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Weird Experience With Sigil Magic

TheOriginalCujo

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 27, 2001
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For the last few months I've been trying out Sigil magic as suggested by the Comic writer Grant Morrison on an eppisode of Disinfonation. I tried to keep an open mind on it as befits a good little Fortean but I gave it my best shot.

I expected that some of it would work (perhaps because the Sigil would focus my mind) and that some of it wouldn't (because it was outwith my direct control). However as of today my Sigils have a 100% success rate and it is freaking me out.

I really wasn't expecting this degree of success this quickly.

Do any of you have any similar experiences? Do any of you have any suggestions as to what I should try next? Any witches out there with advice for someone considering a path in witchcraft?

Cujo
(nbot that I count a 100% success rate as proof, you understand:D )
 
I count 100% as fairly good.

But before going overboard, Cujo, I'd need to know a little more.

Like what did you aim for and what did you get?

Sorry I'm nosey that way. ;)
 
James Whitehead said:
I count 100% as fairly good.

But before going overboard, Cujo, I'd need to know a little more.

Like what did you aim for and what did you get?

Sorry I'm nosey that way. ;)

You know, you sound exactly like I usually do.:rolleyes:

Ok at the begining of this year my circumstances were like this:

I was morbidly obease with no hope of change short of surgery.
I lived in a tiny, untidy dump of a bedsit in an unplesant area.
I had no job and no prospect of a job.
I was suffering from Chronic Fatiuge Syndrome (M.E.)
I was living on Income Support and Incapacity Benefit but I wasn't getting Disability Living Allowance (DLA) although I did qualify for it.

On January 4th I went to an appointment at the local Nutrician Clinic. I was terrified they would turn me down for surgery and send me away to die(ok I was being a tad over-dramatic). Much to my surprise I was told that the reason for my weight problem was that my brain doesn't produce any appitie suppressing hormones. In orther words I was always hungry. They told me that I would have to go on a special diet which would make my brain produce these hormones and cause me to loose weight and also help my ME.

This had nothing to do with any Sigil since I didn't even know abou them then but it gave me the hope that made me try them out.

The special diet seemed horrific at first I had to give up pretty much everything I actually like eating and beer and Tequila. I found it very hard. Particularly since ME makes it very hard to be organised. Then I saw the Grant Morrison on the TV talking about this really simple way to do magic which he swore actually worked so I thought 'Why not?'

The first 3 sigils I did were to cause me to stick to the diet and loose wieght, move to a new flat, and get DLA. Later on I decided I wanted a job and more money. so I did two more sigils. 5 months ago I moved to a new flat which I like very much. 3 months ago I got a job, much to my own surprise. After a month on that job I decided I didn't like it very much and it didn't pay enough so I did another sigil for a better job. Last week I was offered a huge raise and a loyalty bonus and suddenly my old job is a better job.

Today I had my DLA tribunal. I was origonally turned down for DLA, I appealed and it went to a tribunal to decide if I should get the benefit (you can work part time and still get both Incapacity Benefit and DLA) I wasn't expecting to get anything as my health has improved since I put in the application and the Benefits Agency Doctor who examined me put in an incredibly predjudiced repport (basicly she said I was fat and lazy and that was all that was wrong with me). The tribunal came up with an almost instant decision without even questoning me. They awarded me the botom level of DLA, backdated to the begining of last September (when I put in the claim). The award doesn't have to be reviewd for another 2 years (which is almost unheard of in cases of ME). In their written judgement they even stated that they preffered the evedence of my own doctor over the Benefits Agency doctor where they conflicted (which is absolutely unheard of).

Oh BTW I have stuck to the diet and so far I've lost 6 stone in 8 months and as promised my ME is a lot better.

Stuff this good just doesn't happen to me. The diet and the change of flat can be explained since that was a direct product of my own endevours. All the sigil did was focus my efforts but the other stuff is outside my direct control.

Cujo
(still in shock)
 
How long have you had M.E. for? I ask as I have it myself.

lucydru
 
Curious

Sorry to butt in - but could you point me in the right direction to get more info. on Sigil Magic. I know nothing about it and it sounds very interesting.

Many thanks and I hope everything carries on improving for you as it has in the past....................
 
Do any of you have any suggestions as to what I should try n

Big hard reality check!

