Sigils

What is a sigil?

• A sigil is a drawn or painted symbol considered to have magical properties

Why do witches use sigils?

• They allow the witch to cast quickly and effectively (Please note that sigils should only be used by an adept witch. If you are still a beginner without much experience in traditional casting, please do not attempt)
• Sigils allow the spellwork to be incredibly direct

How do sigils work?

• The power comes from the act of creating the symbol itself. The process of taking an intention and transforming it into a magical symbol encodes the meaning of that symbol and it’s magical potential into your subconscious. The point of doing this is to be able to bypass the doubts, restrictive beliefs, and self consciousness of the conscious mind and tap directly into the power of the subconscious, where your power isn’t restricted by those limitations. This is powerful stuff! The activation of a sigil is like using a password that gives you access to the fullest extent of your power in one quick burst.
• Using a sigil created by someone else won’t work. Or, at least it won’t work the way a sigil is supposed to work. When you use a sigil created by someone else you’re essentially just using a random symbol to focus your conscious mind’s intention.
• To really use sigil magic you MUST make your own sigils. There’s no way around it. Using someone else’s sigil isn’t sigil magic, it’s just some intention setting with a pretty symbol.
• Sigil magic stems from chaos magic and by its very nature this kind of magic is highly experimental and tends to evolve quickly. What this means is that there are tons of right ways to use, activate, and create sigils.The sheer number of ways that you can create and use a sigil and have it work means that it’s a very easy form of magic to do correctly. 

How do you make a Sigil?

• You will need paper and a pencil
• Your first step will be to figure out what the intent of your sigil is going to be. This is the most important step, your intention should be well thought out and very clear. A half-assed intention will lead to a half-assed result!
• You’re going to turn this concept into a sentence, make sure you’re being specific and precise with your wording. You want the sentence to be relatively short and it needs to be phrased in the present tense, i.e. phrase it as though you’ve already got what you want.
  • Ex. “I have self-love” instead of “I will love myself”
  • While this distinction seems small, it’s actually huge. One aligns your energy with the result you want, the other aligns you with the state of wanting itself. In other words, when you phrase your intention as something you want in the future, it will remain something you want in the future… indefinitely.
  • Wording can make all the difference. “I have the job of my dreams” will have significantly different results than “I am a journalist for National Geographic”. Neither is inherently better than the other but make sure you know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with your wording. 
  • Additionally, try to avoid negative words such as “I do not”, “I will not”, “I have no”, etc. These negative words tend to get lost in the grand scheme of things and the intention “I do not smoke” can very easily lead to the result “I do smoke” instead. To avoid this, always phrase positively. (To rephrase this positively you might say something like “I quit my unhealthy vices easily”)
  • As an example, I’m going to use the phrase “I am mentally healthy and happy”. This is a sigil that I could use any time I’m struggling with anxiety or depression to help tip me back into a more solid headspace.
• Write out your intention sentence (otherwise known as the power words or power phrase). Erase or cross out all of the vowels in the sentence. When you’re left with just the consonants, you’ll remove any repeating letters so that you have only one of each letter present. These letters are the base symbols of your sigil.
  • “I am mentally healthy and happy” becomes the series of consonants “M M N T L L Y H L T H Y N D H P P Y” 
  • When you remove all of the duplicates, you’re left with the letters  “M N T L Y H D P”. These are your base symbols!
• Now start to fit your base symbols together into a single glyph. At first, it’s probably going to look weird and nothing like a symbol of power, that’s ok, just keep messing with it and moving things around. This part takes some time, the key is to play around with it a lot. If you don’t like the way a particular letter is fitting in anywhere, you can break the letter down into pieces, something like a P would become a line and a half circle that you can use independently within your design.

• When you’re ready to actually use your sigil, you’ll have to activate it. You must do this for the sigil every time you use it, even if you’re using the same symbol that’s just been copied somewhere new. If you like working in a ritual space, set that up for yourself. With practice, you can learn to activate sigils on the go without all the ritual trappings but they’re always helpful when you first begin.
  • The method of activation that I use is actually quite easy, though it may take a bit of practice before you identify what the “activation moment” feels like. Make sure the entire sigil is visible and gaze at it comfortably
  • Let your eyes become familiar with the symbol and if you’re not using the forgetting method, meditate on the sigils power phrase. As your eyes become more comfortable they’ll start to warp the sigil, it’ll look like it’s squiggling a bit. Shortly after this the sigil will fall still again and appear very ordinary and inert, letting you know that it’s charged and activated.
  • There are plenty of other ways to activate sigils like burning them, charging them with other power sources, baking them into food, etc. If you’re not getting good results with the method I use, do some research and try other methods of activation!
• When you’re done, close down your ritual space

Information on sigils comes from https://thetravelingwitch.com/blog/2016/12/21/creating-sigils

This would be a great thing to keep in your books of shadows. Remember that your BOS is supposed to be your witches diary and kept to yourself. Since sigils are privately made and should only be used by the maker, they would be an excellent addition to your private collection.

Other good additions would be any oil mixtures you may create, spells you design, and tips and tricks for personal  holiday rituals and casting.