Quick update: I was recently on the What is the Time Podcast with Zamboni Funk and Brian Wilkins and it was a great chat! Check it out to watch as I forget my own rising sign, call Zamboni a hedonist, and generally shoot my mouth off about all manner of things. Seriously, it was a great romp with two awesome friends and I was honored to be invited.
I’ve been playing with sigils a lot this year as part of Gordon’s Sigil-a-day project. In fact, I’m not doing a sigil a day, but I am doing weekly(ish) sigils launched in what Gordon calls shoals. A shoal is a collection of sigils that are all swim together (like fish). I’ve always preferred creating sigils in little groups because they are small and I think they work better together and like the company. I don’t want my little friends getting lonely.
Lately I’ve been playing with a new idea — siphonophore sigils. A siphonophore is a class of marine organism that, while it looks like a single animal, is actually a modular organism made up of multiple smaller organisms, sometimes called zooids. Man-o-war jellyfish aren’t actually jellyfish at all, but siphonophores.
Since I tend to create sigil statements in clumps (if you follow my substack, I’m including a batch every week) I was pondering how you might turn a very short narrative-style petition into a series of sigil statements. For example, in the case of a goal to improve your social engagements:
I have many friends who care about me. I’m never lonely because my friends support me. My friends are kind and respect me.
As a series of sigil statement, we’d we looking at:
I have many friends who care about me
I’m never lonely
My friends support me
Kind friends respect me
The central theme is that each of these are about me (it’s all about me!). So, while I could make four sigils, I could also turn them into a single narrative sigil connected by the central beneficiary (myself).
One of my sigil tricks is to create sigil parts for common things in my sigil statements (members of my household, my household name, my business). It forms something like a little sigil pictographic alphabet. Anyway, the sigil part for me (myself, I, Ivy) is a circle and a line. So I create four sigils for: many friends who care / never lonely / supportive friends / respect of kind friends and then attach them to my central sigil part.
In my experiments with this, the sigils end up more organic and look like little multiarmed creatures. However, depending on your sigil style, they might end up long and segmented or coiling. I’m reminded of the creatures from the wonderful and meditative video game flow.
The resulting siphonophore sigils (sigil-phonophores?) might look something like these (the friendship one is on the left):
What I like about this idea is how a short narrative of intent can become a single sigil that encodes all the different statements within it. So you can write out a short description of something you want (similar to Wachter’s Black Book from Weaving Fate (highly recommended!) and turn the entire micro story into a sigil. Here is another example of the narrative idea (I leave it to you for the sigil creation part):
I love our household. It’s always peaceful and happy and a safe place of protection. When I feel down, I settle into my favorite chair with a cup of tea and just feel better about everything. The household cares for all its members and we are prosperous unit, all working together toward the good of the house.
The central sigil is household (if you have a household name, use it) and then the other legs or arms would be: peaceful and happy / safe place of protection / makes me feel better / cares for its members / prosperous unit / working together for good.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s my little guide to sigils. If you try sigil-phonophores, let me know how it goes. This is very new and I’m still experimenting with it.
