>I was wondering if you needed a Goddess/God to use spells, incantations, sigils.

imo based off of what I've read and personal experience, not really. Especially with sigils. You just have to believe in the power of your own subconscious. It would help to invoke some sort of godform for aid in your practice, but even then you don't have to have any lasting faith in the entity. You just have to believe in that moment.

I want to know more about this subject, it piques my interest. Anyone willing to give a run down? I'm a total newb too.

I'm pretty sure that the sigils you're looking for are called something else. it is a concept that is covered a bit in the book Black Arts by Richard Cavendish.

actual sigils are signatures for stuff like astral beings.

What I do know is that you don't need a deity to use these, and you made the right choice by leaving Christianity, it just destroys spirituality. it's the complete opposite of it

Cheesy bump for tha sigeelz

Not a newbie,but javent magicaly farted since D&D times so yeah share whatcha got.

Sigils are motifs used to develop your own psychological structures. By deconstructing and reshaping pre existing symbols, you alter their essence and use language to tap into collective consciousness.

Are you aware of Austin Osmand Spare?

>I was wondering if you needed a Goddess/God to use spells, incantations, sigils.
No.

>Which faiths use these things?
You could argue that many things used in many "faiths" are functionally identical to various kinds of sigils, but basically none. Chaos magicians use them for the most part, and they have bled into the practices of individual adherents to more dogmatic approaches to magic as well.

>But anyway, how are sigils so powerful?
Use of them is predicated on no theory or "spirituality" whatsoever. They are really used merely out of the acknowledgement that they DO work, at least some of the time. Most people, if pressed, will admit to having some ideas on HOW they work, but this is of secondary importance, and no one I am aware of would be arrogant or stupid enough to claim they have THE answer to "how". If you want what was probably the "original" idea about this, read Austin Osman Spare. Be warned that his writings are fairly obtuse.

>Do you need to believe in them?
You are considerably less likely to get good results if you go into it NOT "believing". There is no reason to use them while suspecting your work is impotent, unless you are the kind of person who just does not WANT magic to be real, and would like to get poor results at attempting it as confirmation of your wishes that you don't need to worry about that whole side of life. "Garbage in, garbage out", as they say. There is also the danger of belief-as-cant, where you are "trying too hard" to believe in something that you actually have little confidence in, which can sabotage results as well; this should not be much of a problem if you are not obsessively thinking about it all the time and saying to yourself things like, "It will work, I did it right, etc."; this sort of thing is just disbelief wearing a mask, and will tend to have the same effects as unmasked disbelief.

>Have they worked for you?
Yes.

[Cont.]

>>17652488
>Can you use any writing utensil to do them or does it have to be done in some ritualistic way with special ink or whatever?
Any writing utensil is fine. Some people like having more "ceremonial" tools to lend an air of authenticity to the process and boost their results. Having never been all that enchanted by the outer trappings of occultism myself, I most often just use a Sharpee for mine.

>Any info for starters? Basically a beginner's guide from your standpoint?
There is honestly little info for starters that anyone could give you that has not already been written in a hundred places, so I will defer my answer to this question to some choice URLs. All I will add personally is that the requirement to "forget" the sigil and/or its "charging" has been greatly exaggerated, and is not something you need to worry about much beyond seeing to it that you have a moment's mental distraction toward some totally mundane matter immediately following any "charge" you give to it. Again, do not obsess/worry over it after having done any enchantment, but you are not going to suddenly undo all the work you put in if it pops into your head a couple of times.

https://zalbarath666.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/peter-j-carroll-liber-null-psychonaut.pdf – Page 23 by PDF numbering is the FIRST place sigils are discussed , if I recall correctly.

http://tikaboo.com/library/Practical_Sigil_Magic_-_Frater_U.D.pdf
http://www.philhine.org.uk/writings/pdfs/orchaos.pdf – Sigil-discussion is clearly labelled in the table of contents. The whole thing is short and can be read in a night anyway, though.

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/sseg.php – Contains many short relevant articles.

>>17652491
In how many time do you see results?

ITT:
We draw circles and pretend they do magic.

>>17652539
That depends, there are a lot of different kinds of sigils. For just routine, homemade enchantments for specific outcomes, I get results often enough to where their efficacy is obvious to me. I haven't catalogued a list of successes and failures over the years, but successes have definitely been over 50%. Failures are not something to be distraught over in principle, though. If you get results even one out of five times you cast, you are doing something RIGHT, and as patterns emerge in successful and failed castings, you will start to get a sense of how to consistently go about things in a way that works for you.

When I do fail these days, I at least KNOW what I've done wrong, and can tell I fucked up early on in the process (though I guess you could just argue that that's self-fulfilling prophecy at work, too). Again, "garbage in, garbage out".

>>17652561
What type of shit have you used sigils for?

>>17652626
What *I* have used them for does not really matter, anyone CAN use them for just about anything. To answer your question anyway, though:

For "mundane" things, I've used them for quite a bit. E.g.:
• Finding a job I don't hate
• Evoking attraction toward me in women whose "type" I am definitely not
• Facilitating my recovery from illness
• Inducing general lethargy, weakness, and deferential behavior in "petty tyrant" sorts of people whom I cannot avoid dealing with

I think I have been less imaginative than most in using them for routine practical matters, to be honest, but this is probably their selling point for most people.

I've also used them for invocation, evocation, and modifying my own habits.

Casting for fairly banal outcomes you have no personal investment in and are unlikely to spoil with lust of result is probably the best way to start for most people.