So I love sigils and sigil making, and I’d love to chat about it! Sigils are how I first started dabbling in witchcraft, because they’re so accessible and so powerful. I just recently made a sigil about remembering to check and complete my to-do list, and so far it’s been really helpful!
Have any of you used sigils in your practice? What kind of sigils have you made? What’s your favourite method of sigil making? If you haven’t, are you interested in them and learning how to use them?
I am very new and I just read about sigils and making your own and I would LOVE to hear from you about making, using them.
Welcome to the Forum!
IDK much about Sigils in Chaos Magic sorry.
Sigils are very cool. Once upon a time I used my own handmade sigils for certain things, it was a long process to eventually find a formula or a design that I liked. I primarily made ones for manifestation and protection. I also have made protective bind-runes and seals.
My new practice has opened my eyes to new symbols that could count as sigils in certain contexts too. A bit like Southeast Asian runes. I find them more of a curiosity at the moment as I don’t know enough about them to confidently use them! There’s so much I still need to learn! 
I personally use a Nordic protection sigil for my rituals to banish any evil spirits out of my home. I’d say that it works really well.
I like Sigil Magick because it is versatile, practical, relatively simple and straightforward : anyone can do it and the results are potent! All we really need is will/intention, desire (or other emotions fitting for what you are trying to manifest) plus sustained belief . With these simple components we can create mini souls (servitors) which will become embodied in the sigil.
Sigils (and the creation of servitors) are like the swiss army knife of magick. Austin Spare utilized them effectively - creating manifestations observable to other people. Zos-kia is the central foundation of chaos magick… However, according to Spare , his system had in turn developed from a form of traditional British witchcraft, taught to him by a powerful witch…
With Spare’s system of Sigil magick we create Mini Souls (fragments of psyche) which represent the thing, quality or virtue that we want to manifest. The Servitor (a form of ‘‘intentionally made complex’’) is programmed to complete a certain task or manifest a particular thing . But instead of having free reign like the complex does, a servitor has purpose and obeys its master (or is suppose to) rather than trying to sabotage him or her (as it is with the complex) .
So how do we create a mini soul? If you have any form of complex, then you have already created a mini soul before! Complexes are born through trauma, neurosis, obsession etc . They are a fragment of one’s psyche : a splinter from the primary mind that sets up camp in the periphery as it’s own autonomous psyche, usually to the detriment of the mind which it has split from.
In Zos-Kia- to create a servitor, is to create an intentionally made complex. We require a ‘‘primary concept’’ which it will enshrine ( i.e to bring healing, wealth, wisdom , create rain, manifest objects etc) .After the concept is decided, we find a word, phrase or better yet a name - that sums up that concept (personally, I like to use words/names derived from ancient languages). Now its time to get artsy and create a stylized sigil! The sigil should reflect the primary concept. We can make a ‘‘bind rune’’ from geometric shapes, letters, hieroglyphs etc . After the sigil is constructed, written or carved we charge it with vital force- this should be potent emotions but also perhaps breath, spit, blood , other bodily fluids or even a combination. For example, generate a powerful emotion ; imagine that emotion flowing into the sigil ; then give life to the sigil with vital force. Speak to the sigil- servitor : tell it what it’s function is - program it, give it a focus - but be direct and exact.
Perhaps I’m making it sound more complicated than it really is…
‘Back in the day’ I used to make amulets and talismans. Mostly known symbols and imagery
with names of power like angel names in hebrew with intent written around the edge.
Sort of like this:
How is that different than a sigil?
I would consider that an advanced sigil and a valid approach. The angel names might even give it more potency – as they are preexisting spirits (older and more powerful than a newly created servitor) . Biblical Hebrew is also a very powerful language - revered by mages, wizards and sorcerers across the ages on account of it’s unique virtues and esteem as a divine tongue.
By my definition, when there’s more than one symbol, especially arranged in a geometric shape like you would see in a tetragrammaton, or other sacred geometry - I would call that a seal not a sigil.
