Sigil Witchery Read online

  To begin this journey, we will explore the work our ancestors have left us and try to decipher their mysteries, as well as illuminate the modern-day connections we can find in the symbols around us. I will introduce you to an extensive collection of marks, shapes, and symbols that will be the root of our sigils, and guide you in collecting others that hold meaning and power for you. Then we will explore how magick works, and see step by step how we can craft sigils for any situation. We will cover an extensive variety of ways we can implement and apply sigils for daily and ritual use. I’ll go over design, practice, problem solving, supplies, and other technical aspects that will aid you in crafting your own sigils. I’ve also included practice scenarios where you can hone your skills and compare your work to some possible solutions. Lastly, I’ve included some of my own artwork and sigil witchery to inspire you, and provided some resources for you to continue your own research.

  Before we launch into sigil space, first let’s consider the framework for this method and go over some of the important basics of Witchcraft and sigils. Understanding the foundation and background for both is essential for starting off in the right direction.

  The Modern Tradition of Witchcraft

  This title may seem like an oxymoron—how can something be modern and traditional? But I find it to be the perfect description for my path. I am a Modern Traditional Witch, blending the folklore, myths, and practices of my complex and diverse heritage with the acknowledgment that I am a modern person living in the United States.

  Witchcraft—as a means to connect, see, and interact with the world—is as old as human civilization. I’m not talking about a specific organized religion, mystery school, family tradition, or degree system. Rather, I’m talking about the way of the Witch—the one who walks between worlds, talks with the spirits and deities, and manipulates the edges of consciousness. The word Witch, its connotation, and the identity of the practitioner may change from culture to culture, generation to generation, but the heart of magick is consistent throughout. (Nevertheless, the Witch persists.)

  Over time we learn, collect, and build our practices, ideas, and traditions. As humanity progresses and makes new discoveries, we amend, shift, and grow as needed. We keep what works, we make note of what doesn’t work, and we try new things. We can choose to make fire with flint and tinder, strike a match, or flick a lighter. We can use the power of the digital pixel to capture symbols thousands of years old, or draw new images with charcoal and our fingers. Intuition and instinct shake hands with ingenuity and imagination. This is the essence of the Modern Tradition of Witchcraft.

  To guide the Witch’s path, there are three keys:

  Know Thyself: Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, mentally, spiritually, and physically.

  Maintain Balance: Balance is an idea, not a place. To understand it, we must consider the extreme points as well as moderation, and realize that all actions have a multitude of possible reactions.

  Accept Responsibility: Be able to acknowledge, accept, and work with both the known and the unknown consequences of your actions and words.

  It would be wise to keep these three concepts in mind when considering the focus, structure, and intended outcome of your sigil work. You need to be realistic about yourself and your environment, as well as mindful of both your limits and your possibilities for growth. You should think creatively about solutions and brainstorm possible outcomes and effects. And lastly, you should be willing to be responsible for your work in very real terms.

  With this perspective in mind as our framework, let’s explore the essentials of sigils.

  What Is a Sigil?

  First things first: How do you pronounce sigil ? That may seem like a really basic question, but I find that it’s a common one for many folks, especially if you’re an avid reader and you rarely get to hear certain words pronounced out loud. It’s also a logical place to start our study.

  How dictionaries list the pronunciation: or

  A more detailed explanation from an American perspective: The first i is soft, so it’s like the i in Sidney, not long like in silence. The g is pronounced like a j, like in gem. The second i is an “eh” sound, as in gel. If you want to overthink it, there’s somewhat of a phantom d hooked into the beginning of the j sound. If you don’t want to overthink it, sigil rhymes with vigil (not to be confused with Virgil—the poet or the monkey).

  Etymology: The word sigil derives from the Middle English sigulle, which comes from the Latin sigillum, meaning “seal.” Another consideration is that it may be related to the Hebrew (segula), meaning a talisman, or a word or action of a spiritual nature.

  I hope that helps you avoid seagulls and siggles. If you’re still unsure, google sigil and the first result should be a brief definition with a sound icon. Click on the icon and you’ll hear the correct pronunciation.

  What Is Sigil Magick?

  A sigil is a carved, drawn, or painted symbol that is believed to have magical properties. Magick is the art of focusing one’s will or intent in order to bring about change. So sigil magick is creating specific symbols to influence a person, situation, or environment.

  Many modern occultists and ceremonial magicians might have you believe that sigil magick belongs to the realm of “high magick”—that it is something intimidating, requiring arcane knowledge and maybe involving a membership to a secret society or three. Of course, when you’re looking at certain sigils as a means to summon and control angels, demons, and other spirits, then it does often require having a background of understanding in those systems. So while that may be true of the form some magicians use, the art of sigil witchery is much more organic and has very humble, basic origins. In fact, you can find its roots in the earliest preserved magick known to humanity.

  At the heart of sigil magick is the hand-drawn mark: lines, dots, and colors that form a symbol to designate space, conjure events, provide instructions, or invoke spirits and deities. From the outline of a hand-print drawn in red and yellow ochre on a cave wall, to temporary drawings made in the earth for sacred rites, to intricate carvings made on tools and jewelry, to murals on buildings, we have used our hands to make our mark on the world—seeking to influence it.

