Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Sigilization
Compress a single desire into an abstract glyph that no longer reads as words, then charge and deliberately forget it so the wish sinks past the conscious, doubting mind.
Sigilization (Spare, 1913): Write your desire as one clear sentence. List its letters, dropping any repeats (many also drop vowels), then merge the survivors into a single abstract glyph that no longer reads as words. Bring the mind to an empty or peak state, fix full attention on the glyph, then release and deliberately forget it — dropping all craving for the result. Read honestly, it’s a focused intention-setting and outcome-release ritual.
What it is
Sigilization is the originating sigil method set out by the English artist-occultist Austin Osman Spare in The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love) (1913).
A “sigil” here is a desire compressed into an abstract glyph that no longer looks like words. Spare’s premise is psychological: a wish held plainly in the front of the mind is constantly second-guessed (“will it really happen?”), and that conscious interference (his “lust of result”) is what blocks it.
If the wish is abstracted past recognition, charged in a moment of emptiness or peak focus, and then deliberately forgotten, it can sink into the subconscious and work without that interference. Spare framed the whole thing not as superstition but as a psychology of the subconscious — the book’s subtitle is literally The Psychology of Ecstasy.
This is the fountainhead practice that the later chaos-magic sigil method (Carroll, Sherwin, Hine) systematised; see Section 3 and Cross-links.
The Method
Spare’s original letter-elimination procedure:
- Enshrine the desire in one short sentence, present tense and concrete — e.g. “This is my wish to write every day.” One clear aim only.
- Strip out repeated letters. Write the sentence, then list its individual letters, omitting any letter that has already appeared. (Many modern practitioners also drop the vowels first; Spare’s own wording is “omitting any repetition of a letter.”)
- Combine the survivors into one glyph. Artistically merge, overlap and stylise the remaining letters into a single composite design — “one composite glyph which does not suggest the nature of the desire.” Recombine until it reads as pure abstract shape, not as words.
- Forget the literal wording. From here you work only with the abstract symbol; the sentence is set aside.
- Charge the glyph in a vacuous or peak state. Bring the mind to emptiness or single-pointed intensity — Spare reached this through his “Death Posture” (see companion technique) or at the peak of arousal/exhaustion — and in that moment fix full attention on the glyph, then release it.
- Banish and forget it. Close with a decisive break (destroy the paper, laugh, look away) and drop all craving for the outcome. Active longing reintroduces the “lust of result” Spare warned blocks the wish. (Sourcing note: a faithful summary of Spare’s letter-elimination method; “enshrine your desire in a short sentence… omitting any repetition of a letter… one composite glyph which does not suggest the nature of the desire” closely follows his own instructions in The Book of Pleasure. “Lust of result” is his own term.)
Source & Lineage
Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956), a prodigy draughtsman and former associate of Aleister Crowley, published The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love) in 1913 and developed an “Alphabet of Desire” — a personal lexicon of glyphs for core drives.
He explicitly treated sigils as a technique of the subconscious, not as commerce with spirits. Decades later the chaos magic movement rediscovered him: Peter J.
Carroll (Liber Null, 1978/1987), Ray Sherwin and Phil Hine (Condensed Chaos, 1995) made sigils a flagship, belief-agnostic, results-focused technique.
The method has since spread far beyond occultism into internet “manifestation” culture. → originator node; successors.
The Traditions' versions
Chaos-magic sigil method — the systematised successor of this exact practice.
- Gnosis (Carroll) — the no-mind charging state that “launches” a sigil.
- Servitor creation (Hine) — extends the glyph into an autonomous thought-form.
- Autosuggestion (Coué) — implanting a suggestion in a receptive state; sigilization abstracts the suggestion to dodge the censor.
- SATS / the wish fulfilled (Neville) — impressing the subconscious in an altered state.
- Talisman charging / vision boards — investing a symbol or image with charged intention.,
Common refinements
Skipping the “forget it” step. Re-checking on the sigil reintroduces lust of result; charge, release, drop it.
- A glyph that still reads as the wish. If you can decode it at a glance, abstract it further — the whole point is to bypass conscious recognition.
- Vague or compound desires. One muddled sentence makes one muddled glyph; keep a single clear aim.
- A half-hearted charge. The vacuous/peak state matters in the method’s own logic; a distracted glance does little.
- Treating it as a substitute for action. Sigils set direction; they don’t replace the steps toward the goal.