Not because I don't believe your story, or because I doubt that Magick can sometimes be effective. (Although if its so good, how come technology beats it every time in a fight?) But because Magick can be dangerous.

Not because you'll get beset by demons, or end up in hell, but because it can lead to serious psychological problems. If you've had a massive success with Magick, particularly if it seems to have ended what was obviously a terrible period in your life, its really easy to become obsessed with it.

Any honest Magickal practioner will tell you that 'beginners luck' is very common. Suddenly a whole new world appears in front of you, full of apparent possibilities.

Trouble is, for most of the time, its easier to use conventional routes to your goals than magickal ones. Or, when you think your using magick, you're actually using subconscious abilities which, while poorly understood, don't involve violating natural laws.

Either way, its quite common to find that like a junkie, you need more and more to get the same effect. You start to become detached from consensus reality and see signs and wonders everywhere. Then you start to worry about 'psychic attack', or reckoning that you've created a daemon that infests the car park at work, or some equally fruitbat notion.

Finally, you're in a condition pretty indistinguishable from schizophrenia - just like all those way cool shamans in the books!

OK thats a rushed and dramatised argument, but it is based on a lot of years on the fringes of occultism. I'm not saying that Magick is a BAD THING, just that, like psychedelic drugs, sex, and electricity, it can really screw you up if you don't know your. and its limitations...........

Here endeth the lesson...........
 
lucydru said:
How long have you had M.E. for? I ask as I have it myself.

lucydru

About 8 years I think. You might want to see if you can get any information about the diet I'm on. It's officially called the Protein Sparing Modified Fast. The version I'm on would be a bad idea for anyone without an extreme weight problem but there may be a version you could try.

Cujo
 
Wintermute - I absolutely agree with everything you've said. I don't think magic works on it's own. I'm with Granny Wetherwax (a creation of Terry Pratchet, go read his books they're very good) - you can't help people with magic but you can help them with skin, with yourself, with care and effort.

Actually one of the strangest things about this experience is how I feel about magic now. Causing pysical changes in the material world somehow seems too unimportant since the material world is imperminant and I'm goind to die eventually and I can't take it with me. What I wan't to do now is to work on the inner me, to find inner ballence. I don't know if you can do that with magic.

Cujo
 
Re: Curious

Bilderberger said:
Sorry to butt in - but could you point me in the right direction to get more info. on Sigil Magic. I know nothing about it and it sounds very interesting.

Many thanks and I hope everything carries on improving for you as it has in the past....................

Well the version I've been trying comes mostly from Grant Morrison. I don't know where he got it from. There was someting similar in an article in FT about Austin Osman Spare. If you want details of the version I've been trying e-mail me and I'll try and explain it.

Cujo
 
By the sounds of it, your unusual good run of luck, Cujo,
has led back into the world rather than out of it, so I
don't see much sign of damage. May it continue!

Now how do I make a sigil to turn all these red numbers
into black ones in my bank account? :)
 
Sigil

Well the version I've been trying comes mostly from Grant Morrison. I don't know where he got it from. There was someting similar in an article in FT about Austin Osman Spare. If you want details of the version I've been trying e-mail me and I'll try and explain it.

Oh yes, I remember the article you mean - no longer have that copy of FT so I'll mail you for more details.

Many thanks.
 
A question!

What's a sigil? And where can I find info about it?

Thanx!
 
The practice of using monograms to magical ends is as old as letters - the Norsemen used 'bind runes', while the cabbalists made monograms from alphabets drawn from the Aiq-Beker square (see Agrippa's third book of Occult Philosophy).

Most modern authorities cite Austin Osman Spare as the pioneer of modern 'sigil magic', certainly he was the one who made sigils dynamic - the idea that they can be that a seed intent can be put into action instantaneously by "implanting" them into the operator's psyche. This is as opposed to using them as part of long winded astrologically timed rites and superstitious invocations to spirits.

Self-styled Chaos-magician Phil Hine has some introductory texts, such as Oven Ready Chaos, in PDF on his website a5e (try searching for a5e of "5th aeon egregor") which are worth checking out.

DSSh
 
Re: Do any of you have any suggestions as to what I should t

wintermute said:
Finally, you're in a condition pretty indistinguishable from schizophrenia - just like all those way cool shamans in the books!

