Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current - Andrieh Vitimus 2009
Sigil Magic II: Sigil Magical Enchantment
Up until this point, we have been covering vast amounts of energy exercises, visualization, NLP, and banishing, but not much practical use. This chapter is the first section that is only about enchanting for things or desires. Most of the chapters previous to this one will have an impact upon this section, and all of your interesting combinations of breathing, posture, gesture, etc., will be relevant.
You have been presented with a basic overview of the necessary pre-work with sigils, including the self-work. You have a sigil that you double-checked with divination, and you are ready to go. Now what?
With the work you have been doing up to now, you already have most of the tools to work with the sigils you have made. In fact, those interesting combinations of energy work, breathing, posture, gesture, and visualization are in fact your gateways to a singular state of consciousness that can allow you to enchant your way to success. So break out your journal, because we are about to get jiggy with the magic.
A Simple Framework for the Fire-and-Forget Sigil Method
• Clear your head or banish via the methods you have developed on your own.
• Use one of the combinations from your journal of memory, breathing, gesture, posture, etc., that seems to correlate with your encapsulated desire, while staring at the sigil or mantra you have made.
• Continue going into deeper and deeper trance states, thinking only about the sigil or mantra you have made until it becomes the all-encompassing focus of your attention and will.
• You should continue until you really can't keep going because you are too far into trance to do any specific motion or style of breathing.
• Banish to end the ritual. For me, this is usually just laughing hysterically.
• Destroy the sigil or mantra, and do not worry about the request anymore. (Forget it.) If you find yourself thinking about the sigil or the process, just relax and let the thought go.
You can physically stare at a sigil on a piece of paper or hold it in your mind as an image (all the practice visualizing pays off). Yes, sigil magic is that easy; however, for the first part of this book, you have been working on visualization, focus, breathing, and the skills needed to make this framework so easy. The two hardest parts of fire-andforget sigil magic are maintaining focus and thought control while pushing your conscious mind down, and forgetting the sigil itself.
Throughout the first part of the book, we have been discussing different methods of focus and mental control that should aid in your sigil-magic adventures. When you are first starting out, choose things that do not matter to you.
Now, for every sigil you cast, you have to record the results you get from the working (which is a bit odd, so you have to forget the sigil or mantra and pay attention to odd synchronicities that seem to remind you of the original intent). As you practice, celebrate any successes you get by telling yourself how good you are.
If you are just starting out with sigils, a useful technique is to cast them for things that have a relatively high probability of happening without magical intervention, but go into a deep trance while casting for them anyway. Keep with this process and slowly start moving to events that have a lower probability of success. Try to silence any objection that may occur, and enthusiastically state to yourself that the event occurred due to your magic. In fact, if you are using the reward system discussed earlier, do reward yourself. For any sigil you cast, continue to do this and raise your internal voice over any internal objections that success was a result of your magic. This process tends to weaken your personal resistance to magic, making magical workings easier for you in the long run, and it helps you be comfortable with casting sigil magic. As you consciously move to events with less probability of success, treat them exactly the same as the highly probable events. In each case, focus on the sigil and maintain the singularity of focus.
The Wank Method from Grant Morrison as a Case Study
Grant Morrison popularized this method of sigil casting, and it is probably one of the best-known methods of sigil casting on the Internet (Morrison 2000). It's a very simple process: masturbate while concentrating on the sigil or chanting the mantra until orgasm is achieved. This is an extremely simple procedure and, mostly in Internet circles, people state, "Look how simple sigil magic is." Unfortunately, there are a couple reasons why this method doesn't always work or doesn't seem to work as efficiently after a while.
First, the quality of the orgasm matters. For this style of sigil casting to work, the orgasm has to be a complete rip-roaring, tear-your clothes-off affair. Certainly, while it is possible to achieve that, how many people actually do have this type of rip-roaring experience with each masturbation session? Remember, it has to be almost a complete absorption into the trance state. Sure, sex does produce a wild mix of euphoria, trance, and an altered state of consciousness, but it is fantastic sex that really does the trick.
Second, if you limit yourself to any one style of trance generation, from sex to meditation, it may become more difficult to produce any meaningful results from that type of method. So in the wank method, masturbation just doesn't have the same trance-generating effect. Your conscious mind just becomes acclimated to the effect and used to it. This can happen with any sort of method to get into trance.
Third, the stigma of masturbation might lead to some thoughts of embarrassment or self-criticism. This underlying embarrassment might not surface, but if it's there, is it helping you manifest your desire? As with other shadow issues, it is acting as an impediment to what you want, not to mention that these types of issues and feelings keep you from obtaining that rip-roaring orgasm where you cannot think about anything but the moment. For men, ejaculation is not the same as a riproaring orgasm. The underlying associations that you have while using methods of going into altered states of consciousness do matter, and they can affect the outcome of the spell work you are doing.
