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    Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success
    Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success
    Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success
    Ebook162 pages1 hour

    Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success

    By Frater U.:D.:

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    About this ebook

    Create and use powerful symbols of Will

    Practical Sigil Magic is widely regarded as the definitive guide to the topic. Unavailable for a number of years and long sought-after by magicians, this classic work is now available once again.

    Sigil magic is one of the most efficient and economical of magical disciplines. It can be performed without complicated rituals or paraphernalia, is independent of philosophical and dogmatic premises, and can be learned easily and quickly. Most important, it will give even beginning magicians the chance to work with the power of the Will and enhance their own abilities. This classic reference work will provide magicians—from novice to adept— with instruction that will empower and advance their magical practice.

    Praise:
    "Frater U∴D∴ writes from a background of extensive practical achievement and theoretical knowledge to present a book of magical techniques for those who dare to use them."—Peter J. Carroll, author of Liber Null & Psychonaut

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLlewellyn Worldwide
    Release dateApr 8, 2012
    ISBN9780738732329
    Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success
    Author

    Frater U.:D.:

    Frater U∴D∴ (Belgium), founder of Pragmatic and Ice Magic, is Europe's best known practical magician and contemporary occult author. He has written more than twenty-five books. Among his translations are the books of Peter Carroll and Ramsey Dukes, and Aleister Crowley's Book of Lies.

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    Book preview

    Practical Sigil Magic - Frater U.:D.:

    About the Author

    , otherwise known as Ralph Tegtmeier, is a foremost practitioner and expert of modern Pragmatic Magic. Born in Egypt, he studied Eastern philosophy for many years before delving into the principles of Western magic. Previously an occult bookseller, he holds a master’s degree in Comparative Literature and is a prolific writer and translator. His work has been published in The Lamp of Thoth and Chaos International. founded Anubis, a German magazine of practical magic and psychonautics and has translated Peter Carroll’s Liber Null & Psy­chonaut and Aleister Crowley’s Book of Lies into German.

    Translated from German by Ingrid Fischer

    Revised and enlarged special edition for the Americas

    Llewellyn Publications

    Woodbury, Minnesota

    Copyright Information

    Practical Sigil Magic: Creating Personal Symbols for Success

    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 © 2012

    E-book ISBN: 9780738732329

    Cover design by Lisa Novak

    Cover illustration © Gary Hanna

    Interior illustrations by the Llewellyn Art Department

    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

    Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter 1: Austin Osman Spare and His Theory of Sigils

    Chapter 2: Further Exploration of the Word Method

    Chapter 3: The Magical Trance/Activating the Sigils

    Chapter 4: The Pictorial Method

    Chapter 5: The Mantrical Spell Method .

    Chapter 6: The Alphabet of Desire

    Chapter 7: Working with Atavistic Nostalgia

    Chapter 8: But How Does It Work?

    Chapter 9: Constructing Sigils with Planetary Cameas

    Conclusion

    Glossary

    Comments

    Bibliography

    Introduction

    Sigil magic, particularly the system developed by the English painter and sorcerer Austin Osman Spare, is one of the most efficient and economical disciplines of magic. For the most part, it can be performed with­out complicated rituals, needs hardly any parapher­nalia, is independent of philosophical and dogmatic premises and, due to its simplicity, can be learned easily and quickly. Most important of all, none of the magical techniques we know of today is more effi­cient and will give even beginners the immediate chance to convince themselves of its power and their own abilities. These reasons alone support a volume like the following to show the possibilities of this dis­cipline and to explain its techniques and its rationale. The reader—the complete tyro and the advanced practitioner alike—will receive an introduction which will accompany him/her in his/her magical practice for a long time to come.

    You will find in this edition, in the following chap­ter, a reprint of my article Austin Osman Spare and His Theory of Sigils from the, alas, now-defunct Ger­man magazine Unicorn, issue 1/82. This issue has been out of print for quite some time, but many readers’ inquiries have shown that there is still much interest in this article, and it is increasing every day. Since the article also covers some of the historical and philo­sophical background of Spare’s sigil magic, it might be useful to present it here within a new context to a greater audience.

    The word method explained in the article will be shown in greater depth in chapter 2. Further exam­ples will be given, as well as comments and tips for practical use which you will rarely find in literature on this subject.

    Next we will deal with the pictorial method, which has several advantages and disadvantages when compared to the word method. Again, in accordance with the title of this volume, magical practice will be of primary importance.

    A description of the mantrical spell method will complete the techniques of sigil construction proper. It is my hope that examples and commentaries from my personal practice will provide you with many new suggestions.

    Although Spare’s mysterious Alphabet of Desire belongs, technically speaking, to the pictorial method and in some respects touches the word method, it may nevertheless be considered the center of his magical achievement. Unfortunately, his own comments about it are rather vague. Therefore, most writers, being familiar with the subject on a theoretical level only, have caused much confusion rather than clarity when discussing it. Yet, it seems to me that the basic principle of this magical symbol language is amazingly simple if viewed in relation to Spare’s system as a whole.

    The chapter The Alphabet of Desire, therefore, will not only offer a cursory comment on fragments from Spare’s rather chaotic legacy but introduce a mature system of symbol-logic, accessible to every­one. This certainly would have been Spare’s intent had he ever finished what has become known as the legendary Grimoire of Zos, i.e., had he completed it with explanatory comments for the magicians of his time.

    Albeit Spare’s personal philosophy (which he himself termed the Zos Kia Cultus) is not that impor­tant for sigil magic itself, we should not fail to mention his technique of Atavistic nostalgia, which is certainly one of the most fascinating applications of sigil magic. Furthermore, it marks its connection to Shamanism and so-called primitive magic, two disciplines from which today’s magicians can only profit.

    The main topic of the last chapter will concern planetary sigils from the Hermetic Tradition. Although experts have been familiar with the method of their construction for decades, little or no relevant litera­ture has as yet been made available to a wider public. It, therefore, seemed pertinent to treat this subject matter here.

    The reader will note that in this volume we concentrate on creating personal, that is to say, individual sigils. This is a completely different approach com­pared to the tendency of many other books, which usually prefer to list traditional, largely mutilated or inaccurately reproduced sigils taken from the magi­cal cookbooks of generally obscure authors with lit­tle or no practical experience of their own. Although the planetary sigils discussed at the end of this study are taken from the work of Agrippa of Nettesheim, who is above all criticism in this respect, a single glance at other standard works about magical sym­bols will show that most magicians and alchemists in the Middle Ages (the supposed peak of Occidental magic) largely developed their own sigil language using a rather small number of well-established symbols. The myth that there is a small number of correct sigils and a great

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