My Avatar Sigil, Doesn't do anything nasty, just so you know! Options

Hey guys,
I've seen some different sigils/symbols used as people's avatars on here, and have wondered what some of them do.

The green sigil in my avatar is one of the sigils in the circle for my servitor; I'm experimenting with what I've been reading about putting sigils in different public places in order to draw more power for them...I'm assuming that this works in a similar way to what Darkmage said once about putting the Goetics' seals in airport restrooms, etc.

My servitor has at times wanted feeding quite a lot, and I'm hoping that this will create a distributed way of doing it which will still give her the energy she needs, but at the same time not draw too much from any one particular point/person. It will also hopefully mean that I don't have to quite so often feed her myself, since she will be getting energy from other sources as well.

My goodness gracious!
Some energy 101 is needed here. Though I understand the premis of attention saturation with symbols, it ends up being far more complicated in its simplicity. Let me explain...
By posting said symbol in many places (btw, public restrooms is NOT a good idea) you will, in fact, glean random energies from people gazing at it. BUT, unless you have a filter on it (actively working) then you will get ALL kinds of psychic energy from good power down to sludge. You don't want sludge. You'd have to wade through it to get to anything of note. Learn to cultivate your astral senses. You will elevate yourself and your purposes immeasureably. You will also note the incredible amount of astral crud is floating about. This ties in to your perceptions of your servitor. You can't have a servitor without giving it a form as well as purpose. Right now it is only an animated thoughtform, whereas a servitor has definitive purpose and form. Read Bardons Initiation into Hermetics about the formation of an elementarie. Chaos mages have been publishing much crap on this subject...too much actually. They fail you in any number of ways. Ever hear of the phrase, "Form follows Function"? Now if I were to create a servitor that I want to use as a Watcher, a simple ball shape will do. If using the sigil method I would formulate my intent into a phrase and then boil that down to a sigil which I would then empower and give shape to. I can then send my servitor (I really hate that name...but to each their own) off to perform their function. The more abilities that the servitor has, the more complex becomes his sigil and power needs. Bardon cautions us to keep it simple and not exceed three elements in its making. You never want to empower a servitor with free will. That is dangerous and this would be another thread entirely.
If you can't imagine the shape of your servitor you will only get mediochre effects if anything. Clarity of vision be it astral or mental is key to this process. Practice visualization exercises as often as possible. Servitors can be empowered by a. the personal life energy of the maker, b. the ambient energies around you, c. the charging with the energies of a specific source or d. the combination of the other three.
(I'm sure a member(s) will step in here to add and/or correct my feeble articulations) Making a servitor with a definitive lifespan is important...especially with the complex ones who will tend to try an become independent after awhile. When you create life it becomes harder to reabsorb the life and that is a reason for keeping servitors simple. Besides, why do you wish to litter up the astral with your half-baked constructs? Ick. (or Gakk, your choice! :-) )
The Swastika is a fine example of a symbol absorbing enough energy to glom on sludge. The Nazi's utilized the reverse fylfot but many people don't know this, hence ALL swastikas are representing some fairly horrendous things.
It is OK to create batteries or vortices of power to help energize your servitor...they needn't be spread far and wide. Though if you were to area saturate your sigil, how would you differentiate between the various kinds of energy or information it would receive? Think about this. Study more and Practice, practice, practice! I know you'll do fine! Good Luck! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/egypt1.gif)

By posting said symbol in many places (btw, public restrooms is NOT a good idea) you will, in fact, glean random energies from people gazing at it. BUT, unless you have a filter on it (actively working) then you will get ALL kinds of psychic energy from good power down to sludge.

This makes sense. Grimstone, the offline friend who I usually do these things with, has a vampiric companion/guardian servitor who he allows out nocturnally to hunt negative thought forms. He says it has learned the ability to filter such so that it is able to get neutral energy from the those thought forms, without also acquiring the accompanying negative emotion as well. I had some problems with my servitor behaving unpredictably a week or two ago which corroborate what you're saying, in that while I had allowed it to hunt in a similar manner, it was also experiencing negative emotional feedback through not having learned to filter the energy. It would seem that I am learning about at least some areas of magick in the same way that I have tended to learn most other things...by the seat of my pants!

