Sigil Magic, Hoodoo and Sympathetic Magic
by Michael Robin Cooke on Apr.13, 2009, under Kitschchaos
Hoodoo is African American folk magic. That makes for a very unique tradition, African traditions blended with European immigrant traditions as Hoodoo Root workers read new materials and learned from different people and added to their practice those ideas and techniques they found effective.
Austin Osman Spare is not an influence on traditional Hoodoo. As a recipient of traditional Witch training and interviewed by Gerald Gardner as he sought to reclaim the Old Traditions, he may lay claim to influencing Wicca. Peter Carrol mined the writing of Austin Osman Spare, added to it his own and other ideas and branded the result ‘Chaos Magic’.
With the Doctrine of Signatures (the spiritual power of a thing is suggested in its form), it is possible to improvise within the Hoodoo tradition. Newly minted currency, such as the Sacajawea dollar coin, can be used in such a way the imagery suggests to the magician. Though more traditional items are locked into traditional associations.
Austin Spare intended his sigil magic as a solution to the problems of sympathetic magic. Those problems are explained better in the sigil magic article.
- Lust for Result: wondering “is it here yet?” will sabotage a result.
- Duality of desire: I want the job promotion, but not lose the camaraderie of those who would become subordinates.
- Psychic Censor: the part of you attached to magic not being real.
Austin Spare’s understanding of magic is that the subconscious mind does the heavy lifting and the unconscious mind is where the power is at. Peter Carrol accepted this premise hook line and sinker for Chaos Magic. Spare’s solution to the problems of sympathetic magic, is therefore to take the conscious mind out of the equation. This is pretty radical, in the face of several centuries of tradition of using the conscious mind’s focus to drive magic.
In the Hoodoo paradigm how radical are Spare’s concepts? I am new to Hoodoo and don’t have the benefit of growing up into the tradition or anything like that. But invested in the spiritual energies of plants and things themselves and given the abstracted nature of sympathetic magic that clearly makes more sense subconsciously than consciously, I think paradigm compatibility is possible.
Please read my article on Sigil magic, it’s as clear and complete as I am able to write it.
To Paraphrase- Create a statement of desire, extracting unique letters and compose an abstracted image or nonsense word from the characters – repeat the process many times. Later, once the sigils have had their association consciously forgotten – they are ‘launched’ through meditation or even masturbation. The subconscious never forgets what the association is – and this technique has become very broadly popular as a function of a highly reliable success rate.
Now, of course, when practising Hoodoo, the conscious mind is always in on the action. The herbs and materials have to be selected with care to support and suggest sympathetically the realization of a specific desire. So certainly, while Sigil magic as proposed by Austin Spare is an interesting technique worth exploring, it has no place as a Hoodoo technique.
Or does it? One difficulty Hoodoo can present that sigil magic may prove very helpful in remedying is – how do I get a spell to do specifically… something?
Let’s say your husband is very headstrong and a hothead and is up for a job promotion that you DON’T want him to get because it would go to his head and he’d abuse his power. But you DO want your husband to learn from losing the promotion that he has to change his ways, and sign up for Anger Management and Self Improvement counselling. How do you accomplish that with a single Hoodoo spell? What is the sympathetic magic? A curse to lose the promotion? A healing to grow emotionally?
Now, me, because I know a bit about Buddhism – I’d ask a Buddhist demon to help prevent the husband from getting a promotion so he can learn from the experience. The nature of a Buddhist demon would always be to do ‘ill’ such that a lesson is learned, it’s their nature.
But if that idea didn’t occur to you – or if you have some other desire that’s less than very straightforward, sigil magic would fit the bill! The sigil creating process is golden, you know your subconscious connects your written desire with that sigil because your subconscious was there and helped you create the sigil! And you lock the sigil into what you write! And what you write – awesome powers of specificity are now yours!
Now beware, sigil magic is very effective at giving you exactly what you ask for. It’s not unlike the wishing folklore where if your wish can be interpreted in a way you don’t care for – that’s the way it arrives. So take care crafting your desire in language. Always take advantage of opportunities that come to you, and make opportunities where you’re able, that’s the best advice to get positive results with sigil magic – and any magic really.
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April 15th, 2009 on 12:42 am
Hello,
Where are you from? Is it a secret?
Thanks
Dirnov
April 23rd, 2009 on 10:36 am
the magic from africa is so scary!! you never know if it’s good or bad
September 5th, 2009 on 12:31 am
magic from anywhere may be used for good or ill. It’s people that are good or evil, not magic systems.
April 23rd, 2009 on 3:12 pm
bad credit personal loans,
Your p@yday loan website is what I find scary. Magic doesn’t have to be African to be ‘scary’- any kind of magic used by someone with evil intent is ‘bad’ magic.
Read my post on Black magic and true will.
June 5th, 2009 on 4:53 am
Sigil magic is new to me. Let me give it a try.
July 16th, 2009 on 1:08 pm
I don’t know about that kind of magic. There is also Karma that you need to take into account and whether it will affect later on in life the actions that you take today
July 28th, 2009 on 5:34 pm
This article was extremely interesting, especially since I was searching for info on this subject last wednesday.
August 21st, 2009 on 5:54 pm
I didn’t know Buddhists acknowledged ‘demons’?
Spyware Review´s last blog ..Spyware Doctor
September 5th, 2009 on 12:30 am
Buddhism has it’s diversity, but there exists Buddhist lore of demons. The Buddhist demon usually is also interested in your enlightenment and so not really evil in a dualistic sense, but they may use cruelty or torment to drive you to a realization of enlightenment.
October 24th, 2009 on 7:09 am
The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.
October 25th, 2009 on 4:36 am
This is a common social etiquette, but we’re dealing with Chaos Magic and reality hacking for business: Nothing is true and everything is permitted! After all, speaking about money with those that have more than you is where investors and partners come from in business. Talking to people poorer than yourself about money, that’s how you attract employees. There’s a time and place for everything.
January 23rd, 2010 on 4:45 am
As you have added a quite a bit of work into itWow what a post!
May 24th, 2010 on 1:50 am
my best friend has been in an Anger Management class for 2 months now, he improved a lot when dealing with anger.-:`
May 31st, 2010 on 8:35 pm
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June 1st, 2010 on 12:47 am
Byron, I had to re-read the post to get a sense of what you’re looking for. I’m guessing you were impressed at how I took a peculiar problem, keep a man from getting a promotion but at the same time help him learn from the experience positively and address his issues managing his anger – and demonstrated how to address it magically.
I’m guessing you have a desire for something like an occult ‘dear Abbey’, and I would indulge you if you have a question. But that very thought misses the point of this post.
This post is about teaching you to fish for yourself.
But, that said – it is something I can generate for this blog pretty easily. So thanks for the suggestion. If you want to help me, I’ve an Amazon shop with cool stuff and I keep meaning to get a paypal donation button on this blog.