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The Limitations of Sigils

  
 
Gypsy Lantern
11:07 / 21.11.02
In the spirit of the 'Goddamn Magick' thread, I thought it might be interesting to have a thread in which we could look at the limitations of sigilisation as a magickal technique. This should be a constructive criticism of this particular magickal process - not an opportunity to criticise other peoples magickal practices - therefore if contributors could hesitate before posting any knee jerk responses to the critical deconstruction of their favoured magickal technique, and keep in mind that the intention of this thread is to hopefully learn more about sigilisation as a process.

I'll start:

I rarely find myself using the standard sigilisation process these days, by which I mean the Austin Osman Spare derived method of reducing a statement of intent to a visual image, and then charging it through orgasm or alternative excitatory/inhibatory trance method. I haven't used this method for a number of years, and I'm not entirely sure why this is. I do sometimes incorporate aspects of sigilisation into other things that I may be doing, eg.. reducing a persons name into a sigil to represent them in a working, or creating a sigil to represent a functional tool that is then used in conjunction with other things. But I use the method more as a useful magickal shorthand than as a process of sorcery in itself.

I'm not entirely sure why or when this gravitation away from the sigil method took place, and that's partly the reason why I started this thread. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has noticed a similar movement away from the sigil method in their practice.

I've got a few ideas about why I feel less inclined to use it, and I think it's because the thing that attracted me towards chaos magick in the first place is that it encourages the use of imagination in magick. I really think imagination is one of the key components in sorcery, and after several years of using variations on the sigil method - it just gradually started to lose some of its ability to fire my imagination the way it did at the beginning, and therefore started to feel a little less effective for me as a method of sorcery.

I suppose you can make the comparison to the punk ethic, in that sigils are the 3 chords you need to start practising magick, and you can do all sorts of things with these essential building blocks - but eventually start to notice the limitations and get a feel for how much else there is to learn, and what you could conceivably do with it.

But I dunno, this is just my current take on things.
 
 
cusm
19:58 / 21.11.02
I have to agree, as I make little use of the rote method of sigilization myself anymore. What I got out of it was the process itself: creation of a single symbol with which to represent intent, and the charging of that intent with energy to cause effect through magick. If you understand the system, you don't need the routine. I think this is really more the point of CM, to understand how Magick works and to work it in your own way, not to follow one recipe given as an example of how you can do things differently.
 
 
Vadrice
20:07 / 21.11.02
I don't know. I still use the methodology, but only when the intent is more important to me than the process. Sigils are like breathing. They're simple, they can become intuitive, they can be easily internalized.
They're COMFORTABLE, which is why I use them when the tension doesn't have to come from the working itself.

'course, they weren't always comfortable. I had to use more ritual to be comfortable before they became so. Catholic imagry, wiccan ecoitarian symbolism...
But now sigils are just the meme. They're how I relate all workings. They're the status quo of magic that I can use or deconstruct or avoid, as the case seems fit.
They're just so... basic and primaly thought out.
They're haiku.
~mutters~
nevermind. they're carbon.
they AREN'T POETIC!
 
 
The Tower Always Falls
19:30 / 24.11.02
Interesting you bring this up, as i find myself expanding outward from basic sigilization myself.

I think the sigil technique is really good just from a training wheel standpoint. Like 23's for synchs, you get the basic idea of how to play with magick using sigils. Having said that, I think the limitations of the technique depend on the biases and choices of the practitioner.

That sounds a bit like a giant cop-out. Hm... I guess for me when I started, I did the whole sigil/jerk-off deal. And it worked very hit or miss, probably because masturbation never had a great deal of fascination for me. (Sounds pretentious as all fuck, but I honestly just plain THINK too much even during an orgasm). I was attracted to sigils because I've had sigils banging around my head for years. I was that kid who wrote an entire alphabet of alien letters and pasted them around places before I knew what i was doing. (I have one very persistant one from childhood, which I occasionally still launch when I feel the need to stir things up in my life). The results of my sigilizations were very sporadic, to say the least- partly because I think I had too many floating around in my head to begin with.

I've recently been playing much more with squishing down the intent in a much more (for me) natural fashion. I've been writing myself into a trance-state. Basically writing the intent and letting myself "free-write" based off the original. Inevitably, the long paragraphs always seem to squish themselves down on their own accord- as my mind zones out into the clacking of the keys and a mantra is formed. Say, "It is my will for a clown to hug Valdrice" eventually gets suqished down to "cii cci cic cci cii ciici" etc. I still occasionaly have the sigil nearby as a sort of focal point, but I'm finding my language constructing reality fetish works much better if it's an active transformation- rather than passively meditating upon a bunch of squiggly lines.
 
 
FinderWolf
18:03 / 03.01.03
Here's a question which fits under the subject heading: can you charge the same sigil more than once? Because a sigil I charged last year has popped up again in my life recently, while going through some old papers and pictures I drew. I also have noticed one of the color copies of it I put up in Brooklyn is STILL on the lamppost I put it on about 8 months ago, in terrific shape, despite the rain, wind and weather!

So has Grant Morrison or anyone ever commented about sigils being able to be charged twice? Or sigils recurring/resurfacing in one's life?

