My computer is very old. Very. Older than any other electrical equipment I use. I recently attempted to upgrade it with a slightly more modern operating system, but it failed three times.

I lost some files and all my software. Each failure took over ninety minutes, so I was losing patience.

For the fourth attempt, I crafted the above sigil. Now, the trick is, in chaos magick, the sigil needs to be engulfed by the subconscious mind without interference from the conscious mind going ‘oh you-I really want this to work oh my gods oh my gods you-I want this so bad nnnng’.

So chaotes forget the intention, the desire behind the sigil, and memorise / breathe in the sigil without knowing what it’s for.

I usually take a few days to ‘let go’ of any sigil I’ve scrawled or painted, but how can I use a sigil (in the chaos magick mode) immediately?

On this occasion I got down on the floor and did some press-ups while staring at the sigil. I focused on all the signals my body was giving me (screaming for surrender, mostly) and the contours and paths of the sigil. Although I ‘knew’ it was to help my OS installation, after three failures I was happy to accept that my little machine wasn’t capable of being upgraded, and I was able to adopt a ‘neither-neither’ state of mind; I neither mourned the inability to upgrade nor wanted the newer operating system desperately. It didn’t really matter; I’d have to install all my software again whatever happened.

Oh and you guessed it, I’m now typing this using a more modern OS and my little old computer is coping well - fourth time’s the charm!

P.S. I’m using an old slow computer to help me conquer my unhealthy ‘need’ to be online all the time. My big fast computer is in storage right now. I must be clean and clear for my Abramelin Operation, which continues (thanks for asking).

Pause your sigil crafting and focus on creating magick that works according to the rules you’ve developed.

Show your working out and mark the results.

Thought you might like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B3M-XrbHFw&feature=related

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Thanks to Blaqmercury for submitting this YouTube link. I don’t currently surf with Flash so can’t view it again, but this Grant Morrison vid is zehr famous and muchly entertaining, and must have been very provoking at the time.

Here’s another example of sigil development, like my previous Development Kitchen article.

Note the end result is a design I can memorise and ‘walk around’. It doesn’t look like a bunch of letters stuck together. Ahem.

Feel free to critique my Statement of Intent / Desire Statement.

This sigil is now screwed up / folded up in my pocket, ready to give to a certain homeless person I have in mind. Next time I see hir, I’ll chat about dogs, give hir a pound and the sigil along with it. I’ll ask to check they’re not offended by magick, and I’ll instruct them to rip the paper up when they need a bumper day of generous folk.

You can do the same; print off or copy my sigil (or develop your own), charge it (your choice of technique) and then have it ‘cocked’ when you hand it over (the nerves you experience will ‘cock’ it) and tell the person that it will be ‘released’ when they rip up the paper.

Some say chaos magick is souless, and that results magick is ‘low magick’. Pfft; there are souless and low people, that’s all I know.

Now, let’s wait for someone to politicise this little idea and lecture on how people who give money to homeless people are creating the problem of homelessness and making people dependent on hand-outs. I welcome all points of view from anyone who has been homeless.

Anonymous asked: If a sigil needs to be absorbed into the unconscious and then forgotten, would it be effective to place it somewhere where you won't see it every day, but where other people will (for instance, a small poster on a busy thoroughfare)? Can people with no knowledge of magick or sigils add to a sigil's power without intending to, simply by noticing and then forgetting it?

Yes, if you reckon so. I adore posting sigils on the ‘net, ‘round town and into library books.

You can also experiment with becoming ‘blind’ to a sigil by placing it on your mirror, front door, or fridge. Although you’ll see it for the first few days, after a while it will become invisible (to your conscious mind) and then one day you’ll see it and you can fire it.

