The book officially released

So, I have finally released the book called Liber Azag: The Book of Sigils.
The book is available as always on Scribd at https://www.scribd.com/doc/261643751/Liber-Azag-The-Book-of-Sigils

It is not fully finished, yet, as I didn't manage to fix the problem with ToC I was talking about earlier on my blog, but I am working on it and it should be fully up and ready sometimes next week. So for now there is a book without table of contents.

Book of Sigils: Still in progress

Yeah, so I have somehow underestimated the amount of work needed to finish the book. One of the reasons is I somehow misplaced the original Astro Magick Essentials document so I have to rewrite all Magick squares from zero.

So far I have finished the book cver art and most of the illustrations including Nine Chambers sigilization methods. What I still have to do is to make an example of use of Nine Chambers, then example of the pictorial method and aforementioned Magick Squares. I have chosen to depict the traditional squares in the book, for my modern version check Astro Magick Essentials.

There is also a weird problem with the current release of LibreOffice where it cannot generate the Table of Contents properly. I have already found a workaround on this problem where you first export the document to Microsoft Word file format which should fix the internal XML and allow LibreOffice to generate the Table of Contents but I have yet to try this solution.

Progress on books

I know many of you are waiting for the new book being released, especially when the Book of Sigils need only editorial stuff to be finished, I just had bad luck with my schedule recently.

This weekend will be prolonged due to Easters so I should have time to complete the book.

Liber Azag: Book of Sigils, part 6

Spirit model
It's time to speak about the final of 4 basic paradigms in Magick, the spirit model. The basic belief in this model is that everything is inhabited and governed by spirits. When I say everything, I mean literally everything, the air we breathe, the ground we step on, the juice we drink or cigarettes we smoke, everything has its own spirits. The path of spirit model is the path of prayer and rituals, in this model we do our best to get the attention of spirits, to please them and to gain them for our cause. Because everything is governed by spirits, spirits are who do the work, all we can do here is to make requests. To please the spirits we have to make offerings and to have more probability of our requests being fulfilled and our expectations met, we have to possess a spiritual authority. Spiritual authority is the respect we get from spirits as practitioners, you could say this is the filtering mechanism, just like the psychic censor in psychology paradigm.

What is also interesting about the spirit model is the ritualism. Models we have described and practiced before are more direct based, in this model we need rituals as the means of communication with the divine, in this model we hand over our desires to the external power to handle it. To do so we need a set of key aspects. We need to cleanse our space, to call entities we wish to work with, we need to hand over our requests and we need to close the deal, to finish the communication. We also need to please these entities on a regular basis to gain their favour, that's where offerings come in handy. There are still practitioners performing blood sacrifices, whether using their own blood or blood of sacrificed animals, but this is out of scope of this book so we will focus more on different forms of sacrifices, different forms of offerings. We will also learn how to work with deities, angels, demons, any type of entity you might want to work with and how to create servitors in a purely ceremonial manner.

Offerings
During your time as a spirit worker you will meet a good deal of spirits that will join your cause. It is a good idea to have some form of a general offering for these spirits. Of course if specific spirits require specific offerings made in a specific manner, you should follow the instructions. For the rest it is enough to make a simple tobbacco offering once a week or when the situation asks for it. Speaking of tobbacco, a cigarette is a perfect incense stick and working with it is really simple. Just place the cigarette in your hand, say: "Spirits that are present here, please accept my offering to you", then put the cigarette in your mouth, light it and then place it somewhere, e.g. an edge of the table or an ashtray and let it burn. You can use the time when it is burning to sing some mantras for spirits. Note: Many cigarette brands has a safety measure so after a certain time the cigarette isn't used, it stops burning by itself. This is not a concern with offerings: when spirits want, the cigarette will keep burning, and just as fast as if you were smoking it.

Another general offering you can make is a glass of water, just leave it on the "meeting place" overnight and make sure no one touches it. Next morning just dispose of it. Same thing can be done with pieces of bread, fruits, milk, honey, eggs, etc. While getting rid of the offering, you don't want to touch it directly, so make sure you use some gloves or something like that. If you want to place the offering by burning it, you need a decent bonfire and enough flammable offerings (bread is fine).

We have already spoken about mantras, some entities have their own and some have generic ones. These can be sang during the offering or separately when you have some time to spare. I personally use a Sumerian incantation for it as spirits I usually work with are of Mesopotamean origin. The mantra is as follows:
ZI ANNA KANPA
ZI KIA KANPA
ZI DINGIR ANNA KANPA
ZI DINGIR KIA KANPA

It means:
Spirits of skies, remember
Spirits of earth, remember
Spirit, god of skies, remember
Spirit, god of earth, remember

This mantra is very easy to sing and drags the attention of some mighty spirits. This is something you want to happen in the spirit work. By repeating the mantra often, you will gain the relationship with many spirits and your spiritual authority will grow. As we have already said, spiritual authority is the filtering mechanism in the spirit paradigm.

Sigil charging
This is a book about Sigil Magick, so we should namely focus on sigils. There are various ways how to charge sigils via spirit model The simplest of them goes as follows:
Light 2 white candles and put a piece of paper between them. Say: "O, spirits of talismanic magick, I summon thee. Come to this place and do my will. Act to my bidding and breathe a life into this sigil".
Then exhale 3 times on the sigil, then say: "A sigil, an inanimate object, a lifeless piece of paper. Talismanic spirits are breathing life into you, be living and fulfill my desire."
Then exhale 3 times again at the sigil and close your eyes. Meditate for a couple of minutes, feel the power of the moment.
Open your eyes, exhale 3 times on the sigil and say: "O, Sigil, you are now living.".
Put the sigil aside and say: "O, Talismanic spirits, I thank you for your help, return to your places and come back here when I call you. Don't bring any harm to me or those close to my heart, but be at peace".
The last part is called a license to depart, it's a good practice to learn, not as harsh as banishing, you simply ask spirits to leave instead of forcing them with divine names and various other things.

The first method was to ask spirits to charge the sigil for you. Second method is using a spirit to aid you in sigil charging. A good spirit for this purpose is Agaku, one of 50 names of Marduk. You just place Agaku's seal under your sigil, place your palms above your sigil, and charge the sigil as you would do in energy model while chanting Agaku's name and also his word of power. His word of power is MASHGARZANNA. Do so for a couple of minutes, Agaku will aid you in transferring your own energy into the sigil, both in speed and accuracy. Both methods are obviously also good for the creation and charging of talismans, but generally sigil magick is a form of talismanic magick. All methods mentioned in this book can be used for creation of talismans and amulets.

Elemental spirits
Elemental spirits or spirits of elements are also useful in sigil magick. We have already made a simple summary of elements and their associations, to read more about them I recommend to read Condensed Magick 101. Now we should speak mainly of spirits of these elements. Spirits of Fire are called salamanders, they are quite friendly, but have a short attention span and tend to leave the scene quickly. Their domain is anything ranging from courage up to willpower. Spirits of Water are called undines, they are friendly. Their domain are emotions, but also a physical water and rain. Spirits of Air are Sylphs. These creatures are sometimes friendly but more often they are simply neutral. Their domain is the mental plane, they can do anything from improving memory up to boosting the intelligence of the individual. They also rule physical air and together with undines they control the weather, which means both sylphs and undines should be called if we want to manipulate the weather with their help. Last but not least are gnomes, spirits of Earth. They tend to be very friendly towards humans, their domain is wealth, well-being but also physical earth, really anything from dirt up to mountains. They also can be called to make long journeys less exhausting. They are also spirits of physical strength.

If we think a specific sigil is in the domain of specific spirits (e.g. salamanders) then we decorate the sigil with symbolism of their element and then simply take in their element, just like we did with the chaosphere in the energy model, just now we will use their physical element instead of the chaosphere. That means for element of Fire we will use e.g. a candle, for Water glass, etc. Once we have drawn the element into ourselves we can call the elementals and charge the sigil.

For our example let's say we have a desire compatible with Fire and we have used a candle to draw-in its energy. First of all light up 2 white candles, no matter what element we work with, this is the beginning of all of our rituals. Breathe on the sigil for 3 times. Now what we can do is to place our hands above the sigil and while letting the elemental energy to leak from our palms right into the sigil, we can say a following incantation: "Salamanders, spirits of Fire, I call you to this place by the power of your element. By power of Fire I call you here. Appear before me and make this sigil living. Take its desire as your own and fulfill it just like you would do for yourself." After that exhale on the sigil for 3 times again and say: "O Sigil, spirits of Fire breathe a life into you, become a living representation of my desire, become a gate to its fulfillment, a trigger to my happiness, and do my will!"
Then close your eyes and meditate for a couple of minutes. After that is done, exhale on the sigil 3 times again and say: "Spirits have made their deed, Sigil, you are alive".
Put the sigil aside and give a license to depart to the spirits. Then extinguish the candles, that's the end of the ritual.

