How to Craft Your Own Sigils
Magic doesn’t always need words. The spirit world often understands symbols and feelings much more easily than words. Sometimes, a line drawn with purpose is enough to speak to the unseen. Small, personal symbols designed to carry your intention out into the world. Symbols carry the essence of what we desire.
A sigil is a magical symbol created from a specific intention or desire. It acts as a visual spell, concentrating your energy into a single, personal design to bring that intention into form. Sigils are a great tool for witches and offer a simple form of magic that’s deeply personal and intuitive.
Sigils are part spell, part symbol, part primal language. They call on the part of our brain that remembers our ancestors slowly etching out carvings in caves. They’re a powerful tool for witches and magical practitioners who want to condense their desires into a single magical mark.
Newgrange ~ 5200-year-old Irish monument and burial mound
A Short History of Sigils
The word sigil comes from the Latin sigillum, meaning “seal.” In the past, especially during the medieval and Renaissance periods, sigils were used by ceremonial magicians as names and seals of spirits or demons they wished to summon or control. These were often complex symbols drawn from grimoires, passed down or hidden away in secret tomes.
But the kind of sigil making many witches use today comes more directly from the work of early 20th-century occultist Austin Osman Spare, and is commonly used in Chaos magic. He taught that sigils could be created from your own intentions, boiling down a sentence or desire into a single, personal symbol, then charging it with energy and releasing it into the world. Usually by burning it.
The energy of the intention is transformed by the fire and taking it to the spirit world. There is also an element of create it, set it, and forget it, leaving the magic free to do its work untethered by your concerns.
Today, many modern witches use sigils. Some witches destroy them after creation, and some don’t.
Burning a rolled up sigil
Why Use Sigils?
Sigils are another way to bring magic into your spells. They can help:
Set a clear magical intention to focus on
Empower or charge objects, tools, and spaces with a magical intention
Create boundaries or protections when used as wards
Build your skills in understanding symbols intuitively
You can trace them onto mirrors or walls, draw them on your skin, tuck them in your wallet, or bury them in the garden. They can also be used as magical wards to protect a spell, a space, or a building. A sigil’s power lies in how it was made and what it means to you.
How to Craft a Sigil: Step by Step
This is one of the simplest and most common methods for beginners. Use it as a framework, but don’t be afraid to change it. There are other methods out there. Being playful and creative helps connect with the magical part of our brain.
Write down your intention.
Write down a short sentence or even use a single word that clearly states what you want to call in. Examples:
Protection
Abundance beyond expenses
My boundaries are clear
Clarity is important. That is why I often just use one word.
Remove repeating consonants and vowels.
Take out all the vowels and any repeating consonants. If you use the word protection, it will turn into PRTCN.
Then you can use those shapes to make a sigil for your spell.
Create the symbol
Now, using only the letters you have left, begin to turn them into a symbol. You can overlap, curve, flip, or stylize the letters until they no longer look like a word. Just a magical symbol
Often, I just let the letters suggest magical symbols that already exist and either add them to the sigil or use several in place of the letters.
That might look like using parts of the curved letters to make circles, crescents, triquetras, or spirals, and the straight lines to create things like squares, crosses, crossroads, triangles, or t-shapes that hold the curves. I also add in dots and arrows pretty frequently for emphasis or directional flow.
A sigil example
Don’t worry about being artistic. Do your best to set aside your inner critic if you have one. I usually do several tries and cut out a small square around the one I like best and use that.
Release It
Once you’ve drawn your sigil, you need to charge it with energy. You can do this through:
Breathing onto the sigil
Warming your hands and pushing that warmth onto the paper
Holding while you focus on your intention
Or any other way you charge objects with intention
Sometimes it takes a while to know when you are done charging an object. Do your best and trust that you will learn over time.
Release It
Some witches like to destroy the sigil afterward. Burning it, burying it, or tossing it in running water. This symbolically releases the desire, allowing the universe to take it from there.
Others prefer to keep it around. Under a pillow, on a journal, drawn on a mirror. You could even draw it on some card stock as a permanent tool. Go with what feels magical to you.
Magical cave art from Lascaux
Sigils in your Witchcraft Practice
Once you feel comfortable using them, sigils can become a magical part of your regular practice. You might draw them on your wrist before a hard conversation. You might carve one into a beeswax candle, stir one into your tea, or paint one above your doorway for protection.
They are subtle but powerful tools to enhance your spells and offer another way to work with magic.
Happy witchery,
Colette
© Copyright ~ Colette Gardiner Golden Web LLC 2025