Sigils

The alphabet-of-desire method: write the desire as one sentence in the present tense, strike out every repeated letter, and arrange what remains into a single glyph.

1. Write the intent as one sentence, present tense, affirmative. No 'will', no 'not'.
2. Remove every repeated letter, keeping the first occurrence of each.
3. Arrange the remaining letters into a single composite glyph — overlap, rotate and ligature them until the word is no longer legible.
4. Charge the glyph in a state of gnosis (exhaustion, trance, or another single-pointed state).
5. Destroy the paper, or put it out of mind, and do not read the sentence again.

Needs the sentence · pen and paper

If generated The letter reduction is fully mechanical; the glyph's arrangement is a design choice, so a generated shape is one valid reading of the rule rather than the sigil.

The method is Spare's, the forgetting is the practitioner's. A sigil that stays legible or stays remembered is, in Spare's own account, not yet a sigil.

Austin Osman Spare, The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy (1913); the technique was systematised and named by later chaos magic, notably in the 1970s–80s.

Convert the letters of a name or intent to numbers by the planet's square, plot those numbers on the square, and connect them in order with a single line.

1. Choose the planet whose office matches the intent.
2. Take the square of that planet from kamea.json and note its order (3×3 for Saturn through 9×9 for the Moon).
3. Convert the letters to numbers sequentially from 1, or by the Hebrew values where the name is Hebrew.
4. Reduce the numbers above the square's maximum by its own rule so every letter lands on a cell.
5. Plot each number's cell in order and connect the points with one line; mark the first and last.
6. Copy the figure without the grid.

Needs the name or sentence · the planet's square (kamea.json) · a letter-to-number convention

If generated Fully mechanical once the planet, the square and the numbering convention are fixed: the same inputs always give the same figure.

The letter-number convention must be stated, because the same name gives different figures under the Latin sequential and the Hebrew values. Squares larger than 9×9 do not exist in the tradition — names longer than the square's cell count need the reduction rule, and different authors reduce differently.

Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia II.22 (the tables or squares of the planets); the tracing of names on the squares is standard Hermetic practice rather than a single quoted recipe.

Plot the letters of a name on the Rosy Cross — the petals, rays and elemental petals — and connect them in order.

1. Write the name in Latin letters.
2. Find each letter's position on the Rosy Cross: the 22 petals for the paths, the 12 rays for the zodiac, the 5 outer petals for the elements.
3. Where a letter has more than one position, choose by the letter's attribution in the cipher and say which you used.
4. Connect the positions in order with a single line and close the figure if the name returns to its first letter.
5. Copy the figure without the cross.

Needs the name · the Rosy Cross diagram · the letter attributions

If generated Renderable as a wheel: the corpus's twenty-two paths set in path order, with a letter landing on the petal of its value mod 22. That is a fixed map and it is reproducible, but it is NOT the Golden Dawn's lamen, whose petal arrangement and attributions are its own. A leaf drawing this says so on its method page.

The Rosy Cross is an order's diagram with more than one published version. A sigil drawn on one version is not the same object as one drawn on another.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's Rosy Cross lamen, as published in Regardie's The Golden Dawn; the petals carry the 22 paths, the 12 rays the zodiac and the 5 petals the elements.

Combine the runes of a name or a short phrase into one device by overlaying or joining their staves.

1. Write the name or phrase and transliterate it into the Elder Futhark.
2. Remove repeated runes where the tradition would (the historical inscriptions vary; state your rule).
3. Overlay the staves on a single vertical, or join them at their terminals, until they read as one mark.
4. Keep the mark's proportions — a bindrune that is only a word written vertically is a monogram, not a bindrune.

Needs the name or phrase · runes.json · a transliteration

If generated Mechanical for the rune selection and the transliteration; the combination is a design choice among a small number of valid joins.

Historical bindrunes are overwhelmingly practical ligatures — abbreviations and names on stones — and the 'bind the runes to bind the intent' reading is modern. The corpus keeps the historical attestation and the modern use apart in the note field rather than averaging them.

Bindrunes are attested on runic stones and in manuscripts as ligatures of two or more runes; their use as a deliberate charm-device in modern practice is a twentieth-century systematisation, and the entries say which is which.

Write the intent in a magical alphabet rather than compressing it: the substitution itself is the concealment.

1. Write the sentence plainly.
2. Substitute each letter for its character in the chosen script.
3. Set the result as a single line or a device rather than as readable cursive — the scripts are alphabets, so a plain transcription is a substitution, not a sigil.
4. Add the character for the intent's planet or element where the script has one.

Needs the sentence · the script's table

If generated Fully mechanical: substitution plus layout. This is the easiest method to render faithfully, because the table is the whole method.

A substitution cipher conceals a readable sentence; it does not compress it. Whether that is a sigil at all depends on the theory of the operator, and the traditions that use these scripts used them to write, not to conceal intent from themselves.

Theban script, attributed to Honorius of Thebes (The Sworn Book of Honorius); the Celestial and Passing the River alphabets as given in Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia III.

Plot the letters of a name on a watchtower table and connect their cells.

1. Choose the watchtower (or the tablet of union) that matches the working.
2. Find each letter of the name in that table's cells.
3. Connect the cells in order with a single line, marking the first and last.
4. Note which aethyr or sub-angle the letters fall in, because the table is a map and the position is part of the reading.

Needs the name · the watchtower tables · the letter positions

If generated No, and not by choice: the tables are the method, and they are absent. The corpus holds the aethyrs and the watchtowers but not the 12x12 letter grids.

The tables are not in this corpus yet, so this method is catalogued and not yet renderable. That gap is recorded rather than filled with a reconstructed table of uncertain provenance.

The Enochian watchtower tables received by John Dee and Edward Kelley; plotting names on the tables as a sigil is a later practice associated with the Golden Dawn and modern Enochian magic.

Not a method of making: a class of sigils that are given by the tradition and copied, not derived.

1. Identify the seal the tradition gives for the spirit, pentacle or planet.
2. Copy it exactly — a seal's proportions and terminals are part of it.
3. Use it in the operation the source prescribes, not as a free-standing charm.

Needs the seal from its source

If generated No. A generated approximation of a given seal is not that seal; it is a drawing that resembles it, which is the failure mode this entry exists to name.

The seals in the corpus (the 44 pentacles, the planetary characters) are the given forms. They should be reproduced, not regenerated.

The seals of the seventy-two spirits in the Lesser Key of Solomon (Ars Goetia), and the planetary characters in Agrippa II.22 and the planetary talismans.