As you can see in the ritual above, we have already stated a simple form for our rituals, lighting two candles for the beginning and license to depart and putting off the fire for the end. We can go even further and spice up our ritual a little more. Let's say that before you begin you say HEKAS, HEKAS, ESTE BEBELOI!, which means "away with all mundane", then you can sound a bell 3 times to all 4 cardinal directions to cleanse the space. If you don't have a bell, it's ok to use a cup and a spoon for simulating the bell sound. After you are done you can draw a circle around yourself with a chalk or you can lay around a piece of thread to represent the circle. The thread is usually good in-doors, on street you want to use a chalk and in nature you want some form of dagger to engrave the circle into the ground. You can off course be creative and build the circle from dead branches, stones, etc. Once that is done walk around the circle in a clockwise fashion for 3 times, during that you can repeat: "O, spirits of Chaos, come to this place and be present at my ritual". Then stand/sit at the center of the circle  and continue as usually, light up the candles, etc.

Regarding candles, if you use a long candles, you can anoint them with vegetable oil while repeating: "Power of Chaos comes with you" just to give a little more kick into our ritual. Just remember to do it beforehand, when the candles are still new. There are many ways how to modify the ritual and create the right atmosphere, don't be scared to make your research and experiment. Write down what you do and act according to the results.

What we have done with elemental spirits can be done with many more types of servitors. We can easily adapt this working for planetary spirits, primordial entities, pagan deities, spirits of a day or any other correspondence set one can think of. All you have to do is to modify the incantations a little bit so instead of spirits of elements it speak e.g. about planetary spirits and you are good to go. Just before we continue further it is good to mention that spirits can be greedy. A rule of a thumb is to choose 10 or so entities and work mainly with them instead of always choosing a different entity for same type of work. You will be considered as a more loyal "costumer" and treated accordingly, needless to say that such practice truly helps to synchronize with chosen spirits and make the communication easier. Being treated as a loyal spirit worker will make the spirits to work more closely with you. Results will be faster, more frequent and more apparent. Spirits will also very likely grant you familiars for protection and other reasons. Familiars are also very likely to independently help you with your everyday lives, moving obstacles from your path. In a summary, loyalty truly does pay off.

Banishing
Spirit model contains both helping spirits and malevolent ones and time by time we attract the malevolent kind and then we need to banish. Signs of malevolent spirits are usually obvious, we will start having troubles sleeping, we will be waking up tired, items will start falling from tables or shelves or getting transported to other locations (that is usually more obvious when you are living alone and there is no sign of another person entering your home) and your life situation will turn to worse. There are many available banishing methods, the most well known being the Lesser Banishing Pentagram Ritual. What I like during my workings is a simplicity, for that reason I will share a very simple Sumerian banishing ritual. For that purpose we will be calling Asaruludu, the weilder of the flaming sword. Asaruludu is an amazing deity when it comes to protection, it is also one of 50 names of Marduk and mentions about him can be found in Enua Elish, Babylonian version of "Genesis". The ritual goes as follows:
Vibrate a formula:
ZI ANNA KANPA
ZI KIA KANPA
ZI DINGIR ANNA KANPA
ZI DINGIR KIA KANPA

Then vibrate BANMASKIM to all 4 cardinal directions, it is common to start at north and then turn clockwise, but whatever suits you more. BANMASKIM is the word of power of Asaruludu. You can also improve this ritual a little bit and after each vibration of the word of power sound a bell 3 times just like you do in the cleansing ritual.

Servitor creation in spirit model
It's time to speak about how to create your very own servitor in the spirit model. This method resembles the one outlined in the psychology model, that means we will need a name, sigil, description, mantra and a form of our servitor ready. We will need one paper where there is everything, the name, the seal, description, everything. Then we will need a separate pieces for each part.

Start your ritual as usually, then say: "O, mighty spirit Agaku, I call you with your word of power MASHGARZANNA, accept my request and appear before me, aid me in the creation of the serving spirit". Close your eyes and feel power of the moment. Then open your eyes again and place a piece of paper with the name of your new servitor right in the front of you and say: "By the powers of Agaku, I give you the name (name of the servitor)". Then place another piece of paper with servitor's mantra on the top of the previous one and say: "By the powers of Agaku, this is your activation mantra". Continue with the separate pieces, stacking them one by one on each other. Then bind these pieces together by wrapping them around with a piece of thread, during that say: "O, mighty Agaku, bind these together with your power, aid me in the creation by the word MASHGARZANNA". After that burn these bound pieces on a clean ashtray. Close your eyes and meditate till the whole thing burns into ashes and ashes are cold. Now comes the last part, flip over the paper containing all the information and "sprinkle" the backside of the paper with the ash, while saying: "(spirit name), by the power of Agaku, you are now living. By the power of MASHGARZANNA you now breathe, by the power of mighty spirits you now do my will. (Spirit's sigil mantra) is now your calling. (Spirit's description) is now your doing. This is now your new home". With that being said and done, your ritual is finished and you can close it as usually. Don't forget to thank to Agaku and give him the license to depart.

As for the rest, follow instructions from the psychology model, visualize your servitor by your side during the day, et, use his/her mantra on the regulae basis to "feed" him, give him tasks, etc. As for giving your servitor some tasks, you can choose whatever format you wish, whether you do a ritual or not is strictly up to you and your tastes. Once servitor's deed is done and you want to get rid of him, simply do another ritual with Agaku. Start your ritual as usually, call Agaku with his name and word of power, say: "O, mighty Agaku, by the power of your word listen to my request and appear before me, aid me in deconstruction of my servitor (spirit's name). Then close your eyes for a minute and feel the power of the moment. After take the paper with all the information, bind it to another paper with your name and while burning it in the ashtray say: "(Spirit's name), I release you by the power of Agaku and MASHGARZANNA, return back to my own life force. (Spirit's name), you are being called, return to your creator". After that being said and done, your ritual is complete, thank Agaku and give him the license to depart.

Conclusion of this chapter
So, we have done our best to explain the mentality needed for the spirit work. We have learned what is the filtering mechanism in the spirit paradigm, we have described rituals for sigil charging, servitor creation and disposal and we have also described the basic mechanics of banishings. We have also explained the differences between the banishing and the license to depart and we also learned about how to cast a very basic circle in an easy and effective manner. Now, if you decide that the spirit work is your chosen path, it is up to you to come up with your own rituals, to expand the Magick circle and to create a decent list of serving spirits for your very own grimoire, for your personal spellbook. Study, make your research, practice, try, fail and learn from your mistakes. That is the path of Magick in all its paradigms. Is is also the path of life in general. Practise safely and have fun.

Meta model
We have already described 4 basic models of Magick, the psychology model, information model, energetic model and spirit model. All we now have to do is to describe the final fifth paradigm in Magick, the Meta model. Meta means beyond and as we have already said earlier, in the Meta paradigm the source or mechanics of Magick are unknown. The meta model came to the existence after comparison of 4 basic paradigms. The reason for this comparison was to find the similarities between the system, something that could help us to understand what Magick really is and how it really works, but results were shocking. There is always some filtering mechanism, something to make a distinct border between us and the divine, but except that? These models are mutually exclusive, they differ both in philosophy and in approaches, a beliefs needed to operate with these are also very different. And even when these models were completely different, they all yielded results. So there was some interesting outcome after all, the Meta paradigm.

Meta paradigm basically says there is another layer we don't see, the internal mechanics and the source we cannot directly comprehend as a species, a layer that governs the real Magick, a layer that is beyond our reach in terms of understanding. Yet, practitioners of different paradigms were still able to do the work that yields the results, which means they still had to tap into this unknown layer, simply through their own practice. That being said the Meta model has become the uniting paradigm of all previous models, not through similarities, but as the gate between these models and Magick, as the final crossroad where all paths lead to the Rome.

