The classic chaos magic approach to sigil magic assigns one purpose or function to a given sigil. You come up with a statement of desire and you convert that statement into a symbol that represents the desire. You then charge and fire the sigil and proceed to forget about it and get on with your life.
It’s a cut and dried process that works fairly well.
I’ve come up with variations for this type of sigil magic including:
Banishing the sigil through detachment by making it become part of your background.
Creating multiple sigils and connecting them together so when one manifests, it pulls the others into reality.
And sigil webs where you create a life map using sigils to represent your habits, desires, people, events etc.
I share these techniques (and more) in my class Ultimate Sigil Magic.
However, as with any given magical practice or technique there is an opportunity to continually evolve and transform your understanding, so you can do more with the technique. A couple years back my friend Stephanie Connolly Reisner shared some thoughts on how sigils could become programming symbols1. At the time I was reading Robert Podgurski’s book The Sacred Alignments and Sigils, which explores how to use sigil grids for magical purposes. I immediately found a corollary with his work, my experiments with sigils and the concept Stephanie shared about sigils being a programming statement.
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The benefit of applying a programmer mindset to sigils and spells
Before we go into how to meta-program sigils so they perform multiple functions, let’s take a moment to consider the advantages of applying programming as a discipline. Even if you’re not familiar with programming, the basic concept of it is easily applicable to magic.
If x happens, then Y occurs.
Essentially a programming statement describes the logic of how a program ought to work and what actions will occur when the code is activated. Let’s apply that same understanding to magic.
When the steps of a spell are performed, what we’re doing is programming reality with the spell. We’re saying if this action happens, a response will occur that brings the desired result into alignment. Take a look at any spell or practical magic technique and that’s what you’ll see at work on the information level of the spell. That information level directs the energetic aspects of the spell work and activates the underlying principles that makes the magic work.
One of the benefits of treating a magical spell as a form of programming is that it allows you to adopt an approach to magic where the spell can be revised. It has never made sense to me that a magic working would be static and unchanging once the magician has cast the spell, done the ritual, and jumped through whatever other hoops they feel they have to jump through. I treat a given magical working as programming, which means I can refine it, edit it, and change it as needed in order to help me accomplish my desired outcome.
If the spell isn’t initially creating the outcome I want, I don’t write it off as a failed spell. I get curious about why it’s not working, and because I treat the spell as a program, I can go in and edit the spell, making whatever changes are needed to get it back on track and performing the way its supposed to perform.
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Sigils as multi-functional logic statements
Let’s bring this back to sigils. A sigil contains the information that is put into it. It also describes the process for how a result will become manifested into reality, through semiotic, memetic and subconscious alignment. It’s programming you AND reality to connect and create the result.
A sigil is usually programmed to focus on one goal, one desired result. You can get around this by creating multiple sigils, but there is another way, which is to treat your sigil as a multi-functional logic statement. In other words, the sigil is setup to activate specific actions when specific conditions are met.
You can use this approach to design a sigil which works as a long term magical working. The sigil is set up as a staged process that manifests specific elements of the result within a specific order. As the result is achieved, the next level of the sigil is activated. This creates a sequential path of manifestation that the sigil uses to manifest the overall result. It also cuts down on resistance, both internal and external, because the sigil is designed to use micro results.
A practice example of this can be creating a sigil to help you get more clients. The sigil multiplies on itself with each client you bring in. Each client is treated as a micro-result that recursively feeds back into the sigil working, multiplying the effect. Instead of treating the sigil as an end statement, we treat it as an open looped iterative working that generates further results.
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