Sigils and seals

What they are, how they work and what to do with them
By Josephine McCarthy

When people first begin to work with signs and sigils, they often misunderstand what these signs
are and how they work: they assume, in our fine modern world of psychology, that the
signs/sigils stand for something or represent something. Wrong. Sigils and seals once formed, are
fragments of the power that they come from and they can work as a part of the original hive
being, be it demon or angel. So for example, if you work with an order of being that is very
powerful, and then later you want to work again with that same quality of power, but without the
full on nuclear power hit, then you would work with the sigil of that being in vision or in ritual
i.e. a fragment of it. The other way of working with these fragments is to string a few of them
together so that they work in harmony and join their powers to create a specific form of magic,
usually protective. Just make sure that the powers that you bind together get on: war raging will
not a powerful pentacle make!

Angelic and demonic sigils

The sigil of an angel or a demon is like a fragment of their power, and also a key to their power
when used correctly. When you want to work with an angelic or demonic being, firstly you need
its name, function or its sigil to bridge to this specific being. There are three basic ways to do this
type of work: either you bring the being to you, or you go to them, or you bridge them into
something through the sigil or name.
The thing to remember regardless of which way you go, is that these powers are not a
joke: they will kill without thought and they will bring destruction down upon you if you prompt
them to.
If you use the sigils to ritually bring the angel/demon to you, then be prepared to use a lot of
energy, mess your room up and have fleeting contact. It’s not a very efficient way to work as you
never get enough time to actually do anything, and the energy it takes to bridge that being into
your world is not eco conscious. And if you are successful and they decide they like it here and
you did not attend your sigils correctly, they may decide not to go. Having the name of a demon
with not give you power over it ritually. The name of a demon is a small keyhole into its job
description, but not its true expression or power. So by banishing by name, you banish only what
is expressed through that name, not the whole being itself. So you can end up in a dangerous
dance with an unnamed power that you have invited into your world. The whole issue of the
power behind named angels and demons is a book in itself and is a complex messy history of
ritual power binding
The second method is to go to them using the sigil. To do this you work in vision and use
the sigil as a guide: you descend or ascend the abyss or pass through the void using the sigil as a
key and a guide. When you are at the right area, the sigil will appear on the walls or tunnel
entrances in the abyss, or the one you are holding will glow. It is safer to commune with these
beings and ask them to help you in their own realm and in their own form.It works well, the
work does manifest out into the outer world and they operate at their own power level because
they are on home turf. The problem is your ability to hold it together in the depths or heights of
the abyss. It takes a lot of energy (all angelic and demonic work will whack you one way or
another, just find the least exhausting...) and it is more dangerous. You will have to know how to
protect yourself without blocking your ability to work, usually by working with other beings, and
will need to be able to navigate yourself around without being distracted or glamoured. Once you
find the area with the corresponding sigil, you make your connection with the being, sort out the
task that drew you there in the first place, and then get out.
The third method, which doesn’t work for everything, but does work well in some
circumstances, is the pure use of the sigil. This is where you need to know the power levels of
these beings, and be clear about what you need from them. If you are simply looking for their
protection, or power in sealing something for example, then you would just use the sigil. The
sigil itself holds the power of that being and allows you to draw a little upon it: it is like a mini
me. So if you are after sealing or protection, simple use the sigil with specific focused intent on
what ever needs protecting or sealing.
So to work with demons or angels their sigils or names are very important as part of the
working tools, and they must be used correctly for it all to work. Just make sure you have a very
good reason to work with such beings and that you are fully aware of what they are and what
they do. Luckily if you don’t know what you are doing, it tends not to work, so stupidity can be a
saving grace sometimes. If you are attracted as I am to red buttons, then I can tell you from
burned experience: if you want to work directly with one of these beings, do your homework, do
your inner workouts, and move thoughtfully and carefully.
Angels are just as dangerous as demons and demons can be just as helpful as angels: just
make sure you know their job description! If you are still at the baby phase of wanting to use
magic to get a big car or a big willy, or to smite the neighbours/ex wife/boss, I would suggest
you do not use these beings: you may be in for a major learning curve if you do. Sensible reasons
for working with such beings would be for major exorcism, working on a seriously magically
bound or pinned land, to build or destroy a temple etc.

