Sigil Magick

Hine lays out six stages in Condensed Chaos (ch. “Sigil Magick”):

1. S — Specify Intent. Get your desire “as precise as possible without, at the same time, being too overcomplicated.” Hine warns: “Vague intentions usually give rise to vague results.” (His cautionary tale: a friend sigilised for a lover with elaborate specs on looks and car, “forgot to specify intelligence,” and “was lumbered with a bore.”) Write the intent as a single clear statement of result.
2. P — Pathways Available? Make sure there is a realistic route for the result to arrive on. Hine’s example: working blindly for money may bring it via “the sudden deaths of relatives” or “industrial compensation after falling into a combine harvester,” whereas opening a path — applying for a job, entering a lottery, writing a book — gives the result a sane channel. You still act in the world.
3. L — Link Intent to a symbolic carrier. Turn the statement “into a symbolic analogue or code — a signal on which you can focus varying degrees of attention on, without recalling your initial desire.” The two classic methods Hine gives: - (a) Monogram / glyph: “write out your intent, knock out all repeating letters, and from the rest, design a glyph.” (Combine the remaining letters into a single abstract emblem — stylise it until it no longer reads as words.) - (b) Mantra: “write out intent, scramble into meaningless phrase or word, which can then be chanted.” He adds you can also encode intent in “smell, taste, colours, body language, and hand gestures.”
4. I — Intense Gnosis / Indifferent Vacuity. Charge the sigil in an altered state. “Sigils can be projected into the mutliverse via an act of Gnosis.” Hine’s listed routes: “spinning, chanting, dancing, visualisation, sensory overload or sensory deprivation, and sexual arousal.” The alternative is Indifferent Vacuity — “a sort of not-particularly-bothered state,” e.g. doodling the sigil while half-listening to a boring talk you must take notes on. In both, you stare at / hold the glyph while the discursive mind is occupied or overwhelmed.
5. F — Fire. “Simply the projection of the sigil into the void or multiverse at the peak of Gnosis/Vacuity.” His examples of that peak: “orgasm, reaching the point of blackout from hyperventilation,” or — for the vacuity route — the moment you’re suddenly asked a question about the boring talk. At that crest, let the image flash and release it.
6. F — Forget. “Once your sigil has been fired, you’re supposed to forget the original intent and let the Butterfly Effect or whatever take its course.” Hine concedes “forgetting what you just did can often be the hardest part” — which is why he recommends beginners start with sigils for things “you arent really too fussed about.” His garden analogy: you isolate one plant (the intent), feed and prune it till it stands out, then “suddenly get bored. and go indoors to watch television. The trick is, next time you look at the garden, not to notice the plant you so recently lavished attention on.” If the thought resurfaces, don’t dwell on it. (Sourcing note: the S.P.L.I.F.F. acronym, the six stage definitions, and the quoted lines are Hine’s, from the “Sigil Magick” chapter of Condensed Chaos. Descriptions are faithful paraphrase; only short phrases are quoted.)

Phil Hine (b. 1960) is a British occult author and a key populariser of chaos magic; Condensed Chaos (1995), prefaced by Peter Carroll, is his best-known introduction.

The sigil method descends directly from artist-occultist Austin Osman Spare, who originated the “alphabet of desire” and the technique of compressing a sentence of will into a glyph and charging it in trance.

Hine’s contribution is the clean S.P.L.I.F.F. teaching frame and the modern, demystified, “results-magick” packaging. The lineage runs Spare → Carroll/Sherwin (IOT) → Hine. → (Phil Hine; Austin Osman Spare; Peter Carroll).

Spare’s original sigils — the source: sentence of desire → letters condensed into a glyph → charged at the “death posture” / orgasm. Hine’s S.P.L.I.F.F. is the systematised heir.

• Carroll’s Liber Null sigils — the IOT formulation Hine builds on; same charge-and-forget logic.
• Affirmation / autosuggestion — shares the “impress the subconscious, don’t let the will argue” principle, but uses plain repeated language rather than an abstracted glyph.
• Vision boards / written goals — the secular cousin: externalising a specific intent into a symbol/image you periodically attend to.
• Petitionary prayer + “let go and let God” — structurally parallel: state the request, then release attachment to the outcome.
• Indifferent Vacuity ≈ the “law of reversed effort” (Coué) — getting results by not straining for them.

Vague intent. Hine’s first rule — fuzzy statements give fuzzy results. Spell out the result precisely (but not so elaborately you box yourself in, per the “no-intelligence lover” tale).

• No real-world pathway. Skipping the P step and waiting passively. Open a sane channel and act.
• The glyph still “reads.” If you can decode the words, the conscious mind keeps interpreting it. Abstract it until it’s just a shape.
• Can’t forget it. The hardest step. Start with low-stakes sigils; if the intent resurfaces, note it without dwelling. Destroying or filing-and-ignoring the physical sigil helps.
• Weak charge. Firing while distracted and lukewarm. Reach a genuine peak (whichever Gnosis route) before releasing.
• Lust of result. Constantly checking for the outcome re-engages the very grasping the technique is meant to drop.