City Magick: Urban Rituals, Spells and Shamanism - Christopher Penczak 2001

Sigils
The Language of the Streets

Sigils are written symbols used to evoke magick power. Magical symbols can be created all around us. Some have personal symbols that they wear as charms or tattoos to evoke their own personal power. The land abounds with them. Many relate to animals and trees, or to the cycles of Earth. They may relate to the Moon, the Sun, or the positions of the stars. Some come from ancient languages and magical systems. Ritual magicians have their magical squares, converting their intentions into numbers and then tracing the numbers across a grid to create a new esoteric symbol. New symbols can come from the city, traced from the lines of the city and paths where our personal power flows.

World Sigils

A modern, yet more traditional, method of sigil making is to take a statement of your intention and reduce it to key letters. These letters are then combined into one graphic symbol used for magick, either in ritual or to make a charm. The benefit of doing magick in this way is the ability to let your conscious mind forget the symbol’s meaning, allowing you to detach from this goal. With detachment, you increase your chance of success, because your fears and worries about success will not detract from your spell. Once you use it, you can let the meaning go.

Here is a simple statement for protection:

PROTECT MY HOME

By crossing out the repeated letters, reduce the statement to its basic components.

This technique reduces the statement to these five letters:

PRCYH

These letters can now be combined into a graphic symbol for home protection. They can be turned upside down, on their side, or arranged creatively. Use your imagination when making your own sigils. Once created, a sigil can be traced ritually or painted on your doors and windows, drawn in the air, visualized, carved on a charm, or likewise empowered and placed in the home. Can you see the letters incorporated in the symbols shown in figure 8?

Figure 8. Protection sigil.

This is one simple and fun technique for making sigils. I enjoy it, and those who resonate with symbols in general seem to like it as well. A slight variation on this technique is to remove only the vowels and make your symbol out of the remaining letters. Other more obscure techniques use other systems of symbols, converting the intention into what amounts to be a foreign language before creating the symbol. They are fun, effective, and worth exploring as well, but a bit beyond the scope of this book. Here we will be focusing on city symbols.

Graffiti Sigils

City sigils are a bit different, although the basic concept is the same. Create a pictorial representation of your intent. Instead of reducing your intention and using the letters of an alphabet, use the language of the city. By using the energies in harmony with your environment, you create powerful magical designs.

The first technique is somewhat like the pictorial version of magical words. You search the city for symbols and designs that catch your eye. The most innovative place to look for such symbols is in our modern-day cave art, graffiti. A lot of the ancient symbols held so reverently in magick today come from primitive drawings and etchings on cave and temple walls, stones, and tools. Street artists hold the same function in our society, drawing primal symbols and scenes while marking their territory. Unfortunately, this doesn’t fit into what the rest of society has deemed acceptable, so most graffiti is seen as a problem. When looking at it with a magical eye and as a potential tool for your own empowerment, the whole concept takes on new meaning. In some ways, these artists are like shamanic practitioners, flowing free-form with symbols that change the energy and effect of an area, even though most are unaware they are doing it. Are these symbols any more or less important to the universe than the ones kept in bound books for mystics? I do not think so. As you survey your local graffiti, you may be surprised to see how many themes there remind you of more traditional magical symbols. Some of the most primal symbols are artistic letter combinations that act as the “tag,” or signature, of the piece.

Once you find a symbol that attracts you, you must decode it. At times, you may simply see its meaning, and all is clear. The words, symbols, and colors around it can give subtle clues. In other cases, you must meditate on the symbols to discover their meaning. Each meaning is personal to the user, as each symbol unlocks your own personal connection to the universe.

After a bit of research you may have a complete symbol system drawn right from the city in which you live, a system as powerful and important to you as any other symbol system.

Figure 9 shows some letterlike figures between what appear to be two bent spray cans (see page 178). Upon seeing this symbol, I associated it with forces that push or blow you in different directions. Notice that the straight-lined letters consist of two separate parts, roughly joined in a curve. To me, this symbol relates to dealing with forces beyond your control or liking, to bringing together different parts of the self, or two different factions that have been fighting. Use this symbol to make peace, internally and externally.

