Sigil Magic

The classic Spare/chaos-magic procedure:

1. Write a clear statement of desire in the present tense, often beginning “This is my will to…” — e.g. “This is my will to find a new home.” Keep it concrete and singular.
2. Strip it down to a symbol. Spare’s original method: remove all repeated letters from the statement, then artistically combine the remaining letters into a single abstract glyph, recombining and stylising until it no longer reads as words and looks purely like a design. (Variants use the letters’ shapes, mantras compressed into sound, or abstract pictures.) The point is that the finished sigil should not consciously recall the original wish.
3. Forget the literal desire. Set aside the wording; you work only with the abstract symbol from here.
4. Charge the sigil in an altered (“gnostic”) state. Bring the mind to a peak, empty, or single-pointed state — chaos magicians use methods such as the peak of sexual arousal/orgasm (Spare’s own method), exhaustion, intense concentration, ecstatic dance, or deep meditative blankness — and in that moment gaze at or visualise the sigil with full focus, then release it. The altered state is held to let the symbol “drop” past the censor into the subconscious.
5. Banish / release with a deliberate close. Many practitioners end with laughter, a clap, destroying the paper, or a dismissive gesture — a clean break that says “done.”
6. Forget it. The crucial final step, sometimes called the “law of forgetting”: consciously let go of the sigil and the desire. Not obsessing over the outcome is considered essential — active longing reintroduces the “lust of result” that, in Spare’s theory, blocks it. (Sourcing note: a faithful description of Spare’s letter-elimination method and standard chaos-magic charging; “lust of result” and “law of forgetting” are the tradition’s own terms.)

Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956), a visionary artist and former associate of Aleister Crowley, set out the sigil method and his “Alphabet of Desire” in The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love) (1913), framing it explicitly as a psychology of the subconscious.

Decades later, the chaos magic movement — Peter J. Carroll (Liber Null, 1987), Ray Sherwin, and Phil Hine (Condensed Chaos, 1995) — rediscovered Spare and made sigils a flagship technique, prized for being belief-agnostic and results-focused.

The method has since spread far beyond occultism into internet “intention” culture. → suggested nodes.

Affirmation / autosuggestion (Coué) — implanting a suggestion in a receptive state; sigils abstract the suggestion to dodge the censor.

• SATS / “the wish fulfilled” (Neville) — impressing the subconscious in an altered state.
• Talisman charging — investing an object with charged intention.
• Vision boards — visual intention cues kept salient.
• Prayer with surrender (“let go and let God”) — ask, then release attachment to outcome — structurally identical to “forget it.”
• Yantra / seed-symbol meditation — focusing on an abstract glyph.

Skipping the “forget it” step. Continually checking on a sigil reintroduces “lust of result” and (psychologically) keeps you anchored in wanting/lack. Charge, release, drop it.

• Vague or compound desires. A muddled statement makes a muddled sigil; one clear aim works better.
• A symbol that still reads as the wish. If you can decode it at a glance, abstract it further — the point is to bypass conscious recognition.
• No real charging state. A distracted, half-hearted charge does little; the altered/peak state matters in the method’s own logic.
• Treating it as a substitute for action. Sigils set direction; they don’t replace the steps toward the goal.