What's underneath the Squiggle: An Exploration of Sigils

picture copyright Taylor Ellwood 2024

Lately I’ve been finding myself fascinating by sigils and symbols again. Whether you’re conjuring a spirit with a sigil or creating a custom sigil for the purposes of manifesting a desire into reality, what makes sigils so versatile is how they can symbolically represent and mediate specific transmissions of information. Yet what’s underneath the sigil?

What’s underneath is something the sigil can’t quite describe or represent. The sigil presents a face to the world that allows us to make sense of the intangible and give it a form we can relate to. It allows us to pack ideas and concepts into the shape and recall them and it allows us to send them out into the world, to create a path of manifestation that turns essence into form and imagination into reality.

Yet a sigil is more even than that. It is a structure that creates a container to describe the essence that is being worked with, whether that’s a spirit’s essence or the essence of a desired result. The sigil becomes a key to unlock that essence and also learn the essence and make it part of your being. The symbol internalizes the essence within you and it becomes manifest through you.

The reason sigils work so well is become of how they work through us. The sigils embed themselves in our consciousness which in turn is acted upon through our actions. It’s a chain of manifestation that acts on the path of least resistance. The sigils, as symbols, are accepted more readily by our consciousness and seed the mind with possibility which then becomes reality, by the convergence of the outer variables of the world and the inner actions of the person.

The sigil is a story as well. We can get to the heart of the story by meditating on the sigil. If the sigil is for the spirit then it becomes path to the spirit that allows the practitioner to interface with the story. If the sigil is for a possibility it speaks to all the variables of the possibility. What’s underneath the squiggle? A universe waiting to be explored.

Common problems with sigil magic

Picture copyright Taylor Ellwood 2023

With any type of magical working there can be challenges that occur which need to be addressed if you’re going to become proficient in that magical working. For this article I’m going to address issues that can occur with sigil magic that may cause your sigils to fail and suggest possible actions you can take to help you improve the efficacy of your sigil magic. Context: When I refer to sigil in this article I’m referring to the chaos magic method of sigil, as opposed to a spirit’s sigil.

I also want to note that with any type of magical working, it can be normal to encounter failures as you learn how to do a given magical working. As with any discipline you learn, it takes time, practice and experiences to develop the expertise and skillset that produces better results. with that said, let’s explore the common problems that can occur with a sigil.

1. You don’t have a well defined statement of desire. The basis of any sigil is the creation of a statement of desire. The statement of desire establishes the intent and defines the desired result, ideally in concrete terms. A well defined statement of desire not only defines the result but also ties up any loose ends. A poorly defined statement of desire leaves room for interpretation and in my experience when there is room for interpretation there is also room for results not manifesting exactly what you want.

For example the statement I want a job is a very broad statement. We can use that statement, but unless we’ve put some thought into the programming of it we are leaving a lot of room for interpretation and that room for interpretation can leave the door open for not getting the result you want or getting one that seems to fit the bill but has aspects you don’t care for.

I treat sigils as programs so when I create a statement of desire. The statement of desire should be the finalized expression of your thought process and include what you want, as well as excluding what you don’t want. When I create a sigil from the statement of desire I put all of that programming into the sigil, in order to define, focus and crystallize the sigil.

How to create and activate collage sigils

For new years I decided to revive an old art magical practice that I haven't done for a few years. I decided to create a collage sigil.

First I needed to decide on the theme. I chose the theme of YES, specifically saying yes to myself.

The theme is what ties a given collage together. It informs what images you use, what words you'll be drawn to, and what it is that you're ultimately calling into your life.

It's not all that different from any other themed work I've done in my life, and what I find with themed magical work in general is that the theme WILL show up in your life, but often in ways you don't expect. This is because when you utilize magic to call a theme into your life, you are calling in that theme but in a way that is needed.

Planetary Magic update

A while back I'd written about my work to connect with Jupiter and its planetary energy. Since that working I've done similar connection workings with the other planets, including Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto. I didn't stick with the "classical" model of planets because its outdated and inaccurate, but it also meant I had to do some research to find the correspondences for the other planets.

At this point I've gotten symbols for each of the planets from the archangels. My encounters with the various archangels was interesting because of how focused they were on their own functions as it related to the planets, so they didn't provide much information, instead encouraging me to make my connection with the planets via the symbols.

I debated a bit on my next step, but I decided to settle on creating individual paintings for each symbol. I'll use the paintings as gateways that use the symbols to open up or shut down access to the planetary energies. The act of painting the symbols will be a good exercise for connecting with the planetary energies and learning more about them and how I can work with them. But I'm also going to experiment with specific placements of the paintings in specific rooms of the house, with the idea being to enhance specific characteristics of those rooms with planetary energy. I'll post more information once I've proceeded to the next step.

I paint to forget

I paint to forget sometimes, on a conscious level the desires, the wants, the needs, etc. I have. The paintings are sigils usually, though in someways I don't really think of them as that so much as mindscapes, which allow me to express what's going on in my mind and then let it go. I paint to forget, but also to free my mind. Once something is expressed, if you have a place to direct any further attention or energy toward that expression, you can can then remove the desire from conscious thought. It becomes part of the background. And once its part of the background, that desire can then work because it's not being pushed into the future by the conscious mind.

It's a reason to paint. Funny thing about painting for me. It's the one creative skill, where I'll never make it a product to sell. It's a magical work for me, but more than that it's something I need to keep for myself, as an outlet I use for both my magical expression and artistic/creative expression divorced from any form of compensation (beyond my satisfaction). I don't paint often, but I love to do it. The state of no-mind, the rustle of the brush, the colors that I use, and the shapes that come forth, all of it created in a place that is the secret part of my soul, and even when shared, it's still a place only I'm really intimate with.