#sigilry

[lailoken]

My husband and I collaborated on this enchanted clay plaquette recently, and I'm quite pleased with it.

The clay was imbued with pertinent materials and then inscribed with a sigil of Cultivation before being fired and consecrated. It will hang in our orchard to help the saplings that have been struggling due to erratic weather.

[mindisland]

The Philosopher's Flight and The Philosopher's War Timeline

Tom Miller clearly planned these two novels stupendously, and I found myself wanting to put everything together in order so I could follow the timeline the way he intended. Hope someone else finds this helpful!

1750: Sigilry comes into widespread use 1831: Cadwallader invents smoke carving 1857: Transporter sigil first comes into use 1861: Wainwright starts Legion of Confederate Smokecarvers April 6, 1865: Petersburg massacre 1865: Birth-control sigils are published 1870: Franco-Prussion war begins 1871: Cadwallader’s Siggilrists break the Korps des Philosoph beseiging Paris 1891: Chilean Civil War - Beau Canderelli is a military philosopher 1892: Maxewell Gannet alludes to his list of 200 sigilrists 1897: Beau Canderelli and Emmaline Weekes meet in Havana January 1899: Robert is born 1901: Second Disturbance - Emmaline Weekes and Beau Canderelli guerrilla fight the trenchers November 1901: Beau Canderelli dies of a gunshot 1902: Hatcher and Jimenez make the first Transatlantic Flight hovering back-to-back 1914: The Great War breaks out February 1916: Gallipoli; Danielle Hardin evacuates most of the Commonwealth army solo 1916: Corruption discovered in 1st Division of R&E by Blandings; Gen. Rhodes creates 5th division for Blandings before Rhodes is fired April 6, 1917: Philosopher’s Flight begins August 1917: Edith Rubinsky (Edie or Ruby) gets her legs ruined January 1918: Robert gets his sigil fixed January 1918: Robert places 3rd in the Long Course of the General’s Cup May? 1918: Danielle becomes aide to Sen. Cadawaller-Fulton July 1918: Robert goes to Europe as part of R&E Early October 1918: Drale dies, Punnet dies in Battle of Saint-Mihiel Late October 1918: Robert breaks 1000 evacuations October 30th, 1918: the mutiny begins; Germans attack Metz and head towards Paris with their plague smoke October 31st, 1918: Robert picks up Bertie Synge and gets trapped under German cloud of smoke November 1st, 2pm, 1918: Edie finds Robert and Bertie November 2nd, 1918: Robert and co. end the war by transporting Berlin January? 1919: Robert ties 1st with Dmitri in the endurance flight February? 1919: General Pershing decimates the Corps, renames it the Army Philosophical Service; Essie stays on and rises through the ranks March 1919: Thomasina Blandings is court-martialed, subsequently gets sentenced to 10 years imprisonment at Ft Leavenworth Christmas 1919: First Zoning law passed January? 1920: Robert ties 1st with Michael Nakamura March? 1920: limits on hoverers license passed; Robert is living in Massachusetts January? 1921: Robert places 1st in Endurance flight 1922: Assuming she held to her timeline, Danielle Hardin runs and wins the Representative seat in Rhode Island 1926: Second Zoning Act - Danielle Hardin campaigns against December 26, 2926: Danielle Hardin writes to Robert 1930: Robert and (presumably) Edie’s daughter is born January 1932: Pilar Desoto orbits earth, Robert powers her 3rd-stage booster 1939: Preface to Flight, Robert is exiled in Mexico and is Field Commander for the Free North American Cavalry (at some point lbefore this, Freddy Unger starts teaching at the Universidad de Tamaulipas, Essie is promoted to Major General of the US Army Philosophical Service, Edie becomes a doctor of Neurology at Matamoros General Hospital) 1941: Danielle Hardin is/was Secretary of Philosophy to Franklin D Roosevelt November 11, 1941: Preface to War, Robert is promoted to Commander and Brig. General of First North American Volunteer Air Cavalry, and is in China due to personal request from Roosevelt (in exchange for amnesty for sigilrists in exile from United Stages)

[emrosedeleon]

Alright, I'm on the page right before the end of Act IV, and I'm prepared to assert directly now that Homestuck is definitely a fucking hypersigil whether Hussy was going for that or not.

[woven-aegis]

For avoiding negative energies.

[mjbookreviews]

The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller

In which magic, history, flying sports, romance, science, heroism, and women’s rights combine in glorious fashion

The Philosopher’s Flight is a delightful, fantastical, and magical coming of age story.  In Miller’s version of the world, “empirical philosophy” is a practice dominated by women that is a mix between magic and science; these “philosophers,” or sigilrists, as they’re often called, use powders and drawn “sigils” to let them “hover” or fly, carve smoke, transport from place to place (like teleportation), freeze human motor functions to put people in “stasis,” and much more. Narrator Robert Weekes grew up the son of one of the best hoverers in Montana (and probably the country), and since he was a young boy, he had dreamed of following in his mother’s footsteps and becoming part of the U.S. Sigilry Corps’s Rescue and Evacuation team, where only the best and bravest philosophers have flown.  As a male, however, this is viewed as impossible; men just can’t perform empirical philosophy like women can.