Advantages of the Meta model
We have already said there is a great disadvantage of the Meta model in that we cannot understand the real mechanics. But is there any advantage? Yes, there is, we know for sure that all 4 systems work, therefore we are not tied to a specific mindset and choose any of the paradigms knowing that it will work. We also know that we can switch between the paradigms (paradigm shifting) as we see fit because we will always use the same internal mechanics. It also means that by practicing one paradigm, we will get better in others, too. It basically means that a person being able to quickly get into the inhibitory gnosis will be good with spirits, too or it also means that a very skilled energy worker will be much more lucky with the psychology paradigm than the person freshly starting with the same paradigm. The reason is the real improvement lies in the internal mechanics and the way of operating them rather than in paradigms themselves.

Paradigm shifting is the heart and blood of the Meta model. There are times when we are out of time to do ceremonies with spirits or we feel that an excitatory gnosis won't do the trick for us today. During these times we don't need to horribly alter our schedule to do the ritual or we don't need to talk us into drawing sigils for hours trying to find that one design that really clicks in. We can simply shift the paradigm, we can simply use one that feels appropriate at the time. It happens with time that the Magick will become a routine, something we have to force us into doing instead of enjoying what we do. This is when the paradigm shift comes in handy. By substituing our practices and playing around a little bit we can gather back our joy of doing Magick, or more importantly, we are even able to never lose it again as we can switch our routine whenever we need or want to do so. The great thing is that we won't lose our spiritual authority or ability of controlling the energy by doing so, we will simply convert one into other and then freely back as we shift the models we work with. This conversion isn't very obvious at first, as it is usually not so easy to convert at first, meaning by shifting the paradigm we will feel naked, as we have started from zero. But by following the other paradigm for some time, we will be able to achieve something a dedicated newcomer to that very path would need much more time to achieve, and as we continue to switch between these models, easier the switch will get, which takes me to the final part of this chapter, the combined routine.

Combined routine
We have already said that by working in one paradigm we improve in other paradigms, too and by learning to shift the paradigms we manage to shift faster each time and more easy for us is to become pro-efficient on this or that path. What we have yet to mention is there is a simple method to learn how to shift between the paradigms with ease and how to improve at all of them at the same time. This super simple method is a combined routine.

During the course of this book I have outlined various practices in different models. We have spoken about gnosis and avoiding the Psychic censor in the psychology model. We have also described exercises to gather, store and control energy in the energy model. In information model we have spoken about the channels and means of using just one main channel and how to reduce the noise that pollutes the final information we wish to transfer. In the spirit model we have spoken about offerings. These all are healthy practices allowing us to get better within the paradigm we are working at, and despite the fact that these cannot be combined into one giant exercises, these still can be practiced as a separate exercises during the day. You could e.g. start your day with a simple energy exercises to start your body, then you could take a meditation from the information paradigm to clear your focus and get ready for your day. In the afternoon you could take a moment aside for some meditation from the Psychology model and before going to sleep a nice little offering to the nearby and familiar spirits just to keep them interested. You can of course split and distribute this routine throughout the day as needed. Other method you could do is to start with an offering during the morning coffee, then focus fully on your present moment during brushing your teeth (information paradigm method), then during the lunch break do some energy work and in the evening use the exercises from the Psychology method to clean your mind and gain a much better sleep.

Once you create your combined routine, you should of course stick with a specific timeline to build some habit. Sticking to the schedule also helps to build some willpower. But if you get annoyed by the repetitiveness of the routine, simply change. Either modify the times or turn the whole routine completely upside down, avoid one paradigm for some time or focus strictly on one paradigm, do what pleases you. Time by the time when I am bored, I stick e.g. with Franz Bardon's IIH, I always gain some new insight from such "retreats", plus I keep my Magick alive and kicking, this is one of the advantages of the Meta model, it is much harder to get bored and slip down into the mood where you just have to force yourself and you rather do million other things than practicing the occult. It is also good to mention that this doesn't apply only to the occultism but to the life in general, switch between your hobbies and also ways of doing things, this way you will always keep yourself interested, but you will also learn a lot of new things during the process. Bored playing guitar? Learn how to cook. Annoyed by the endless study of philosophy, buy some wood and tools and learn to craft statues. Carving figures out of wood being too annoying now? Switch wood with clay. Keep the Magick within alive and rocking, whether through occult or other means, and learn a lot of new things in the process. Also, if you are not careful enough, there is a big chance of having some fun in the process. Practice safely and remember, Nothing is true, Everything is permitted, with these words I conclude this book.

Liber Azag: Book of Sigils, part 5

Energy model

So far we have described mainly a psychology model of Magick with just a slight tap into the spirit model with our description of servitors, but still more from a perspective of our unconsciousness. We also described one energy model method, charging sigils with Akasha. But for the book of sigil magick to be truly complete, we have to explain different models, too. There are actually many reasons why to do that. First of all not everyone is psychology based, we are unique individuals with different tastes and beliefs. Secondly we don't want to be stuck to one paradigm forever, sometimes we just need to spice things up to keep it going. Third reason is that different models have different sets of qualities, some models are better for something and worse for something else, being able to shift the paradigm equals to being able to adapt to the needs of any given situation. And I know I am now diving a little bit deeper to the Chaos Magick, but still with Sigil Magick point of view in mind.

First new paradigm we are going to talk about is the energy model. In this model everything is consisted of an energy and manipulating this energy is what Magick is about. This universal energy is usually split into outer (external) and inner (of the body) and has many different names across different cultures. It is prana in India, Chi in China, Ki in Japan, animal magnetism, fluidum or vital energy for mesmerists, od or orgone for various different folks and psi for parapsychologists. In this chapter I want to describe the differences between this model and other models, how to use the universal energy source and how to bottle the energy for later use.

Before we start doing anything with energy, we should learn to feel it first. For that reason we will introduce a set of exercises to feel the energy within our body and to shift it around a little bit. First exercise is a simple meditation technique. You should sit in a comfortable position in a nice and calm surroundings. First of all think about your hands getting warmer and heavier, say in your mind or out loud: "My hands are very hot and very heavy". Feel your hands getting hot and heavy. Once you achieve this feeling, you then continue with your whole arms (you can also split it to forearms, elbow and rest, it depends only on you). Then shoulders, then feet, ankles, whole legs. Then chest, stomach, back. And finally neck and head. Once you are finished it is also good to invoke the feeling of coldness to your forehead so you won't feel like overheating. Once this relaxation is done, focus on your body. Concentrate on all feeling in your whole body for at least 5 minutes. Just concentrate and enjoy those little swirls of energy. This exercise is great from both the energetic and psychological point of view. In energy model this exercise removes energy blockages and let the energy flow freely in your whole body and in psychology model this helps from stress and also in long-term this strengthens your immunity.

In the next exercise we will learn how to shift energy in our body and how to feel this shift. For this to work, we must be relaxed first, so this exercise is best done right after the aforementioned relaxation technique. So, while we are still relaxed and our hands are preferably rested on our lap with some space between them, we now concentrate our whole mind on the right index finger for about 15 seconds. Next we will switch our concentration to the left index finger for another 15 seconds. Keep switching the concentration, soon you will notice there is a distinct feeling between these two fingers as you are switching the attention between them. On energetic level the flow of energy is associated with your will and the energy flows as you see fit. On physical level you slightly change the blood flow and few other things. Now, by doing this exercise on regular basis you improve your ability to control and distribute energy in your body. As you train you also want to prolong the time between switching the focus. The reason is there is a practical application of this exercise. Focusing on the wound will help it to regenerate a slightly faster and focusing on the place that hurts will help to reduce the pain. It can look counter-productive as focusing on pain make it feel worse, but if you keep at it, it really will diminish. The pain itself also is a very interesting thing. It has the double function. First function is to warn us that a body is taking a damage and we should withdraw from the damaging factor. Second function is to bring our attention to the damaged area to activate and boost the regeneration process. So without pain our wound wouldn't heal as fast, it would heal, but at a bit slower pace.

Before we learn to draw-in the external energy, we should learn how to avoid energy blockages because else we could exhaust our energetic "plumbing" and get sick.  In simple terms to avoid energy blockages we have to get our bodies free of a waste. The easiest way is to do so together with a material waste. In other words if you are going pee-pee or poo-poo, focus on all negative energy in your whole body, mind, spirit and soul. Visualize as this all negativity attached to you leaves with your waste. Same goes to blowing your nose, too, simply let all negativity to go with it. As a nice side effect you will be much healthier, your time needed to get out of the sickness will be reduced and you will have much more quality sleep. Another way is to stick your hands in a running water and let it attract all your negativity to itself, a tap water is a good enough for this exercise as well. And of course, bathing and showering can be used the same way, just in case of a bath, make sure no one touches the water after you are finished bathing and letting the water drawing in your negativity, always better dispose of the water right after the bath.

