A Chaote's Sigil Magick
By Belaluna
When discussing sigils, sigil creation and sigil magick, one first needs to make sure everyone is on the same page as to what magickal practice one is using to perform sigil magick. See, sigils actually exist in several different magickal practices. In Daemonology, sigils represent the individual daemon you are working with. There are pre-designed sigils – some of which are literally hundreds of years old – or there are sigils that the magician can design. Some schools of thought of daemonology believe that when you create your own sigil for a particular daemon that it is taken as a complement by that daemon as it is more personal. These types of sigils can be somewhat ornate, but not all of them.
CabronDeOz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Then there are sigils that are used in ceremonial magick or other high magick practices. Like Daemonology, some of these sigils have existed for several hundred years while others are created by the magician. These sigils can represent a single purpose, a full intent, an entity or can be used to bind an entity to do the magician’s bidding. Most of the beautiful elaborate sigils that come to mind are most likely from ceremonial magick practices.
xxovercastxx, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Then there are the sigils of Chaos Magick. This sigil is designed based on one’s intent or goal which is then obscured. It is the sigil of Chaos Magick that I’ll be discussing more in depth.
Rune370, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Other magickal practices also incorporate the use of sigils; however, the one thing that these different practices all have in common is crucial and often one of the most overlooked part of sigil magick. This is the CHARGING and ACTIVATING of the sigil.
Chaos Magick Overview
First, let’s have a quick overview of Chaos Magick. In a nutshell, Chaos Magick is about results using whatever means and pulling from whatever magickal practice to achieve those results. You’ve all heard of eclecticism. Take eclecticism and give it a gallon of coffee, and voila – Chaos Magick. Where eclectic practitioners pull from different practices and techniques to form their own established practice, Chaotes pull from different practices and techniques in order to achieve a particular result, discards those methods and then starts the whole process all over again of exploring, mixing and matching for the next magickal working. Rule #1 of Chaos Magick – THERE ARE NO RULES. There is a saying that many Chaos Magicians know well:
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
In other words, dogma of any kind doesn’t exist for the Chaote. Morals don’t exist. Only belief and results are what really matters and the Chaote does what he or she needs to do to achieve the results desired.
For the Chaote, the key to manifesting and achieving results for us is to tap into and influence the subconscious where we are no longer bound by the constraints of conscious existence. The subconscious is where the Chaote feels that the magickal mind thrives. Tapping into and influencing the subconscious is referred to as achieving gnosis. There are several different techniques we uses to achieve gnosis. This could easily be a whole other blog in and of itself so I will simply summarize. These techniques are considered to be either “inhibitory gnosis” or “excitatory gnosis”.
Inhibitory techniques are achieved through meditation in order to reduce sensory stimulus. It’s a state of absolutely no thought and no awareness of the world around you. Although extremely effective, using this method requires much practice and discipline.
Excitatory techniques use external stimuli to get to the state of gnosis. These types of techniques can easily be learned and can put one in a state of gnosis but they do tend to be less controllable with the effects fading relatively quickly – but it’s still effective, nonetheless. Some of the ways to achieve this can be through the use of mind-altering substances (check your local laws for legal use) or through a technique known as the “death posture” which induces a temporary black out. One of the most popular methods of excitatory gnosis is through achieving an orgasm. As you can imagine, this is probably the safest and most enjoyable of the excitatory techniques.
Sigil Creation in Chaos Magick
When employing sigils in Chaos Magick there are essentially 3 main steps:
- Sigil Formation
- Charging and Activating Via Achieving Gnosis
- FORGETTING
Sigil Formation
This part is what most people are familiar with in some form or fashion, and unfortunately, it’s what most people tend to put the heaviest emphasis on. The problem is, it’s probably the LEAST important of the 3 steps. The sigil is formed by first establishing your statement of intent. Then a typical method is to eliminate all the vowels and repeating consonants and then form an image out of the remaining letters. There are various approaches to doing that. Other methods employed are the mantra method and audio sigils.
Now let’s stop and discuss this for a moment. This is where a lot of people become concerned about – “did I do it right”, “does it look ok”, “should I use the grid, just use lines and curves or use the whole letters”…These “directions” originated from writers who were/are Chaos Magicians themselves. So, I’m going to deliver the punchline to this irony. What did I say the first rule of Chaos Magick was?
That’s right. In Chaos Magick there are no rules. These methods are SUGGESTIONS. Stop stressing over the process of making it and just make the sigil whatever way works best. And now let’s remind ourselves WHY we go through this process. We take our statement of intent and we OBSCURE it. Why? Because we are trying to remove it from the influence of our consciousness and hand it over to our subconscious – where the magick happens. Take a moment to let that soak in.
As an example, here’s a few of mine. As you can see, the approach I use each time is whatever I think works for me and that particular working. I also sometimes incorporate enclosing the sigil in a geometric shape (circle, triangle, square – whichever suits my fancy and feel is most reflective of my goal) No rules 🤷♀️
Charging and Activating
Now that your sigil is formed, it’s time to get down to the real work. Now we need to charge and activate it. Some people who use this methodology but are not practitioners of Chaos Magick may use other means for charging and activating. That’s certainly your choice. Staying on the subject of this blog though, this is when the Chaote would use whatever preferred technique to achieve a state of gnosis in order to charge and activate the sigil. This is done by in essence searing the image of that sigil in your mind’s eye and once gnosis is achieved, bringing forth that image.
Forgetting
And now for what many truly believe to be the hardest part of sigil magick from the Chaos Magick perspective, and that is to FORGET the purpose of the sigil. So, you’ve spent all this time thinking about what you want to achieve, how to frame the statement, staring at the statement as you work to visually obscure it – how in the world do you forget that? Like I said, this is the hardest part. A popular approach many of us like to use is to create several sigils at a time, put them away and out of sight for a significant amount of time (usually up to a month tends to work for most), and then bring them out at a later date and proceed with the charging and activating. (As of note, for those who use this approach but have a sense of urgency, they often employ assistance from another practitioner to charge the sigil for them if they can’t quickly forget.) Some use a technique involving intense laughter which has been known to be quite effective for some. Regardless of method, in order to fully turn the process over to your subconscious, forgetting the sentence, it’s purpose, it’s goal – this is the key to fully employing the Chaos Magick method of sigil magick.