Work to make your altar beautiful so that even if someone didn’t realize its magical nature, they would see it as a work of art (and if a nervous fundamentalist Christian neighbor visits for coffee, you could tell him or her that’s exactly what it is).
Your altar may include any or all of the following:
• Candles
• Representations of the four classic elements (earth, water, fire, and air), as detailed below
• Incense burner and incense
• Deity, animal, saint, or other statues (any of which may be animated or “enlivened”—see Chapter Nine)
• Flowers
• Gemstones and crystals
• Shells, feathers, bones
• Herbs, roots, leaves, seeds
• Small bell
• Personal items and mementos
• Photographs or illustrations of target people, groups, or institutions
• Drawings, sigils, or other power images
• Cloth covering or special altar cloth
• Broom
• Magical tools from your tradition
Many of the spells in this book require specific items that may temporarily take a prominent place on your altar, and they are noted in the instructions.
The Four Elements
Many of the world’s magical traditions honor the four classical elements: earth, water, fire, and air. I recommend giving them each a place on your altar. If your tradition has an association for each element and direction (such as air in the east, water in the west, fire in the south, and earth in the north, as found in many Western esoteric and witchcraft traditions), then you should arrange them as such. Otherwise, simply having the four elements present and arranged in a pleasing manner is sufficient.
Some suggestions include:
Earth: Container of soil or salt, rock, crystal, geode, petrified wood, plant, pentacle
Water: Chalice or other container of water, cauldron, glass bowl of blue gemstones or crystals, seashells
Fire: Candle (red, yellow, or white), container of ash or burnt wood, volcanic rock
Air: Feather, incense or aromatherapy burner, fragrant herbs or flowers, wind chimes
You may want to align your altar to the four cardinal directions if you are part of a tradition (like Wicca) that is directionally based. Otherwise, you can decide to follow the broad esoteric tradition that aligns altars facing the east (where the sun rises and the metaphorical source of spiritual light). But directional alignment is not necessary because your altar becomes the symbolic center of your spiritual practice wherever you place it. The key is to locate it somewhere you can have privacy when doing your ritual work.
My Basic Altar Arrangement
A white “spirit” candle (seven-day glass prayer candle) goes in the center and toward the back of my altar and also serves as the symbol for elemental fire. For special workings, I will sometimes swap it out for a similar white candle with a sigil affixed it (sigil creation and use is detailed later in this chapter).
Arranged artfully in front of the white candle are these:
A feather, representing elemental air. My old neighborhood hosted an enormous number of crows, so I have a collection of beautiful crow feathers on hand for rituals.
A chalice, representing elemental water. My chalice is a relic from the days when I practiced the Golden Dawn system of magic and is hand-painted with sigils and Hebrew lettering.
A small dish with consecrated coarse sea salt, representing elemental earth.
I also have a classic three-legged copper cauldron, which I serendipitously found in an antique shop when I started practicing Wicca as a young adult. It serves as an incense burner (I place disks of charcoal in it, on which I burn loose incense) and also a place to dispose of burnt materials.
Looking on over the elements is a statue of the ancient Greek god Hermes (also known by his Roman name, Mercury), the patron of magic. It’s a reproduction of an ancient statue that I ordered from Greece, and as with many of my magical “action figures,” it has been enlivened—a process you can read about in chapter 9. I have a number of enlivened statues and devotional candles that I swap in and out depending upon the job that needs to be done. When they’re not “at work” they rest on a special shelf of their own. And even when they’re not actively working, I make sure to give them regular attention, as I would any guest in my home.
Next to Hermes sits a very special monkey I named Voodoo Monkey when I received him as a gift in my early twenties. He didn’t need any enlivening—the person who sculpted him was clearly a magician and knew how to imbue spirit into wood (or call the spirit out of wood—either way, an artistic genius). Ever since the day Voodoo Monkey came into my life, he has been with me, following me through multiple moves, relationships, traumas, and joys. He’s as dear to me as any of my human or animal friends, and once, while I was under the influence of a magic form of fungi, he opened up and shared some of his secrets. Maybe you have a similar object in your life, and maybe it already occupies a space on your altar. You know it if you do.
Depending upon the season, I may have fresh or dried flowers, leaves, or herbs. Since I often employ tarot cards in rituals, I frequently have a tarot card in place. A couple of very special shells and rocks round out the tableau.
And that is my basic altar. What will yours contain?
Ancestor Altars
Many cultures keep altars to their ancestors. It is probably one of the oldest extant spiritual practices, and you can see it in our era in African spiritual traditions, in Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, among Spiritualist churches, and in some nontraditional Christian homes.
For a number of reasons, some simply intuitive and aesthetic and some traditional, I do not believe in mixing working altars and ancestral altars. First, your ancestors may not care for your type of magical practice—Great Grandma Judith, who went to Mass every Sunday, may not be too keen about hanging around while you’re doing your skyclad Wiccan rituals.