Now it's time to learn how to gain energy from the external source. We have already described working with Akasha before, so now let's talk about a more modern method. We will use a chaosphere for means of gaining energy. To do so we need a chaosphere either printed or drawn on a piece of paper. Sit on a chair in a comfortable position and relax your whole body. Chaosphere can be either placed on the table or attached to the wall at your eyes' level. Gaze at the chaosphere and concentrate all your will on it. If any side thoughts appear, simply dismiss them and re-focus on the symbol. Do so for about 20 minutes. Then reach with your hands, placing your palms about 2 inches above the chaosphere. Visualize how the energy is soaking from the chaosphere and entering your body through your arms, feel this process happening. You can also synchronize this process with your breath, for each inhale you draw the energy in and for each exhale you store it in your body, either in your third eye (between your eyebrows) or in the place called hara, about 2 inches below your belly button.

Speaking of hara, there is another useful exercise to remove blockages, strengthen the flow of energy and improve your health. During each inhale expand your stomach instead of your chest and visualize it like you are breathing directly into your hara, feel breathing into your hara. During each exhale let it all go back out. This exercise is a bit harder in the beginning, to make it easier, use your finger to push against hara while breathing to help pinpoint the location and learn this method correctly. Once you learn this method correctly, you can also use it to draw in external energy Simply inhale into hara and while exhaling, when the breath reaches solar plexus, swallow and feel how the energy goes back down into hara, then finish the exhale This method comes from Chi Kung, where there is a belief that the air we breathe contains the energy and via this process you can separate it from the air and store it.

Once we have learned some basic methods  to store energy, we should learn how to use it to charge our sigils. In case of visual sigils it is really simple. All you have to do is to place your hands above your sigil and imagine the energy radiating from your palms and into the sigil while staring at the very same sigil as in focal meditation. Keep doing so for 20 minutes or till you stop feeling the energy radiating from your palms. For a sigil mudra it is a good practice to visualize the energy leaving your body through the hand doing the gesture, being "converted" or programmed with our intention in the process. Same process works for asanas too, but you will most probably want the energy to leave through the top of your head instead. Some people also like to use the third eye chakra for that purpose. When you are using sigil mantras you want to lead the energy from hara to the throat, where it gets programmed with your intention and leaves your body together with the sound, aside that everything is exactly as in the previous description of mantra chanting, your mind should be one syllable ahead your tongue.

It's time to speak a little bit more about the energy model. You could notice that as opposed to the psychology model there is no mention of the psychic censor. The thing is that there is always some filtering mechanism, just now it isn't called the psychic censor. Energy model is, as the name suggests, dependant on the energy work, in how much energy you can gather, program and control, anything in this process being too limited means the result will fail. People usually say that these paradigms are separate and we shouldn't compare them, their differences are the main reason for their distinction. But because I want to teach you about the meta model, too, I think it's good to pinpoint the similarities right in the beginning of our journey.

When we are still within the energy paradigm, it is also good to mention another useful practice: conscious eating. This basically means that any income of food or liquids should be fully conscious and not a mindless task you just do while watching TV. The reason is that the food brings in energy, same goes to water. While eating or drinking we can focus on correct use of the energy. We can focus on storing it, sending it right to the circulation, or we can also concentrate on using the energy from that specific meal to use for a very specific task. This task can be something you normally don't like to do, like washing dishes, housework in general, exercising, or it can be e.g. a sigil charging. To work with energy this way you can e.g. use a simple prayer before eating/drinking or you can touch each bite with the bit of your tongue while  concentrating on your desired goal. Same way it works with water, just remember it usually works better when the water is cold. Another method you can use with water is to place your hands on the water container and concentrate on your goal while visualizing the energy being emitted from your palms right to the water.

Information model

We should speak about the information model now. In this paradigm we work with symbols and their meanings. It is believed that literally everything is consisted of symbols and by manipulating the definition of these symbols we can manipulate the reality. Generally speaking in this paradigm all we have to do is to make a sigil and correctly associate it with its new meaning. Information model partially works with unconsciousness like the psychology model but doesn't consider the energy at all because in this model energy itself is just another set of symbols, another packet of information. There is of course yet another filtering mechanism that makes the association of symbol and its definition hard, but in this case it is quite easy to figure it out. If you observe your mind, you will notice how it works, you have one general thought train that usually gets swayed away in a direction of random thoughts, fantasies, day-dreaming, memory recall, etc. Sometimes you have to do multiple work at the same time and then your thinking patterns change chaotically. This means that in the case of using the information paradigm we need a clean and strong communication channel. In other words we need to get rid of the noise in the channel (side thoughts) and keep using just one main channel (no chaotic thinking patterns).

To reduce the noise we can use a simple zazen meditation practice. Relax your whole body and then start counting your exhales from 1 to 20. There shouldn't be any thinking in the process, only counting. If a side thought appears, simply reset the counting and start all over, if you reach 20 then reset the counting and start all over. Remember that there is no rush, if a side thought appears, it's not failure, there is no reason you should be angry about yourself, just keep counting and resetting the count as needed and the problem will eventually sort itself out, there is no rush in this. After all, if you reach 20 you would reset the counting anyway.

We have described how to get rid of the noise in communication, now we should speak about using just one channel. To practice this choose a simple thought or a field of thoughts, set timer to 10 minutes and during that time think just within this thought pattern. If a side tracking thought appears simply re-focus on the original pattern. For this method it is also a good idea to have some sort of prayer beads so you can use it to count a number of "failures" by moving your fingers on the beads. A string with knots is a good enough tool for this exercise.

I know these exercises can get frustrating from time to time, especially during periods where there is no apparent progress. Just remember there is no rush and even while it seems that you are not moving anywhere, believe me that even then these exercises have some effect, from both occult and mundane perspective. Occult based these exercises will improve your ability to work within the information, energy and spirit models. Mundane wise, you will be much more focused, productive, task oriented and resistant to stress.

Once you have done the basics, it is time to learn about how to associate the symbol with its meaning, how to create this connection between the two. First thing we need for the practice is a symbol for the association. Let's say we create a sigil for happiness. Place the sigil on your mirror or somewhere you will always see it. A mirror in the bathroom is quite usual place as we use it every day for brushing our teeth, shaving, etc. Each time you see the sigil, invoke a feeling of happiness within yourself, what is happiness and how does it feel like? Do this every day for some time and soon it will become automatic, soon each time you see the sigil you will feel happy without any explanation, then you will know you associated the symbol with its definition correctly. If you are done with one emotioin, start with another, it can be fear, anger, lust, love, continue as long as you wish. Btw, if you didn't have any luck with AoD before, this is a good way how to charge it.

Once you get experienced in associating emotions to sigils, you can move to desires. Create your desire statement, sigilize it and just like before, place it on the mirror or somewhere you will see it every day. Each time you see it, invoke the feeling that you've already got what you desire for so much, that you already got what was the purpose of the sigil. Notice that so far in the information paradigm we have spoken only about visual sigils. It is a very good beginning for information model, as it is something we just draw and then focus on it. Once you've got enough efficient with visual sigils, you can go for other types, same rules apply for visual sigils as for sigil mantras, mudras and asanas.

Liber Azag: Book of Sigils, part 4

Servitors

It's time to speak about servitors and their use in Sigil Magick. A word servitor was originally intended to mean any kind of entity, from an elemental being to a demon. Modern definition is an artificial entity created by the practitioner, but I personally prefer the original meaning so I will use it more broadly in this book. One of the reasons is that Sigil Magick would be too limited if you didn't know how to apply its philosophy to modern and traditional systems of Magick, Spare's original intention was to re-discover Magick in its purest state, not to create an independent system that's not compatible with the rest.

So, what is a servitor? Servitor is a type of non-physical lifeform with some level of consciousness and intelligence. The biggest difference between a servitor and a sigil is the working mechanics. By using a sigil, we can shift a probability to our advantage, but if the gate is closed, our desire won't be fulfilled. A servitor that is given a task makes conscious decisions to meet its goal and when there is no apparent gate to the goal, it can learn about how to climb the wall or lockpick the door. In other words a servitor can learn new things to meet its goals. Servitors are also suitable for more complex tasks where a couple of factors have to be manipulated or when we search for something, servitors are e.g.  good finders of rare occult books.

