Calling all Sigil Users

I could really use some advice here …

The meat and potatoes of Sigil magic , is the charging of the Sigil….

Letting it slip into your unconscious mind …absorbing the sigil , firing the sigil , reaching a state of Gnosis , call it whatever you like…

For all this essentially the key to getting a sigil to work , its also incredibly obscure and unclear .

It’s a bit like asking how long a piece of string is ?

It’s a trick question , but for all it’s a trick question , it actually has an answer , how long is a piece of string ? Exactly as long as you want it to be …..

People use all manner of different methods , some kinky and some downright strange , what I’m looking for is a simple down to earth method of charging a sigil that doesn’t require me past out on the floor or running to the toilet …

I’d use the death posture but I simply cant , for a start I have extensive nerve damage in both feet , so its almost impossible for me to stand on my tiptoes for any length of time , so I have to ask , does anybody know of any reliable methods for this ? <!-- s:wtf: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wtf.gif" alt=":wtf:" title="wtf?" /><!-- s:wtf: -->

See if this helps?

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I hope it does.
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as "alternative" methods, i usually draw my sigils on a piece of paper and stick it to the bottom of my computer screen for a day or two. i won't look at it consciously that way, but it's always there. if you're using the vista sidebar, there's a slide show where you could integrate the sigil.

also, making a sound sigil (e.g. a mantra) helps me a lot.

the most important part is forgetting about its meaning, not how you charge it.

JDRage Wrote:People use all manner of different methods , some kinky and some downright strange , what I’m looking for is a simple down to earth method of charging a sigil that doesn’t require me past out on the floor or running to the toilet …

I’d use the death posture but I simply cant , for a start I have extensive nerve damage in both feet , so its almost impossible for me to stand on my tiptoes for any length of time , so I have to ask , does anybody know of any reliable methods for this ? <!-- s:wtf: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wtf.gif" alt=":wtf:" title="wtf?" /><!-- s:wtf: -->

Okay, I've seen this maybe twice/thrice, and the other person couldn't answer...where are you getting that description of the Death Posture from. That's not what Spare (the man who invented the Western practice of Sigil magick as we understand it) had for the death posture, but I've seen other people saying something about that, but none had a source.

Anyways the Death Posture is my favourite way for charging a Sigil, so I'll explain the proper way. First off, put the Sigil somewhere you can see it without straining while lying down. I put it on my ceiling, over where my head rests when I lay down. Lay down, close your eyes, and hold your breath. This is the hard part to describe. Put your hands on your face, so that your thumbs can (and do) reach down and plug your ears. Your pointer fingers cover your closed eyes (not actually holding them closed, but symbolically blocking them off). Your middle fingers push in on the side of your nose and block of that root. Your ring and little fingers rest on the top and bottom lips respectively, to symbolically close your mouth. (Try doing that now, so you get what I mean).

Now, stay like that as long as you can...then stay longer, until it gets really hard to hold your breath then...hold it longer, until it hurts...then keep holding it...until you can't stand it...then a little longer...then finally, when you're at the limit of your body and consciousness, pull your hands away, breath in, and look at your sigil, just stare for a moment as your mind/body recovers, then look away and start laughing (really easy to start laughing if you've held your breath for a while).

Now, for me to slip into lecture mode (as my Sigil workshop is my most requested workshop...but I think that's just because it's more accessible than my fun ones). Sigils are charged (in Spare's methodology, in an Energy Model it's different), at four times of censor paralysis; Death, Fear, Sex, and Exhaustion. At these points, the censor is so preoccupied that Sigils can pass into your mind. Death, I explained the Death Posture, and that's the best Death method really. Fear, just that, at a moment of extreme panic, the censor ignores sigils. I know someone who (crazy as it sounds) would draw a sigil on paper, put it facing out there window, then lean out of their window (6-7th floor in an apartment) until fear/panic gripped them, then they'd look at the sigil and come in to safety. Sex, at the moment of orgasm, there is a brief voidmind moment, sigils slip in well then. You can do this alone, or with a partner, but put the sigil somewhere you can see it easily at the moment of orgasm. If you're having sex, put a bunch of them everywhere, because if you're doing it right (the sex I mean) you'll never know which way you'll be facing when you orgasm. Look at it as you orgasm, then resume your activities. Exhaustion, some magicians prefer sleep dep. Personally I'm a clubber, so I much prefer dancing myself into trance states. I generally have sigils painted on my hands/arms in henna or dragon's blood ink, and I dance all night, until a point when I literally reach a collapse point (not "I feel tired", but world and body are collapsing), and at that moment I stare at the sigil(s) and go take a seat, before I wander for water.