  The Modern Tradition of Witchcraft has a very hands-on, no-nonsense approach to magick: do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done—without a lot of fancy trappings. (Everything else is just gravy on top.) This often means using whatever is on hand to do the work, instead of carefully curating ingredients and designing an elaborate ritual to coincide with the perfect alignment of the moon or stars. This immediacy is the essence of witchery to me. Sometimes just a bit of dirt, some string, and a match—or a ballpoint pen and a scrap of notebook paper—will do the trick when one’s will is focused and the need is great.

  Some folks may disdainfully call this approach “low magick.” However, if you compare magick to computer technology, it’s the low-level coding that is the closest to the source. The higher you get, the more you are moving away from the source, altering the language to suit other purposes. One method is not better than the other; they both get the work done in their own way. Both approaches certainly do work, so the trick is figuring out which one you are better suited for.

  From simple to complex, from novice to artisan, there is plenty of room for learning how to create sigils of your very own. All it takes is a willingness to open up your imagination and the ability to make a mark. Remember back in school when you wondered just when geometry was going to come in handy in real life? Now’s the time—and you’re not being graded!

  So set aside your fears, gather up some paper and a pen, and let’s have some fun. It will be my pleasure to introduce you to the world of sigil witchery and help you learn to integrate it into your own practice.

  [contents]

  Chapter 1

  A History of Mark Making

  I remember in nursery school working my
little fingers through a shallow tray full of squishy poster paint, mixing the colors together—blending yellow and blue to make green, red and yellow to make orange—swirling it all about. Then I took my paint-covered hands and pressed them onto the clean paper provided, leaving behind two small imprints. The teacher hung up all of the papers on clothesline to dry, and we gazed up in awe at the colorful marks we had made, each set unique.

  Eye—Brain—Hand—Art

  As children, we revel in making art. We instantly recognize our ability to create new worlds, tell stories, recreate the world around us as we see it, and, most importantly, make our mark on the world. As we get older, we often push aside art making for other ways to get recognition from others, to explain ourselves and our world. We may forget that we even knew how to draw or paint or to play make-believe. Yet it was these very “simple” skills that we humans first embraced to begin our journey toward civilization. No matter how sophisticated we may perceive ourselves to be now, our ability to visualize ideas and draw symbols is what first set us apart on the evolution timeline. In her book The First Signs, Genevieve Von Petzinger writes: “The first instance of making an intentional graphic mark was one of the profoundly important moments in our species’ history—right up there with the invention of tools, the control of fire, and the development of spoken language.” 1

  It can be easy for some to dismiss drawing and painting as something frivolous. But if you really think about it, the process and the background behind it is incredible. We observe the world around us and translate 3-D into 2-D through a series of marks, colors, and shapes. Or we picture something in our brain—literally something that has no physical form outside of our head—and draw it into reality. Manifestation comes from seeing with our eyes and picturing in our brain, then creating through and with our hands. The evolutionary leap that our brains needed to develop in order to see, think, and create intentional marks is a phenomenal thing. Our ability to think abstractly, envision time and space, and translate our world into new forms is what helped set us apart as a whole new species thousands upon thousands of years ago.

  Most people are familiar with the amazing cave paintings in Spain and France depicting herds of bison and horses. But few people, including archaeologists and anthropologists, have turned their gaze to the other human-made marks found in those very same caves. Those overlooked marks and symbols caught the attention of researcher Genevieve Von Petzinger, who has spent the last several years exploring caves all throughout Europe. She documented every single mark she could find and put them into a database. In TED talks and in her book The First Signs, she explains how she found thirty-two signs that appear again and again in caves thousands of miles apart. Not only that, but their making also spanned centuries, suggesting meaningful use over time. Her research points to the likelihood that a symbolic tradition developed in Africa long before our ancestors journeyed forth into other parts of the world. This theory could certainly explain the similarities we see in the early art of Europe, Indonesia, and Australia.

  Why would our ancestors create a system of symbols and migrate with them? I think the reason is pretty easy to determine: the desire to communicate and to connect. Considering the amount of effort required to carve an object or paint in a dark crevice of a cave, it’s clear that they were purposefully making marks with the intent to communicate meaning (even if the precise meaning may be lost to us now).

  Montage of Images from Cave Paintings

  When we look at the historical timeline of communication technology, we can see the direct correlation with the evolution of society. Some of the earliest tools found in caves were used to crush and mix pigments into paint and apply them to surfaces—meaning we could collect pigments from different places and take them with us. There’s the making of papyrus and other forms of paper to replace heavy stone and clay tablets, making it easy to transport images and words. Advancements in bookbinding all the way through to the printing press all come back to that desire to spread ideas, share information, and collect knowledge. Starting in the late nineteenth century, telephones and telegraphs helped us connect over long distances more immediately. The twentieth century saw the development of computers, television, and the internet, leading to the information revolution we have today, where tiny hand-held devices allow us to share ourselves with the world through pictures, words, and video. Even today, we still rely on symbols and images to express ourselves and communicate with the world around us.