Before we speak about how to create our own servitors, let's take a look into those already existing, there is a good number of grimoires consisting of countless spirits ready for our use. Grimoires are like phone book, you get a spirit's name, seal, correspondences and descriptions of its abilities including means of summoning these. It is great to have a set of entities one can work with, just remember that most of these are egregores, entities created by a great deal of practitioners and worshippers during the ages and their consciousness is usually culturally specific. For example when an entity was crafted by a blood cult, it will require you to sacrifice blood as an offering or if the spirit is specific to some hidden tradition, it will require you to be initiate of that same tradition. I say this because many egregores come from Goetia where it is normal to threaten the spirit with God's wrath to comply, and some of these spirits really need this behavior to work. On the other side some of the Goetic spirits are deities from much older religions and treating them like God's servants will bring some unfortunate consequences, if the egregore was created while being worshipped as a god, you shouldn't threaten it like a hobo wanting some spare change, enough said.

So, we know there are some pre-made servitors, but where? You can pick from Goetia, Clavicula Solomonis, Faust's grimoire, Grimorium Verum, New Avatar Power, Simon's Necronomicon and many many more. I personally prefer Necronomicon but I worked with others before. You can off course follow rituals and procedures as described in these grimoires (Necronomicon's spellbook, second book of Necronomicon, has a pretty nice and straightforward ritual) or you can take Spare's approach and use gnostic practices to contact the spirits, death postures used over the seals is an especially effective method of conjuring the entity). You can also try to put a seal of an entity under the black mirror, think about the seal while performing the death posture and on the verge of excitatory gnosis look into the mirror.

When speaking about conjuration, we should also mention the most amazing way of doing so with Sigil Magick, meeting spirits in dreams. As easy as sigilizing I WANT TO MEET A SUCCUBUS IN MY DREAM and charging it. By the way, the dream state spirit work is the only one where you want to use beginnings of the desire like THIS MY WILL, I WISH or I WANT TO. Reason is that servitors have their own consciousness and intelligence and you rather request them to come than commanding them. You also want to avoid this to be permanent, who would want to meet succubi in each of his dreams and always wake up tired? Just few hints, before working with spirits in your dreams you should practice a dream recollection first. Simply repeat I REMEMBER ALL MY DREAMS as a mantra till you fall asleep or sigilize it and use the sigil before going to sleep, a charged sigil can also hang on the wall just above your bed to increase its effects. Speaking of working with entities, you can sigilize the I WANT TO MEET THE SPIRIT IN MY DREAM in a fashion of a circle, then you just put the seal or sigilized name of the spirit inside the circle and charge it. This way you save time and also each of your dream evocations will be more and more successful.You can do the same with remembering all your dreams and make it as the outer circle for the dream spirit work. So, in the end you will have a seal of a spirit enclosed in a circle saying you want to meet that spirit in a dream and that will be enclosed in another circle stating you remember all your dreams. These circular, rectangular or triangular hollow sigils are used  by practitioners quite frequently, they just don't speak much about it. But we can of course find these in traditional magick as well, magick circles and triangles of evocation are hollow sigils. Same goes to planetary intelligences, if we have e.g. a mercurial spirit, we will enclose its seal within an octagon, because 8 is a number of Mercury in Chaldean sequence (more about it in Astro Magick Essentials).

While still speaking about pre-made servitors it is also worth to mention something. A servitor doesn't need to be only invoked or evoked, the biggest beauty of servitors is their multi-functional use. Let's say you pick some entity from a grimoire that has some ability or knowledge that you want. We have already spoken about Goetia so let's use some goetic entity as an example, let's speak about Marbas. Marbas is a expert in healing and mechanical arts. A healing, meaning an ability to heal others and improve's one own health dramatically, that is useful skill. Mechanical arts doesn't mean only small geared machines, it's general for household work, when you need to fix anything from a clogged toilet up to the electricity problems, Marbas is the entity for that. Now tell me, what handy man would refuse such a gift, an ability to fix nearly anything and an unique mentality of solving problems that only Marbas can give to you? Everything without a need to even evoke this entity. How? If we read Goetia, we will find out that each antity has a name, a seal, description and correspondences. These all are sigils. All we have to do is to draw Marbas' sigil on the paper and use it regularly for focal meditation to suck in his characteristics. Of course death postures with intention to do so will have the same effect. We can also strap his seal to a piece of thread and use it as a talisman or amulet of sorts. Now comes the beautiful part, we can be really creative, take a piece of wood or metal, engrave his seal on it charge it and use that as your talisman, or use his seal as a latte art, charge it and then drink it. Or go old school, charge his sigil on a piece of soft paper, charge it, then let the paper dissolve in water or tea and then drink it. There is really no limit stating how you can or cannot work with servitors and their sigils. You can also draw Marbas' seal on your body with a pen, best directly on the wounded area or on the chest right in front of the heart and use this as a centering and magnifying gateway for your healing, or draw it on the body of the sick person you wish to heal.

To create your own servitor you have to specify his goals first. Should the servitor be a one-time type for a specific task or should he be the multi-use type? In case of one-timers you have to specify an expiration for the servitor, whether when the task is finished or in some reasonable time frame. Let's make an example of a servitor now. Let's say I want my servitor to aid me in meditations, clarity of mind and ability to make correct decisions. What shape could be the best for such a purpose? The servitor can be short as there is no need for him to rush anywhere, he should have long white beard representing wisdom and mystery. He should have a scroll or parchment, representing wisdom and knowledge, also some form of pen or feather, representing writing notes and writing definite decisions. We can use parchment for the written notes and scroll for a gained knowledge, scroll should probably be on his back to make it ready for use, parchment and feather should be in his hands. When the purpose and ideal form of the servitor is decided, we should take some time visualizing the servitor and our communication with him/her to make sure this combination is really what we want. Remember that when we do a mistake now, our servitor will be less able to accomplish his future tasks.

Next we should create the name and activation formula for our servitor. Let's use his set of abilities as a desire statement:

MEDITATION INSIGHT DECISION MAKING CLARITY

Let's erase all vowels and repeating letters now:

MDTNSGHCKLR

Turn it into a sigil mantra:

MADATAN SIGI HOCEK LIER

Now we can either turn his mantra into a word of power to gain his name or we can use the original desire statement for this. From mantra it would be MASIHOLI and from the statement MEINDEMA. I personally like MEINDEMA more.

As the next part we should create a seal of our entity to have some nice focal point for meditations. We can either sigilize the name, mantra or the desire statement, choose what you like. We can also use any method of sigilization we like. Frankly, our MEINDEMA possesses a lot of Mercurial qualities, so let's use the square of Mercury to create his seal.

Once we have the description, form, name, mantra and seal, we are pretty much ready to create our very first servitor, easiest way to do so is to use his seal for focal meditation while vibrating his name and his mantra. Coincidentally this is also the method we will use on regular basis to feed our servitor. And, because our servitor is meditation based, this process will also automatically become easier for us as the time goes and our artifical spirit grows in power, everything depends on the practice. It is also a good experience to visualize the form of your servitor and repeat his name a couple of times when falling asleep. This way you can call your servitor into your dreams and get to know your creation. Servitors also like to lurk around a lot, so if you share a bed with your partner, it can happen that the very next day your fiance will describe a very strangely looking creature from his/her dreams that will be suspiciously similar to your servitor. This happened to me the very day I have created my very first servitor, a fox-like creature named Erlis, the morning after that my wife has told me about her dream where I was sleeping while leaning back on a tree and a weirdly looking "dog" was protecting me against something. She described the "dog" exactly the way I built Erlis to the closest detail and she didn't even know about my little experiment with servitor creation.