Figure 9. Graffiti sigil to make peace. Photo credit:William Michie

Figure 10 contains a few interesting things (see page 179). At the bottom center is a heart with more stylized runes. This symbol can most certainly be used in a charm for love magick. To the right is the word “ki,” a Japanese term for life force. Although probably not the intention of the artist, this marks a high-energy symbol site. To the left is a cross, a symbol of balance, riding a wave surrounded by three dots (two toward the bottom on either side of the cross, one at the bottom of the vertical stroke), perhaps marking the trinity of mind, body, and spirit. This symbol can be used for health and balance on all levels of being.

Figure 10. Graffiti sigils for love magick (bottom left) and health and balance (bottom right). Photo credit: William Michie

The image calling to me in figure 11 is in the lower left corner (see page 180). At first glance, it looks like a person, like the symbol for woman or Venus, a circle atop a cross. Surrounding it is a chaotic swirl of lines. If the circle and cross were a person looking at you, the majority of the swirls would be on this being’s left side. The left side denotes feminine attributes—receiving, opening, intuition, emotion, and going with the flow. The symbol resonates those traits to me, so I would use it in a magical ritual to bolster those traits and open to the divine feminine within.

Figure 11. Graffiti sigil to bolster the divine feminine within. Photo credit: Lena Garutti

Figure 12 is one of my favorite graffiti symbols (see page 181). The right-hand loop looks to me like a handle. The rest is a futuristic key. The symbol is almost astrological in shape and form. For my magical purposes, this symbol is used in information magick, to unlock the doors of knowledge, wisdom and mystery. When you need to remove obstacles from your path—whether mundane, as in a job, or magical, as in seeking out new information—use this symbol.

Figure 12. Graffiti sigil to remove obstacles. Photo credit: Lena Garutti

One of the more complicated symbols I found in my quest for graffiti magick jumped out at me as a symbol for higher guidance. In figure 13, buried between the lines, is a very modern symbol for an angelic figure (see page 182). I see a halo on top, swirls of wings, and several star shapes. Use this image when invoking higher guidance and seeking out a new guide in your meditations.

As you experiment with these techniques and symbols, you will discover your own magical insight to decode them. As with everything, practice and an open mind make all the difference. Once you have found a symbol, meditate on it, draw it in the air, write it down, or make a charm out of it. Charge it with your intentions.

EXERCISE 18—GRAFFITI SIDEWALKING

Do Exercise 9, the sidewalking experience, but start with the intention of finding a magical symbol (see page 79). Bring a notebook and pencil with you, or a Polaroid camera, so you will have a copy of the symbol immediately.

Once you have found the symbol correct for you, write it down or take a picture of it, along with any intuitive information you feel regarding its meaning and use. Some get a lot of information. Others get only the word. Use whatever comes. Return home. Meditate, using the symbol as a focus. Write down all you can remember after your meditation.

Figure 13. Graffiti sigil to invoke higher guidance. Photo credit: William Michie

Map Sigils

The second technique for identifying sigils uses the very streets and pathways of the city itself. These pathways are a language of power, connecting people and places through lines of power. The lines you follow can be streets, subway tracks, waterways, or simply lines connecting important places. All pathways, whether natural paths or man-made are usually conductors of energy. Use the shapes of these paths to your advantage. This is geomancy, the study and manipulation of energy lines to create a harmonious environment in action. You are creatively using maps of these power lines to manifest your desires. What could be more in harmony with your environment than that?

Start by getting a map of the city where you live. You may have one already, used to trace magical power lines you have discovered on your sidewalking trips. This is your magical map, an invaluable city tool. Once you have the map, pick places and streets strongly associated with your goal. Decide your intention and, instead of reducing it to simple letters, reduce it to points on the map. Once you have decided what parts of the city can aid you, connect them. Use the city streets and subway lines as your guide, or simply cross conventional pathways and connect places separated by greater distances. Tracing paper is an important tool for initially creating the sigil, as it saves you from making a mess of your magical map. Here are some examples of my own city sigils.

For a time, I was in the music business, trying my hand at fame and fortune to become a rock star. My band came from New Hampshire and was desperately trying to break into the Boston club scene where no one knew us. Boston is a big club town, with many bars for the college kids to go out and hear music, but there are ten times as many bands floating around town as there are clubs. When you start out as unknowns, club owners expect you to get all your friends to fill the club. If you’re from out of town with no real reputation, you may leave their club empty, no matter how good you are.

I made this sigil and used it in a ritual, asking for more shows in the Boston area. I wrote out my intention with the sigil and cast a magick circle. In the ritual, I visualized my desired outcome. I saw the club promoters getting our tape and calling me up to book the band. Then I burned the paper and raised the cone of power in a magick circle, releasing the energy to do its work.

