Sigils, What are they?¿ Options

I've been reading a lot on sigils, and can't seem to think of what they are for / how they work in the right way.
Could someone help elaborate please?

http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/amethystbt...igilmagick.html
"Your unconscious mind, while extremely powerful, only understands symbols sent to it from your conscious mind. It does not understand what we would consider simple and straight forward communication. Hence, the need for sigils which are really just combinations of the letters in your statement of intent (minus repeated letters, state of being verbs: is, are, etc. and any vowels)"

Trouble with whats written is that the unconciouse mind would be in control of the body whilst the concious mind is of doing the dreaming / travelling etc if you can imagine that your etheric body is not concious where as your physical body whilst being awake is. Unless meaning the subconcious?

The sigil can be interpreted in the wrong way. If I saw a triangle then it could represent a pyramid in the subconcious mind and an I shape could represent one of those roman colum thingys. I have thought though if you can picture this that it would build a picture in your mind about the person attached to the incoming thought if your mind thought it were coming from a person, although it doesnt need to be a person. Can also interpret in your dreams.

Trouble with whats written is that the unconciouse mind would be in control of the body whilst the concious mind is of doing the dreaming / travelling etc if you can imagine that your etheric body is not concious where as your physical body whilst being awake is. Unless meaning the subconcious?

The unconscious mind is always in control of the body. the conscious mind is a sort of compartment within the unconscious, which is within the subconscious. It's one of the neat little parallels to the emnationist theory of creation. Sigils are formed in the conscious, committed to the unconscious, and affected into change by the subconscious. The three of those compose the relative body/mind/spirit trinity of the psyche.

Also, your etheric body is conscious, just not the way we classically define consciousness - it senses and acts, and has reactionary principles just like the body does, they are different facets of your total consciousness. Your consciousness is only localized in any fashion according to your current contextual perspective - when centered in your body, you experience body consciousness, centered in your etheric or astral body, you experience astral consciousness, etc. - but the consciousness itself is never split up or divided in any fashion; you are simply only aware of one or two facets at a time. Expansion of consciousness is the expansion of how much awareness you have at any given time.

The sigil can be interpreted in the wrong way. If I saw a triangle then it could represent a pyramid in the subconcious mind and an I shape could represent one of those roman colum thingys. I have thought though if you can picture this that it would build a picture in your mind about the person attached to the incoming thought if your mind thought it were coming from a person, although it doesnt need to be a person. Can also interpret in your dreams.

I'm not sure i completely grasp the question, so allow me to just cover the basics of how a sigil works.

First step, you formulate an intention. Now, this is where the 'know thyself' addage comes into play, from the very beginning, because already your subconscious mind is going about the business of analyzing a plan of action - the more ego garbage you've cleared out, the more clear and energetic the intention will be. You want to have a good repoire with your subconscious, that comes ove time. In any case, the intention comes first.

You write the statement of intention out, which is like encoding the information into a cohesive pattern that already your subconscious has associated with a particular thought - the intention you started with.

However, in order for the intention to be absorbed and applied by your subconscious, you have to bypass the noise of your conscious mind. Since even looking at a simple sentance connects the thought with your conscious mind, colors it with mind chatter, etc., one has several methods of doing this. the classic A.O.Spare method is to eliminate the repeating letters and use the leftovers to create a composite image with no discrete parts. This obscures the identity of the intention to your conscious mind, but not your subconscious mind - to your subconscious, you've simply rearranged symbols and it will only interpret them in one way, based on the process of moving from step one to step three in order. I have tried using sigils that were simply barbarous looking images drawn while keeping an intention in mind, and I have found that it doesn't work as well, although some have had success by drawing a simple image of the outcome, distorting it, and using that as the sigil.

Generalized sigils, that is sigils formed from geometric images, runes, etc., can indeed be interpreted with some freedom by your subconscious mind. The only way to bypass that 'freedom of interpretation' is to spend time contemplating the complexities of the meanings of any symbols you wish to employ. And, in fact doing that can give your sigilization practice a connection to symbols embedded in the mass consciousness. However, I find that these symbols are better used as the template or setting of the sigil itself.

For instance, a simple intention sigilized to focus one's analytical ability might be crafted in the classical A.O.S. aforementioned before, and distorted into the shape of a square, representing the 'four dimensions' of an given idea in spacetime, or a triangle to focus the intention towards the analysis of the mind/body/spirit elements of any given concept.

Sigilization is a sensitive practice, and does require self-knowledge and surety of intention in order to be really effective. After the sigil is crafted and associated, some method of charging and 'firing' comes into play. There are a million ways to do this, I personally feel that the method should fit the purpose in some way. These days I just focus energy for a relavent period of time, and at the appropriate moment, burn the sigil itself unless it's set into something like clay or stone, in which case I bury it or put it out of sight and mind. Forgtting it's existence is the key to having a sigil work most effectively - so that your subconscious can do it's work unimpeded by the conscious mind.

Hope that sheds at least a little light.

peace

This post has been edited by Vagrant Dreamer: Sep 30 2006, 11:09 AM

I kind of get what your saying but, could you do a dummies version?
Does it relate to this though?... If you were to picture a bowl with a spoon in then take the spoon away, the spoon has now gone subconcious. Same as burring something. Been wondering why however you choose to burn?

