I don’t engage much in Sigil Magic anymore – and for those of you just beginning to read this blog or who have only ever heard me say the word “magic,” I don’t use “magick” because I think it’s unnecessary and stupid and reminds me of fat gay Wiccans who think they’re special – but I do still care very deeply about symbols and their use in manifestation, healing, and opening doors to storerooms of specialized types of energy. (Yeah, sounds like magic, I guess…)
A Spirit Brother recently wrote me a few times asking me about the use of sigils. Here is my response to one of those e-mails:
“Hey there. I think you wrote another email after this, but I’ll respond to this one first. Yes, I would say there are more and less effective ways to charge sigils. But it’s my belief that it depends more on what you ask for rather than how you ask for it. (But of course both are significant.) I used to ask for “high” spiritual things, like “fully open my crown chakra” and “I reach enlightenment” and that kind of thing. How the hell do you gauge whether or not that’s working? It’s certainly not going to come instantly…
Have you read Liber Kaos? The author goes into an interesting scientific explanation of how magic works. It’s sort of like reading a physics manual, at least in the beginning. You might find that illuminating.
I’m kind of old-school though and I don’t really care HOW it works as long as it works. In my studies, I found that the ancient Chinese Daoist magicians used pretty much the same type of techniques that we do. They would have a wand or a brush and slowly trace or draw their symbols on pieces of paper while imagining them to be hot with glowing red Qi (or some other powerful energy.) I know chaos magicians don’t like to visualize much, but it’s really your strength of intent, your unwavering focus and belief that as you are drawing it, YES, you are imbuing this symbol with incredibly powerful energy, and that in a sense the sigil/symbol/your intent is becoming alive. Then afterward, you don’t even have to sit yourself down in a ritualized fashion to keep giving it more energy. Just focus, breathe slowly with your movements, and imagine Qi flowing to your symbol as you trace it slowly with your finger.
Then depending on the type of ritual and whether or not you want to continue building energy around this sigil for a long time, you can burn it as a way of firing it into the universe. This also suggests – and therefore should be taken with the attitude that – you are completely letting go of this desire, so as to allow it to come back to you.
That feeling in your chest [he described a vibration in his chest area sometimes while focusing on his sigils] is your heart chakra doing what it does best: manifesting. And props on using the feeling of elation to charge sigils as well. In my experience, positive feelings work much better than negatives ones, although that’s debatable. If you can learn to smile and make your heart chakra respond – this is natural but most people can’t feel it at first; smiling opens the crown chakra and allows more spiritual energy to flow downward – then you can allow that energy to build and use it charge your sigil.
What I try to do – although I don’t use symbols when I do it – is smile and become filled with joy at the fact that my desire has ALREADY manifested. I think of how happy it’s ALREADY making me, how it’s exactly what I wanted, no hangups, no regrets. If there is any doubt in your mind as to whether you SHOULD be manifesting for this desire, stop and reevaluate why you want it in the first place, whether you can phrase the desire better, etc. I have the ability to allow a great deal of Shen – high spiritual energy – to flow through me at any time. I use this to fire desires now, and things seem to just flow into my life naturally.
Sexual energy is also very powerful, but it works more slowly. Incidentally, you can learn to use your sexual energy in magical work WITHOUT achieving orgasm. Orgasm is used by most chaos magicians because it’s a quick sure-fire method. But the point is to become rapt in the object, the sigil, and to merge with it, and then to find some method of firing, i.e., orgasm, burning the sigil, hyperventilating and passing out, etc. I think since orgasm naturally follows the activities that produce greater amounts of sexual energy, it’s the obvious choice.”