Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current - Andrieh Vitimus 2009

Sigil Magic IV: Sigil Anchors

Anchoring, Conditioning, and Sigils

Spare's method of sigilization can be used in more methods than merely the fire-and-forget method. Earlier in our adventure, we glanced over the concept of anchoring. Anchoring is a method of rooting a state of mind (for our purposes) to a gesture or word. We can link a state of mind to any mantra, sigil, gesture, or combination. This is a rather old idea in psychology called operant conditioning. Once a sigil, gesture, or mantra is properly anchored, it is sufficient to reproduce the state of mind that it was anchored to. Equally important is the idea neurologists have that only the conscious part of your brain can really tell the difference between a remembered state (or, in this case, anchored state), a fantasy state, and an actual experience (Arntz 2004). So if you had an anchor to a happy state, you could push yourself to be happy.

The process of creating an anchor to a sigil or mantra is relatively simple. First, use the Spare method to create a sigil or a mantra. The more creative and adventurous readers can create a gesture or even imagine a combination of smells. Once you have the sigil, the process is very similar to the sigil-casting exercises, except that you are focusing on the sigil while allowing the state of mind to completely take over.

Now, at first, experiment with the combinations of breath, posture, gesture, etc., that seem to lead toward certain states of mind. If you haven't really experimented with those combinations, I strongly suggest that you go back and do the work before reading this chapter. Those exercises will make more sense. At first, the stronger emotions will be easier to anchor with sigils, but other states of mind are equally possible to anchor.

Reliving a memory until the emotion takes over, as we did in the energy exercises, is a good starting point. In the previous exercise, we added details to the memory until the emotion from the memory was overpowering. In addition, we chose memories that seemed to be strongly tied to one emotion. Now, anchoring is a simple addition. We go through the same process of reliving a memory while staring at our sigil, smelling our olfactory correspondence, speaking or singing our mantra, or moving in a certain way. If you can get into a deeper trance state while taking on the state of mind completely, a solid anchor will most likely be created. Testing the anchor is easy. Simply put the anchor sigil away for a day and then bring it out and use the sigil. Most likely, the sigil or mantra will produce some of the effects of the desired state of mind.

Unlike with the fire-and-forget method, it is actually extremely advantageous to repeat the anchoring process until the link created fully pulls forward any state of mind that you desire. For example, I have found it particularly useful to connect an anchor for a relaxed state of mind to a word of power. This allows me to go into deeper trance states much more quickly, and each time I use the anchor, I try to relax deeper and more fully, which makes the anchor more personally powerful for me.

Don't believe me? Repeat the elemental auric energy exercises. This time, create an anchor to your type of Persian elemental energy and create your own elemental symbols. After you create the anchor, use it to see the impact of concentrating on the anchor alone and test it with a partner.

The more you use the anchor, the better it will become, even when you are using your body to produce energy of a specific type. Playing with emotions like this can obviously be a significant advantage if you can use a well-practiced anchor to rapidly shift the emotional energy in your aura.

More Occult Uses-This Isn't Just Psychology

Although we have not yet covered invocation and evocation of spirits formally, some of the previous exercises are good training for those skills. Pulling a state of mind forward is generally a type of invocation, while projecting out energy of a certain type could be considered a type of evocation. Anchoring will work well with these concepts. Any ritual, performance, encounter, etc., that you experience can be remembered, added to, or manipulated while in a trance state and then anchored in the manner previously described. Later energy exercises will work more explicitly with this concept, but for now, try to remember meeting someone for the first time, especially if it was an extraordinarily good encounter. Try to anchor that experience with a sigil while working with the memory in order to get the core details as vivid as possible (the core details being the details that, when focused on, increase the intensity of the experience). Now try this: for an entire day, project out this energy of "incredible encounters," especially toward anyone that you meet for the first time. What is the other person's reaction? Do you experience more extraordinarily good encounters by trying this? As a tweak to this, experiment by visualizing the sigil (and logistically, sigils do work well for this) over the person you are meeting as you are talking to him or her. What is the effect?

When we get to invocation and evocation, both processes can be anchored to allow for much quicker evocations and invocations (or even possessions). That is where the real fun begins.

