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"Steal This Book of Shadows"
ver 2.0
by
Azzerac
~PAGES~
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Page 39
Spellcasting #6
Symbols #2
(Brought To You By,...)
Where do you begin?!?
The topic goes beyond Huge, and straight in to Gargantuan!
Let’s see if we can find a beginning to this Topic, shall we?
The earliest I know of symbols in Spellcasting is The Hunt. It started as storytelling, relating the Hunt to others, after the hunters returned. In short order, it became a method for telling the story, before the fact. Cave dwellers would scrawl images of their hopes for success before the foray. As the eons passed, the panoramic scrawling became pictures, then pictographs, and then (in many cases) phonetic characters. So was born western writing forms.
…but there was another path.
Eastern writing forms stayed rooted in full-word characters, where a single character represented the whole of a concept. The step towards pure phonetics wasn’t a mandatory shift, as the East-Asian ciphers demonstrate.
…and it still isn’t.
Even in western cultures, the need for the simple symbol held fast. From grade school “Gold Stars” to the “Emoticons” prevalent in Internet correspondence, we live with symbols throughout our lives, in daily communications. These symbols are an instant trigger to emotions & ideas. The associations, though many are learned responses, many are visceral in nature. They require no explanations. We look. We see. We understand.
Other symbols are not so cut-and-dry. The ones we’ll deal with in the occult are obscure. Some look, see, & understand. Others look, Learn, and Realize. Most will look, fail to see, and simply fear. Each aspect of these reactions has it’s value to the occultist. What we need to focus on must be how these apply to you.
The real power is how they work within the Collective Unconscious & Akashic Records. These symbolic languages (as all symbols are, ergo the name “Symbols”), each have a meaning within the mass mind. Through their cultural heritage, through the mythologies they’ve developed, through the intrigues they inspire, they capture the reasoning mind, as well as the imagination. Also, their historical meanings echo through this undercurrent of unconscious telepathy, asserting them-selves within the reality we all ‘agree upon’.
Many seem to be under the misconception that any squiggle is a sigil. WRONG! If it means something to you, then congrats: You have fun casting spells upon yourself. Good luck with that. If you want to affect others, you’re better off working within historical frameworks. This history is invaluable to “Multi-Person” spellwork, as the mindset of the iconography has had time for the “Hundredth Monkey” effect* to set in.
When most occultists think symbols, they break down into several subheadings:
Runes of Empowering (Symbols Magical & Spiritual)
Ciphers (Secret Codes)
Dedicated Name-Sigils (Names of Powers in a single symbol)
Amulets & Talismans (Shapes, Images, and Arrangements of Letters)
Runes of Empowerment: These are present in every olde-world civilization. Germanic cultures have the Odic Runes, The Himalayas have Sanskrit (Spirituality in Common Culture), and we’ve already spoken about the Hebrew written spell-craft. Each of these avenues, and more, are specialized fields in their own right. One can spend a lifetime studying how Persian Cuneiform is used in invocation, evocation, & recitation-incantation. One can spend a lifetime with the written sigil for “Om”, and still never truly comprehend it. I suggest YOU start SOMEWHERE! This goes back to knowing you, and (In Particular), Knowing what Fascinates more than Frightens, what Calls rather than Assails, and What feels Both COOL & RIGHT FOR YOU!
(I like to say, “I can’t stress this enough”, but I think I did, that time! ~L~)
If you’re still spinning your wheels, Try Norse Runes. I’m almost full-blood Celt, and they still call to me (Just Avoid BLUM, and his re-printers!!) The infrastructure within the occult community (as well as the minds of the world) is well entrenched. You can BUY Runes wherever you go (but I’ll suggest against that, as an end-goal), there are volumes of written materials, and more to the point, They are Verbal as well as Inscribed. It kills two birds with one stone.
Ciphers: Many of you might be tempted to use established Rune-Structures as a Magical Cipher. In a word, “DON’T”! As with Odic Runes, the act of writing is as the act of inscribing. What the word means in you own tongue may be antithetical to it’s meaning in Combined Runes. You may ‘write’ the words, “I love you, Sarah”, but in a ‘Rune of Empowering”, it may simply spell out a Horrid Curse.
Ciphers are intended to be a set of codes to keep others from reading your works & workings. Your journals are private, and should stay that way. Secret Societies would often teach their well-protected ciphers to their initiates. Today, the bulk of these societies’ codes are reprinted in countless sources. Some even go as far as to attribute the strength of our First Subheading to this second. Some have actually come the other way around, starting as invocative sigils, and ending up as ciphers.
~Your chronicler is, again, sick as a dog, and needs to hit the hay. I hope this makes a passable “Page #2”~
Thanks for your patience.
* (Though the Circumstances of the origin of the term have been disproved, I see the Truth of the principle enacted almost every week!)
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