There is also a strong prohibition in some traditions against mixing photos or mementos of living people with the dead. I agree. It makes me uncomfortable, and I suggest keeping the living and the dead separate.
The spirits of the dead who went before you are some of your most important and useful magical allies. But if you want to work with them, give them their own sacred space. Keep it simple—photos or items from their lives, special food or treats (like cigars for my dad), a cool drink of water, and a plain white candle.
A Living Altar
An altar is a living being. Like all living things, it will grow and evolve as you grow and evolve. Just as your body sheds hair, perspiration, and skin, your altar will shed candle wax, ash, husks of flowers, crumbled herbs, and evaporated water. While some elements may remain for years, others will change, mutate, or go away completely as you grow in experience and your needs shift. If you’re engaged on a long-term campaign for racial justice, for example, a statue or tarot image of Lady Justice or the Egyptian goddess Ma’at may take up long-term residence. When that campaign ends and a looming confrontation with a developer over a local forest demands your attention, a blown-glass image of the earth or a Neolithic goddess statue may take her place.
The world changes, you change, and your altar will change in response. Let your intuition and your artistic, aesthetic, and metaphorical impulses guide you in creating your ever-evolving magical dashboard. Before long, it will be a glowing power center, always on, always ready for you to go to work.
The Art of Sigils and Magical Writing
Written and carved images and symbols have been part of magic since prehistory, probably since early humans could draw a triangle in the dirt with a stick. The symbols found on cave walls and carved into rocks by Neanderthals in Europe and at Tassili n’Ajjer in Africa were likely part of magical or shamanic practic
es. Some of the oldest magical writing dates back to ancient Egypt, where hieroglyphics and protective spells were carved into amulets and excerpts from the Book of the Dead were written on papyrus before being inserted into cylindrical gold cases to be worn as pendants.
Spells may be written out or words may be broken into parts or arranged in shapes, like this well-known bit of text from the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) that was worn for protection:
Abracadabra
Abracadabr
Abracadab
Abracada
Abracad
Abraca
Abrac
Abra
Abr
Ab
A
Magical symbols, names of spiritual beings and deities, and seemingly nonsensical words (known as voces magicae) like abracadabra have been used in magic since the dawn of writing.
Textual magic was used throughout the ancient world by Pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The texts were often rolled or folded and worn on the body. In Jewish magic, sections of the Torah are worn as talismans or placed around the home (like the mezuzahs placed on doorposts). In the grimoires of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, writing, symbols, and images were combined into glyphs or sigils and employed in natural magic, spirit summoning, and protective circles.
In the modern era we can see a continuity in magical writing traditions going back to antiquity. In Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure, sections of the Psalms or torn pages from the Bible are carried as apotropaic (protective) magic. Written names have sympathetic power, and personal signatures even more so. Names, petitions, Biblical verses, and curses are written out and manipulated to magical effect. Nearly identical traditions are found in witchcraft.
Graffiti and tagging are also forms of sigilization, with their own rules and culture.
Words and symbols are extraordinarily powerful magical tools. Manipulating written words and symbols is an important technique in magic, and you’ll find it employed through the spells in this book.
Let’s look at one of the most practical and potent forms of symbolic magic: sigils.
Sigils
Sigils are magical symbols designed to influence and cause changes in the inner and outer worlds. The magician, witch, or shaman may utilize existing sigils or create her own.
Sigils are not the sole province of magic, either. If I asked you to visualize the logos of popular soft drinks, computer companies, and fast food chains, you could very likely call them to mind and even draw them. Corporations spend an enormous amount of money to design and test logos, and whether they call it magic or not, they are using the same techniques as magicians. A successful logo can spread across the world and be understood in any language.
Imagine what you can do with a magical logo.
In resistance magic, a sigil can be created for a single spell or to encapsulate an entire movement. Historical examples are the peace symbol, the black power fist, and the symbols for ecology (created by artist Ron Cobb in 1969) and women’s rights (and notice that the feminist sigil is based upon the astrological symbol for Venus).
I spent a few days developing a sigil for the Trump binding spell, and within hours of my introducing it on Facebook it had spread like wildfire through social media. Many of the spell’s participants adopted the sigil as their avatar on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and added it to their altars during their monthly binding rituals. People asked to have it printed on T-shirts and hoodies, and I soon set up an online shop to sell 3D-printed plastic and metal sigil pendants and altarpieces.
So let’s look at the process of sigil creation and then how to empower or “charge” them.
Sigil Creation
There are a number of techniques for designing magical sigils. I’ve used most of them, and the following combines attributes from a variety of authors (and you can find their books in the resources section and the bibliography). The most influential is without question artist and magician Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956). Spare’s technique was adopted and popularized by chaos magicians in the late twentieth century, and his practical techniques remain the basis for most modern sigil magic.
