Sigil Creation: Austin Osman Spare's Method

Austin Osman Spare’s sigil method transforms a written statement of desire into an abstract visual symbol by reducing the letters of the statement to their components, removing duplicates, and combining what remains into a single unified glyph. The resulting symbol bears no obvious connection to its origin sentence, which is the point: the intention is encoded below the level of conscious recognition, where Spare believed it could act without the interference of doubt, contradiction, or grasping desire.

The technique is the foundation of Chaos Magick’s approach to sigil work, and it remains the most accessible and widely practiced form of personal sigil creation in contemporary occultism. Its appeal lies in its lack of prerequisites: you need no traditional correspondences, no planetary hours, no initiatory training. All you need is a clear intention, a pen, and the willingness to forget what you have made.

History and origins

Austin Osman Spare was born in London in 1886. He showed extraordinary artistic talent young, studied at the Royal College of Art, and produced symbolically rich drawings and paintings throughout his life, often interlaced with his occult ideas. He developed his system of magick through two primary texts: “The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy” (1913) and “The Focus of Life” (1921). His ideas drew on his understanding of the subconscious mind, pre-Freudian in development but parallel to psychoanalytic thinking in some respects, and on his contact with what he called atavistic resurgence: the ability to summon ancestral or pre-human energies through focused practice.

Spare’s work was largely neglected after his death in 1956. He spent his later years in relative poverty in South London, painting and trading artwork. The rediscovery of his techniques came through Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin, who incorporated Spare’s sigil method as a core technique in the Chaos Magick system they articulated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly in Carroll’s “Liber Null” (1978) and “Psychonaut” (1981). Through Chaos Magick’s growth in the 1980s and its subsequent spread via the internet, Spare’s method became the most widely practiced sigil technique in Western occultism.

In practice

The Spare method begins with what practitioners call an intent statement: a clear, grammatically complete sentence describing the desired outcome. The phrasing matters. Traditional Chaos Magick instruction advises writing in the present tense as though the outcome already exists (“I have stable and well-paid work”) rather than in the future or as a wish. Some practitioners also advise removing the word “not” and any negatives, rephrasing them as positives. See the companion entry on intent statements for a full discussion.

Once you have your statement, write it out clearly and remove every repeated letter, keeping only the first occurrence of each letter used. From the remaining unique letters, you combine, overlap, rotate, and stylize them until they form a single abstract symbol. No single correct outcome exists; your glyph will be unique to you and to the specific working.

The sigil is then charged through a state of gnosis, which Spare understood as a moment of intense focused consciousness followed by sudden release into blankness. Common charging methods include intense visual concentration on the sigil followed by looking away and clearing the mind, physical intensity such as prolonged laughter, breath control, orgasm, pain, or dancing. After charging, the sigil should be destroyed or set aside and, critically, forgotten. The practitioner should make a deliberate effort not to think about the working or check for results obsessively.

A method you can use

1. Write your intent statement clearly and read it once to confirm it says exactly what you mean.
2. Write the statement again, this time removing any repeated letters as you go, keeping only the first occurrence of each letter. If your statement begins with the letters S, I, W, I, L, L, H, A, V, E, you would keep S, I, W, L, H, A, V, E and discard the second I.
3. List your remaining unique letters and begin combining them on a new piece of paper. Overlay them, rotate them, extend one letter’s stroke to pass through another, add curves or points where they improve the visual coherence of the symbol. Work freely, not analytically.
4. Continue until you have an abstract glyph that feels complete, one that you can look at without immediately reading letters.
5. Set the sigil aside and do something else entirely for at least a few hours. When you return to it, look at it fresh: if it still reads as letters rather than a symbol, rework it.
6. When the sigil is complete and abstract, charge it. Choose a method that works for your temperament: deep meditation and sudden release, physical intensity, creative flow, or a moment of complete mental blankness. At the peak of your chosen state, fix your gaze on the sigil completely and then release it.
7. Burn or otherwise destroy the paper. Deliberately move your attention to something else. Trust the working and leave it alone.

In myth and popular culture

The broader idea that symbols and language can be condensed into an abstract form carrying power runs through the entire history of sacred writing. Alchemical symbols, planetary seals, Enochian script, and the Hebrew letters as used in Kabbalistic practice all share the premise that concentrated symbolic form carries force independent of ordinary linguistic meaning. Spare’s specific method represents a modern, rationalized development of this older tradition.

Austin Osman Spare as a figure has attracted considerable biographical and critical attention, particularly since his rediscovery in the 1970s. Alan Moore, the graphic novelist and practicing magician, has discussed Spare’s work and influence extensively, helping bring him to a wider audience beyond occult circles. The British Museum holds examples of Spare’s artwork, and his paintings have appeared in public exhibitions and auction sales, with prices reflecting increasing recognition of his significance as both an artist and an occultist.

Spare’s sigil method has permeated popular culture in ways he could not have anticipated. The Chaos Magick current that carried his method into widespread practice produced, among other things, Grant Morrison’s celebrated account of creating sigils during live performances, which appeared in his 2000 Disinformation Conference talk and brought the practice to an audience far outside traditional occult circles. Morrison’s work on the comic series The Invisibles is explicitly organized around Chaos Magick ideas, including sigil work, and has been credited by many readers with introducing them to the practice.

Peter Carroll’s Liber Null (1978) and his co-founding of the Illuminates of Thanateros formalized the transmission of Spare’s method into a teachable system, and from that foundation the practice spread into internet communities in the 1990s and early 2000s, reaching a genuinely popular audience.

Myths and facts

Several widespread beliefs about Spare’s sigil method benefit from honest examination.

• Forgetting the sigil does not need to be total or permanent. The instruction to forget is designed to prevent anxious, desire-laden attention from interfering with the working. Many experienced practitioners understand this as setting the sigil aside with an attitude of detachment rather than achieving genuine amnesia.
• The method does not require a specific physical medium. Sigils drawn digitally, carved into wax, or written on skin all function in the same way as those drawn on paper. The medium matters less than the intention and the charging process.
• Destroying the physical sigil after charging is traditional but not universally required. Some practitioners keep sigils for long-running workings or in talismanic applications. The instruction to destroy is connected to the instruction to forget: burning the paper removes a physical anchor for conscious attention.
• The technique is not guaranteed to produce results in any specific timeframe. Spare himself was not a systematic experimenter in the scientific sense, and Chaos Magick’s claims for the method are experiential rather than empirically verified.
• Spare’s method is not the only approach to sigil creation. The Rose Cross method, planetary kamea squares, and various traditional approaches each have their own lineage and their own practitioners. Spare’s is the most widely practiced in contemporary occultism, but it is not inherently superior.
• The method does not require any particular spiritual belief. Spare himself held a highly idiosyncratic philosophical position, but the technique has been used within every imaginable belief framework, from strict materialism to traditional ceremonial magick.