The symbol in figure 14 is based on the locations of some of the clubs we were targeting (see page 185). I used Lansdowne St., Boston’s infamous club row, Central Square in Cambridge where all the new bands play, The Paradise Rock Club back in the city, and Kendall Square, a more low-key artist area also in Cambridge. By connecting these points, I created my magical sigil in harmony with the intention.

Focusing solely on Cambridge, I based my next sigil on Harvard Square and used it as an amulet (see figure 15, page 186). I worked not too far from Harvard University, and found myself constantly doing errands there. There was a great occult bookstore in the Square at the time, along with a witch shop down the street. I found some other interesting shops and restaurants. Parking in Cambridge, and Harvard Square in particular, is horrible. Street parking is difficult and, frequently, the garages are full or very expensive. Even my usual visualization of parking spaces often failed me. Then I started doing city magick to get parking spaces.

The parking sigil in figure 15 is based on locations where I had had luck parking before: Church Street, Garden Street, and Mass. Ave. just before you enter the Square. I marked these locations as special sacred sites, because parking spaces are a special gift from the Gods. At least, that’s how I felt. In this case, the locations were close enough to use the streets as the base of the sigil. I joined them, using the closest streets available. I liked the symbol, but found it lacking. So, in an artistic move, I doubled the sigil and mirror-imaged it, making it a bit more symmetrical (see figure 15 bottom). I painted the symbol on a flat disc of wood I bought in a craft store and consecrated it during a circle ritual to get me a parking space whenever I held it and said, “I have a parking space now.” I say it silently to avoid freaking out my passengers. I have kept it in the car ever since and have found that it works not only for Harvard Square, but all over. I always thank it and the powers that be when I get the space.

Figure 14. Map of Boston (top) with sigil for the band (bottom).

Figure 16 (see page 187) shows a sigil I made for a friend moving to New York City. I have worked with Manhattan’s energy a bit when I have visited there, but I have not really spent enough time there to truly know the city intimately. You can, however, learn a lot about a city in a short time. Just be aware that a lot of it can still remain hidden. My friend needed an apartment because she was subletting and her lease was almost done. We marked on the map all the neighborhoods in which she was looking, and all the neighborhoods she had lived in where she wouldn’t mind living again. By connecting the spots, we created this sigil. She carried it around with her and visualized it before getting the newspaper real estate section. It gave her encouragement and a focus. She did finally settle in one of her chosen areas.

Figure 15. Map of Harvard Square (top) with elaborated parking sigil (bottom).

Figure 16. Map of Manhattan (left) with sigil for new apartment (right).

EXERCISE 19—CREATING A PROTECTION CITY SIGIL

Create your magical intention. That is the first step in the process. For this particular exercise, we are creating a symbol for your protection in the city.

Get out your map and mark places important to you around your home. Include places you feel are safe and comfortable—your “turf,” so to speak. Choose two to five spots. They can all be close together, surrounding your home, or spread across the city.

Place tracing paper over the map and experiment with connections to these points. Create a symbol that resonates with you. Modify it artistically, as needed.

Create a magical charm by drawing the symbol with intent on a piece of paper no larger than a dollar bill.

Empower the symbol. You can simply stare at it and visualize your goal, or do a full ritual like the magick circle, inviting your spirit allies to join you. City sigils can also be empowered by walking the streets you’ve chosen, actually marking your symbol through your movements in the city. Your act of magical sidewalking becomes the ritual of power. Carry the paper talisman with you in your wallet when you travel in the city. Know that its power and the power of the city are protecting you.

Now that you have a better idea how to find magick words and make your own sigils, you can use them anytime. Some practitioners have personal symbols or a group of symbols with which they work continuously, letting their power grow. Sigils can be carved on special tools and equipment. In the city, graffiti is another source of symbols and words. You can find them there or leave them. Marking your symbol on a place can infuse it with your own power, particularly for protection. If you use your personal symbol, however, it’s as if you leave a magical and physical fingerprint that can lead right to your door. Be careful who you lead to your home base, both physically and spiritually. I am in no way condoning vandalism, but in places where graffiti is already prevalent, would you really be doing any damage? That’s up to you to determine. I think the right symbol can add artistic and magical flair to an area. Graffiti magick to keep the peace and safety of the whole neighborhood can be a welcome act.