One mage can charge and fire another mage’s sigil without knowing what it’s all about; ‘charging’ means absorbing into the unconscious, just as you said - in chaos magick it doesn’t mean ‘pouring energy’ into the spell / sigil. So, what happens when passers-by, the proletariat, the populus, see a sigil in public? Well, we can theorise all we like on the process (nexus of the unconscious?) but only rigorous experimentation and the recorded results will tell us if it adds anything. Does a glance do any charging? Does anoyance / disregard / no-mind non-commitalnessness do any firing? Inquiring minds want to know.

Erased rune-sigil.

Rune based coloured ink sigil, over-brushed with white ink.

What is repressed manifests.

Anonymous asked: If the intent behind a sigil is meant to be forgotten before the sigil is charged, then how do we know what we're casting, and how do we observe the effects of the sigil? Likewise, does this mean we can cast sigils created by other people and have their effects manifest? Additionally, can sigils be reused?

Casting? Well, you’ve designed the sigil based around the Desire Statement / Statement of Intent, so…

When you come to Charge the sigil (which means ‘drinking in to the subconscious’, rather than ‘energise’) then as you rightly say, we should’ve forgotten the intent. We might well have several sigils awaiting charging and firing, none of which seem particularly attached to any of our Desires from the last week… Oh the blue one is probably about power or money or something… um.

Chaos Magick is about direct manipulation of the subconscious without interference from the conscious mind, the ego or the so-called Psychic Censor. If you don’t want to ‘do’ chaos magick then by all means ‘pour’ your desire and energies into a glyph and evoke all your desire and wants and need and will and, y’know, do some other kind of magick with the glyph as a focus.

The chaos magick approach is to reach a ‘no mind’ state where you have transcended the desire, or rather, repressed the desire so that your subconscious can manifest it. What is repressed manifests.

Sigil magick is only one part of chaos magick; sigil magick is a set of techniques and you’re welcome to cherry pick and develop your own techniques - the only point is to discover what works for you. There’s no point following the ‘rules’ if you don’t get the result you want, and there’s no point discarding rules if all you’re doing is going through the motions (as if following a fucking recipe) if you don’t get the results you want. I’m afraid the challenge that is in front of you is to design, forget, charge and fire a sigil and another day, design, remember, charge and fire a sigil. You have to discover what it all means and what matters.

See; the answers are ‘open answers’, - I can’t just tell you what to do.

In case you feel lambasted by my tone, let me help a little more.

We know what we’re casting for because of the intent. We might well record the Desire Statement in a diary, and then not look at the entry for weeks or months. If you want a promotion at your current place of work, you don’t need to keep reading your diary to know you’ve cast a sigil. But two months later when you get offered a better job at a different company, it’s up to you to decide if the magick worked, or if you specifically desired to stay at your current company. So you go back to the diary entry and write up a conclusion.

During the charging and firing, you don’t ‘need’ to know what you’re charging and firing. Some say that knowing can invoke Lust for Results (especailly in newer mages who have not developed non-attachment and who can’t find the ‘does not matter, need not be’ state of mind). Lust for Results can derail magick, or can fuel it (if you be-lie-ve in such matters). But Lust for Results of course invokes its opposite (in dualistic thinkers, i.e. most of us) being Fear of Failure. OCD about all this is terribly detrimental and so chaotes have just dumped it all by forgetting. In one swoop, we just give up on the Lust and the Fear; we’re chool like that. If you’re not a Chaos Mage then I would advise you to inculcate supreme confidence in your magicks - but this can lead to obnoxiousness and poor magickal habits and ego.

Have you never charged and fired someone else’s sigil design? Why not do eight of mine, using a different exhitatory or inhibitory technique for each?

A further experiment! Take one of my sigils, one that speaks to you, print it off and decide what it means for you. Write your Statement of Desire down in a book somewhere. Forget the exact intent, but remain conscious that this is now a sigil working for you. A day or two later, charge and fire the sigil in the coolest and most exhitable / involving manner you can. Three, six or eight weeks later, review the Statement of Desire and see if your magick has created a result. LET ME KNOW THE DETAILS :)

Now, answer your own question about whether sigils can be reused and under what circumstances / timestances.