Another method of getting past the censor is what kahoku already touched on...simply over-exposure...seeing the sigil so much that you forget it. I use Crayola Window writers, and will occasionally draw sigils on my mirror, because I'll see them when I brush my hair (and I have nice hair, so I brush it alot) but don't really notice them, they slip in.

I agree (in most cases), as well, that the part most people really should focus on, is forgetting the sigil. It is the repressed nature of the sigil, that gives it the power (in the Spare/Psychological model). I find if you get a good blast, a clear transmission past the censor, forgetting becomes fairly easy.

If you're having trouble forgetting, my general advice, which works for general sigils, if there is something really important, that you need soon, it won't work, but for general or training wants, it works great. Make 5-6 sigils for 5-6 different things at once, and put them all in a drawer/envelope/out of site. Go back in a week, and pick out one, and use it. If you make them all close together, and then drop them, often you'll forget which is which, or even what some of the sigil goals were. Getting used to this just seems to help the forgetting/repression process.

I like E. A. Koetting's style of charging sigils (go try to google it, I aint sure if I can just copy paste from his books, but I doubt it).

Stupid question from a total n00b here. I've been interested in Sigils for a while, but never really gotten around to studying them. So please forgive the basic question:

Why do you have to forget what they mean?

Kizzy Wrote:Stupid question from a total n00b here. I've been interested in Sigils for a while, but never really gotten around to studying them. So please forgive the basic question:

Why do you have to forget what they mean?

This is why modern (last twenty years) sigils piss me off. Not because of questions like yours Kizzy, but the fact that the theory behind them is lost. I haven't seen sigils properly explained in anything published since the 70s.

I'll keep it short, and simple. The theory is based on psychological repression, now you can argue against a literal understanding of this, but really, it's magick, accept it as a model. Repressed images and patterns manifest in people's lives, horrible stereotypical example, someone abused as a child easily ends up in abusive relationships. Anyways, the Charge and Forget process is really a method of forced psychological repression. You repress a sigil, so that what it represents becomes manifested externally.

i've seen a lot of explanations to it, don't know which is the "original" or "right" one. it seems that they all agree that, after the actual spell is cast, you should forget about it because it's the subconscious that has to work from there on and you'd only hinder that process.

kahoku Wrote:i've seen a lot of explanations to it, don't know which is the "original" or "right" one. it seems that they all agree that, after the actual spell is cast, you should forget about it because it's the subconscious that has to work from there on and you'd only hinder that process.

As Spare invented the Sigil in how we are discussing it now, his would be the original, and right one. Others are derivations at best, and degenerations at worst.

Gesigewigus Wrote:

Kizzy Wrote:Stupid question from a total n00b here. I've been interested in Sigils for a while, but never really gotten around to studying them. So please forgive the basic question:

Why do you have to forget what they mean?

This is why modern (last twenty years) sigils piss me off. Not because of questions like yours Kizzy, but the fact that the theory behind them is lost. I haven't seen sigils properly explained in anything published since the 70s.

I'll keep it short, and simple. The theory is based on psychological repression, now you can argue against a literal understanding of this, but really, it's magick, accept it as a model. Repressed images and patterns manifest in people's lives, horrible stereotypical example, someone abused as a child easily ends up in abusive relationships. Anyways, the Charge and Forget process is really a method of forced psychological repression. You repress a sigil, so that what it represents becomes manifested externally.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. Thank you! <3