Q&A: How do you know what your sigils mean?

I thought I’d share a sigil-related question I received today.

Question: “I love these drawings you make, but I don’t understand how they work. How do you know what they mean?”

The answer is pretty simple, actually. Symbols and writing only have the meanings we give to them. If you give a child a pencil and a piece of paper, and they come back to you with a crude drawing of a big circle and some scribbled lines and smaller circles, that picture has no inherent meaning to you. If you ask the CHILD, however, they will say “It’s a dog,” as if you were an idiot for not being able to see it.

It doesn’t matter if the drawing actually looks like a dog, or if it’s just a bunch of scribbles. To the child, the drawing “means” dog, and so it becomes a drawing of a dog. The child’s “intent” is what creates the meaning behind the symbol. The symbol or art itself has no meaning beyond that. It only means what the child wants it to mean.

Leaving aside all the related topics – from self-actualization to chaos magick – this kind of abstract thinking is an incredibly powerful part of the human experience, and yet we often take it for granted. Anyone can make a sigil. Anyone can turn scratches in the dirt into meaning. Just ask any child.

When someone requests a sigil from me, I use a personal take on an old occult process to create a new and unique symbol. It’s a matter of mixing and matching elements of the letters in the original text – a line, a curve, a loop, a dot – and using my own artistic instincts to make it into something new. I don’t give the new symbol meaning, I simply create it from an existing series of symbols (letters) that already mean something when combined together in a sentence.

The sigil, at least in its creation, is ultimately just a work of art.

If you’re interested in learning more, here is a simple guide to how I create sigils: http://sigildaily.com/activating-rituals/