This post has been edited by Coffee: Sep 30 2006, 03:27 PM

I kind of get what your saying but, could you do a dummies version?
Does it relate to this though?... If you were to picture a bowl with a spoon in then take the spoon away, the spoon has now gone subconcious. Same as burring something. Been wondering why however you choose to burn?

Ah, I see...

Starting with the example of the bowl. What you are referring to is the difference between structured and unstructured energy. I will explain.

Structured energy is any energy (electrical, emotional, informational, subtle or gross, any energy at all) which is able to be percieved in some fashion as an identifiable concept or sensory object. A spoon is a structure of energy, and so is the image of a spoon.

If you call up in your mind the images of a bowl and a spoon, then you are gathering the previously unstructured energy that was in your unconscious mind, and giving it structure in the conscious mind. If that unstructured energy didn't exist in your unconscious mind, then you would not be able to call it up into your conscious mind.

The point of sigilization is to take discrete unstructured energies, give them form and purpose - structure - and then submit them into the recesses of the mind where your intention gives them structure in an unstructured environment.

I'm afraid i'm not very good at describing these matters in simpler terms than what i've given here. The key to it, though, is the focused intention to create a sigil with a purpose. For instance, imagining a spoon and then letting it go from your mind is essentially the same practice of imagination, however the spoon was not associated with a particular purpose, and so committing the image of a spoon to your subconscious/unconscious mind does not cause an overtly magickal effect. However, if you consider the fact that every time you go to eat a bowl of cereal, you automatically go for a spoon without having to think it through or plan your actions, you may see a parallel. A sigil works the same way.

The trick is to take out the physical reality aspect of the overall picture. All existence is energy. Take a moment to stop thinking about that energy in terms of "table" "book" "chair" "computer", etc., the labels and symbols in our physical existence that define things for us. Outside of those structures and their order, all that is left is the subtle aspect - that is, the aspect not directly percieved "as-is" by the five classical senses. An example of identifying the subtle aspect of a structure: Find a picture or object which is sentimental in some fashion to you. When you look at this structure (object/concept) you percieve it on two levels. First level is the gross (physical) level - the object itself as defined by it's atomic structure and space/time context. The second level is the subtle level - this is the emotional memory associated with that object, the totality of your experience of it. That part cannot be percieved by anyone except yourself and possibly a skilled empath. As a natural part of being human, you are able to connect that physical object's structure on the gross physical plane, to subtle energies on the astral (subtle) plane.

This is the principle upon which sigilization functions. It is a process of creating a structure which is associated then with subtle energies, and 'digesting' that structure and it's function into your unconcious mind.

For me, burning the sigil is symbolic of releasing it's energy into my reality. When an object burns, matter is converted to energy (heat) which radiates outwards. Conservation of mass states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only altered and moved from one locale to the other. As the gross physical energy of the sigil is transformed into heat in the burning process, it's associated subtle energies follow the same movement, but in a holographic, non-physical plane of existence. While the heat is localized specifically in the physical plane, in the subtle plane that energy now exists throughout all the energy that I am connected to.

I hope I managed to explain everything in a cohesive manner... if anyone wants to take a crack at translating into more laymen's terms, you're welcome to try, I'm a gemini, this is about as good as I can do.

peace

I think I get what your saying, however the third step is missing?¿
Is there any liturature that I can read from / links etc to learn more about these matters? I am also not understanding the part where your sigil has now gone under a transformation and manifested, but where is that, do you see your subconcious as a part of a whole (nexus)?

Thanks.

This post has been edited by Coffee: Oct 1 2006, 05:54 AM

In my mind, the process of Sigilization rests on 2 basic principles:

1) That all of our minds are somehow connected to the world around us and

2) That our subconscious minds understand symbols better than words.

Therefore the process of casting Sigils is basically about taking a desire (your Intent, what you want to happen as a result of your Sigil), turning that desire into a symbol (the Sigil itself), then handing it off to your subconscious mind so that it can use its connections to bring about the desire you wanted.

"Handing off your Sigil to your subconscious mind" is done through the state of Gnosis. All that is, is basically a time when your Conscious mind has gone away and you have a direct pathway to your subconscious. This can last anywhere from half a second to a few minutes. At this point you send the Sigil to your subconscious and let it work.

Afterwards you just have to forget about it. Take the attitude of "I've done what I can. Just wait for whatever happens." If you obsessively think about your Sigil you are letting your conscious mind work against your subconscious in bringing about your desire.

There are plenty of resources out there on the specific details but that's the underlying theory behind it in a nutshell.

Im interested to know what missions you do with the sigil. You say that the sigil represents in a way the mission too?

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The unconscious mind has way more power than the conscious mind. Your unconscious "spits up" things, and your conscious mind filters what is coming up. In my mind, the conscious mind doesn't have much control, it is the unconscious that spits up this stuff and then the will, which is unonscious directs its intent. A sigil is a symbol FROM the unconscious stating an intent.