Using Planetary Squares to Create Sigils
Sigils are very, very popular on Tumblr and the Internet lately. They are perfect for witches and magicians living in today’s dynamic world. There is much consternation and perhaps even a bit of debate, though, over what constitutes a sigil and how to use them properly. I personally just define them as any (usually) two-dimensional symbol communicating magical intent, and I’ve talked about my process for making and charging them here. A lot of us have different methods for making sigils, and there’s really no wrong way to do it (provided it works for you), but there do exist some traditional sigilization methods, among which we find the idea of using planetary squares.
This method, popularized by Agrippa, uses a series of number grids associated with each planet. A statement of some sort of magical intent is translated into numbers, and then the numbers are plotted on the grid. A line is then drawn between the numbers in their order within the statement, beginning with a circle to denote a start point, and ending with a perpendicular line across the main one. You’ve probably seen sigils made in this fashion before - the circle at the beginning and perpendicular line at the end make them rather recognizable.
While not all sigils with those features are planetary, they do employ a similar technique to those using the planetary grids, usually a grid setup of some sort. Of note, many technowitches will use keypads and keyboards as grids in making sigils. Here, though, I’ll describe what’s (mostly) the traditional method for making a simple sigil using a planetary grid. It’s pretty far beyond the scope of this article to include all the grids, but resources for them can be found in various places online, including this site.
Lets just here, as an example, focus on the grid for Venus, which is shown below.
Suppose you’re a witch and would like to create a sigil using it to help a friend find love, or to bring love of some sort into your own life, strengthen an existing relationship, or just invoke the concept of love for some reason in general. Venus is an ideal celestial sphere to work with for this purpose, as most people know, given that Venus is not only named for a goddess of love, but also associated with love in astrology. Venus is associated with other matters, too, such as creativity, fertility, and art, though, so we want to be specific. We could, in theory, just use the glyph, hexagram, or other symbol of Venus for this, but suppose your friend (who has bad luck in love, and needs help with it) wants a custom sigil specifically. It’s quite easy to do.
Like with most sigils, you begin by summing up your intent. Were I doing this for a specific, actual situation and not as an example, I might spend a long time deciding on the correct choice of word or words to sum up the goal of the sigil, but for the purposes of this example, we’ll just use the word LOVE itself as our statement of intent. It’s not very specific, but it’s positive, and using it in this fashion will be a great demonstration of this technique. The word LOVE, after all, only has five letters, and works well to sigilize in this fashion. That’s one thing I do want to emphasize before you try this with something more complex - try to reduce your intent to as few letters as possible. This can be done by removing vowels or repeating letters if your statement is complex, but planetary sigils really do work best with as succinct an intent as possible. You’ll soon see why.
We take the word LOVE and transliterate it into numbers using the following table of values. The table has variations, and witches assign numbers to letters in a variety of ways - some might transliterate their intent into Hebrew or Greek letters and use those systems of gematria, for example. This is the most common way that I’ve seen of doing it in English, though. Of note - Dixie Deerman (whose book taught me to do this back in the day) actually includes a & symbol at the end, equal to 900, and uses that to connect words if necessary. I’ve never been much for that, but some might find it useful, so I mention it. It’s in the image below.
For LOVE, it gets transliterated into five numbers, which are, in order, 30, 60, 400, and 5. This can then be plotted on the Venus square using the method described above, beginning with the first number (30) and ended with the 5. But wait! If you actually look at the Venus square, it doesn’t quite go as high as 400, does it? It doesn’t even go up to 60. So, how do we include those numbers (representing the letters O and V) in the sigil? Well, simply divide them by 10! Instead of plotting straight up 30, 60, 400, and 5 on the grid, we’re plotting 30, 6, 40, and 5. This is how it is commonly done, and, in my experience, it works quite well.
Below is the finished LOVE sigil plotted on the Venus grid. Notice how the first number is circled, to designate where the sigil begins, and the last one is marked with a perpendicular line. Feel free to use this yourself if you want (and feel like doing love magick!), but I do encourage everyone to experiment and make their own for whatever purposes they favor.
Sigils made in this fashion on planetary grids can be used without the grid, naturally. If I were wanting to use the one above as a bit of gesture magick by tracing it in the air, or perhaps just sketch it on a piece of paper for a quick boost, I’d do so without drawing the full grid - just the lines themselves. The grid is implied. When creating the grid on paper in preparation for creating a sigil, though, it’s traditional to draw the lines, and then jump around the grid, filling in the numbers in order. I personally make most of my planetary sigils digitally in Photoshop, but some witches will have all the grids in their grimoire and use tracing paper over them to create the sigils. There’s a lot of methods for making a planetary sigil physically or digitally, so practice, and see what works for you.
Color can play a role in any sigil you create, too. If anything peeves me in the magical community these days, it would be that so few witches realize you can use colorful sigils. I just feel that people miss out when they don’t explore that, and it can be a lot of fun! With planetary sigils, each planet is associated with several colors traditionally (as an example, Venus has an association with both pink and emerald green), and you yourself might have color associations on your own for the planets or the intent of your sigil that can be used. You’ll note above that I’ve tinted the lines of the sigil itself a nice Venusian green, and were I casting the sigil, I’d do it with green ink if possible, or just visualize it in green. In fact, were I to suggest someone use this sigil (or were I using it myself), it might end up looking something like this:
The usual “rules” (as in, whatever you usually get results doing) as far as charging and preparing mentally to use a sigil apply with planetary sigils, as well. If you’ve read my article on charging sigils, you know that I personally know some folks who don’t “charge” sigils formally, yet still get good results. A lot of them work with planetary sigils, and the general consensus between us (having discussed this) is that, for some people, the very process (which you now see is quite involved) for creating these sigils can be sufficient to charge them. Whatever works for you is fine, but definitely experiment a bit.
I hope this article on planetary squares and sigilization was useful or entertaining for you, and that you create wonderful magick, regardless of how you do it! Planetary squares used in sigilization are a great way to get started working with celestial forces in specific ways, and they’re ideal for witches who’re on a budget or trying to keep things low-key, as they, like most sigils, require essentially nothing but paper and pen to create. If you like my work, consider donating or purchasing a divination reading in my shop, and if you have an questions, feel free to contact me.
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