Visualization and States of Mind

While we have covered some visualization games, there are a few more games we are going to play involving visualization. On some occasions, merely visualizing the desired outcome of an event while in a trance state is sufficient enough to manifest it (R. A. Wilson 1987). Let's say we have an anchor to a relaxed, confident state. We have used this anchor at job interviews, when meeting a new potential mate, and at sales sessions. By going into a deep trance state and using the anchor, or perhaps the tools used to create the anchor, we could then simply visualize ourselves in a situation where a relaxed confidence is helpful. Each time, repeat the visualization and change the details of it, but not the underlying type of experience. For example, you could visualize yourself at a job interview with a relaxed confidence and then change the details of the company or fictional people you are interviewing with. Eventually, if you repeat this enough, you will condition yourself to have a relaxed confidence at every job interview. If your anchor includes invoked spiritual elements, you can condition yourself to be in a state of partial invocation for particular experiences.

A lesson from cognitive science is that we can string these types of conditions together to form more useful patterns of behavior. In fact, it is very possible to accidentally condition naturally unrelated events. Advertisements often try to make correlations between a product and more primal desires. A classic example of this conditioning/anchoring process is in the film A Clockwork Orange, where Alex is conditioned against violence at the same time he is conditioned against Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. We started the book with methods of deconditioning, including some simple NLP exercises, energy work, and banishings. If you accidentally condition a link you don't want, pull forward the experience and remove all of your sensory information while concentrating on the link. Usually this means duller, darker, farther away, and less perceivable-less of what you are feeling.

Scrying Sigils, Anchoring, and the Alphabet of Desire

Spare had an interesting idea about gathering sigils from the subconscious to represent different aspects of the self and pull them forward. Peter Carroll and Stephen Mace further explained the concept. Peter Carroll compiled this into what he referred to as the alphabet of desire (1987). Stephen Mace further explained how to actually go about doing this in Stealing the Fire from Heaven (1984). I am going to offer a slightly different take on the alphabet of desire, which is an extremely useful process for individual sorcery. Earlier in our adventure, in the shadow ritual and framework, we explored different parts of ourselves. This chapter represents a way to map those parts.

Ultimately, the alphabet of desire could be seen as a personal alphabet of sigils or mantras to produce desired states of mind and enter them at will by using the different personal keys to your subconscious. Of course, I have heard that Peter Carroll actually used the alphabet to write journals, which would be quite interesting. There is a fair amount of disagreement as to how large or small an alphabet like this should be, but I leave that as an exercise for you, the reader. The idea that sigils and mantras evoke certain states of mind seems similar to the ideas expressed about anchoring mantras and sigils to a particular state of mind. The key difference, however, is that ultimately the sigils themselves should come from the subconscious mind. At this point, I have to ask you, have you practiced the sigil-scrying techniques? If you have not yet practiced them, please try a few.

If you are using the various combinations of breathing, gesture, and memory reliving, it should be possible to scry out a sigil or mantra that would represent a specific "state of consciousness." The "gotcha" with the process is that if you are only using one memory, it is possible that the sigil would only represent the memory used in the generation process. However, if you take the additional step to create a sigilized anchor and then anchor that symbol to multiple memories, you may be able to avoid this problem. After the anchor is suitably embedded in multiple memories, you can use that multi-linked anchor to produce a more generalized "state of consciousness" in the area you are looking for. Having linked your sigil to various memories, you could try to scry a sigil that represents the general state (if you intuitively think you need to do this). If you have triggered your multiple-linked anchor, this should be easy, since the subconscious mind should understand that you are looking for a sigil that represents the core idea, emotion, or state of mind. I cannot tell you how may different ways you will need to anchor a sigil to get a universal link sigil (within your personal microsom). This sigil will be part of your personal alphabet of desire, and you should check the sigils your subconscious gives you in this process with a divination. The alphabet of desire sigils buried in the subconscious mind are keys to easily telling the subconscious mind exactly what you want. For example, if you want more love in your life, you could use the alphabet character for love to invoke it into your life without worrying about the specifics.

Of course, using the earlier shadow ritual framework, it would be possible to explore the parts of yourself while in that deep state of trance and, in a more shamanic method, ask for the mapping sigil to those parts. You might have to bribe yourself, but it can be well worth the experience. Again, make sure to use divination to check what you give yourself, and reward yourself when the divination comes back in a positive manner. This should again tell your subconscious mind you really do want the keys to the castle, as it were.