Sigils might be utilized within a seal, as they tend to be smaller, or they can be easily shrunk to a very small size due to their simplicity. By my definition sigils are more like a self-created alphabet or hieroglyph - they tend to be small, pictographic, and simple. Not a large geometric complex design.
(That’s just my interpretation though. I know there can be some ambiguity in the meaning.) 
Well, that’s fair and perhaps a more correct definition by the standard of various schools of thought … although sigil means exactly that in Latin- a seal . I’ve been known to cut corners sometimes, to keep certain aspects simple. For the sake of clarity lets just say I consider a sigil to be any symbol created with magical intention or imbued with psychic energy.
Hello! I love sigil-work, too. I recently created a protection sigil for family members and it has worked wonderfully. How do you find inspiration for your designs? I use symbols representing my goddesses and archangels along with symbols of the desired effect. I really love sigil-work!! Good Luck! I look forward to hearing your technique.
I think that people use the word sigil to mean a lot of different kinds of symbols and runes used for magic, it’s very much a umbrella term, and at this point how people define the term is part of their personal practice. I love hearing how you all use sigils and symbols of power!
For me and my practice, sigils are a symbol I make out of a power phrase, and the making of the symbol is just as much a part of the magic for me as the symbol itself. It connects me to my intention, and forces me to make my intention clear and precise, and while I’m making the symbol I’m focused on my intent and desire, and then every time I use the sigil I’m connected to my intent just by seeing it, yknow?
@vixie and @bebe , if you’re still interested in hearing about how I specifically make and use sigils (and i mean anyone else lmfao), I’ll demo my process and methods. Be warned, this post is going to be LOOOONG 
The first step is to come up with a clear, concise desire phrase that encapsulates your want, and is phrased as a positive statement that’s already true. For this example, I want to stop over-using my phone. The first phrase I thought of was ‘i’m not addicted to my phone,’ but I don’t like that it’s a negative. So instead I ended up landing on “I use my phone with intention.” Simple, straightforward, phrased as already being true, and encapsulates what my end goal really is. I want to only use my phone when and the way I intend to, instead of falling into mindless scrolling.
Once you have your phrase, you simplify the letters. I usually cut out any vowels and repeated letters, but you can follow you intuition with it. For single word phrases, like “wealth” for example, I would probably use all the letters, just cutting out any that repeat. If it was a phrase with a lot of vowels and not a ton of consonants I’d probably keep in the vowels instead of cutting them all. For this phrase, I started by cutting out all the vowels and repeats, but ended up without any letters left in “intention,” which I definitely want represented in the final letters. So what I ended up doing was cutting out repeats and vowels in the rest of the phrase, and using the vowels in ‘intention’ because otherwise all the letters had been used already. You can see already that, for me, creating a sigil is very intuition focused and fluid in it’s process.
Here’s what this part of the process looks like:
I USE MY PHONE WITH INTENTION
becomes
I U S E M Y P H O N E W I T H I N T E N T I O N
becomes
S M Y P H N W T I E O
tbh this is still more letters than I would prefer to use, but the method of sigil making I’m planning on using shooould make it okay.
Speaking of, there are a few different methods for sigil making that I personally like to use, and I also use my intuition to decide which one is the best for each sigil.
The first, and I think most known, method is to use the shapes of the letters to make the symbol. I threw together an example of what this might look like for my phrase, which also shows why this is maybe too many letters haha. I personally wouldn’t use this because it’s too complicated, but maybe if I spent more time on it I could come up with something that works better. (Also ignore the repeated H in my list of letters, it slipped past me this time )
Another method that’s similar but different is taking individual curves and lines from the letters and using those to make a symbol. So, for example, here’s how I’d break up the letters from before:
S M Y P H N W T I E O
(( |||| ||| |( ||| ||| |||| || | |||| ((
So that’s 25 lines and four curves. We’ve ended up with a very line-heavy phrase! The point here is to use those lines and curves the same way we used the letter shapes before to make an image, but this time the letters are broken up into their component parts. Again, this is more complicated than I’d like it to be, but if I wanted to use this method I’d fiddle around with it until it worked better.