A little later, when we talk about layering after the evocation and invocation chapters, the wank method becomes far more interesting and effective for use in combination-style rituals.
Subtle Correlations and States of Mind
While for some people it may seem obvious, it has been my experience that like attracts like, even in sigil magic. Throughout parts of the book, we have been working on cataloging different interesting combinations of breathing, gesture, posture, and the effects they have on your state of mind. Now, if you find an interesting combination that seems to produce an angry effect, is this the type of correlation that you want to make when casting a love spell?
Most magicians who practice for a while make this obvious connection and are at times matching the state of mind produced by a breath pattern or gesture with the desired result of the sigil. It is not often spelled out in many of the occult books you can buy, but personally I have found that the results work better if you match these up.
Obviously, some forms of trance do not lead to any particular emotional content or state of mind other than a deep trance state, and they can be used with any type of sigil work you want to do, but some most certainly have personal connotations that should be taken into account. Try to make use as many correspondences as you can between what you want and the different techniques that you yourself have developed.
Physical Props: Assisting Your Work with Mood and Ambiance
From here through evocation and invocation, mood and ambiance will help your rituals have a greater effect. You can control and set up a mood to get you in the right frame of mind for a particular ritual. Now, if you are doing a sigil to get a job, it might be worthwhile to do the ritual while wearing a suit or having pictures of money (or money itself) all around you.
There are lots of games that you can play to help your sigil magic process. For instance, burning incense that corresponds to the same general influence as the spell helps set the mood. Likewise, using the same color light that corresponds to the general purpose of the intent is helpful for visualizing the sigil in the same color as the planetary influence (only an example). Embedding the sigil into art that has a lot of relevant correspondences for you can help you with the process. Any mental correspondences that make sense to you for the intent you are casting can be visualized or chanted. If they can be added to physical props, you can certainly place them on the wall in front of you (if they are pictures) or around you in some way so you can use the visual cues to help augment the correspondences. These additional props will help your mood and belief that something will happen.
Where can you find correspondences? First, different systems will have different scent, color, and symbol correspondences. Choose ones that seem right for you. If lavender smells like success to you, then that's what you use when you are doing a success ritual. Further research can give you a host of correspondences for spells. The Magician's Companion by Bill Whitcomb (1993) is also a good starting point. If your intuition tells you to use something different, by all means follow that, but researching correspondences can give you some ideas.
Gestural or Sequence-Based Sigils
Again, earlier in our adventure there were some practice exercises related to spontaneous gesture. An interesting take on sigils that I often use is to change a drawn sigil into a gestural process-for example, a dance. This takes a bit of practice and intuition, but if the sigil is simple enough, it can be converted to dance steps. If the sigil is too complicated, try to simplify it.
Dancing out a sigil (or even walking out the sigil) on the ground takes a little practice, and you have to memorize the sigil beforehand. The easiest way I have found to do this is to add direction to the drawing of the sigil (perhaps using an arrow) so that the sigil has to be drawn in a certain sequence. Adding this direction gives you a sequence to follow while repeating the sigil on the ground. You have to adapt the number of steps in each direction depending on how large you want the sigil on the ground to be drawn. If you are outside, you can scratch the sigil in the dirt to give you a reminder of where to step.
A second way I will do gesture sigils is to draw the sigil repeatedly in the air, visualizing it glowing and becoming more powerful, while possibly chanting a mantra (or using any other means to go into gnosis).
It can be possible to make "sigils" out of sheer random gestures as well. However, for this you have to scry out or think about what each gesture means in relation to what you are trying to cast for. The possibilities are endless.
In each case, the gesture should be repeated until a deeper trance state occurs, either from fatigue or a type of body trance where you simply are not thinking (I often experience this with tai chi).
The Problem of Trance
While we have covered different types of trance generation and how they interact with sigils, the problem is that some of these methods do not generate enough trance to achieve the single point of focus. Often, when I am personally doing straight sigil work, I will combine gestural sigils or correspondences, a visual sigil, and a mantra sigil that are all interrelated. I will tend to combine these different aspects to further go into a much deeper trance. Generally if you cannot reach a deeper trance state, your sigil enchantment will be less likely to produce a result. Try to combine dancing, mantra, etc., or meditation, relaxation, and breathing techniques in ways that "get you there." Experiment with different combinations of trance generation techniques and your own correspondences in the previous exercises. Remember, what matters is the result.
The fire-and-forget sigilization techniques from Spare are by no means the only uses for sigils. As I said earlier, these are great techniques to learn in order to start working with sigils. We will now move onto some different uses of sigils that are still highly effective enchantment techniques.
