Ensigillatin'

[darkemeralds]

I practice sigil magic. British punk, Chaos-Magick types came up with the technique in the 1960s, a modernization of an ancient practice. Sometimes it works for me.

Here's how it goes:

Write out your intention simply:
MOM'S CONDO SELLS QUICKLY

Delete the vowels:
MMSCNDSLLSQCKLY

Remove duplicate consonants:
MSCNDLQKY

Fashion the remaining letters into a pattern that pleases you. Pencil on paper is typical, but a sigil can be as simple as lines scratched in the dirt. It's supposed to be unreadable; the idea is to forget it, to release it into the universe.



Finally, you "charge" it. The Chaos tradition calls for sexual charging, typically via masturbation, after which you burn or erase the sigil.

Being asexual myself and uninterested in what 1960s British male chaos gremlins decided was necessary, I charge mine by making art out of them. Mostly I color them with paint and sparkle pens, encase them in glass, and photograph them.



Then I either send them to the friend they're for, or hang them up somewhere. This one went inside a closet in my mom's vacant condo, above the doorframe. I love the thought that it's still there. I mean, how often do you check inside the doorframe of your closets?

The condo sold in three days.

Usually, I just hang 'em somewhere on my house. The neighbors think I'm a witch. They might be right.

Comments

[dine]

very cool info; I'm glad you resolved the problem, as these are some great pictures!

[darkemeralds]

Thanks!

Now to figure out cut tags. Man, I used to know all this stuff in my fingertips!

[ranunculus]

Looks pretty witchy to me. Also lovely and artistic.

BTW Larryhammer posted this today:
How to clean up Google search results: add &udm=14 to the result url. This removes AI summaries, knowledge panels, and ads—gives just the actual sites. https://TenBlueLinks.org/ has instructions on how to make this your default in Chrome or Firefox. (via)

[darkemeralds]

I saw that! It was all over Bluesky. So I tried it and it's pretty great.

[sporky_rat]

Hey your images work again! Hurrah!

[darkemeralds]

Yup. Then I got a little carried away...

[tabaqui]

Very cool! I'm unfamiliar with the specifics of sigil magic (and equally uninterested in what 1960s British male chaos gremlins thought). I find this very interesting.

I practice my own kind of magic, a sort of mash-up of Wicca and general pagan 'stuff'...usually involving feathers (I seem to find LOTS of feathers, all the time).

I hope the new condo people don't notice the one you made or, if they do, they keep it there. :D

[darkemeralds]

Ooh. I'd love to know more about the feathers. I only find feathers during the crow molting season. Do they appear as signs, confirmations? Or do you make things out of them?

[tabaqui]

I just seem to find them. I worked for Greenpeace years ago, collecting signatures on petitions and trying to get people to sign up to be members. I'd go door-to-door. On crappy days when people were jerks, I'd always find blue jay feathers.

Blue jays are kind of 'my' birds - I've always loved them and felt an affinity for them, and their feathers seem to be all over (for me).

I just seem to come across feathers of all kinds all the time.

So i used them for protection charms, for healing, for good luck sort of magic, for memory... Putting them together with copper wire (for the sun/energy/life) and shells or interesting twigs or stones, depending on what I was doing.

[darkemeralds]

That's really neat!

I read license plates. Not as organic or natural, I know, but walking and biking around Portland as much as I do, I sometimes go into a kind altered state where the three-letters plus three-numbers format of the Oregon plates seem to tell a little story, or answer a question.

I do a lot of "reading the world" when I'm in the right mood, and it's all a kind of oracle. The bluejay feathers sound similar for you.

[tabaqui]

Ooh, that's very interesting.... :D