It can happen that your servitor creation won't work the way you would expect and the spirit will be too weak or too vague to even communicate. Sometimes this happens. The very usual reason is that our unconsciousness didn't join the separate pieces like name, mantra and seal together, so they exist separately, but do not enhance each other. In fact it can even happen that these separate pieces will negate each other. This situation tends to be very troublesome, often even annoying. Fortunately there is a quite quick and easy fix for that. Write servitor's name and mantra on separate pieces of paper, draw his seal on another piece of paper and you can also draw your servitor's form on yet another piece of paper. Once you did that put all pieces together and secure them with a piece of thread. Once that is finished, simply burn them together. Occult lodges usually use this method to associate your real name with your name given to you by the lodge. The basic belief is that this way your name and your lodge name does merge together on astral level, as you can see the very same thing can be done as a quick fix in case of servitor creation. What also helps is to visualise your servitor right next to you during the day, imagine that your servitors are always with you, all the time, they are sitting right next to you in bus, they are attending the same meetings as you are, they are walking right by your side, etc. And when you are already visualising that, remember to talk to them in your thoughts. This helps to develop a relationship with your creation. Sometimes when you are communicating with your servitors, they will talk back to you. People tend to role-play a bit in this case so they are just chatting with themselves thinking they speak with their own creation, but once your creation really talks to you, you will be able to easily differentiate that from your internal voice. Servitors also tend to develop a sort of personality unique to them. This personality will also affect your visualisations and your inner talks with them. Their personality will also affect the way they do things, they will develop a very specific personal style of their own. This style will have some resemblance to your own, after all you play a creator in this process, and the same way as your servitor is affecting your thoughts about him, same way you are affecting your servitor's personality. This is also one of the reasons why some egregores are hard to work with, there is a big cultural gap between you and their "creators". This gap makes it a bit hard to decide, you either have to work with old and powerful entity but with cultural problems, or make your own entity that will be easier for you to work with, but results will be harder to achieve due to the age and inexperience of the servitor.

So far we have described only permanent servitors, but what about those limited by time or by task accomplishment? This information can be part of the desire statement, simply adding ONE WEEK, ONE MONTH or TILL something IS ACCOMPLISHED should do the trick. There is only one problem with this scenario, the time needed for the task won't fit the expiration date of the servitor or if the servitor becomes too intelligent, he will figure out not doing the task will prolong his existence. But there is a simple solution to the problem, create a permanent servitor for a specific task and when the task is finished, simply dissolve the servitor. Easiest way to do this is the burning method described before, simply write servitor's name, mantra and draw the seal all on one piece of paper and your name on another piece. Tie these two pieces together and burn them,  merging the servitor back into yourself. The very same thing can be done with various other methods, including a ritual to draw all already created servitors back, we will speak about these methods later, for now it is important that you know the basics of servitor creation, manipulation and dissolving.

Liber Azag: Book of Sigils: part 3

Different methods of sigilization

Let's speak about few different methods of sigilization now. In the beginning I have mentioned 3 basic methods used in Sigil Magick: Meshing letters together, pictorial method and automatic drawing. These 3 methods were used by Spare and are commonly used by Sigil Magicians across the globe. There is nothing wrong with these methods, but we must understand is that these methods are quite modern. If we go back into the past, into the history of Magick, we will find much older methods of sigilization. These methods can also be used in the modern Sigil Magick.

First of all we have the Nine Chambers system. In this system we have a table with 3 rows and 3 columns, giving us a total of 9 cells. In each cell there is a set of letters, outer border of the table is non-existent, giving us a variety for the sigilization.

To create a Nine Chambers we can use a common numerology system, where we write numbers 1 to 9. Under each number we then write a letter of the alphabet, A under 1, B under 2, C under 3, D under 4, etc. When we finish writing a letter under 9, we then continue writing under letter A.

Once this is finished, we have a set of letters and their numeric representation. Now we draw the table for Ine Chambers and letters under number 1 goes to the first cell (first row, first column), letters under 2 go to the second cell (first row, second column), till the whole table is finished.

To use Nine Chambers, we simply cross out all repeating letters in our desire statement and then we follow the letters one by one in the table, except of drawing the letter, we draw the outline of its cell, meshing these outlines together as we go. This makes our sigils a little bit less original, but we don't need to spend too much time with our artistic side and due to the limited variety of shapes it is much easier to mesh these outlines together to make a sigil. This is the Aiq Beqar (nine chambers) method.

Next method we can speak about is the Rose Croix method. This method is really simple, you just take the rose croix and connect the letters on it in the sequence matching with your desire statement. These connected lines then represent your sigil. It is quite unclear what's the true origin of the rose cross in this particular design, it officially appeared in Golden Dawn but of course a much older heritage was claimed. What is not ancient in the systems of traditional magick like it wasn't worth the effort. It's partially due to the human nature, trying to find the lost wisdom of ancient races, partially also caused by the arrogance of members of these "ancient" lodges. But this method is used quite often and there actually exist even variations, Here is one from the TOHO order:

Another system we can speak about uses the planetary Magick square. I have described this method very deeply in the Astro Magick Essentials, so I will be rather give a summary here. It is believed that there are cosmic energies affecting our little planet and these cosmic energies can also be used to enhance our Magick if we follow a set of rules and observe the stars and planets to find out which energies are currently available for us to use. Planets we normally observe are Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn (yes, in astrology Sun and Moon are considered planets). A certain occultist named Agrippa has derived a set of Magick squares for these plaets to be used for sigilization, namely to derive signature of intelligences and spirits of these planetary energies. But what else is a signature than a sigil?

First of all we need a conversion table between numbers and letters:

1. A: 1
2. B: 2
3. C: 3
4. D: 4
5. E: 5
6. F: 6
7. G: 7
8. H: 8
9. I: 9
10. J: 10
11. K: 20
12. L: 30
13. M: 40
14. N: 50
15. O: 60
16. P: 70
17. Q: 80
18. R: 90
19. S: 100
20. T: 200
21. U: 300
22. V: 400
23. W: 500
24. X: 600
25. Y: 700
26. Z: 800

Now, let's say we want to create a sigil for money, then we create our desire statement:

I ATTRACT A LOT OF MONEY

then we cross out all repeating letters:

IATRCLOFMNEY

Now let's convert it into numbers:

9, 1, 200, 90, 3, 30, 60, 6, 40, 50, 5, 700

Now we want to use a planetary Magick square of Jupiter, as our request is money related. But if you take a closer look then this square contains 16 as its biggest numbers so some of our numbers do not match. For that purpose we have to cut down zeroes to the point when our numbers match:

9, 1, 2, 9, 3, 3, 6, 6, 4, 5, 5, 7

Now our numbers match but some repeating in the sequence. When you have one number twice in a row (e.g. 6,6), you make a mark on the number, usually a small arc. It is also a good custom to start the sigil with a small circle and end it with a dash.

Here I am going to give you a list of planetary correspondences and their Magick square so you know which square is good for which outcome. Squares themselves are also symbols so their understanding is part of Sigil Magick, this is unfortunately out of the scope of this book, still, if you are interested about what these squares represent and how to build them, I can only recommend you to read my book named Astro Magick Essentials where you have all the information about these squares and how to create them that you will ever need, with both traditional squares as described by Agrippa and their modern versions made by me.

Alphabet of Desire

It's time to speak about the AoD, the final stage of A. O. Spare's system, the beauty of Sigil Magick and the most powerful tool of al sigil magicians. AoD, as we mentioned earlier is a set of re-usable sigils that can be combined together to create new ones. This explanation sounds kinda interesting, but what does it really mean? With AoD you create your own set of correspondences, these correspondences can then be used even outside the scope of Sigil Magick. As we said before, a sigil can be anything from a symbol to the position of the whole body, it can actually be a combination of one or more of these. Now, if you ever tried Rune Magick, you would see a similarity here, as each rune has its own meaning, it also has a sound, a gesture and a position of a body. Visual depiction of runes is usually used for divination, body positions are used for meditation and gestures are used for spell casting (together with its sound). With AoD you can easily re-invent the whole Rune Magick and obtain a system that is good for meditation, divination and spell casting, also creation of charms, talismans, amulets, as I said before, this is a complete system of Magick on its own.

To start with the creation of AoD we first need a set of opposite emotions, of dualities. Write down as much as you can in a following format:

1. Love - Hate
2. Anger - Passion
3. Fear - Courage
4. Happines - Lust
5. Luck - Poverty
6. Nudity - Security
7. ...

Write down as much as you can, any pair of whatever seems to be dual opposites to you based on your subjective feeling. This AoD is yours and yours only, fit it for yourself. Once our list is finished, we can proceed to the next part, remember if at any time you figure out another pair of duality, you can always add it later. For the next part we now take each word from the pairs and sigilize it, using our favorite method of choice, so you make sigils for LOVE, for HATE, for ANGER, till you have sigils for all of your "emotions". Once sigils are finished, we should pre-charge them, we can either use a death posture for each of the sigils or we can use each sigil for a focal meditation while we mentally invoke and experience its emotion. That means that during focal meditation on e.g. LOVE you try to feel the love during the whole operation, this is all the pre-charging that is needed.

