to others, and indeed you are, and thus become ready for other experiences the rest of the race would seem to be deprived from, at least until they defuse their own pain-maker memes.

I think just prosecuting the magickal end on your own works for everyone else in the specie, simply systemically, and indicates that something is definitely at work. The collective meme -or sigil- has a life and a death, it can't be otherwise, although some may take centuries to live and die -even if they die with the whole specie-, but it can not avoid its cycle. Each time a host is no longer a host, the meme is a step closer to its extinction, guaranteed the host will no longer become infected. The signals that more and more hosts are working to get rid of it, or even "thinking" and becoming aware about "it", pondering its utility, herald in many ways its extinction. Those who self-appointedly and self-consciously seek for the antidote, the right antibody, to use in themselves, are the magickians, the dreaded agents of catalysis the meme fears, because they are accelerating its defusement. The process moves slower or faster, depending on the skills of the magickians and their ability to discover the leverage points of the meme, which will always lie out of the current field of perception -that's why they have to be magickians in a sense-, until through magickal engineering and successfull hosting, they get enough of the antibody "in their own blood", and the point is reached when sufficient mass and efficacy of the meme-antibody is obtained, for it to simply spread itself to other hosts with no more conscious intervention of the agents.

At least, that's how I think about it.
 
 
Vadrice
14:59 / 14.08.02
One suggestion I have is to not try to alter the sigel for homosexuality at all. I mean, you aren't trying to change that, really. You're trying to change how others deal with it.

ach. I was reverting to existentialism again. How people deal with and percieve a thing often IS the thing in my mind.

I mean, what you are working with is on the level of a godform, by its sheer size alone. Sigels will allow you to access this without the messy personification issues, but its still a big target.

I hate to be repetative, but this is just wrong. The entire point of a sigil is that (by being symbolic) it is VASTLY reductive. Like a zipped file- it's reduced to something small and managable.

as to the prepared sigil's re-entry, yes, this would be an undertaking, but not by any stretch of the imagination unworkable. By me alone, perhaps, but that's nothing some creativity and networking couldn't get around.

But all this is academic (and fun to think about), because there are several ideas and tecniques I'd rather not post here out of fear that someone will hop along and attempt this without having exhaustively reserched the morality. Or worse DO THIS, and screw up. That would be... horrendous.
hrumph.
Well... I guess I could just start posting about morality first... yuck.
 
 
Vadrice
15:03 / 14.08.02
elegant post, Sebastian. I'll get back to it after some thought.
 
 
cusm
15:34 / 14.08.02
The entire point of a sigil is that (by being symbolic) it is VASTLY reductive.

Yes. But what is reduced is your experience of the meme, not the meme itself. Sigels are personal. Now, one could create a sigel that was represenative of the objective/collective meme rather than your personal experience of it. That is an interesting direction. However, the sigel would have to be such that anyone familiar with the meme would be able to identify the sigel as reductive of that meme. It would have to be universal, such as the Golden Arches. Such a sigel could be used for what you propose. Though you would probably have to draw from cultural sybmology rather than inventing your own sigel. For example, some combination of a pink triangle and a rainbow.

Still, I tend to think of the reduction as merely a reduction of the grasp you have on the idea, not the idea itself. The map is not the territory. So, while such a sigel would allow you to access what it represents and affect it, there is still the issue of magnitude and force to contend with. Though I'll grant you, a good imagination of the working can go a long way to make up for that. Still, I'll have to say I'm on the doubter's side on one person being able to cause that much of a global effect. I think you'd see the results more localized, if it worked.
 
 
Sebastian
17:37 / 14.08.02
Cusm's point and mine are pretty close. I extend it to the fact that while you honestly work to the bottom in yourself you are working for the whole race and memetic system.

But a collective event bursts out of the collective mind. Individuals find themselves wondering and thinking about something and then they start acting accordingly. They can discuss endlessly who started it, but systemically it was an emergent operation of the system itself. There is however a strain, a gathering of will power in those individuals that consciously seek to promote and facilitate change, but it is effective at its most when the rules of sigils -or simply bare naked magick- are deployed: reduce lust of result to zero, and stop denying possibility of manifestation, blow your mind first, but then compose back and go enjoy yourself, and this is simply because "You" can not effect a systemic change in the system in which you are a part, the more you try, the more messy and repetitive things will turn. Anybody who is "trying" to raise kids will recognise this pattern.

Make a sigil to change the world. We can make a motto out of this.
 
 
Vadrice
18:03 / 14.08.02
Of course the latter would depend where the initial sigil
came from- my own temporal perspective, or something better.

oh no... now I'm quoting myself...

but I'm still thinking. And you're still making good points.
And cusm, you're absolutly correct, now that I think on it, which is something of the entire purpose of this thread.
Namely, looking for ways around the magnitude and force, and not through it.
 
 
the Fool
23:09 / 14.08.02
How people deal with and percieve a thing often IS the thing in my mind.

I don't agree, at least not in this case.

I still troubled that you seem to fuse the conceptual 'homosexuality' and 'homophobia' with the actuality of the experience, or at the very least not differentiate between the two.

Being gay is a very different concept to socially generate prejudice of homophobia, both seem to fall within your concept of 'homosexuality sigil'. One is a state of being the other is a meme.

The only part you seem to want to effect is the discrimination. So be clear on that. It is a meme, an idea. It is not intrinsic to the rest of the experience and thus can be dealt with separately.
 
  
Add Your Reply