About the Author
© Carrie Meyer/Insomniac Studios
Laura Tempest Zakroff is a professional artist, author, dancer, designer, muse, mythpunk, teacher, and Witch. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her artwork has received awards and honors worldwide. Laura has been a practicing Modern Traditional Witch for over two decades and revels in the intersection of her various paths with Witchcraft. She blogs for Patheos as A Modern Traditional Witch and for Witches & Pagans as Fine Art Witchery and contributes to The Witches’ Almanac, Llewellyn’s Magical Almanac, and Llewellyn’s Witches’ Companion. Sigil Witchery is her second book, her first being The Witch’s Cauldron, released in 2017. Laura resides in Seattle, Washington, with her partner, Nathaniel Johnstone, and at least three cats. Find out more at www.lauratempestzakroff.com.
Llewellyn Publications
Woodbury, Minnesota
Copyright Information
Sigil Witchery: A Witch’s Guide to Crafting Magick Symbols © 2018 by Laura Tempest Zakroff.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.
Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.
First e-book edition © 2018
E-book ISBN: 9780738755854
Book design by Donna Burch-Brown
Cover design by Ellen Lawson
Interior art and photos by Laura Tempest Zakroff, except for the photo on page 107 by Kohenet Ketzirah haMa’agelet and the photo on page 126 by Carrie Meyer
Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.
Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.
Llewellyn Publications
Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
2143 Wooddale Drive
Woodbury, MN 55125
www.llewellyn.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
For my parents, Pete and Terry Zakroff.
Thank you for believing in your crazy artist daughter.
From putting up with 10-foot-tall chicken-wire/plaster-wrap goddesses,
salt block sculptures, and life-size horses painted on my bedroom walls
to collecting my latest creations and commissioning me to paint your mailbox,
your support for my work throughout my entire life has made all the difference.
Contents
IlIllustrations and Photographs
Foreword by Anaar Niino
Introduction
Chapter 1: A History of Mark Making
Chapter 2: The Meaning of the Mark
Chapter 3: Making Magick
Chapter 4: Design Guidance
Chapter 5: Practice Exercises
Chapter 6: Gallery
Conclusion
Resources
Bibliography and Suggestions for Further Research
Index of Symbols
Illustrations and Photographs
Chapter 1
Montage of Images from Cave Paintings 11
Entoptic Phenomena 15
Cave Art Handprints and the Familiar Turkey Hand 16
Collection of Aboriginal Signs and Symbols 20
Evolution of the Chinese Character for Cart or Wagon 23
Egyptian Cartouche 24
An Array of Amazigh Symbols 29
Amazigh Tattoos 30
A Variety of Veves 33
Photo of Graffiti in Greece 35
Chapter 2
Point (Closed Dot) 39
Open Dot 40
Circle 40
Horizontal Line 41
Vertical Line 41
Dotted or Dashed Line 42
Diagonal Line 43
Cross 44
Chevron 45
X 46
Arrow 47
Wavy Line 48
Zigzag Line 49
Triangle 50
Square 51
Rectangle 52
Diamond 53
Crescent 54
Spiral 55
Pentagon 56
Hexagon 57
Other Polygons 58
Star 59
Pentagram 59
Hexagram 60
Septagram 60
Asterisk 61
Heart 62
Vesica Piscis or Mandorla 63
Eye 64
Infinity and Hourglass 65
Wheels and Shields 66
Wings 67
Key and Keyhole 68
Scales 69
Anchor 70
Butterfly 71
Hand 72
Spoon 73
Elements 74
Directions 76
Zodiac and Astrological Signs 79
Chapter 3
Photo of the Artist at Work 94
Donna’s Sigil 100
Illuminating a Sigil with Traditional Pen and Ink on a Card 104
Vitality and Vision Spell Paintings by the Author 106
Sigil Satchels—Canvas Bags Embellished with Washable Paint by the Author 106
My “Power Sigil” Design, Embroidered and Photographed by Kohenet Ketzirah haMa’agelet 107
Wood, Bone, and Clay Make Great Bases for Sigil Pendants 108
A Chalk Sigil on a Doorstep 109
Earth Sigil 110
Water Sigil 111
A Sigil of Smoke 113
Planting a Sigil 115
For the Birds 116
Photo of the Author’s Leg Tattoos 119
Sigils in Motion 126
Chapter 4
A Sacred Sphere of Energy 137
Drawing Circles and Ovals 142
Drawing Pentagrams 143
Drawing Six-Pointed Stars 144
Drawing Seven-Pointed Stars 145
Drawing Crescents 146
Drawing Spirals 147
Traditional Pen and Ink 152
Kinds of Brush Tips 154
Chapter 5
A Festival Sigil 163
A Coven Sigil 165
A Business Plan Sigil 167
An Office Ward Sigil 168
A Healing Sigil 169
A Transformational Sigil 170
A Sigil against Bullying 171
An Anti-Anxiety Sigil 172
A Fertility Sigil 173
A Focus Sigil 174
A Banishing and Binding Sigil 175
An Inspiration and Creativity Sigil 176
A Prosperity Sigil 177
Chapter 6
Upright Power Sigil 180
Inverted Power Sigil 181
PantheaCon Sigil 183
Paganicon Sigil 183
DragonCon Sigil 186
Workshop Sigil at Herne’s Hollow in Delaware 186
Sigil Crafting and Notetaking 188
Another Sketchbook Page 189
Mago Djinn Sigil 190
