TA 11 (3) pp.

297–305 Intellect Limited 2013

Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research

Volume 11 Number 3
© 2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/tear.11.3.297_1

Pam Payne
University of Plymouth

Digital Sigil Magick: The

relevance of sigil magick in
contemporary art and culture

Abstract Keywords
Many areas of contemporary art and culture in the United States and Europe can be contemporary art
shown to have a direct lineage to the rich history of the Western Mystery Traditions, surrealism
rooted in ancient esoteric and magical philosophies of Greece and Egypt. Video mash-ups sigil
and audio sampling have inherited the cut-up methods of Beat poets and artists, who in mnemonic
turn were influenced by the Surrealists and their contemporaries. Early twentieth-century magick
artists such as Austin O. Spare drew upon magickal practices derived directly from hermeticism
renaissance practitioners such as John Dee’s use of The Key of Solomon and Giordano Austin O. Spare
Bruno’s Art of Memory. Methods of employing graphical imagery for the purpose of consciousness
accessing insight or influence from alternate realms continue to draw upon Gnostic and
Hermetic philosophies of ancient Greece and Egyptian antiquity. We can easily see the
persistent influence of these ancient beliefs and practices in the contemporary use of logos
and symbols of popular culture as well as in contemporary art and music.

A brief historic overview of sigil magick

A ‘sigil’, as it is understood today, is a visually encoded statement of intent; a
focusing device employed to direct or define future events.

sigil: an inscribed or painted symbol considered to have magical power.

Origin: late Middle English: from late Latin sigillum ‘sign’.
(http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sigil)

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Pam Payne

Figure 1: a) ‘The Key of Solomon’: The 7th Pentacle of the Sun, b) John Dee’s
Hieroglyphic Monad, c) ‘The Key of Solomon’: The Great Seal, d) Jimmy Page’s
sigil from ‘Ars Magica Arteficii’ (1557), e) The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

The term is mainly used among historians and occult researchers to define the
graphic images used in a magickal context. Much of what we know regard-
ing the use of sigils comes to us through the publications of early twenti-
eth-century artist Austin O. Spare. His artwork and writing describes their
use as a means of traversing alternative realities and states of consciousness.
Spare came of age during the time of emerging Surrealism and Psychology,
and shared an interest in the occult with many of his contemporaries. Such
renewed interest in the occult drew upon the esoteric literature and works
of renaissance scholars and philosophers such as John Dee and Giordano
Bruno. Their theories and practices in turn, were based upon a lineage that
stemmed from the ancient Greco-Roman and Egyptian Hermetic, Gnostic,
Neo-Platonist and early Christian philosophies that flourished in and around
the Mediterranean world around the first century BCE.
The etymology of ‘Gnositc’ is the Ancient Greek ‘gnosis’, or ‘knowledge’;
a mystical enlightenment in this case. Early Christian sects relied upon a direct
personal experience of God rather than the potentially corruptible teachings of
human beings through the Gospels or the Church. Though varied in other aspects,
many of the early philosophies noted above shared this distinction of value placed
on a direct experience of the divine or a personal knowledge of alternative realms.
They also shared a common lineage of teachings from the mystically gifted King
Solomon of approximately 1000 years earlier. Solomon’s teachings were believed
to be descended directly from Hermes of Egyptian antiquity.

Austin O. Spare’s sigil practices

Many ancient esoteric texts were transcribed in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century during the revival of interest in the occult. Among them was
The Key of Solomon, a book of magical seals (see Figure 1) and their uses attributed
to King Solomon transcribed by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. The spell-
ing of magick with a ‘k’ was initiated by another Spare contemporary, occultist
Aleister Crowley to differentiate the term from non-scholarly superstition and
stage magic (Wasserman 2012). Crowley’s definition of magick is succinct:

Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity

with will.
(1912)

The definition is purposefully broad and meant to include mundane acts of will
as well as ritual acts of magick. The term ‘intention’ is used more commonly
today than ‘will’ though they are synonymous and should be understood as