After the pre-charging is done, we ca try to use our AoD for the first time. Build your desire statement from the emotions from AoD and then either merge the sigils together into one big sigil or write/say/draw/use them in a sequence, building your very first sigil sentence. You can either use your AoD in the archaic manner, then all you need will be your basic AoD, or you can sigilize new words, verbs and nouns, expanding your AoD. This expansion is not limited to words only, whole phrases can be used for sigils if this can make your work easier. For example when I still used THIS MY WILL as the beginning of my desire statements, I had it ready as just one sigil in my AoD so I could built my formulae very quickly. It is also fair to say that if you use mudras (gestures) or asanas (body postures) as your AoD sigils, you should draw some archaic depictions of these as a reminder of what is what. It is also fair to say that more you use your AoD in your work, more powerful it gets as each use of your sigils will charge them, making them stronger. Now, if you used the very same method, but instead of drawing your sigils, you would carve them into a wood or metal, you could easily create a persistent holder of their energy, a charm of sorts. Same goes to amulets and talismans, only difference is their purpose. A charm is for luck, amulet for protection and talismans are to bring fourth something into your life, whether love, money, fortune. Just choose right sigils and engrave them into their holder. The holder can be made from wood, stone, metal or wax and can also be artistically shaped and decorated to enhance its "mystical" value. In other words more "magickal" the holder looks, more easily you will be able to charge it after sigils are engraved.

The next we should describe how to use AoD for divination purposes. For this use we will need our sigils on a separate pieces of paper. These pieces should be small enough to be easily manipulated. Certain companies like Bicycle sell blank cards, these are perfect for our occult endeavors, but whether you choose paper, stones, pieces of wood or blank cards, the output is same. Simply shuffle the deck, select a couple of cards at random with your left hand and place them into a spread just like if you did with tarot cards. Simplest spread contains 3 cards, for past, present and future. If you intend to use these cards purely for divination, you can also write the "emotion" word under each sigil, making the interpretation easier. To learn about more spreads that can be used, read my book named Liber Azag: The Book of Tarot. If you omit the word of sigil on cards, having purely sigils on your cards, you can easily use these cards to create your sigil statement, just placing down cards you want and using them for dynamic charging or death postures, this is the fastest and the most ultimate way of spell casting, always ready to use as long as you have your AoD deck with you.

So far we have described how to create our Alphabet of Desire and how to use it for spell casting, talisman creation and divination. What are other uses? Well, you can also use AoD for scrying. A sigil built from a statement I SEE THE FUTURE can be easily used for focal meditation to bring forth the visions of future. This sigil can be also placed under the black mirror or built directly within the frame of the blac mirror to enhance its power, aiding in black mirror's ability to see the Astral and bring visions.

AoD can also be used to attain power, statements like I AM VERY POWERFUL MAGICIAN turned into a sigil can be used repeatedly to enhance one's own Magickal potential. Now, if such a sigil existed as a visual sigil, mantra, gesture and posture, you would gain a very nice meditative ritual for a self development. Speaking of that if each of your sigils also contained a word of power, you would get your own very effective Magickal language even with its own alphabet, add gestures and postures to it and use it on regular basis and you will one-handedly overpower any rune magician as the AoD will be your very own, not borrowed from some distant culture.

Liber Azag: The Book of Sigils - part 1

So I figured out I didn't post any new article in a while so I decided to share what is finished so far from the book of sigils I am currently working on. So, sorry, this post is going to be quite long :D

Introduction

Since ancient times there was a belief in the power of symbolism, a belief that a certain image, certain word and certain posture executed in a certain time can cause a certain outcome. Origins of these symbols were usually an inheritance or a complex sets of mathematics and geometry, combined with mysticism. Some of these paradigms of deriving symbols were so complicated that only a person trained within this paradigm the whole life could execute such operation. Then one person came with a completely different perspective, this person was Austin Osman Spare.

Spare had a very non-traditional and fresh opinion regarding symbology, according to him you didn't need a complex calculation and the knowledge of position of all the planets in the Chaldean sequence. According to him all you needed was a desire, this desire was then converted into a symbol to alienate it for the conscious mind, and make it more available for the unconsciousness.

Now we know, that unconsciousness is rather a symbol based than sentence based, a phrase is simply too chaotic for our unconscious selves, it contains words with multiple meanings, some of these can also be easily lost during the process of migration, but a symbol is whole, a symbol says it all, totally, without any losses, without any omitted words, a symbol is a reference link to what we want the most, a symbol is the most honest thing in the universe.

A symbol is also something that keeps invading our minds, symbols are everywhere. When you e.g. hear about McDonald's, a symbol will appear right in front of your mind's eye, this symbol can be the M logo it can also be one of your favorite burgers, or, if you are into "healthy" diet, you will think about fat people and conservants. There is the association between the symbol and meaning, the reference link between the two.

When you make the sigil yourself, through whatever technique you choose, you are not creating only the sigil, but also the reference link between the sigil and your desire. The sigil in itself is not important, it's its connection to the meaning that counts, after all, you don't want to pass a meaningless symbol to your unconsciousness, you want your desire to be fulfilled.

Historically speaking, sigils are nothing new, they existed way before Spare, they just weren't made by meshing letters together. Gematria, planetary tables, rose croix, nine chambers, possession drawings, these all were used just to draw sigils, not even speaking about audial sigils (mantras) or gesturial sigils (mudra), even asanas (body postures) are sigils.

In our every day life we use a lot of symbolism, clothes we wear, our ethnicity, how white teeth we have, how expensive watches we possess, these all we use to create some image, this image is the symbol of us, when someone thinks about us, this is the image he sees, at least when we are lucky. It happens that our self-perception and the perception by others is slightly off, that's normal, if it is off a little bit more, we have a problem, because people give a different definition to ourselves, one we may not be satisfied with. If a company, or a celebrity has an unpleasant image, one that doesn't bring the bright future, this image is changed. A company changes the name, replaces the CEO, puts more money into PR. A celebrity buys new clothes, changes haircut, appears on some show, that's how it's done.

One could say that Spare didn't invent the Sigil Magick. Firstly he himself claimed to be taught by another person, secondly we as a mankind has a tendency to overcomplicate stuff. It is very probable that sigil magick started in its pure form thousands of years ago and new generations then started attaching more requirements to it, like planetary correspondences, elements, deities, ceremonies, we really tend to do that, especially when our effort fails. Many people use this form of thinking: "The recent sigil didn't work, so maybe I did something different from before, maybe one has to be turned into the correct cardinal direction or it's in the day, last successful day was Saturday, maybe it works better on Saturdays". And new successes and new failures attach more and more rules to the mechanics, when the truth might be that you simply used a wrong intention, maybe it doesn't work at all or maybe it does something you haven't intended or you are somehow ignoring the real execution of your spell. This was one advice given to me by Patrick Dunn when I told him I never had much success with money magick. He told me to make a sigil to be more receptive in receiving money. That method worked like a charm and I was thinking about why, does being more receptive to something makes it come true?

Now I think the culprit was hidden somewhere else, my previous spells did work, not as flashy as finding $100 on the street the very next day, but they did work, I was just ignoring the indications, I was simply apathetic to what was happening all around me.

Mechanics of Sigil Magick

It's time to describe the basic procedures of Sigil Magick, first of all, how does Sigil Magick really work? In Magick there are generally these following paradigms as described by Frater U. D.:

1. Energetic paradigm - everything is energy, different frequencies of energy cause different results
2. Information paradigm - everything is information, everything is symbology, by manipulating our own internal symbology we can affect the symbology of the world
3. Psychology paradigm - all the Magick is caused by our psyche, by our unconsciousness.
4. Spirit paradigm - everything is governed by spirits, each action, event or item has its own spirit, we can communicate with them through the use of symbology
5. Meta paradigm - all previous paradigms are sorta true. There is an internal mechanic of Magick we cannot comprehend, but we can use it by either of the previous paradigms.

Now we can speak about the procedure, the most basic one is to state a desire, sigilize, and then either fire and forget, or charge it for a pro longed period of time. For a fire and forget one has to enter the state of gnosis and pass the symbol to the unconscious part of our mind (as the psychology paradigm would explain it). The thing is that during the gnosis our psychic censor is deactivated so we can pass the information directly into our unconsciousness without any filtering. Then we have to forget about our desire else the psychic censor might figure it out after being re-activated and stop the execution.

Dynamic charging means using the sigil for a pro-longed period of time, e.g. for focal meditation. We have already described the fire and forget method as bypassing the psychic censor behind his back. In that case using the dynamic charging is like beating him repeatedly with a stick, till our desire is fulfilled. It is quite obvious that this method won't be as fast as the fire and forget, but internal mechanics are easier, more accessible, and are also useful for a more complex tasks where a couple of factors must fit together to bring our desired change. There is also another difference and that is in the behavior of a sigil itself.

