I've been meaning to write this for a while, but now it's relevant to discourse, so... Here's hoping there isn't a hornet nest where I'm aiming my foot.
I do not believe a psychological model of witchcraft is the best, most accurate, or most useful model.
But -
I believe a psychological model of witchcraft is extremely handy to keep in one's back pocket.
The obvious reason is that it's a backup with clear, immediate results. Did your curse actually fuck someone up? Dunno, maybe! Did channeling your hurt feelings into one make you feel better? If it didn't: probably don't do that again! If it did: whether or not your target is actually fucked up, that's a success. Maybe not your primary goal, but definitely a success, which is worth something on its own and shouldn't be discounted.
The second reason is that psychological witchcraft-stripped-of-woo is readily available in all sorts of psychology resources or meditation courses or whatever, backed up with empirical evidence, and there's surprisingly a lot of overlap between psychology advice and straight up woo-ful witchcraft. Charge a ring with emotions of safety and love, then focus on it in situations of fear: an exercise I found in a psychological self-help book with no woo whatsoever. Meaning: a) more resources, and b) more backup successes that can transfer to spells you find elsewhere, when you can see what solid empirical stuff is hiding beneath the woo.
The third and maybe best reason, though, is that once you know how to remove woo in this way, you can also add it back in.
So, take that psychological exercise with the ring. Make it a spell, but do it properly, according to your paradigm. Use correspondences. Call on gods or spirits for aid. Do whatever you usually do.
The backup psychological layer will work regardless. But if your paradigm works, you get a functional spell on top of that. And the beautiful thing is, the backup layer will be strengthened by it too.
Witchcraft isn't (just) psychology. But that doesn't mean psychology can't be witchcraft.
A sigil is a symbol of intent developed by the chaote with the intent of manifesting a desired result. It's a neat little glyph you can create that is processed by the subconscious mind to bring about the change the chaote is looking for.
There are so many different ways to create a sigil, but today, for this post, we're going to focus on the original method- the Letter Method.
This method was developed by the grandfather of chaos magick, Austin Osman Spare. This technique revolutionized the occult world, making it easy and accessible to the layman as opposed to the strict and gawdy teachings of the magick orders of the time, such as The Golden Dawn.
The idea is simple, and can be done in just a few steps. Some sigils are completed within five minutes, others may take several hours to get just right. It all depends on what the chaote is trying to achieve.
1 . Write out your Statement of Intent
A statement of intent (or SoI) is a simple sentence that outlines your desire in clear, concise language. It should be written in the present tense, and should avoid words that are either negative in nature (not, never, don't, etc) or words like "want". This is because the universe can be finnicky, and by using words like "never" it tends to do the opposite and manifest what you're trying to avoid. If you use a word like "want" (i.e. "I want a new book on the occult.") then you get trapped in an endless cycle of wanting that new book instead of actually receiving it.
For example:
"I want a new book on magick." Incorrect
"I receive a new book on magick." Correct
2. Remove all the duplicate letters and vowels.
The next step is to break down the SoI into fewer letters. This is done by removing all the duplicate letters and vowels from the SoI. If a letter appears more than once, remove it. If it's a vowel, remove it.
So with our previous example "I receive a new book on magick." if we break it down as described we're left with:
RVNWBMG
Simple, right?
The reasoning behind this is that we're trying to encode the SoI into our subconscious minds. By breaking down the original statement, we're creating an abstract representation of the SoI. The subconscious is a very abstract beast, and it works with symbols and codes.
3. Rearrange the remaining letters into an abstract glyph
This is the fun part, where we get to be a little artsy.
So we're going to take the remaining letters, and mash them together into one coherent symbol.
Don't be afraid to warp, bend, and morph the letters into unique shapes, and don't get too wrapped up in the aesthetics of it.
It may look like a bunch of a random squiggly lines, but if you look closely you'll see the shapes of all the letters that were leftover.
4. Charge it
Now you're going to "charge" the sigil, which means you're going to enter a state of gnosis and implant the sigil into your subconscious mind.
There's a number of ways of doing this. The simplest technique is to simply sit still and meditate on the sigil for as long as you can. Quiet your mind from all other distractions and simply gaze at the sigil. Make it your one and only point of focus. When you believe it to be charged, move on to the next step.
Other ways of charging a sigil include: dancing to music while focusing on it, head banging while focusing on it, retracing it over and over again. These are just a few examples, and the creative chaotes usually develop their own methods.
4. Destroy it.
This part isn't absolutely necessary, but it is traditional teaching to burn the sigil after you've charged it. This extravagant event of burning implants the importance of the sigil further into your subconscious mind.
Destroying the sigil is supposed to release it to the universe, dispersing the energy you've gathered in the process.
Other ideas besides burning include: leaving it somewhere out in the open so you passively charge it out of your peripherals, hiding it somewhere out of sight, putting it some place of importance, etc. Be creative.
5. Forget it.
There's a lot of debate on this part, but traditional teachings say it is necessary to forget the sigil entirely so that the subconscious mind is doing all the work, while the conscious mind isn't lusting after the results. If we think about the sigil too much, our desire gets in the way of it working, and makes success much less likely.
And there you have it! A simple tutorial on the Letter Method of sigil creation.
This was written late at night in a bit of a rush. I'll probably come through at some point at tighten it up a bit. Until then, this tutorial will give you the bare basic info you need to create your first sigil.
Hi, my name is Astora Diam, occult author. Almost 30 people have purchased my book, The Path: Psychomancy, which is 30 more people than I expected would purchase it.