There are two other methods I like to use that don’t require making symbols with the letters themselves, but rather involve mapping letters onto an alphabet grid. There are several different kinds of grids you can find out more about if this kind of sigil making interests you, but I have two different kinds I like to use. The first is an alphabet circle, which is sometimes called a witch’s sigil wheel. Usually when I do it I draw out the shape and then put the letters of the alphabet in randomly, guided only by intuition. For this I just straight copied a wheel from google images and drew over it in ms paint lol. There are several things that some people do, like here I drew a circle at the start and end letters but some people draw different icons for the start and the end or icons for letters that are repeated. There are a whole lot of ways you can customize this, and searching online will give you about a million different grids and ways to use them.
so when I take out the wheel, the sigil becomes this:
There are lots of ways I’d neaten this up and customize it if I wanted to, but now we’ve come to the specific method of sigil making I want to use this time. I do this a lot when I’m working with techy magic or sometimes if it’s to do with communication. It’s using the image of my phone’s keyboard in the same kind of grid mapping way as I do for the wheel, like this:
So, whatever method I use, once I’ve got the sigil that I want I then take it and draw it over and over again to make sure I have the shape down and memorized, and make any adjustments I want to how it looks. You can get real creative with it at this point. I curved the lines, and I like to add little embellishments like dots and lines, usually using some kind of numerology to decide how many. For this one I focused a lot on security and grounding, which is also why I was drawing it in brown pen. I put four lines for stability, five dots for change and adaptability, and a triangle, also for stability. I’m not sure 100% that this is the version I’m going to end on, I might do some adjustments until it feels fully right before I go on to use it.
From here there are three more steps to using a sigil. The abstraction/forget about it phase, the activation phase, and the usage phase.
The abstraction, or forgetting, phase is about separating your sigil from your original desire phrase in your mind. It’s especially important if you used the first method with the shapes of the letters. Once you’re happy with your symbol, set it aside for a few days, maybe a week, until you’ve forgotten what parts of it symbolize what letter. For me this is especially easy when using a grid method since it’s easy to forget where on the grid certain letters are. It also helps to draw your sigil focusing on the shapes it makes instead of following the original pattern directly, and adding in artistic bits like I did on the final image of my sigil above. It makes the whole thing into one image instead of being a bunch of lines pointing to specific letters. The point is to get this symbol to represent your desire in your subconscious mind rather than your conscious mind.
Activation of my sigil comes once it’s been abstracted, and is done, for me, by destroying it. I usually burn it, but depending on my intention I could also leave it in water until it dissolves, bury it, or tear it up into little pieces and let it blow away. Destroying the sigil releases the power and intention it holds into the universe. Other people activate sigils by meditation, big emotions, I’ve even heard of people activating sigils by visualizing them while having an orgasm. If you’re making a sigil that’s supposed to work once and then be done you can stop here.
Usage is simple. You use the image you’ve created as an image of power for your intent. My plan with this sigil is to activate it by burning and then keep a copy of it in my phone case. I’ve also carved sigils into candles, drawn them in steam on the bathroom mirror, drawn them on my face in moisturizer before rubbing it in, traced them in my coffee, drawn them on my skin, and embroidered them into my clothes. There are really endless ways you can use a sigil once it’s been created, and if I ever feel its power start to wane I can activate it again.
I’ve heard a few different arguments about how exactly sigils work, some think of them as straightforward symbols of power that contain the magic in the image itself, and I’ve heard other people say that their power is in making you subconsciously direct your energy towards the intent when you see the image. Personally I feel like it’s a combination of both? But honestly I’m a little less concerned about the WHY of the whole thing. IME, sigils work, and that’s the important part for me.
I love this method of making and using sigils because it’s so adaptable and approachable, and it works. It’s simple to hide if you’re in the broom closet, it doesn’t take any incredibly specialized knowledge or expensive tools, so it’s really great for baby witches, and it’s so customizable and can get as in-depth and complicated as you like when you get more advanced.
If anyone’s taken the time to read this whole post good on you, idk how I wrote this much lmfao. I’d love to keep hearing others ways of doing sigil work!
