Hello! My name's Joe, and I recently rededicated myself to my craft. I've gotten increasingly more interested in sigils, and I've developed my own system to make them. They are complicated and beautiful, and I'm still developing my shape language and other associations to make them even more powerful. Overall, very fun for me as an artist!
I base my sigil making on traditional witchcraft, my own intuition, and personal associations. While I won't be going into much detail on my own personal practices (some things I wish to keep private), I figured I could at least work through an example sigil to encourage other people to get more creative.
A little background on me: I am a French-American Catholic folk witch. My research very heavily involves French traditional witchcraft, the Saints, my Ancestors, and God. I am from Louisiana which also heavily influences my practice.
DISCLAIMER: I am not claiming to be an expert on this subject. This is just what’s worked for me. Please take this tutorial as inspiration or simply a share of how I practice. If nothing in this tutorial resonates with you, then feel free to disregard it entirely!
STEP ONE: GATHER YOUR INITIAL SHAPES
This is a pretty common way to make your sigils! I start with an action statement pertaining to my intent. Action statements are statements where your subject is engaging in an activity in the present tense. Examples include “I am strong,” “My energy flows through me.” You do not want to use passive statements such as “I will be strong” or “My energy shall flow through me” because you want to stay in the present, and you want your sigil to be active at all times. By putting it in the future, your sigil will not be activated until a future date which you do not have control over.
After you’ve made your statement, write it out in all capital letters. Eliminate all vowels so that you’re left with just the consonants. Then break down those letters into the shapes that make them. Your shapes might vary based on your handwriting. For example, you might write your capital Gs differently than I.
STEP TWO: MAKE YOUR INITIAL SHAPE
You can make the shapes any way you want. You can make your lines dotted, wavy, solid. Really get creative with the shapes. Make them bigger! Make them smaller! Stretch or squish them out. Mine tend to lean more into symmetry when possible, but that's literally just me. Just create a shape that feels right!
Some people go through several designs before settling on one. For me, though, I just go with the first one I come up with because I don't want to think about it too hard. Additionally, I tend to follow my intuition a lot. This is magic, not an art project!
STEP THREE: ADD MORE SHAPES
THAT'S RIGHT MORE SHAPES BABY. We are filling this out with all sortsa symbols. What I tend to use the most are planetary symbols as well as smaller sigils I make that represent something I wish to incorporate into the sigil. Where these other symbols are placed also correspond with the direction (North, South, East, and West) in which i place them. For example, I put the symbol for the sun in the north placement on my sigil. To me, this means that I want this sigil to represent a beginning with a powerful rising energy.
Other symbols I tend to include are clusters of dots corresponding with a number, sigils I made using the same technique previously described to represent colors, herbs, etc. Some other symbols I use represent spirits, a particular person, or simply letters themselves to represent a word I wish to incorporate.
Literally add whatever symbols you want to!
STEP FOUR: THE OUTER "SHELL"
I typically encase my sigils in circles to replicate particular Saint and Angel sigils simply because it works in my practice. Other shapes you can use to encase a sigil are squares, triangles, octagons, literally whatever shape you want!
After the initial circle is drawn, I will the surround the circle with other symbols to strengthen the sigil as a whole. Again, these symbols can be whatever you'd like them to be! In this example, I placed the letters N, E, W, and S to represent the cardinal directions. I placed big circles in between them, and then three dashes in between those letters and circles.
STEP FIVE: FINALIZE YOUR SIGIL
Typically I will draw a final circle to encase literally everything. And boom! You're done! This is our final sigil:
I hope this at least provided you with inspiration in making your sigils!!
As far as charging them goes, part of charging them to me is physically drawing it out. It's a way of adding my own personal energy into the sigils. That's the first part of charging them for me.
The second part of charging the sigil is after you finished drawing your final product. The way that I charge my sigil post drawing pretty much varies depending on what the sigil is for. Find what works best for you!!
Other advice I'd give is to not think about it too hard and have fun with it. The moment you take it too seriously is the moment you make it harder for yourself. Remember the intent behind your sigil, and don't be afraid "mess it up." Real life is not perfect, real life is messy. Nature is messy. Lean into the imperfections.
EXAMPLES OF REAL SIGILS IVE CREATED
I'm sharing these just to give you more of an idea of how I make genuine sigils in my practice. My practice is ever growing and I hope to make them even better in the future !!!