The Path:Psychomancy is a book that goes over a variety of basic techniques encountered in spiritual paradigms repeatedly across time and place and breaks down how to use these techniques, what to use them for, and the underlying psychological principle by which they work. Meditation, thoughtform construction, the psychology of ritual, otherkin as a psychological construct, soul retrieval, and dream states are examples of topics covered in this book.
I consider myself an occultist, writer, and philosopher who practices from the perspective that magick and spirituality is mediated entirely by psychological and creative processes.
The original cover of The Path: Psychomancy by Astora Diam. This book teaches a slew of basic occult and spiritual techniques- meditation, soul retrieval, evocation and invocation, thoughtform construction, psionics, dream work, astral projection, and imposition (to name a few topics)- from the psychological model of reality.
This is where I am at on the models of Magick. It is pretty much a meta model infused into each individual model. Hopefully from here on you will see each model as an aspect of what the whole is, like the blind men groping the different parts of an elephant and trying to guess what it is. Questions or thoughts are welcome.
Spirit Model:
The universe is populated with various types of spirits. You are a spirit. Even ideas and Ideals are types of spirits (a space of consciousness holding information and energy). Created spirits can over time or directed belief and magick build up enough to be effective in some way. When one calls a spirit they use tools and symbols that through the arts of magick have become effectively, spirits. Spirits cause change by manipulating the astral light/energy/chi/prana and elements to cause change. They do this by taking a quality (an idea, say Love) and building up the quantity (sensation and symbol) of that idea on the target. At a certain point this causes a manifestation to occur. Spirits can also influence and/or guide a person by influencing their thought stream in the same manner. Most people don’t realize that some of their thoughts are from such means. People don’t have ideas, Ideas have people. Over time and with skilled awareness one becomes aware that none of one’s thoughts are really one’s own much like clouds are not the sky.
Energy model:
All things that have an effect on something have some type of energy. This energy in the art of magick has been called various things over different cultures but every culture has a name for it. In all cultures it is tied to the breath and to ideas of “spirit”. Nearly all ancient magick traditions had some type of breath work involved to activate this model and one will also find a system of muscle tension and release are involved as well in some form. You experience this energy as sensations and feelings within consciousness and your body. It moves where awareness goes. When the quality and quantity diminish you either need to breathe, eat or sleep properly to replenish that lost amount. If one builds up enough energy and infuses it with a particular feeling (bliss, joy, love and success bring a very high end energy) and connect that to a target the result will be based on the quantity and quality of the energy. That is why master magicians and gurus don’t have to do much ritual magick to get things done, they have developed their energy to such a degree that their intent-awareness sends the needed quality and quantity towards the target for results to just occur. Usually thought control and emotional control are key to this model because the more random thoughts and feelings mix in, the lower the quality and the quantity is scattered. Spirits use this model because they exist in this energy flow (they themselves are stable coagulated forms of this energy and information) in such a way that it is easily perceptible to them and easily manipulated that they can work in this model like we can gather and shape clay.
Psychological model:
This is the one that needs the most revision in magick. I have a degree in psychology. The ideas most people have about psych are really way off. Psychology as a science is just terrible. They have abandoned most of what people considered as psychology and have opted for Behaviorism and pills to fix things because it is a completely materialist model. But, let us have a go at it. Even the most intro level psych class teacher will be able to explain to you that EVERYTHING you have or will ever experience has always been inside your head. Take a look around. All that is in your head. That is pure materialism mind you! They can’t even tell you how that is possible and have actually given up on trying to figuring that out, leaving that to Neuroscience.Tons of frequencies and energies are bouncing around, get absorbed into your awareness through certain nerves, those signals enter the brain and the brain produces a story about what is going on to the best of its processing power to produce your experience. In other words all of this is taking place in your skull. Modern psych doesn’t even care about consciousness or unconsciousness (subconsciousness). It sees people as animals that can be trained. If you can be trained to behave in a happy way measurably then in its model it has succeeded. They believe eventually the inside will catch up to the behavior, and since no one can measure what is going on inside then what does it matter? To still be trying to explain magick through a psychological model that has been outdated for decades; successfully, is a truly magickal act.
This should now be the Parapsychology or Psi model or at worst the Depth Psychology model to even begin to be a credible model. There is a ton of evidence for psi and if linked with depth psych you can have a pretty good map of the beach...but not the ocean. Sigils fall into this model in most people’s opinion. From reading all of this (and the information model below) you can maybe guess now how sigils actually work. Especially once you get a good handle of the latest psi research.
The Information model
The astral light/chi/prana is consciousness in the same way you are conscious right around the time you wake up or are about to fall asleep and exist as just pure floating awareness. It is not dumb/intelligent, it just is. If properly gathered together (quantity) it can hold an intent (quality) and go about its work to produce a result. This is very much like slowly waking up and enjoying the pure bliss of being for a few moments before the flow of thoughts you have collected (or have being fed to you) rush in to remind you it is time to get up and “BE” or do something. Imagine not having a body and existing in that barely conscious state and you have the basis of what it is like to be pure spirit. Consciousness is the base matter, the philosophical Earth. All things are molded from this. Information is the philosophical air. (Those familiar with internal alchemy may have just had an aha moment) all things are inspired to “Be” through this element, the breath of life. Before you incarnated this was what you were. From there you build up information, experiences, personalities drives and then when you die that basic gestalt is taken over to a new body where the process is repeated and that basic pure spirit over time crafts itself into a divine being (Through philosophical Fire and Water) from which the information-less consciousness can experience itself and direct itself.
