Liber Azag: The Book of Sigils - part 1

So I figured out I didn't post any new article in a while so I decided to share what is finished so far from the book of sigils I am currently working on. So, sorry, this post is going to be quite long :D

Introduction

Since ancient times there was a belief in the power of symbolism, a belief that a certain image, certain word and certain posture executed in a certain time can cause a certain outcome. Origins of these symbols were usually an inheritance or a complex sets of mathematics and geometry, combined with mysticism. Some of these paradigms of deriving symbols were so complicated that only a person trained within this paradigm the whole life could execute such operation. Then one person came with a completely different perspective, this person was Austin Osman Spare.

Spare had a very non-traditional and fresh opinion regarding symbology, according to him you didn't need a complex calculation and the knowledge of position of all the planets in the Chaldean sequence. According to him all you needed was a desire, this desire was then converted into a symbol to alienate it for the conscious mind, and make it more available for the unconsciousness.

Now we know, that unconsciousness is rather a symbol based than sentence based, a phrase is simply too chaotic for our unconscious selves, it contains words with multiple meanings, some of these can also be easily lost during the process of migration, but a symbol is whole, a symbol says it all, totally, without any losses, without any omitted words, a symbol is a reference link to what we want the most, a symbol is the most honest thing in the universe.

A symbol is also something that keeps invading our minds, symbols are everywhere. When you e.g. hear about McDonald's, a symbol will appear right in front of your mind's eye, this symbol can be the M logo it can also be one of your favorite burgers, or, if you are into "healthy" diet, you will think about fat people and conservants. There is the association between the symbol and meaning, the reference link between the two.

When you make the sigil yourself, through whatever technique you choose, you are not creating only the sigil, but also the reference link between the sigil and your desire. The sigil in itself is not important, it's its connection to the meaning that counts, after all, you don't want to pass a meaningless symbol to your unconsciousness, you want your desire to be fulfilled.

Historically speaking, sigils are nothing new, they existed way before Spare, they just weren't made by meshing letters together. Gematria, planetary tables, rose croix, nine chambers, possession drawings, these all were used just to draw sigils, not even speaking about audial sigils (mantras) or gesturial sigils (mudra), even asanas (body postures) are sigils.

In our every day life we use a lot of symbolism, clothes we wear, our ethnicity, how white teeth we have, how expensive watches we possess, these all we use to create some image, this image is the symbol of us, when someone thinks about us, this is the image he sees, at least when we are lucky. It happens that our self-perception and the perception by others is slightly off, that's normal, if it is off a little bit more, we have a problem, because people give a different definition to ourselves, one we may not be satisfied with. If a company, or a celebrity has an unpleasant image, one that doesn't bring the bright future, this image is changed. A company changes the name, replaces the CEO, puts more money into PR. A celebrity buys new clothes, changes haircut, appears on some show, that's how it's done.

One could say that Spare didn't invent the Sigil Magick. Firstly he himself claimed to be taught by another person, secondly we as a mankind has a tendency to overcomplicate stuff. It is very probable that sigil magick started in its pure form thousands of years ago and new generations then started attaching more requirements to it, like planetary correspondences, elements, deities, ceremonies, we really tend to do that, especially when our effort fails. Many people use this form of thinking: "The recent sigil didn't work, so maybe I did something different from before, maybe one has to be turned into the correct cardinal direction or it's in the day, last successful day was Saturday, maybe it works better on Saturdays". And new successes and new failures attach more and more rules to the mechanics, when the truth might be that you simply used a wrong intention, maybe it doesn't work at all or maybe it does something you haven't intended or you are somehow ignoring the real execution of your spell. This was one advice given to me by Patrick Dunn when I told him I never had much success with money magick. He told me to make a sigil to be more receptive in receiving money. That method worked like a charm and I was thinking about why, does being more receptive to something makes it come true?

Now I think the culprit was hidden somewhere else, my previous spells did work, not as flashy as finding $100 on the street the very next day, but they did work, I was just ignoring the indications, I was simply apathetic to what was happening all around me.

Mechanics of Sigil Magick

It's time to describe the basic procedures of Sigil Magick, first of all, how does Sigil Magick really work? In Magick there are generally these following paradigms as described by Frater U. D.:

1. Energetic paradigm - everything is energy, different frequencies of energy cause different results
2. Information paradigm - everything is information, everything is symbology, by manipulating our own internal symbology we can affect the symbology of the world
3. Psychology paradigm - all the Magick is caused by our psyche, by our unconsciousness.
4. Spirit paradigm - everything is governed by spirits, each action, event or item has its own spirit, we can communicate with them through the use of symbology
5. Meta paradigm - all previous paradigms are sorta true. There is an internal mechanic of Magick we cannot comprehend, but we can use it by either of the previous paradigms.