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more of an acknowledged predestination than determined effort. Spare seem-

ingly preferred to work independently and although he is often referred to
as the ‘Father of Surrealism’ due to his avid automatic drawing practices and
explorations of consciousness, he was not a member of the Surrealist Art
Movement that was flourishing during his time. The Surrealists were inter-
ested in accessing and expressing areas of consciousness, particularly the
subconscious, and ‘the very process of thought’ (Breton 1924). Spare was
deeply engaged in traversing and exploring alternate realms using the proc-
esses of drawing, painting and sigil creation as methods to do so. Automatic
drawing can be understood in terms of more contemporary practices such as
the ‘stream of consciousness’ writing of the Beat poets and forms of improvi-
sation such as Free Jazz and Hip Hop.
During Spare’s time, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were developing theories
of the subconscious; a realm of consciousness not readily available to awareness,
but accessible through dreams and hypnotic or otherwise altered states. They
believed aspects of an individual’s behaviour could be explained by understand-
ing the contents of the subconscious, whether repressed experiences or inherent
human desires. It is tempting to interpret this to mean the subconscious mind is
more powerful and has more influence on behaviour than the conscious mind.
Automatic drawing is thought to reveal a direct expression of the subconscious
by disabling the analytical thought processes and providing a clear path for the
subconscious material to emerge. Spare’s sigil practices take this process one
step further by striving to consciously and intentionally manipulate and direct
the material submerging into and emerging from the subconscious.
A better understanding of Spare’s sigil creation process can be explained
through the following basic example from Joseph Max, adapted from Peter
Carroll’s contemporary interpretation of Spare’s practices. As Max explains
‘Sigil Magic uses these glyphs as a means to bridge the gap between the
conscious and subconscious mind’ (2009).

1. Compose a clear, direct statement of intent:

IT IS MY WILL TO EARN ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY A NEW CAR
2. Cross out any repeating letters:
IT xS MY WxLx xO EARN xxxUGH xxxxx xx Bxx x xxx Cxx
Which leaves us with the following:
ITSMYWLOEARNUGHBC

Figure 2: Austin O. Spare artwork (left), Giordano Bruno graphic mnemonics (right).

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Pam Payne

Figure 3: Sigil Creation.

3. Reconfigure the letters into an unrecognizable symbol; the sigil.

4. The original statement of intent should now be discarded. Memorize the
sigil so that it can be redrawn from memory.
5. The sigil is then ‘charged’ or ‘put into action’ by destroying it (burying or
burning it) and by actively forcing it out of conscious memory (intention-
ally forgetting it) while committing it to the subconscious. As interpreted
by Peter Carroll, this is done by entering a ‘gnostic’ state, a mystically
heightened or ecstatic state of consciousness. The methods of achiev-
ing this state are apparently innumerable and individual ranging from
over‑excitement to sensory deprivation. Spare describes one particular
method involving hyperventilation called the ‘Death Posture’.

Spare’s exercises of mental agility and practices of intention are similar to

those of contemporary sports psychologists and performance coaches. These
practices can be understood as exercises of memory, attention and focus –
accessible to everyone and improved with exercise. If we overlook the distrac-
tions of archaic terminology and exotic personalities we may gain a great deal
of insight by studying magickal methods of traversing states of consciousness.

John Dee and Renaissance Hermeticism

Political changes caused an increase of immigration throughout the
Mediterranean world and Europe in the thirteenth century and along with
it the movement of ancient Arabic, Greek and Hebrew mystical teachings of
Alchemy, Greco-Roman magic, Hermeticism, and the Kabbalah. The Western
Esoteric Traditions flourished in renaissance Europe with the translation and
interpretation of many ancient texts.
Renaissance Hermeticism was based on the belief that philosophers of
ancient Greece such as Plato and the Gnostics, were in possession of texts
directly descended from Hermes, a prophet of the Egyptian religions of antiq-
uity. This ‘pristine’ source from Hermes was thought to have been handed
down through King Solomon. It was more recently revealed that the origins
of pertinent documents which had been copied and translated over hundreds
of years, could not be validated. The source of the works attributed to King
Solomon for instance cannot be determined with the earliest known copies
dating to about 300 BCE. Nevertheless, it cannot be disproven that works such
as ‘The Notary Arts’ were derived directly from Solomon, so these ancient
Hermetic and Egyptian sources remain enigmatic to this day.
John Dee was a philosopher in the Hermetic tradition, a mathematician
and an alchemist, the sixteenth century’s version of a scientist. He was also
a trusted advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. Encoded messages sent to the Queen
were signed ‘007’, John Dee’s code name which meant he was the Queen’s
‘eyes’. Dee was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s ‘007’, the fictional James Bond
character and of William Shakespeare’s ‘Prospero’ in The Tempest. He was the
Queen’s court Astrologer who tutored the navigators who eventually sailed to

