Sigil magic: from planetary squares to WitchTok
A sigil is a drawn symbol that stands for a purpose. Where the idea comes from, who teaches it, which free videos millions watch, what it costs, and what psychology says about setting an intention. Every number is checked and linked.
How a sigil is madeWhat science says
At a glance
Where sigils come from
The word comes from Latin sigillum, “seal”. It has meant two quite different things (Wikipedia): before 1913 a sigil was the signature of a spirit, copied from a book or built on a magic square. Since Austin Osman Spare it usually means a private picture of your own wish. Most how-to videos today mix both.
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| Era | What “sigil” means | How it is made (as sources describe it) |
|---|---|---|
| Grimoires, about 11th–17th c. | The seal of an angel, demon or planetary spirit | Copied from the book, or the spirit’s name turned into numbers and joined by a line on a planetary square (squares of order 3 to 9 for the seven planets) |
| Spare and chaos magic, 1913 onward | A picture of the practitioner’s own wish | Write the wish, condense the letters into a glyph, “charge” it in a trance-like state, then forget it |
| Witchcraft and WitchTok, about 2015 onward | A personal symbol for an intention | Letter-condensing, free drawing (Laura Tempest Zakroff’s Sigil Witchery, 2018), planetary grids, generator apps; burning or touch replace the trance |
Chaos magic and the end of a generation
Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin turned Spare’s method into a school in 1978 (Liber Null, The Book of Results); chaos magic treats belief as a tool. Phil Hine’s Condensed Chaos (1995) spread it online, and comic writer Grant Morrison called his series The Invisibles (1994–2000) a “hypersigil”. Carroll died on 22 April 2026; his Arcanorium College had awarded its Bachelor of Magic to two students (specularium.org).
How a Spare-style sigil is made
Similar symbols around the world
Many symbols online are labelled “sigils” but belong to living religions or folk heritage, with fixed meanings. They are worth knowing about, not copying as a style.
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| Tradition | What it is | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Chinese fu | Talismanic script written by Taoist priests, in use since the Eastern Han | Still a religious practice |
| Yantras | Geometric diagrams of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist Tantric traditions | Each tied to a specific deity and task |
| Vodou vèvè | Sacred drawings for a specific lwa, drawn by initiates | Haitian practitioners object to them being sold as “witch sigils” (Visit Haiti) |
| Runes and bind runes | An alphabet (from AD 150 at the latest); bind runes are ligatures | “Extremely rare in Viking Age inscriptions”; modern magical use is mostly recent |
Popular videos: lessons, history and claims
Sigil videos are evergreen: most of the top results are 4 to 11 years old and still collect views. View counts as shown on YouTube on 10 October 2026.
![Video: Sigil Magick: Tutorial [Esoteric Saturdays]](/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/si-vid-LMqtmaLCynk.jpg)
Tag key: Tutorial/lesson = how-to; History = sourced background; Practitioner claim = promises an effect that has not been tested. Searching “chaos magic explained” mostly returns Marvel’s Scarlet Witch and Skyrim videos, so big numbers there are not interest in the practice.
Teachers, authors and schools
The big audiences belong to witchcraft and explainer channels, not to the chaos-magic authors: ESOTERICA has 1.16M YouTube subscribers, Anita Sirene 852K, Angela’s Symposium 584K and The Witch Of Wonderlust 458K, against 37.6K for Rune Soup and 11.5K for Strategic Sorcery (10 Oct 2026). On TikTok, Chaotic Witch Aunt has 1.4M followers.
* seen only in a search-result summary, not on the page itself.
What sigils cost
Sigils in Brussels and Belgium
Web researcher found no sigil workshop in Brussels or Flanders and no Meetup group for witchcraft, chaos magic or sigils in Brussels or Leuven (ten searches, 10 Oct 2026). The only sigil workshop found for the region was online. These are the nearest places and groups:
Is anyone searching?
Belgian search volume for “sigil magic” and “chaos magic” is too low to chart (1 and 3 non-zero weeks out of 261). Within Belgium, Brussels is the strongest region for “sigil” and “witchcraft” over the last 12 months, but on small numbers. “Sigil” is also a video-game item, so not every search is about magic.
What science says
No study Web researcher found tests whether a personal sigil causes the wished-for event. Research on nearby mechanisms cuts both ways:
| Practitioners’ claim | Evidence status |
|---|---|
| A sigil sends an intention to the unconscious and changes outcomes (Spare, Carroll) | Claim. No experiment supports an effect on events. |
| Making a sigil clarifies goals and focuses action | Plausible, when tied to a specific plan; not shown for the symbol alone. |
| Protection sigils, staves and the Sator square protect the user | Tradition. Historical use is documented; protection is not tested. |
| Hexes and curses harm the target | Claim. No evidence; ethical and legal questions. |
Test it yourself: the four-week experiment
A fair home test separates the plan from the symbol:
- Write down four small, checkable goals for the next four weeks.
- For all four, write an if-then plan.
- Flip a coin for each goal: heads, also make and “charge” a sigil; tails, no sigil.
- After four weeks, score each goal 0 to 10 before you look at which had a sigil.
- Do it with friends and pool the results. If sigil goals do not score higher, the plan was doing the work.
With a few people this is a demonstration, not a study, but it shows why one success story proves little.
FAQ
Sources
- Wikipedia: Sigil (magic)
- Wikipedia: Magic square
- Wikipedia: Key of Solomon
- Wikipedia: Lesser Key of Solomon
- Wikipedia: Three Books of Occult Philosophy
- Wikipedia: Austin Osman Spare
- Wikipedia: The Book of Pleasure
- Wikipedia: Chaos magic
- Wikipedia: Grant Morrison
- Wikipedia: Icelandic magical staves
- Wikipedia: Sator Square
- Wikipedia: Fulu
- Wikipedia: Yantra
- Wikipedia: Veve
- Wikipedia: Bind rune
- Handrit.is: Huld (ÍB 383 4to)
- Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft
- specularium.org: The wizard has gone
- BBC News, 31 Oct 2022
- Gollwitzer and Sheeran 2006 (Konstanz)
- Kappes and Oettingen 2011 (LSE)
- Wood et al. 2009 (PubMed)
- Wegner white bear (Harvard)
- Dixon et al. 2023 (PubMed)
- Wikipedia: Ideomotor phenomenon
- SKEPP Sisyphus prize rules 2025 (PDF)
- Visit Haiti: Vèvè
- Strategic Sorcery
- Udemy: Chaos Magic Masterclass
- Etsy: AerozopherArt
- Occulture Conference
Also used: YouTube channel and search pages, TikTok profiles, Meetup searches, RedPulse and Google Trends (pytrends), all checked 10 Oct 2026, from THE Golden Library report “Sigil magic and similar practices”. Image credits: historical seals, squares and portrait are public domain (Wikimedia Commons); the method, magic-square and title-card drawings are our own; video thumbnails belong to their YouTube channels; website previews are screenshots of the linked pages; charts are our own. No artwork by Austin Osman Spare is shown, because it is still under copyright in the EU until 2027.