Very cool!
The first one you describe (breaking down the words into essential letters and using the letters to form the shapes) was the earliest way I started sigil making. It’s essentially the same process when you’re making Bind-Runes (though of course you’re also integrating the meanings of the individual runes.)
I also have never thought about using a keyboard for a grid, but that makes sense!! Wild how much technology has changed the craft - tech-based chaos magick is something I am still very foreign on. A factor of being a Millennial. xD
I’ve also employed numerology!
The formula that I settled on for myself was a combination of hieroglyphic style symbolism, letter incorporation, and numerological lines/dots for added power.
For activation, I did either meditation or elemental activation.
(Yes I read the whole thing - did I have time for that today? Probably not. xD lol)
Cheers.
lmao that’s fair, I probably didn’t have time to write the whole thing XD
I also definitely use some hieroglyphic style symbolism sometimes, for example my sigil for divination is a stylized image of an eye I designed without using any of the methods I mentioned lmao. Part of what I really love about sigil making is the flexibility it allows for. You can really do anything, because once you associate an image with the intention you want it to have then it becomes a symbol of power for you as long as you believe it does.
I find myself dipping my toe into tech magic every so often, even though it’s not what I go to immediately for most things. I’ve had a lot of success with a quick emoji spell sent over text for nudging energies in certain ways, though it’s not the most powerful magic I’ve practiced. I’m at the young end of millennial lmao, but I was deep into the tumblr witchcraft scene back in the early 2010s, and tech magic had a pretty big presence there. I’m sure if it was someone’s main practice that they poured a lot of energy into it could be real strong for them!
‘‘sigils are a symbol I make out of a power phrase…while I’m making the symbol I’m focused on my intent and desire, and then every time I use the sigil I’m connected to my intent just by seeing it…’’
‘‘come up with a clear, concise desire phrase that encapsulates your want, and is phrased as a positive statement that’s already true…Simple, straightforward, phrased as already being true, and encapsulates what my end goal really is’’
‘‘Once you have your phrase, you simplify the letters. I usually cut out any vowels and repeated letters, but you can follow your intuition with it.’’
‘‘The first, and I think most known, method is to use the shapes of the letters to make the symbol…’’
‘’…three more steps to using a sigil. The abstraction/forget about it phase, the activation phase, and the usage phase.‘’
‘‘The abstraction, or forgetting, phase is about separating your sigil from your original desire phrase in your mind.’’
‘‘Activation of my sigil comes once it’s been abstracted, and is done, for me, by destroying it. I usually burn it, but depending on my intention I could also leave it in water until it dissolves, bury it, or tear it up into little pieces and let it blow away. Destroying the sigil releases the power and intention it holds into the universe.’’
‘‘Usage is simple. You use the image you’ve created as an image of power for your intent. My plan with this sigil is to activate it by burning and then keep a copy of it in my phone case. I’ve also carved sigils into candles, drawn them in steam on the bathroom mirror, drawn them on my face in moisturizer before rubbing it in, traced them in my coffee, drawn them on my skin, and embroidered them into my clothes. There are really endless ways you can use a sigil once it’s been created, and if I ever feel its power start to wane I can activate it again.’’
''I love this method of making and using sigils because it’s so adaptable and approachable, and it works. It’s simple to hide if you’re in the broom closet, it doesn’t take any incredibly specialized knowledge or expensive tools, so it’s really great for baby witches, and it’s so customizable and can get as in-depth and complicated as you like when you get more advanced. ‘’
-featherfae
Thanks for putting in the effort to explain these nuances in detail – along with diagrams and examples. Very thoughtful! Your explanation provides good insight and helped me to remember parts I had forgotten to mention : about condensing the intent and destroying the sigil to send it - widely maintained practices when it comes to sigil magick (I often keep Sigils as beloved Pocket Monsters or Tulpas, to evolve as they achieve or be repurposed as is fitting). Your explanation also reminded of the fact that the mere act of writing transmits psychic energy (thoughts) into physical manifestation (letters/symbols).
p.s I like the aesthetics of the last sigil - finely crafted !