But as in any patriarchal society, the philosophers are not without opposition.  The Trenchers, groups mainly of men who believe that empirical philosophy is against God’s word and should be made illegal—and that the woman’s place is in the home—are riled up and out for blood as our story begins, and it is because of a tragic event involving Trencher terrorists that Robert Weekes becomes a hometown hero and is given the chance to get a scholarship to Radcliffe, a women’s college and a premier school for sigilrists. Robert finds opposition everywhere he turns at Radcliffe, but he does not give up on his goal to become a part of Rescue and Evac.  To even earn the recognition that would get him an interview with R & E, though, he must find a way to compete in the inter-collegiate General’s Cup, an Olympics-style competition for philosophers.  And of course, what would a coming-of-age story be without a love interest?  Over the course of the school year, Robert falls for Danielle Hardin, war hero and transport sigilrist extraordinaire, but will their love survive the political turmoil surrounding Danielle and Robert’s impossible dreams?

I absolutely loved reading this books and learning about how history would be different if empirical philosophy were a real practice.  There are such great little details that you pick up—like women already having the vote in the 1800s, for example—that it’s impossible not to be absolutely floored by the insane amount of time and research it must have taken Miller to put this whole book together.  Robert is a darling narrator who is so easy to empathize with; I honestly don’t think the story would have worked half as well from any other character’s perspective or if it had been written in third person.  And the quotes from characters and excerpts from textbooks and articles created for the beginning of each chapter are ingenious.  Not only do they immerse you in Robert’s world, they let you see into what the future holds for Robert and empirical philosophy as a practice. Similarly, the inclusion of pages at the end f the novel taken from a “textbook” of sigils that Robert helps to write is incredibly fascinating, finally giving the reader visual representations of the symbols sigilrists use for their different tasks.

For me, the most interesting aspect of the novel was the thought put behind how gender dynamics would work in this alternate universe.  The dedication page is great—apparently one of Miller’s friends or colleagues had asked why his stories never feature women, and this novel, though told from a male perspective, is all about strong women and the struggles they face in early twentieth century society, which, despite the respect most people have for the philosophers, is still a world run by men, where women and their “witchcraft” are often feared.  Miller does an excellent job of thinking out the nuances of how a society where powerful women are given a chance to take charge would differ from our own.  It’s also a very interesting way to look at how, for most of Western history, women were seen as the inherently inferior sex; if you were a woman, you just couldn’t compete with men.  In Robert’s world, he is seen as naturally inferior because men just are naturally worse than women at empirical philosophy, and Miller hits the nail on the head of how, for example, women who fought and flew in the World Wars must have felt trying to break into these fields dominated by the opposite gender who saw them as naturally incapable.

However, Miller is also not blind to how these situations would obviously be different as well. Robert’s roommate, another male at Radcliffe, Unger, has a younger sister who wants to go to Harvard, and after he and Robert are targeted in the cafeteria on their first day at school, Unger shudders to think of the kind of treatment his sister would get being the first woman at male-dominated Harvard.  The threat of sexual violence and the way that people like the Trenchers use the Bible to remove women’s autonomy and classify them as the submissive sex are still very real for the women in the novel, and I appreciated Miller’s effort to show that while Robert can metaphorically stand in for the women who had to break into the public sphere in a patriarchal society, he enjoys privileges as a white male in a country that still holds the white male as the standard, making his transition into the female-dominated world of empirical philosophy much easier.  

The only thing about the novel that is left ambiguous that I wanted to explicitly see happen was Robert ending up with Essie, another first-year at Radcliffe who aspires to become a part of the Rescue and Evacuation corps as well.  She was obviously so into him the entire time. And they had the same interests! And there was definitely a spark near the end!  I guess I just identified more with Essie—she seems quiet and is easily embarrassed, but inside, she’s strong as hell.  Ugh. You know it’s a good story when you want the author to tell you exactly what happened after the novel ended.  All in all, I absolutely loved falling in love with these characters myself.

[bookbumming]

The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller is truly an adventure of it’s own. As soon as I turned the final page I had to jump on the internet and make sure there will be a sequel. Thankfully all is well in the world and there is an additional book coming in 2019. In the words of Tom Miller himself this is a story “In a WWI America where women are best at magic, a boy who wants to join the witch-army meets a girl war-hero trying to break into politics.” It’s a historical fantasy with a big dose of romance. Do yourself a favor, and read this book. 🌪🧚🏼‍♀️✨

[lailoken]

Some of the setup for a traditional Invisibility Spell I amended for the sake of concealing a house from prospective buyers.

[lailoken]

As part of a specific rite we undertook for Hollantide/Hallowe'en, we created this Jack-O-Lantern, inscribed with a compound-sigil that was generated using the ideographic sigilry my husband developed.

I was very pleased with the ultimate effect—both aesthetically, and magically.