Magical seals

Magical seals, like the impressive ones used by eighteenth and nineteenth century magical
groups are and were used for a wide variety of good and bad intentions. The use of magical seals
stretches back far in to antiquity, to the world of ancient Sumer, Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Magically they were mainly used for protection, to seal something into a container, or to keep
beings out of a building or area. They were used upon thresholds to affect the person who
crossed them, and they were used around the neck to protect the body from invasion and impact.
Today’s usage is more or less the same. The magical seals are made up of a ‘sentence’ of
angelic/demonic sigils combined with sacred text and sometimes a deity sigil. The ‘sentence’
would sometimes be encased in an over all sign to contain it and pressurise it (i.e. make it more
powerful and stop it being messed with). An ancient and impressive version of the use of
magical seals is the Babylonian demon bowls, which are vessels covered in script and glued
together with pitch. Inside is often eggshell, human skull or bone with sigils and script upon it.
This is a demon ‘prison’, a trap in which a demonic entity has been trapped and sealed. The sigils
and script around the bowl would encase the demon and stop it escaping. Such magical sealing is
still in use today, although personally I find it easier to take demons back home and deposit them
where they belong rather than end up with a house full of containers that some idiot could open
one day.
 In modern magic, seals are most often used as protection. The wisdom of the constant use
of protection is debatable but the seals do work when done properly and using the right powers.
It is best to use them when you have to do heavy magic and you are under the weather or under a
major attack. The seals can be used as a wearable amulet; it can be drawn upon an object or
marked out over an area. Large magical seals are used in certain branches of magic to keep out
spirits while the magician works. The seal would be marked out upon the floor or on the altar
and it would keep out any beings other than the one being summoned. This again has its
drawbacks, which is part and parcel of the experiential learning of the young initiate.
One of the oldest magical seals seen around the British Isles is the swirls that cover some
of the Neolithic tombs, stones and chambers. The swirl or series of interlocking swirls are
extremely effective at sealing in power and trapping solar (sun temple) power. If the swirls are
on the inside of the container, they will trap whatever is in there: the whole surface needs to be
covered in interlocking swirls. If the swirls are on the outside and are shiny, then they will draw
the being or power to them and the being gets trapped in the endless patterns as though
mesmerised.
One of the dangers of magical seals is that life can become too comfortable and safe with
them if they are used too many times for everything that you do. It is best to keep them for
sealing in things that need to not see the light of day ever: it will guard something for you so that
you can get on with your work.
The other danger that can happen from over use of magical symbols is that you never get
to learn how to deal with all the various beings that are in the inner worlds. If you are so heavily
protected that nothing can ever get near you, then you will end up never knowing any inner
world beings. Like all magic, used sensibly in context it is very powerful, but it must be used
from a place of knowledge and calm, not curiosity and fear.

Platonic solids/geometric shapes in magic

Magic is like a science: it is about learning how the universe works, what particles, powers and
energies do, and it is about the realisation that magic works like a mathematical poem. It is
logical, it makes sense and it is a natural part of the universe. Physics and magic are basically the
same thing with different names: they both work with and are aware of the powers that flow
through space, and they are both littered with workers who are maladjusted.
Platonic solids and geometric shapes often appear in magic simply because they are a
natural part of our world. They are the purest form of a power expression in harmony with itself
and when a being appears to you as a platonic solid you know you have reached its deepest and
most powerful unfiltered form. When the angel of death and destruction appears before you as a
cube, you know you are in for a bit of a bumpy ride.
The forms that beings take to appear to us, i.e. wings, eyes, swords, teeth, fire etc is their
way of talking slowly to us: they play down size, cool power and dress up using images from our
own minds so that we can interact with them and understand what they are about. If an angelic
being appeared before you as a cube, you would blink and scratch your head before finding
yourself fried to a crisp. If an angelic being appeared before you with a flaming sword, fancy
armour, nice hair do, big wings etc then you know you have reached a form of an angel that is
really down playing it for the ants (or it is more commonly a cross dressing parasite out for a
meal).
 They are beings of our universe but not of our form: they are pure form without being
‘nothing’; they are eternal harmony. The more you work the Abyss, work the thresholds and the
void, the more you begin to see that the inner worlds are like a conversation of pure form, of
harmony, shapes, sounds and energy. The beings with faces, wings, horns, etc are just our feeble
way of trying to understand the enormity and conditionality of that which is all around us.
So back to platonic solids: if you see one in vision then chances are you are hitting an
angel full on, or something connected with angels: platonic solids or geometric shapes are often
used as angelic sigils. If the angel appears to you in that form, you have to learn to communicate
at a level that uses no imagination or emotion: angels are really like Aspergers physicists. You
will have to communicate in mathematics, physics and logic.
If you cannot communicate in that form, then best not to call them in that form: having a
pre menstrual emotional ritual artist in the flows of power outputting, standing before a confused
cube is rather entertaining.
But those forms can be used to bring in that power to use at a non personal level: if you
work that way it is usually in temple construction or a similar practical job. An ancient example
of this is the Kaa’ba: a perfect cube temple, holding an ancient sacred stone that stands at the
centre of an ancient power site. Today it is the spiritual centre of the Islamic faith but before that
time it was already an ancient structure that housed many deities.
Its legend is that it was built by Adam to the heavenly specifications of the Angels. It
works in a very specific way to do with utterance and the magical power of breath/sound and the
myth goes that it was built to house paradise on earth: it is a balanced harmonic form that
mediates a pure power of air into the consciousness of humanity for us to work with; how closer
to paradise can we get?
© Josephine McCarthy 2009