Now we can speak about the procedure, the most basic one is to state a desire, sigilize, and then either fire and forget, or charge it for a pro longed period of time. For a fire and forget one has to enter the state of gnosis and pass the symbol to the unconscious part of our mind (as the psychology paradigm would explain it). The thing is that during the gnosis our psychic censor is deactivated so we can pass the information directly into our unconsciousness without any filtering. Then we have to forget about our desire else the psychic censor might figure it out after being re-activated and stop the execution.

Dynamic charging means using the sigil for a pro-longed period of time, e.g. for focal meditation. We have already described the fire and forget method as bypassing the psychic censor behind his back. In that case using the dynamic charging is like beating him repeatedly with a stick, till our desire is fulfilled. It is quite obvious that this method won't be as fast as the fire and forget, but internal mechanics are easier, more accessible, and are also useful for a more complex tasks where a couple of factors must fit together to bring our desired change. There is also another difference and that is in the behavior of a sigil itself.

A one time sigil used via fire and forget method is a no-brainer, you wish for a change and the change will more or less manifest. Dynamic charging where you use the same sigil over and over again can bring the sigil to the life, in that case the sigil gets a consciousness on its own, one needed for executing the task, this conscious symbol is then called a servitor.

Servitors can be created through a dynamic charging or methods I will describe later. The conscious creation of the servitor is better as it gives us better control over its intent and also expiration. The expiration is also an important factor, as we want to have the count of our servitors in check. The servitor is usually programmed to expire till a certain date or till his task is completed. Sometimes we also need servitors with no expiration date, but more about that later.

We have already spoken about internal mechanics of Sigil Magick, but what about its uses? What are sigils good for? Well, you can use sigils to get a raise, to win the heart of your chosen partner, to improve your memory, learn things faster, get rid of your habits, heal faster, get rid of bad dreams, bless your family or friends or even add few rare pieces to your vase collection. Sigil Magick is good for anything as long as there is any chance for it happening, as an example, you won't become an US president when you were born outside the United States or you will never look into the space unless you are in a good position to be an astronaut.

You can also use sigils for vague stuff like happiness, luck, feeling of unity or inner peace, but keep in mind that vague desires have vague results and result is everything that Sigil Magick is about. In Sigil Magick it is a good idea to keep your work in the journal together with the records of your results, your successes and failures will help you to figure out your personal system of working with sigils, just remember, don't overcomplicate it like our ancestors did.

Specifying the desire

Before we do anything in Magick, we have to set what our ideal goal should be. For that matter it is good to ask yourself questions like "What do I want to change about my life?" or "What do I want to experience?". Once you got some basic idea, close your eyes, relax and imagine yourself in the situation when you already got what you wanted. Think whether this outcome is really what you want, think about what could go wrong or right in that situation, if you find a possible problem with that, modify the situation a little bit and repeat. Do so till you find the desire with a perfect outcome, one that you are completely satisfied with.

Once the desire is specified and we are completely ok with it, it is time to formulate the desire statement. Austing Osman Spare used an example of THIS MY WILL TO OBTAIN STRENGTH OF THE TIGER. Spare generally believed that using some immutable part of the sentence like THIS MY WILL TO helps to get accomodated to the process and bring better, faster and more accurate results. You can off course follow his example and build the desire statement his way, but first let me tell you what I personally find ineffective on that method and why.

First of all, that method uses an immutable part of the sentence, more and more sigils you make, more unique your approach will be, unfortunately you will also develop a design which will appear in all your sigils because of this part, so your sigils will be less unique and your unconsciousness will have more troubles distinguishing between them. Secondly this method defines a desire, not truth. Saying this my will is similar to I wish, wishing something doesn't mean will become true.

I personally prefer the concept that Bardon introduces in IIH regarding affirmation. An affirmation should be in present tense and formulated as if the desire was already fulfilled, like it was always true, so e.g. instead of "I will quit smoking" or "This my will to quit smoking" it should be "I don't smoke". Many people also prefer the V-Prime model, where words like "to be" are omitted, so instead of "storm is gone" you simply write "storm gone", this simplifies the sigilzation process too, as there are less letters to work with.

You might also ask why is it important to write the desire in present tense. If you specify the desire for the future, your unconsciousness will have time to intervene with the result, the psychic censor will naturally try to stop the work. But, as Bardon states in IIH, if you make your unconsciousness to lose the sence of time and space, it will have no way of stopping your desire.

