Sigil Magic

Sigil magic is the practice of encoding a specific intention or desire into an abstract symbol, a sigil, which is then "charged" and released, on the theory that the intention will thereby be impressed upon the unconscious (or the cosmos) and work toward its own fulfillment. The word and the older practice come from the grimoire tradition, where a sigil (from Latin sigillum, "seal") was the distinctive graphic signature of a spirit, angel, or demon, a seal by which the entity could be identified and summoned, catalogued in works like the Lesser Key of Solomon. The modern, do-it-yourself method, however, was developed by the English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare in the early twentieth century and later became central to the improvisational, results-oriented current known as chaos magic.

In Spare's method the practitioner writes out a statement of desire, removes the repeated and vowel letters, and combines the remaining letters into a single abstract glyph; the conscious meaning is then deliberately forgotten, and the sigil is "charged" in a moment of intense focus or altered consciousness and destroyed or set aside, so that the desire may work on the unconscious without the interference of the conscious mind. Understood in psychological terms, sigil magic functions as a technique of focused intention and unconscious suggestion. It is one of the most widely practised techniques in contemporary do-it-yourself occultism, valued for requiring no elaborate apparatus, deities, or dogma, only a desire, a pen, and the will to work it.

Two quite different practices go under this name and the difference is worth stating first, because most confusion about the subject comes from running them together.

The older practice uses fixed seals. Grimoires supply a specific figure for each spirit, and the figure is treated as belonging to that spirit in the way a signature belongs to a person; it is drawn in order to summon, bind or constrain, and it may not be altered. Planetary characters and angelic seals work the same way, and some are derived by tracing a name across a magic square, which is a construction method but not an invention: the result is determined by the name and the square.

The modern practice inverts that. Austin Osman Spare, in the early twentieth century, took a statement of intent written in words, struck out the repeated letters, and combined what remained into a single compressed figure with no readable content. The figure is then charged in a state of concentration or exhaustion and, crucially, forgotten, so that the intention can operate without the conscious mind interfering. Nothing is being summoned; the target is the practitioner.

Chaos magic adopted this as its central technique in the 1970s, and it spread from there into general use, including into internet culture, where the word sigil is now applied to images made and shared with no ritual attached at all.

The atlas keeps both, and treats the seal of a named spirit as a different object from a made sigil.