Sigils

Sigil magic is one of my favourite kinds of magic to use. There are two main trains of thought on sigil creation that I would like to talk about here.
The first way, the way I use most, involves coming up with a short sentence that outlines what you are trying to accomplish or manifest. This sentence should be a complete thought, expressed in as few words as possible, and be in a positive frame. So, if you were in a financial bind you would use something like “I attract money” rather than “I am not poor”, or if you were being bullied you could say “I am protected” rather than “My bully can’t harm me”. This positive phrasing goes for any manifesting really. The universe does not see the negative (words like not, doesn’t, or won’t), and so you would likely end up attracting what you didn’t want in the first place by using that type of phrasing. Next you would write that sentence down and cross out all the duplicate letters (leaving the first instance of it). So in the case of “I am protected” you would be left with the letters *I a m p r o t e c d*. Next you would take these letters and combine them together into one symbol. It does not matter if the letters are sideways, upside down, and once you have created that symbol you can leave it as is (as I do), or add some embellishments to make it look more “magical”. Whatever works for you. It might look something like this:

​The second way is to combine symbols that correspond to the message you are trying to convey. You could look up symbols and their meanings in various books like The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols by Adele Nozedar, but using ones that have special meaning to you is a better way to go to make your sigil more personal. To do this, you would make a list of all the concepts you need for your sigil like love, family, home, money, protection, man/woman etc.. and combining those symbols rather than letters. It would definitely be a good idea to write these symbols and what they mean to you in a journal or your grimoire for quick and easy reference in the future. It would also not be a bad idea to write down the sigil you created and its purpose somewhere as well, so that you can use it again if need be, and to keep track of what worked for you and what didn’t. If you want to learn more about this type of sigil magic I recommend Sigil Witchery by Laura Tempest Zakroff.
Now that you have created your sigil, you need to do something with it. You could write it onto paper, paint or etch it onto a crystal, burn or etch it into wood, paint it on your (or someone else’s) body, or anything else you can imagine that will help your spell work or manifestation. When you are ready to activate your sigil, you will then ground and center yourself, raise your energy however you normally do this (connecting your crown chakra to the universe, visualizing a white or coloured light stemming from your power center, connecting to the earth through your root chakra, etc.. whatever works for you) and you will bring this energy/power to your hands so that you can use it to trace out the sigil. If you used the first sigil making method you would trace out the letters in the sigil in the order they appear in the sentence, saying the sentence word by word as you do. This sets your intent. If you chose the second method you could trace out each symbol in the order they are needed for your intent to be laid out. So if you are a woman and your intent was to attract love and you chose symbols to represent a man, a woman, a heart and something for attraction, then you could trace them in the order of woman (representing you), the symbol for attraction, the symbol for man, and then the heart, while stating “I, (your name), attract a man to love, who will love me”. The same could be used for same sex attraction. I do recommend, however, that if you intend to do any kind of love spells, that you ask only to attract love to you, and not a specific person. Not only would this interfere with free will, it could backfire on you badly, and the universe may have a better plan, you never know. Always ask for these and other things “for your highest good, and to harm none”, unless you are cursing someone, but that is a whole different story.  
So, have you used sigil magic before? Which method did you use? Which one do you prefer? After reading this, would you try sigil magic (if you haven’t before)?