Or should you just make a new sigil instead of charging the same one twice? (even if it seems to be charging itself up by its reappearance?)
 
 
FinderWolf
18:00 / 04.01.03
Also, what luck have people had with putting time limits in sigils? (i.e. I will do this by Feb. 2003) is it better just to say it'll happen and let the universe decide when? or can we really control when these things occur also?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
23:07 / 04.01.03
I've found that putting time-limits on my sigils is a complete non-starter. Whatever region of my consciousness is involved in this sort of thing doesn't seem to have much truck with time as we understand it. Possibly this is just one of those things that you need to practice to get right.

I suspect that all the interesting stuff that makes magick work happens outside time in any case.
 
 
De Selby
01:26 / 05.01.03
I agree with Mordant, in that sigils don't seem to like timing much. However, I tend to think its more because you drastically reduce your chances of it working, simply because you're putting another limit on its success.

My main problem with sigils, is that the things I tend to want to sigilise, are things I think about a lot, and thus make it difficult to forget. Therefore, my sigils tend to be really vague, which means I can't sigilise for things like "new turntables" or whatever...

I've just started experimenting with using sigils without firing them, like what Mr Tower was talking about, haven't had enough time to quote any results though...
 
 
Chiropteran
14:28 / 05.01.03
Mordant: "I've found that putting time-limits on my sigils is a complete non-starter. Whatever region of my consciousness is involved in this sort of thing doesn't seem to have much truck with time as we understand it. Possibly this is just one of those things that you need to practice to get right."

In my (somewhat limited) experience with sigils I've realized that putting an "objective" time limit tends to really boost my internal "this-ain't-gonna-work" script. An alternative I've had some success with, though, is putting more fluid time "guidelines" on the working (as opposed to "limits"). So, instead of "by the end of Feb. 2003," I'll work out some other condition to measure against to be sure the working takes effect "on time." These can be pretty working-specific, but the main point is to use something that is, itself, somewhat variable (by the time my work team finishes a given project, by the time so-and-so writes back, before the next time I travel to Hartford, whatever), and which may itself actually manifest part of the desired result. Seems to have worked so far, and doesn't present the same challenge to my "inner non-believer" that "by 3:15 this afternoon" does.

}{
~Lepidopteran
 
 
louisemichel
15:32 / 05.01.03
Hi Gypsy !
What I'd like to know is what's your method now...

Also, I tend to be afraid of threads like that because, as in punk music, it could be very easy to say that those who still use sigil are less evolved than those who stopped using them. That's why lot of shit flew on Chaos Practionners at the beginning of the Chaos Uprising after all...
Music is music (even if it's punk) and Magick is magick, it's result that counts, not the way to have it.
I know it's not the subject of this thread, but well...

Now, what I think on the subject of the thread is the process of de-complexify then re-complexify (sorry, but my english is not so good to explain things like that)
Magick seems a very complex thing at first. Lots of books and work and so on. Chaos Magick De-complexed it a great deal : No big Secret, but on the contrary everybody can do it, and easy. Now for those who went that way, maybe it's time to re-complex their own ways.
Yes, I think that's it. Natural process. I use the same one when I write a script. De-complexify and then re-complexify.
 
 
illmatic
18:28 / 05.01.03
Nice point - re-complication. There's a lot of interesting stuff in Dave Lee's book "Chaotpia" about belief and sorcery, and the fact that your beliefs tend to change as your practice develops, your inner critic catches on, punctuates your naivety, and things like sigils stop working, so you have to take on board something new to re-create the "theatre of belief".

I've often wondered if, with really complicated "high magick", all the elaborate difficulties and ritual prescriptions are there partly to help generate belief, and thereby aid the working - if you've (for instance) fasted for 48 hours, covered your altar with the skin of a virgin calf or whatever, the trouble taken means you believe more, therefore the magick is more likely to work. There' s point here about the dynamics of sacrifice as well, making effort or giving up in order to gain.

As for myself, well, things are kind of the other way around. My first few experiences were outright failures (in retrospect this was a good thing, as it taught me to think for myself, and encouraged me to pursue other areas of interest), but sigilisation is still something I'm very attracted to, partly because I love Austin Spare's writing so much (The Book of Pleasure is a personal fave, and is worth persisting with. Trust me on this one). Spare gives some details in the BoP on using emotions and "free belief" as fuel for the process, and that's what I tend to do, rather than anything more formal or ritualised. This method has the advantage of being very "portable", no props required, avoids unecessacry ritual theatrics, and also encourages you to work actively with emotions and beliefs, rather than experiencing them passively.
 
 
illmatic
10:42 / 06.01.03
Hunterwolf: With regard to sigils being cahrged twice etc. , don't see why not. Spare's whole thing was the creation of a personal "Alphabet of Desire", a set of symbols that represented the different parts of the psyche and aided communication with it. So it stands to reason you'd "charge" these more than once, if that was indeed what he did. (I'm not exactly clear on his methods here). Lots of examples of recurring symbols in his artwork.

Doesn's surprise me that the same symbol should pop up more than once either, synchroncity at play.

Anyone else want to contribute other methods?
 
  
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