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 Digital Sigil Magick

Figure 4: John Dee, ‘700’.

the New World. He was well versed in Hermetic practices and experimented
extensively with sigil magick.
Dee created a sigil called the ‘Hieroglyphic Monad’ (see Figure 1) a
symbolic language with an accompanying text written over twelve days in a
self-described heightened mystical state. Dee explained that the sigil contained
the basis of all creation. Unfortunately Dee’s accompanying lecture no longer
exists and without it our understanding is limited. Later in his career, Dee
was commissioned by King Rudolf II to discover the philosopher’s stone and
spent ten years in Prague engaged in Hermetic experiments. There he used
an elaborate sigil thought to have originated from King Solomon known as
‘The Great Seal’ (see Figure 1) with an obsidian mirror to engage in a form
of visual meditation known as ‘scrying’ in order to access alternative realms
for enhanced knowledge of the future. When used in this way, we see the
graphic device employed as an instrument to access knowledge beyond the
constraints of consensus time and reality that was apparently King Solomon’s
original use of the sigils, also known as ‘seals’, as well.

The art of memory and mnemonic devices

Mnemonic stems from Mnemosyne (remembrance), the name of the goddess
of memory in Greek mythology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic).

Mnemonic: a device such as a pattern of letters, ideas, or associations

that assists in remembering something.
(http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/mnemonic)

In contemporary terms, a mnemonic is a conceptual tool to aid memory. It is

a tool to record the past and retrieve the past; essentially a representation or
definition of the past. As an example, my colleague Massimiliano Viel provided
the mnemonic ‘chicks send me high’ to remember the pronunciation of the
name Mihaly Chicksendmihaly, the author of the book Flow (1990) (the name
is pronounced ‘me-high--chick-send-me-high’). Various mnemonic meth-
ods such as image association or rhyming are based on principles that aid in
memory retention such as visualization, repetition and ‘chunking’ (reduction
into manageable pieces). One method attributed to the ancient Greco-Romans
is known as the ‘method of loci’ or ‘the memory palace’. It entails linking items
to a location and as you conceptually walk through the location you recall the
information stored there. For example you might conceptualize a castle, plac-
ing items to remember in rooms, adding floors and extensions when needed.
This particular method reminds me of the expression ‘building castles in
the sky’, or creating elaborate plans for the future without clear resources to
actualize them. The mnemonic then, employed to organize and define the
past by recording it in memory, is a similar conceptual model to Spare’s
sigil, as a visualization device used to define and organize the future.

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Pam Payne

Figure 5: Zairja.

In fact in the sixteenth century as described by Francis Yates in The

Art of Memory, sigils and mnemonics were considered one in the same
device by Giordano Bruno (see Figure 2) (1966). Bruno, a contemporary of
John Dee in Elizabethan England, was tutored as a youth by Dominican
monks, known for their memory techniques. Bruno developed elaborate
graphical symbols that functioned not only as aids to memory but as aids
to access insights and new knowledge. His graphic devices followed the
Hermetic teachings of the ‘Ars Notoria’ (or ‘The Art of Signs’) attrib-
uted to King Solomon. Bruno was a Hermetic philosopher and lectured
on Egyptian spirituality. Though his teachings did not conflict with his
personal Christian beliefs, the catholic authority ultimately found Bruno
guilty of heresy.
Bruno was influenced by Ramon Llull, a thirteenth century philos-
opher and scholar from Majorica, an island in the Mediterranean Sea.
Llull was well versed in the Art of Memory and known for his elaborate
graphic devices. One example of a ‘Llullian circle’ is made up of three
embedded rings, each inscribed with encoded archetypal characteristics
including mythological or elemental qualities. The user turns the rings
to align different combinations of characteristics to reveal insights and
new knowledge. Ramon Llull’s concepts are said to have had an influence
on early computer and information scientists (Bonner 2007). Llull was
probably influenced by the Arabic devices known as Za’irajah or Zairja;
alpha numeric recombination systems used by medieval astrologers and
scholars. The systems are a form of ‘letter magic’ based in the belief that
the letters are fundamental expressions of a divine creativity, and further,
that particular combinations have the capability of influencing expres-
sions of the divine such as the physical world and future events.
In both Llull’s and the Zairja devices we can see traces of the ‘Ars
Notoria’, used by the Ancient Greek philosophers in 200 BCE and said to
have been created by King Solomon 700 years earlier.