Right now it is only an animated thoughtform, whereas a servitor has definitive purpose and form. Read Bardons Initiation into Hermetics about the formation of an elementarie.

I'll have to check the local Theosophical Society bookshop for this...that is normally where I go for such things. Thanks, bym. This will definitely be good to know...because I will admit that rather than trying to tackle everything in the world, getting overwhelmed, and giving up, probably two aspects of evocation (servitors, and maybe banishing) were what I'd considered focusing more or less solely on...at least at first.

Chaos mages have been publishing much crap on this subject...too much actually.

I'm actually starting to notice some differences of opinion between chaos and the old school. Someone more starting out such as myself will mention some element of CM, and one of the old hands on here will respond with something along the lines of, "Urrrrgh. You haven't been associating with those people, have you?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Not that I'm complaining, mind you...I agree, in that I think I've probably learned some laziness and bad habits already. Grimstone is rather a more avid reader than I am of both Uncle Al and Agrippa, and while I've tended towards an isolated sigil for one or two things I've tried, he tends to advocate a somewhat more formal system where we draw a pentagram (at least on paper) and try and do things a bit more properly.

Although admittedly about the only thing I've used a sigil on its' own for was for a self-replicating servitor (which I did envision as being purely a ball) to infest the local supermarket over the road from me and convert whatever energetic rubbish it found into positive material, although I also perhaps rather carelessly gave it the instruction to replicate every time it fed. (although I was trying to keep it simple) The end result was that a night or so later, on going over to do some shopping, while I can remember thinking that it did seem more positive and relaxed in there than usual, (people being more talkative and so on) it also felt unusually "close." I can remember having the sensation that to a degree my eyes were being pushed back into my head. I also had the very strange experience in my room temporarily where I found it literally impossible to feel negative emotion...to the point where I was quite adamantly and deliberately trying to do so, because I was so unused to not having any form of equilibrium; it was like having drunk around half a dozen cups of coffee within 5 minutes.

Now if I were to create a servitor that I want to use as a Watcher, a simple ball shape will do.

You're right. My servitor was modelled after my favourite World of Warcraft character; around a seven foot tall Orc. I think I might have already written about her having dissipated once, and having to re-evoke her, because I simply wasn't able to keep up with the energetic requirements of feeding her, at least at my current level of (non)development. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) As she feeds more and more from other sources though, I'm finding it more difficult to get a definite sense of where she is, which I think is because there's less of my own energy now as part of her...although I've already used a small amount of my own blood, and I also use semen periodically to renew the link.

Bardon cautions us to keep it simple and not exceed three elements in its making.

She has two elements; earth and fire. In the backstory for the Orcs in WoW terms, they were originally an indigenous people modelled I think on the early Africans, so I thought earth would be appropriate for that. The fire is for the aggressive nature of her race, but I also gave her fire because I wanted her to be able to use heat as an energy source. Unfortunately though from what Grimstone has told me we would need at least a moderate sized bonfire for her to be able to draw anything meaningful from it.

In terms of purposes, I initially gave her two...or more really one, with the ability to carry out a second if I wanted. The primary purpose is as a guardian with the ability to engage in astral combat; I've already had one instance where there was a relatively minor negative spirit of some kind in the house that she was able to deal with, and Grimstone and I also evoked a small water elemental at one point for her to spar with as well...although it turned out to be way too weak/simple, and she basically ate it alive. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) Due to my own lack of knowledge of martial arts, she does not at this point fight particularly well...but being an Orc, what she lacks in technique, to some degree she makes up for in enthusiasm. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

The secondary purpose was as a messenger, simply between Grimstone and me for now, but maybe with other people later. I didn't want her to relay anything complex...more simply to be able to give people a vague urging to get in touch with me, so that I could then talk to them in more detail myself later.

You never want to empower a servitor with free will. That is dangerous and this would be another thread entirely.