Sigilize your intent

Now it's time to sigilize our desire to alienate it from our conscious mind and let it slip past the psychic censor to our unconsciousness. There are many sigilization methods but let's speak about the most traditional one for now, meshing the letters together to create an image. Many people start this process by crossing out repeating letters first, so each letter is present only once in the desire statement, but you can omit this process, simply don't draw each letter more than once and frankly, if you find any letter in the sigil that you still didn't draw consciously, you can omit it too, as it is already present.

Let's use some example now, e.g.

STORM GONE

First we ca draw a circle, representing O.

Then if we draw short line inside, touching the border of the circle, we will get both T and G.

We can then turn this short line into a lightning, giving us both N and S.

All that is missing now are letters E, R and M. M can be drawn as E, which helps us to kill two flies with one hit.

Now all we need to do is to add R to the sigil and our work is nearly done.

Now we can continue in our artistic work, adding new shapes to the sigil. Triangles, crosses, petals, pentagrams, planetary symbology, anything we feel appropriate for fulfilling our desire and alienating it further from our consciousness.

We can of course make the sigil in different sequence, directly from the desire, starting with S and ending with E, this method then creates more open ends which can be decorated with occult symbology.

There is no right or wrong way of how the sigil should look like, the only key aspect is to do what works for you, as the time passes, you will create your own personalized design which will work the best for you, everything is in practice, so don't be scared to try new things, through failure we can learn what is the best approach for us.

Pictorial method

Another method used for the sigilization is the pictorial method. You simply draw a sigil based on the stated desire and then you derive a sigil from it. This method is commonly used for healing of another person, you draw a person, usually with initials of the person you want to heal and you draw a needle aiming at the part that should be healed. After the drawing part is done, you then continue simplifying and reshaping the picture till you get the sigil.

Another type of pictorial sigilization is automatic drawing, also heavily advocated by Spare. For this method you need a quiet space where you can relax. Meditate for a moment to calm your mind, then place your hand with a pen on a piece of paper, close your eyes and think about your desire, let your hand to move automatically, drawing on the paper.

Once you fel you are done (or after some time you have specified) put your pen aside and look carefully at the drawn picture. You should notice some part that feels like being associated to your desire, extract it from the drawing and decorate it as needed, e.g. add planetary symbology and close it within a circle. Once again I suggest that there is no right or wrong design of the sigil, this can't be stressed enough.

Mantra method

Another method is the mantra method. In this case you don't create a picture, but rather a sequence of sounds that you repeat again and again during the meditation (like a Sanskrit mantra). Let's use the storm example again:

STORM GONE

One way of creating the mantra is to write the words backwards, adding or removing letters to make it more readable:

MEROTIS NOG

This mantra is a bit hard for chanting, so let's modify it a bit more:

MEROTIZ NOGEY

This one is better for chanting.

Another method is to write are desire phonetically, which won't work in this case as the difference between STORM and its phonetic version is zero to none. But what we can do is to get rid of all AEIOU's and mesh the rest together:

STRMGN

Now we can add additional letters for the readability:

SETORIMAGANA

and split the mantra in separate words for readability:

SE TORI MAGANA

So, we have described two separate ways of sigil mantra creation which gave us two separate versions of the mantra, MEROTIZ NOGEY and SE TORI MAGANA, whether we like method A or method B, let's see how the mantra can be used, for that purpose I choose SE TORI MAGANA as that is my personal favorite in this case.

1. Sit comfortably in a dim lit room and close your eyes.
2. One by one, stretch all your muscles for the time of 5 seconds and then relax them
3. Feel the heat slowly filling your body, your body becomes hotter and hotter.
4. Feel how your body becomes heavier and heavier with each exhale.
5. Turn your eyes up to look at the place between your eye brows, keep them this way for the rest of this exercise.
6. Your breathing should be deep and calm, but still natural. Observe your breathing till you start hearing the buzzing sound. That's called Nada, it's a sign that you have entered the lower form of trance.
7. Now comes the tricky part, vibrating your mantra. Let's use our SE TORI MAGANA example here. Your mind should be one syllable before your tongue, so when in the head you say SE, you're silent, when your mind is at TO you start vibrating SE, when your mind is at RI you start vibrating TO, etc.
8. Repeat step 7 for a couple of minutes or stop when the time seems right.

If the purpose of the mantra is to bring in a certain vision or an experience in a dream state, you can repeat the mantra silently in your mind till you fall asleep, this is also useful for mantras that should help you to break bad habits. You can also turn your mantra into a word of power and focus on it during orgasm.

To turn a mantra into a word of power, you ca simply take the first syllables of the mantra words and join them together. So in case of SE TORI MAGANA it would be SETOMA, you can of course use any method of word of power creation you want, just turn the whole mantra into one word.

The mantra and a word of power can be also used for the creation of the servitor, where the word of power would be the servitor's name and the sigil mantra would be his activation formula, but more about that in the chapter about servitors.