  Many of our modern symbols share shape and form with those thirty-two signs Von Petzinger documents. Those signs include the asterisk (six-pointed star shape), cruciforms (cross and X shapes), half-circles, straight lines, dots, chevrons, crosshatches, triangles, finger fluting (lines left by fingers in soft surfaces such as clay and mud), zigzags, spirals, quadrangles (four-sided shapes), handprints, ovals, scalariforms (ladderlike shapes), penniforms (feather shapes), circles, cordiforms (heart shapes), and serpentiforms (snakelike, wavy lines). Von Petzinger explores a wide variety of possibilities for how and why these signs were used: to mark territory, to pass along messages, to tell stories, for ritual and magic, for worship and observance, etc. What is most important to Von Petzinger is not pinpointing the exact interpretations of these signs, but rather recognizing that they are “the product of a fully modern mind, one capable of great abstraction and symbolic thought.”2 What matters is not the meaning of the symbols, but the fact that we humans made them—simultaneously marking our place on the evolutionary ladder.

  Even if we were able to figure out the exact meaning of one collection of symbols from a certain area, it is very likely that the meaning of the signs changed over time and location, varying from group to group. We don’t even have to dig very far back in the historical record to find evidence of these fluctuations. For example, consider the crosshatch shape. I grew up with it being called the pound sign on the touch-tone phone and the number sign in math class. My husband—a musician—would be more inclined to see it as the sharp symbol, denoting a note played a half step higher. Now it’s commonly called a hashtag and is used for tracking social media trends by keywords on the internet. Imagine if I showed a young child the rotary desk phone my grandparents had. They would probably have great difficulty trying to figure it out, wondering how someone could text and tag with that thing!

  Without a codex or complete historical record, it’s hard to know for sure what many of those early symbols meant to our ancestors, as well as how and why they used them as they did. It’s possible that they carved and painted them on everything (themselves, their clothes, buildings), but we only have what’s been left behind over time to go by thanks to the protective environment of caves. Many of the best examples of cave paintings do not occur in areas that also show evidence of regular human habitation. That information suggests that those caves may have been sacred places, which lends credence to the idea that the art may have had spiritual and magical connotations.

  How so, you may ask? The stylized images of those enormous round bison and galloping horses could be aligned with what some anthropologists and art historians call “hunting magic.” Hunting magic falls in the realm of sympathetic magick. This is the idea that like affects like, and that the microcosm can bring change in the macrocosm—influencing the whole through the association with or manipulation of the part. So by painting well-fed prey and depicting a successful hunt, our ancestors may have believed that their metaphysical work would bring their desire to fruition. We could interpret the signs surrounding the animals as weapons, animal and hunter tracks, and simulated woundings. But that explains only a small percentage of cave paintings and carvings, as we can find many paintings of animals without those hunting marks and signs. We also find those same symbols in places without depictions of animals—so hunting magic may not be the actual reason they were made.

  Another possible explanation can be found in David Lewis-Williams’s work on exploring shamanism and cave art. His re
search suggests that there are seven abstract shapes that are manifested through what is called entoptic phenomena. The word entoptic derives from the Greek words for “within” and “vision,” so entoptic phenomena refers to visual effects whose source is within the eye itself and the brain—meaning not caused by outside visual stimuli. Those seven shapes are dots, half-circles, spirals, zigzags, parallel lines, wavy lines, and grids (or crosshatches)—all designs that are also found in cave art across the world. Maybe the cave artists were drawing shapes they were seeing in trance and dream visions. So perhaps that is another kind of esoteric activity, connecting the making of these shapes with trances and shamanic journeys.

  Or maybe there’s another explanation, one connected to identity. In my opinion, one of the most powerful symbols found in cave art is the handprint. The handprints were made in two ways: by pressing the hand against the wall and outlining it with pigment, and by painting the hand liberally with pigment and “printing” it onto the wall. Handprints are often seen in layers on top of each other, in a wide range of sizes—cluing us in that they were made by people of all ages and genders. So not just shamans or artists but everyone may have had a hand in making the symbols. I see handprints as one of the simplest ways to make your own unique mark on the world. It says to everyone, “I exist, I was here.” Even today, this meaning is apparent as we teach our children to fingerpaint and to press their hands into clay so they can see the marks left behind. They are taught the transformable nature of their own bodies when we show them how to change the outline of their own hand into other shapes (such as turkeys!).

  Entoptic Phenomena

  Cave Art Handprints and the Familiar Turkey Hand

  We can also see correlations in other, more modern artistic practices that may hint at what our ancestors were up to. The repetition of symbols and patterns found on walls, tools, jewelry, and figurines and in burial sites—when compared to similar designs found in modern systems—suggests ownership markings, landscape exploration/mapping, tribal identification, personal rank or station indication, talismans and protective powers, decorative purposes, mnemonic devices, and storytelling. So let’s look at some more relatively recent examples of symbol systems we do know the meaning of, and use them to see the threads connecting us to our ancestors and each other.