King Solomon’s ‘Art of Signs’

In the ‘Ars Notioria’ (Notary Arts, or ‘Art of Signs’), mystical properties are
attributed to graphical notations. Engaging with these graphical notations in
the prescribed manner is said to provide communion with the divine and ulti-
mately enlightenment in the Arts and Sciences (Peterson 1986).

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 Digital Sigil Magick

Figure 6: King Solomon’s ‘Arts Notoria’ or ‘The Art of Signs’.

The Key of Solomon, also attributed to King Solomon, contains ‘seals’ (signs
or symbols) that act as ‘keys’, providing access to the influences of the major
planets. For example, ‘The Seventh Pentacle of the Sun’ (see Figure 1) is a
‘key’ that is capable of freeing one from imprisonment through the influence
of the Sun. Specifications such as the days and times when the Sun is most
accessible are noted along with the influential metals and inks. In this case,
inscribing the ‘key’ on gold, the metal of the sun, is stipulated.

Contemporary hyper-sigils
Contemporary occultists suggest that television commercials can be thought
of as a form of ‘hyper-sigil’. The roots of this concept can be found among the
Surrealist film-makers and their contemporaries such as Maya Deren of New
York City. Through her extensive filming of Haitian Vodou ceremonies, Deren
came to consider the entire process of film production a ritual. As exempli-
fied in her film Ritual in Configured Time (Deren, 1946), the camera becomes
a participant as the cast engages in a communion of activity. Reality is made
malleable through the rhythmic use of light and shade and the direct manipu-
lation of time through film editing.
The use of creative works to intentionally manipulate time was taken a
step further by writer William Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin with their
‘cut-up’ techniques in the 1950s and 1960s. Initially working with text, the
process was eventually explored through film and audio recordings. Influenced
by Hermetic philosophy, they believed time could be manipulated by editing
the works to a point of disorientation, where it could then be reordered into
an alternate future. The contemporary practices of audio sampling and video
mash-ups are clearly inherited from the cut-up method regardless of whether
or not the beliefs and accompanying philosophies remain.
Within the context of early twentieth century sigil magick and renaissance
Art of Memory mnemonics, creative arts practices might be understood as a
method of first conceptualizing, and ultimately of consciously constructing
reality. Art, music, literature and all creative form then can be seen as poten-
tial devices used as means to access malleable boundaries of time and physical
space – gaining insight and perspective of our individual and collective human
condition. Might this perspective then, outside of the boundaries of time and

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Pam Payne

physical space, be employed in order to define those same boundaries, and to

define and position ourselves within them as time-based beings?

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SUGGESTED citation
Payne, P. (2013), ‘Digital Sigil Magick: The relevance of sigil magick in contem-
porary art and culture’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research
11: 3, pp. 297–305, doi: 10.1386/tear.11.3.297_1

Contributor details
Pam Payne is a digital artist and theorist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her
work explores consciousness, noetic experience and the interaction of electronic
and organic forms through code, motion, imagery, installations and events.
She exhibits her work in the United States and internationally and has been
awarded grants from NYSCA, LMCC, ETC and The Puffin Foundation. She is
currently pursuing doctoral research with the Planetary Collegium, Center for
Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, University of Plymouth, UK.
E-mail: [email protected]
Web address: www.pampayne.com

Pam Payne has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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