I've already broken that rule, unfortunately. Because I wanted her to be intelligent, basically more or less the entire top half of her circle is covered with copies of the astrological glyph of Uranus. That means that she's intelligent, but it also means that she can be a little rebellious at times, too. I'm not too worried, though...the single main reason why is because I imbued her with as much of a sense of compassion as I could, as well as a desire to protect people. (Me, and anyone else who I might ask her to guard) That was what actually led to her dissipating the first time she did. At the time, I didn't know that there was any other way that she could get energy other than either fire (which I didn't think I could get in a sufficiently large amount to be of use to her) or directly hand-feeding her, which I had been doing. What happened though was that this was not long after she was first envoked, and at the time, I'd been channelling to her around once every four hours. I'd only just finished helping Grimstone evoke his servitor, and from that and regularly feeding my own servitor was particularly exhausted. I went to bed while my servitor was still low energetically. Next day she seemed all right, and whenever I went to try and feed her she would refuse it, and I was given the impression that she didn't need it...although the sense of her presence grew increasingly fainter, and when I woke up the next day, I had a visual of her mass gradually blowing away like smoke, while she was trying to somehow maintain cohesion. At that point I told her to let go, and mentally watched her dissipate. It was like watching the rest of the air go out of a balloon, and for a few days after, until we re-evoked her, I had the impression of an echo in the room which I likened to a corpse.

That though is why I don't think I have anything to worry about in terms of her having free will, in the sense that I figured out that the reason why she'd dissipated was due to refusing energy from me earlier; she had seen that I was exhausted from helping Grimstone evoke his servitor, and the protector element that I'd programmed her with kicked in, to the point where she would not let me feed her because of a fear that being that low energetically would seriously harm me. To contrast, I read on the web about someone else who had a servitor, and the person in question actually ended up being physically injured due to the servitor's resistance to re-absorption. The protective emotional elements which I'd given my own servitor seemed to have developed into the capacity for self-sacrifice.

The only ethical dilemmas I've had in connection with her intelligence were that, for starters, for a few days after we first evoked her, a couple of times I repeatedly got the mental question (with a certain amount of emotion behind it) of, "Where are other Orcs?" She is now able to associate with Grimstone's servitor some of the time, and I think that really helps.

The other problem came a week or two ago when she actually got bored being largely inactive with me, and tried to leave in order to go off on her own. I initially didn't know that it would be a problem, and so reluctantly actually allowed her to go for a couple of days, since although that was obviously not my purpose for her, I felt that it would be the ethical thing to do. I only actually called her back on reading a post from bym about astral parasites, and on calling her back, sure enough I had a visual of several large lumps on her, resembling oversized boils, where it seems that some creatures resembling maggots had dug in and begun feeding on her. I'd been able to establish at least low level reactive barriers around my room, so on calling into the room, I found that the parasites were removed (them not being my own energy) but she was then left with several large holes. I then channelled to her to fill the holes, and afterwards sent her out with Grimstone's servitor to explain to her that, despite the fact that she might *feel* like a person, she actually wasn't...that she was in fact a servitor and that she would not be able to survive on her own without either Grimstone or me. Although for a day or two after this I had impressions of some intense, brooding anger and another emotion which I would most closely describe as grief, to the point where I actually had to sigil for a form of mental restraint that I could use on her if need be, (I got the idea from reading about the Goetic curse of chains) she now seems to have recovered emotionally. She can become somewhat enraged if I threaten her with the restraint, since I designed it, like the curse, to cause considerable pain, but I'm finding that the carrot of offering to feed her (in terms of positive reinforcement) works better than the stick in order to get her to obey me.

I'm also now trying to find tasks for her to do on a regular basis...I'm finding that for getting rid of disorderly people who loiter in front of my house, she is excellent...and that is what I think actually led to the only physical manifestation I think I've had with her so far. There was one evening where some fairly noisy teenage girls were outside the front of my house (I'm on a main highway, here) so I sent my servitor out to scare them away. A few seconds later I then heard a loud, but short, growl that sounded almost identical to the Orcish effect for such in WoW, followed by some terrified squeals from the teenage girls! I'm only wishing I had actually been at the window at the time, and not in my computer chair...I'm thinking I might have actually seen the servitor then.

When you create life it becomes harder to reabsorb the life and that is a reason for keeping servitors simple.

I wouldn't be able to re-absorb her now, I know.

Think about this. Study more and Practice, practice, practice! I know you'll do fine! Good Luck! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/egypt1.gif)

Thanks, bym.

This post has been edited by Petrus: Dec 7 2007, 11:35 PM