The Point of Shamanism is often that the Shaman has the ability to move between madness and sanity at will.. ie when it is useful. I remember a story - though I forget where from - about a tribe telling how their mad people ran wild in the forest shouting at invisible spirits. When it was pointed out that their shamans did the same they said yes - " but only when they need too!".
 
On the(e) Nature & Use of Sigils

Most sigil technique seems to involve the construction of a 'monogram' from written text. By removing letters till the bare minimum remain (think texting), then re-arranging/layering those left, a design is created which the Magickian then 'charges' in order to have it work its (alleged) effects.

Its always struck me that all the faffing with letters etc is a sidetrack. Surely what you need to construct is a glyph i.e. an image that although simple carries a complex meaning - kinda like this - :) ! Think of logos/political symbols and you get the idea. In the odd bits of sigil Magic(k) I've attempted I've found this much more effective, possibly because the unconscious 'prefers' visual images to text.

Put another way - I reckon that if you wanted re-housing you'd do better with a kid-type drawing of a house, than playing around with the text 'I need a new house'.
 
Update

Since begining this thread I've done 3 more sigils. One for myself and 2 for one of my brothers. All three of these have worked out

Has anyone else been inspired to try sigil magic?

Cujo
 
Wintermute:
"Put another way - I reckon that if you wanted re-housing you'd do better with a kid-type drawing of a house, than playing around with the text 'I need a new house'."

The reason you play about with text is to create a glyph which has no conscious meaning and integrate it into you unconscious mind. A drawing of a house would be way to loaded with meaning - leading to "lust for results" syndrome, which is why lot of people fail with this kind of magic (according to the theory, at least!)

Of course, a picture of a house would be fine to be incorporated into a talisman or as a work of imitative/image magic.

Best,
D.S.Sh
 
Sigil Magic

Thanks to Cujo for starting this thread. ME seems to be rife amongst the writers here, and you'll have to count me in ,too, I'm afraid, having had it for over ten years now.
WELL - just thought you'd all like to know that I've just successfully blasted a noisy neighbour with a sigil to prevent him causing any more disturbance at 4am. It worked like a dream; precisely as I sent it, the dreadful music stopped and his flat has exuded only a deadly silence ever since (he is OK, though, I've seen him). I'm honestly NOT a miserable sod, it's just that his actions had become intolerable. I used the letter-editing technique mentioned earlier, employed by Austin Spare and have no theory as to how or why it works, except perhaps that the sigil acts as a repository for the energy willed into it which is then discharged appropriately. The right frame of mind in which to do this is impossible to describe or teach - I've had 20 years practice and only use it as a last resort, and then it flies like s**t off a shovel! All the best, FrancesFelixe. P.S. I'm designing one now to get a new boyfriend. . . ;)
 
Thanks for reawakening this long-slumbering thread, Frances.

As hoped for at the time, the red figures on
my account have indeed turned into black ones.

Wish I could say it was Sigil Magic.

'Twas six bloody awful months of teaching the sprogs from Hell!

Now then . . .

Sigil, Sigil on the Wall
Double my income by the Fall!

It doesn't work with Autumn
Which only rhymes with Post-mortem. :(
 
Aha

But the most powerful sigil magick is done when you forget what the sigil is for...

I read once somewhere that it is an idea to construct a whole pile of sigils, then leave them lying around until you've forgotten what each was for, exactly, then charge them up all at once. Spare was certainly a very strong proponent of sigil magick, and his biographer (sorry, can't remember the name off hand) reports a time when he asked him if he could make it rain. Spare promptly drew some sort of sigil on a piece of paper, frowned at it, then screwed it up and that was that. A short time later it started raining (allegedly).

I like the way Steve Wilson puts it - "It didn't not work".

Sam
 
Magic of all kinds is "Desire-Visualisation-Release" all that Sigil Magic does is take the mental act of visualisation and turn it into an artistic act.

Let me explain.

Desire is deciding what you want to happen.
Visualisation is imagining it happening.
Release is willing it to happen.

With Sigil Magic changes Visualisation into the act of drawing the Sigil and Release with the Sigil's Empowerment.