A one time sigil used via fire and forget method is a no-brainer, you wish for a change and the change will more or less manifest. Dynamic charging where you use the same sigil over and over again can bring the sigil to the life, in that case the sigil gets a consciousness on its own, one needed for executing the task, this conscious symbol is then called a servitor.

Servitors can be created through a dynamic charging or methods I will describe later. The conscious creation of the servitor is better as it gives us better control over its intent and also expiration. The expiration is also an important factor, as we want to have the count of our servitors in check. The servitor is usually programmed to expire till a certain date or till his task is completed. Sometimes we also need servitors with no expiration date, but more about that later.

We have already spoken about internal mechanics of Sigil Magick, but what about its uses? What are sigils good for? Well, you can use sigils to get a raise, to win the heart of your chosen partner, to improve your memory, learn things faster, get rid of your habits, heal faster, get rid of bad dreams, bless your family or friends or even add few rare pieces to your vase collection. Sigil Magick is good for anything as long as there is any chance for it happening, as an example, you won't become an US president when you were born outside the United States or you will never look into the space unless you are in a good position to be an astronaut.

You can also use sigils for vague stuff like happiness, luck, feeling of unity or inner peace, but keep in mind that vague desires have vague results and result is everything that Sigil Magick is about. In Sigil Magick it is a good idea to keep your work in the journal together with the records of your results, your successes and failures will help you to figure out your personal system of working with sigils, just remember, don't overcomplicate it like our ancestors did.

Specifying the desire

Before we do anything in Magick, we have to set what our ideal goal should be. For that matter it is good to ask yourself questions like "What do I want to change about my life?" or "What do I want to experience?". Once you got some basic idea, close your eyes, relax and imagine yourself in the situation when you already got what you wanted. Think whether this outcome is really what you want, think about what could go wrong or right in that situation, if you find a possible problem with that, modify the situation a little bit and repeat. Do so till you find the desire with a perfect outcome, one that you are completely satisfied with.

Once the desire is specified and we are completely ok with it, it is time to formulate the desire statement. Austing Osman Spare used an example of THIS MY WILL TO OBTAIN STRENGTH OF THE TIGER. Spare generally believed that using some immutable part of the sentence like THIS MY WILL TO helps to get accomodated to the process and bring better, faster and more accurate results. You can off course follow his example and build the desire statement his way, but first let me tell you what I personally find ineffective on that method and why.

First of all, that method uses an immutable part of the sentence, more and more sigils you make, more unique your approach will be, unfortunately you will also develop a design which will appear in all your sigils because of this part, so your sigils will be less unique and your unconsciousness will have more troubles distinguishing between them. Secondly this method defines a desire, not truth. Saying this my will is similar to I wish, wishing something doesn't mean will become true.

I personally prefer the concept that Bardon introduces in IIH regarding affirmation. An affirmation should be in present tense and formulated as if the desire was already fulfilled, like it was always true, so e.g. instead of "I will quit smoking" or "This my will to quit smoking" it should be "I don't smoke". Many people also prefer the V-Prime model, where words like "to be" are omitted, so instead of "storm is gone" you simply write "storm gone", this simplifies the sigilzation process too, as there are less letters to work with.

You might also ask why is it important to write the desire in present tense. If you specify the desire for the future, your unconsciousness will have time to intervene with the result, the psychic censor will naturally try to stop the work. But, as Bardon states in IIH, if you make your unconsciousness to lose the sence of time and space, it will have no way of stopping your desire.

Sigilize your intent

Now it's time to sigilize our desire to alienate it from our conscious mind and let it slip past the psychic censor to our unconsciousness. There are many sigilization methods but let's speak about the most traditional one for now, meshing the letters together to create an image. Many people start this process by crossing out repeating letters first, so each letter is present only once in the desire statement, but you can omit this process, simply don't draw each letter more than once and frankly, if you find any letter in the sigil that you still didn't draw consciously, you can omit it too, as it is already present.

Let's use some example now, e.g.

STORM GONE

First we ca draw a circle, representing O.

Then if we draw short line inside, touching the border of the circle, we will get both T and G.

We can then turn this short line into a lightning, giving us both N and S.

All that is missing now are letters E, R and M. M can be drawn as E, which helps us to kill two flies with one hit.

Now all we need to do is to add R to the sigil and our work is nearly done.

Now we can continue in our artistic work, adding new shapes to the sigil. Triangles, crosses, petals, pentagrams, planetary symbology, anything we feel appropriate for fulfilling our desire and alienating it further from our consciousness.

We can of course make the sigil in different sequence, directly from the desire, starting with S and ending with E, this method then creates more open ends which can be decorated with occult symbology.

There is no right or wrong way of how the sigil should look like, the only key aspect is to do what works for you, as the time passes, you will create your own personalized design which will work the best for you, everything is in practice, so don't be scared to try new things, through failure we can learn what is the best approach for us.

Pictorial method

Another method used for the sigilization is the pictorial method. You simply draw a sigil based on the stated desire and then you derive a sigil from it. This method is commonly used for healing of another person, you draw a person, usually with initials of the person you want to heal and you draw a needle aiming at the part that should be healed. After the drawing part is done, you then continue simplifying and reshaping the picture till you get the sigil.

Another type of pictorial sigilization is automatic drawing, also heavily advocated by Spare. For this method you need a quiet space where you can relax. Meditate for a moment to calm your mind, then place your hand with a pen on a piece of paper, close your eyes and think about your desire, let your hand to move automatically, drawing on the paper.

Once you fel you are done (or after some time you have specified) put your pen aside and look carefully at the drawn picture. You should notice some part that feels like being associated to your desire, extract it from the drawing and decorate it as needed, e.g. add planetary symbology and close it within a circle. Once again I suggest that there is no right or wrong design of the sigil, this can't be stressed enough.

Mantra method

Another method is the mantra method. In this case you don't create a picture, but rather a sequence of sounds that you repeat again and again during the meditation (like a Sanskrit mantra). Let's use the storm example again:

STORM GONE

One way of creating the mantra is to write the words backwards, adding or removing letters to make it more readable:

MEROTIS NOG

This mantra is a bit hard for chanting, so let's modify it a bit more:

MEROTIZ NOGEY

This one is better for chanting.

Another method is to write are desire phonetically, which won't work in this case as the difference between STORM and its phonetic version is zero to none. But what we can do is to get rid of all AEIOU's and mesh the rest together:

STRMGN

Now we can add additional letters for the readability:

SETORIMAGANA

and split the mantra in separate words for readability:

SE TORI MAGANA

So, we have described two separate ways of sigil mantra creation which gave us two separate versions of the mantra, MEROTIZ NOGEY and SE TORI MAGANA, whether we like method A or method B, let's see how the mantra can be used, for that purpose I choose SE TORI MAGANA as that is my personal favorite in this case.

1. Sit comfortably in a dim lit room and close your eyes.
2. One by one, stretch all your muscles for the time of 5 seconds and then relax them
3. Feel the heat slowly filling your body, your body becomes hotter and hotter.
4. Feel how your body becomes heavier and heavier with each exhale.
5. Turn your eyes up to look at the place between your eye brows, keep them this way for the rest of this exercise.
6. Your breathing should be deep and calm, but still natural. Observe your breathing till you start hearing the buzzing sound. That's called Nada, it's a sign that you have entered the lower form of trance.
7. Now comes the tricky part, vibrating your mantra. Let's use our SE TORI MAGANA example here. Your mind should be one syllable before your tongue, so when in the head you say SE, you're silent, when your mind is at TO you start vibrating SE, when your mind is at RI you start vibrating TO, etc.
8. Repeat step 7 for a couple of minutes or stop when the time seems right.

If the purpose of the mantra is to bring in a certain vision or an experience in a dream state, you can repeat the mantra silently in your mind till you fall asleep, this is also useful for mantras that should help you to break bad habits. You can also turn your mantra into a word of power and focus on it during orgasm.

To turn a mantra into a word of power, you ca simply take the first syllables of the mantra words and join them together. So in case of SE TORI MAGANA it would be SETOMA, you can of course use any method of word of power creation you want, just turn the whole mantra into one word.

The mantra and a word of power can be also used for the creation of the servitor, where the word of power would be the servitor's name and the sigil mantra would be his activation formula, but more about that in the chapter about servitors.