Jaime’s Sigil 191
Carolyn’s Sigil 192
Jennifer’s Sigil 193
Kim’s Sigil 194
M’s Sigil 195
Mary’s Sigil 196
Matthew’s Sigil 196
Megan’s Sigil 197
Paul’s Sigil 197
Stephanie’s Sigil 198
Veronica’s Sigil 198
The Drawing of the Mother Matrix 200
The Painting of the Mother Matrix 201
Details from Paintings from the Iconomage Series: The Star Goddess • The Huntress • Hekate • When Love Lay with Death and Darkness, Light Was Born 203
Familiar Territory 203
Queen of the Sabbat 206
The Shaman 206
Foreword
by Anaar Niino
What if, from the depths of your liminal consciousness, you could create your own symbolic language? What if you could create, from the ether, a personal language? What if you could create a magical language, a secret language?
What would you do with such a thing? Would you slip it under your pillow? Would you place it beneath a crib? Would you draw it in the air with smoke? Would you write it in lipstick?
What do I mean by symbolic language? It’s a set of signs used to communicate all manner of things. The very words you’re reading now are a set of agreed-upon signs. You can understand these words because you know what the agreement is. It is symbolic because when I write apple you understand what is meant by that set of abstract symbols. I do not need to draw an apple for you.
That is one form of symbolic language. It has its uses but is by far and large taken for granted. With lightning-fast imagery flashing before us, these symbols begin to lose their symbolic nature. They become divorced from their magical nature, losing their symbolism to become mechanical.
Sigils, on the other hand, are deeply personal. A sigil is an invented, private language, created for specific meanings known only to the creator. Agreement is not necessary for the symbol to take hold. Sigils reopen the symbolic and magical nature of a written form.
Can you draw something just for fun? Absolutely! But that form of symbolic art is a design and has other uses. That form of symbolism inhabits another part of our consciousness, one that is more present and readily accessible. It is not without meaning, as art is always meaningful in a variety of ways. But it is generally not meant for magical spiritual applications.
Sigils are very powerful tools coming from the very depths of our consciousness, reflecting our deepest desires. Sigils have a job to do. Sigils draw from deep within our psyche and are cast out into the world to do their work. The modern method of sigil making is by far the most effective means of drawing out those deep desires.
This book covers all those bases. Laura Tempest Zakroff offers a practical, non-threatening approach to sigil work. From advice on developing your own symbolic language to ideas on how to apply that sigil, a novice should feel very comfortable drawing their first sigil. There is plenty of room for creative self-expression, yet this book offers a solid, no-nonsense method to its magical applications.
Written in a conversational style, Sigil Witchery draws the veil and sweeps the cobwebs from the arcane. It exposes the mystery of sigil work for what it is: simple. Of course you may have heard me say, and will hear it again, that simple is not necessarily easy. But at least it’s accessible.
So go now. Grab pen and paper, lipstick and mirror, stick and sand. Go grab something to draw with and make some magic.
—Anaar Niino
Grandmaster of the Feri Tradition
Archivist for the Victor and Cora Anderson Archive at the New Alexandrian Library
[contents]
Introduction
Imagine a large hotel meeting room packed to maximum capacity with all sorts of Pagans, displaying a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and experience. They’d chosen to attend this workshop on sigil magick over at least a dozen other options all happening at the same time on the busy convention schedule. Even though I’ve been teaching workshops on metaphysics, art, and dance for twenty years, I was battling a fair amount of anxiety. This was the very first time I’d be introducing my take on sigils to such a large audience. I was afraid that maybe they might not have read the description, and were expecting something more traditional. I flashed an image of a ceremonial magic seal on the overhead projector and gave this warning: “Okay, before we get started, if this is the kind of sigil you’re expecting out of this workshop, now’s the time to leave so you can catch another event. No hard feelings. I just don’t want you to be disappointed. We’re going to be looking at crafting sigils from a very different perspective.” I waited. Not a single person budged. I took a deep breath and dove in. For the next ninety minutes, no one left the room. Afterward and all weekend long, people kept coming up to me asking when I would write a book on what I had presented.