Personally most of the Magic I do utilises thought-forms and mental images which are effective for me as, a particularly reliable Lucid Dreamer, I do most of my workings either in a REM state or in a light hypnogenic trance.

Niles "Dreaming My Life Away" Calder
 
just wanted to say thanx, for the people who have posted some links on this subject..

i only just read the thread yesterday but i think sigil magic could be something that i will be good at...

i like things that lets me be creative, its one thing i seem to be quite good at lol..

ive found a few other sites on the subject too, if i can find the links again i'll post them here if anyones interested in them
 
Well. This is a really interesting thread.

I'd just like to add that, perhaps, any kind of successful magics, (action at a distance through the excercise of will), might alter our relationship to, and perception of, `reality.'

Imagine standing at right angles to the world. Put your shoulder to it and, push. Don't forget it's travelling at about 20,000km an hour!
 
Hmmm... can't remember, but I think I've tried sigils before... I've certainly known about them since my mid teens.

My two Pesetas on Magick...

Magick is an odd thing for me... a phrase I use quite often to people who are panicking about stuff is "trust life". I don't believe that life is against anyone, but you got to surf it and learn to keep your balance. I think stuff like sigils work in helping you to concentrate on life and respond to it in a way that a person thrashing in a pond doesn't (and promptly drowns). Whatever life does, it takes you forward through time, and resistance to the things it throws you stops you moving forward, like walking backwards on an escalator - if it's the escalator you fear, how are you going to ever get off it?

That's starting to stop making sense :)

I've seen people do small scale magick, from this kinda thing to the Ouija kinda thing, and too many get wrapped up in the "paranormal" aspect of it... for me it's all about the person doing it and their own focus. Maybe you can achieve the "impossible" with the right mindset. It's not about conjuring any power from anywhere else, but about pinpointing yourself in existence so u can go about navigating it...

Keep yer head clear and spook free and that can only be good, but one thing I'd say - if it scares you, then don't do it...
 
Re: Aha

Ravenbait said:
But the most powerful sigil magick is done when you forget what the sigil is for...

That's true - the trick to making it 'work' is to let the sigil sink into the unconcious so much that it cannot be conciously recalled. A sort of active forgetfulness ;)
 
This does sound very interesting - if you have anymore information on the various types/systems I would be grateful to hear of it - especially from cujo as he/she seems very confident in the path being used. My email is [edited by the Moderators; The Private Message system is best used for this purpose to save all and sundry from spamage]
 
They come out a night, mostly

This is a very intriguing thread,..is there anything in DOOM PATROL which refers to this ? Or am I just a fan-boy.
 
Re: Do any of you have any suggestions as to what I should t

wintermute said:
You start to become detached from consensus reality and see signs and wonders everywhere.

There is a middle ground. I think the key here is a strong sense of self, so that you remain grounded no matter how in touch with the inexplicable you become. A person with a strong sense of self, who is at cause in the world, not at effect, can be in touch with the wonders of the world, see the signs that relate to themselves, even be a channel for knowledge and signs for others (e.g. having dreams that are messages or warnings for friends or family members), and not go off the deep end.

Consensus reality is a tricky proposition in and of itsself; it can seduce you into the idea that everything has a physical world effect, there are no mysteries, ghosts, magic, etc are all delusions, and life ends at physical body death. Depends on who you are cleaving to for the consensus. There are degrees of consensus reality, wherein you agree with the common belief of your society (society being as small as your group of friends or as large as 'the western world' as opposed to 'eastern world') but on some issues you "go your own way". Is that sanity? Well, again, that depends on who you listen to. Some of the residents of mental institutions have been "sane" save for ONE belief that put them outside the consensus reality of the society in which they were members. That can be all it takes. Depends on what that one belief is.

Staying grounded with a strong self image (not in the sense of "I like myself" but rather "this is who I am"), keeping in touch with the core society you identify with...those are the keynotes. And recognize that we do live in a physical world, so going far afield from it very quickly can be the thing wintermute warns of. Choosing to live more and more a life of the mind, and according to things defined as illogical, unreal or impossible...you can indeed lose your grip on this world. But it's not that those other things don't exist. It's that you have to know how much you want to immerse yourself in those things and how much you want to exist in this physical world.

If you have not thought about these things, then like wintermute I caution you.
 
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