There is also the Aiq Bkr magickal square that can be used to craft a sigil from a spirit’s name.Įssentially, a sigil is a visual magickal sign of some sort, whether it’s taken from some traditional body of magickal lore (grimoire or tradition), or created by the magician to represent the name of a spirit or to encapsulate a specific intention or desire. One could also derive a spirit sigil from one of the appropriate magickal planetary squares, depending on the spirit’s hierarchical association, since there are different squares for each of the seven planets. That sigil can be derived from a number of sources, but I generally use the Rose diagram from the Golden Dawn Rose Cross, which has the Hebrew letters drawn on the three concentric circles of petals, representing the triple division of those same letters (3 mother letters, 7 double letters and 12 single letters).
When I perform an invocation or an evocation, I will employ a sigil crafted from the name of the target spirit. Still, sigils used as the symbolic name of a spirit assumes that the sigil is a more pure and direct representation of that spirit’s true nature, and of course, whoever knows the “true” name or nature of a spirit has direct power over it. This makes a sigil similar in some ways to the “Veve” as found in Haitian Vodoun. Most often, sigils are reputed to be the specialized symbolic names of angels, demons or various spirits, and the sigil is used to summon and evoke them. Some grimoires are notorious for the sigils and characters that they contain, lending weight to the superstition that sigils have an independent volition quite separate from whoever invented or wields them. Some believe that magickal sigils or characters have a power and potency all to themselves, others believe that a sigil has to be activated, at the very least, by the imagination and will of a trained and competent magician. (A good example that shows how these sigils were developed can be found in Donald Tyson’s version of “Three Books of Occult Philosophy” originally written by Agrippa – particularly Appendix V on Magick Squares (Llewellyn 1997).) These kinds of sigils were carefully crafted using very specific techniques (and not derived from either imagination or revelation), but the methodology used for their creation is typically missing from those same works. Most often, sigils, or specialized characters, were incorporated into grimoires and had a traditional use, requiring the wielder to copy them exactly as depicted, even though they had to have been invented by someone at some point in history. The use of sigils in magick has its roots in antiquity, possibly from Hebrew sources, since sigils often accompanied magickal squares, which were used extensively in the Jewish tradition of ceremonial magick.
The word sigil comes from the Latin word sigilum, which means “seal.” Of additional significance is the Hebrew word SGULH or sagulah, which means “some kind of word or action” that has a specific spiritual or magickal impact. Sigil Magick is defined as a magickal system that makes use of occult characters, diagrams, condensed verbal intentions, geometric symbols, mystical alphabets, angular signatures of spirits and other kinds of symbolic or hieroglyphic representations.
Sigil generator rose cross full#
I also like this post I found on Tumblr (reposted in full because I found the original link hard to read…): I wouldn’t recommend using the sigils as they come out, but it’s a decent way of playing with combinations of letters, writing systems and rotation (although I’m not sure about some of the transliterations…. Use of a sigil generator can also be helpful for experimenting. I’ve also tried bringing in other writing systems and the results have been pretty satisfying – for example a word with “th” in it could be replaced with the Greek letter theta (θ). Certain letters seem to work well with each other.
This inspired me for a while, but occasionally I still get this “creative block” – I’ll get a workable set of letters and they just don’t seem to “fit” well together and I usually end up with something I’m not entirely happy with.Īs with most things, it gets easier with practice. Earlier this year, I totally changed my view on sigils after reading Advanced Magic for Beginners (highly recommended).