Someone on the Hermetic House of Life Discord server asked recently whether sigil magic actually works. I’ve worked with sigils for a very long time—in terms of praxis, it’s how I got started along the magical path—and yet I still ask myself that question as well. At least part of the answer for me, however, seems to depend on how exactly those sigils are being used within a given magical operation.

The vast majority of the sigil work I’ve done has been with Agrippa’s planetary squares. And I’ve had some really good results. But those results also came from using not just the sigils themselves, but also prayers and offerings to the planetary spirit/intelligence in question. That’s very different from something like my OTP cryptographic sigil methodology, which I’ve really only demoed for myself as a proof of concept.

My experience with Agrippan planetary sigils has been excellent, when using those sigils as a material basis for invoking and working with the planetary spirits. But that’s different from just charging a sigil and letting it do its own thing. The closest I’ve come to building a body of experience with that latter sort of work has been with pentacles from the Key of Solomon. I haven’t seen the returns on my efforts there that I would have liked, but to be perfectly honest I’m also not entirely sure that I was going about things the right way either—and I was also working with too many sigils at once at the time, so that unhelpfully muddies the waters.

Basically, the jury is still out when it comes to my opinion on sigil magic as it’s commonly understood. From my perspective, the crux of the matter lies to some extent in whether you’re using a sigil as a tool in a magical working (to signify a spirit you’re invoking, to articulate an intent that you’re doing other work around, etc.) or whether the sigil is itself the magical working. My experiences with the former have been a lot more profound and clearly effective for me than the latter.