First you must condense your spell’s intention or goal into a short, concise phrase. For the Trump binding spell, it was easy: bind Trump.
Then write it out without spaces between the words and remove duplicate letters:
Bindtrump
Many people remove the vowels, leaving:
Bndtrmp
To use or not use vowels? Spare didn’t use vowels because Hebrew, a language considered magical in many Western esoteric traditions, doesn’t have vowels. I sometimes incorporate them, sometimes not. The key is to create a sigil that feels and looks right—and that takes time and tinkering. Try vowels or simply leave them out.
If you use vowels, the letter O can always be drawn as a bounding circle around your sigil. Magical symbols from the medieval era were often drawn inside of circles and crafted into talismanic disks.
You may also want to incorporate other symbols. If you want to work with the energies of Venus or Mars, for example, you could incorporate their astrological symbols. Ditto with alchemical or elemental symbols. If you’re doing a spell to expose a corrupt corporation, you could incorporate the drawing of an all-seeing eye. For a spell for peace, you might include the well-known peace sign. If your goal is to commemorate an important date, say July 4, you could use 7 and 4. The possibilities are endless and only limited by your imagination and creativity.
Now comes the fun part.
Take the letters (and other symbols if you are using them) and begin combining them creatively. Don’t worry if you’re not a great artist—you don’t need to be. Combine the letters. Overlap them. Merge them. Turn them upside down or sideways. Distort, mangle, flip, break apart, and otherwise work your letters until you have an image that looks … well, magical. It should be simple enough to draw easily but should feel like it is more than just some lines and squiggles on paper.
When you think you’ve nailed it, work with it and try to finesse it even more. You will often know exactly when it is finished. I often describe my best sigils as looking like an alien alphabet or a hieroglyph from a lost civilization. You might not know what it means, but you can tell immediately that it has meaning.
Voilà! You have created your sigil.
Preparing the Sigil for Magic
For most spells, it’s easiest and most effective to draw your sigil on a piece of paper before employing it. You can use any kind of paper, but after reading a suggestion in Gordon White’s The Chaos Protocols, I now regularly use metallic ink pens on black card stock. In candlelight the sigils really come to life, seeming to glow, glimmer, and pulse.
I also sometimes use papyrus (available online or at specialty paper stores) because of its ancient magical provenance, especially for sigils I want to keep on my altar (papyrus holds up very well).
Experiment with different pens, paints, markers, papers, and other media. But don’t confine yourself to ink or paint on paper. I’ve fashioned my sigils into pendants made with clay, especially polymer clay, which comes in an enormous variety of colors and styles, including metallics, fluorescents, even opaque and transparent. You can create exquisite faux-gemstones that are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
Any surface can be covered in a sigil—crystals, wands, cauldrons, ceramic, leaves, clothing, envelopes, even your skin (a very ancient and obviously still common practice). You can even paint surreptitious and invisible sigils onto surfaces with water or oil or trace them onto objects or in the air with your finger.
One of my favorite techniques is to add the symbol to a glass-enclosed prayer candle. You can draw it directly on the glass with a permanent marker or draw or print the sigil on a piece of white paper and use a glue stick to apply it to the candle. Especially if you are doing a long-run
ning working, you can use the sigil candle on your altar for days, weeks, or even months, depending on how long you leave it burning. The effect is quite extraordinary for such a simple and easy-to-make object.
Charging Your Sigil
Now it’s time to empower or charge your sigil.
I view the process as bringing the sigil to life—taking a purposely crafted symbol and imbuing it with magical energy. After the charge, it transcends simple lines on paper and becomes an image of power, carrying your intention into the spiritual realm.
Methods of charging sigils are just as varied and diverse as those for creating them. I’ve tried many, and all have been effective, more or less. I suggest trying the following, which has worked exceptionally well for me.
First, we’ll consecrate the sigil. Have the four elements represented on your altar, along with your incense censer. Use copal or frankincense (loose incense is best, but sticks and cones are fine).
Arrange three small white candles (tea lights are fine for this) in the center of your altar in an upward-pointing triangle. Light the candles to begin the ritual.
Stand or sit before your altar and perform the Centering Ritual (see page 152).
Light your incense. Hold your sigil in front of you and say,
Bless this sigil, powers of earth (touch the object to your earth symbol), water (touch water to your extended index and middle fingers and wet the object with them), fire (hold the object over your fire symbol), and air (hold it in rising incense smoke or touch it to the feather); spirits of the heavens (lift it toward the sky) and of the underworld (lower it toward the altar or ground).
Still holding the sigil in front of you, say,
Consecrate this sigil so that it may (state purpose/intent). May it serve the highest good. So mote it be.
You can expand upon your purpose or intention—you don’t need to stick to your simplified statement. For the Trump binding sigil, for example, I would say, “so that it may bind Donald Trump and all those who abet his wickedness.”
Magic for the Resistance Page 7