That workshop kicked off a process that would be two years in the making—from the presentation at PantheaCon to this book first arriving on the shelves of bookstores everywhere. It’s truly an amazing thing seeing what focused intent can accomplish!
I believe that every Witch has a certain talent that they excel at. Often we are good at many things, such as divination, spellcraft, mediumship, and counseling. But there’s usually one specific area among those many hats we wear that is our niche, a skill where our ability to influence and change the world around us is paramount. Some Witches are incredible herbalists, their gardens lush and thriving. Others excel at kitchen witchery, mixing in their magick with meals. Or perhaps they have the gift of music, where their song enchants everyone around them.
For me, that talent involves the visual arts. I’ve been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember, and my parents fostered those abilities by enrolling me in art classes at the age of three. I continued to study fine art formally all the way through college. Whether it seemed a safer road to keep me occupied as a child (I got kicked out of gymnastics for not being coordinated enough) or my parents had some sort of a psychic insight, it was definitely the right road for me.
Early on, I perceived art as my way to understand and interact with the rest of the world. I have a distinct memory of me at age five scribbling rune-like shapes with my crayons on sheets of paper, one for each tree in our backyard. In my head, I believed the markings were for the protection of the trees. As I grew older, I reveled in drawing dragons and mermaids, telling myself elaborate stories about them as I painstakingly drew every little scale. From around age eight through eleven, I was an avid Egyptophile, not only learning about all of the mythology but also teaching myself to read and write hieroglyphics. Then I went further back to explore prehistoric cultures and early civilizations around the world—the remnants of their sculpture, architecture, paintings, and murals. As I studied more recent art history, I naturally gravitated toward the movements and artists whose work explored mythology and spirituality and reveled in symbolism: Gustave Moreau, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Marc Chagall, Frida Kahlo, Audrey Flack, and Andrew Wyeth, to name just a few.
The question was, how to create myth and magick in my own art? In college, I began to understand how I could use my art to explore myth, folklore, and religion. I explored the feminine and masculine divine through large hand-pulled prints and paintings. I experimented with deliberately casting spells through the making of art. I did independent studies on shrine making, divination, and trance techniques. I started to truly see the connection between the marks I made and the channeling of intent to get specific results. In the las
t two decades I’ve used my work to explore the space where magick and art intersect, and see how it actively influences my path as a Witch. I began to incorporate my own take on sigil magick into my drawings and paintings, following my instincts and drawing on years of art history studies.
People started to ask about my sigils, so I decided to reverse-engineer how I created them. (It may sound a bit odd that I needed to figure that out, but often when I’m making art, I’m following an internalized, subconscious formula.) Then I considered how others could use the same method to make their own sigils. It was this exploration that launched the workshops and this book.
Our Journey Ahead
I came to sigil crafting from a very different direction and practice than the method that is most well known among magical practitioners. In fact, it wasn’t until I was commissioned to do an illustration for a sigil magick article in Witches & Pagans magazine that I learned about the method popularized by chaos magicians.
The chaos magic method of creating a sigil involves composing a clarified statement. Next you remove all of the vowels and duplicate consonants, then scramble up the remaining letters to create the sigil. To finish the working, the sigil is typically burned after its creation. Or at least that’s how the author of the article described their method and how it worked for them. (Some methods don’t involve removing the vowels, but only the duplicate letters.)
I enjoyed illustrating the article, especially since it was well written and entertaining. It’s a cool method, especially if it works for you. But that’s not how I make sigils—as you’re about to discover.
Instead, you’re going to learn a process that I believe is more intuitive and fluid for right-brain thinkers and is very much grounded in Modern Traditional Witchcraft. How so? It is a fairly new and unique method for creating sigils, yet it pulls from basic skills our ancestors used to communicate prior to the advent of complex language. It can also be applied to a variety of metaphysical techniques, spellcraft approaches, and spiritual paths. Regardless of how artistic you may or may not consider yourself to be, this kind of sigil witchery is accessible to people with a wide variety of abilities and experiences.
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