Programs and Egregores

Sigils and Glyphs as Magickal Programs

Cross-posted from demonolatry.org

I’m still on a sigil magick kick because of Alchemy of Goetia. Over this past weekend I was talking to someone who practices an entirely different magickal paradigm and she said something that really made me stop and think – wow, she’s right.

She said that some symbols or glyphs are almost like magickal programs that execute when we utilize the symbol in our magick. I couldn’t help but think that that’s so true for the seals in the Ars Goetia. They really are like actual programs that activate the alchemical spiritual processes described within them.

Which makes me feel like, in actuality, the program activates an egregore created by centuries of magicians who have placed their own anthropomorphic expectations on the egregore. Because at this point – I’m pretty sure the use of pagan god-names (or variants) or made-up names has more to do with gematria and alchemy than it does the divine intelligences. Then again – as within, so without. As above, so below.

That said – I suppose we can’t deny that these spirits, these egregores, become our personalized thought forms (this even happens with god-forms) and are therefore very valid in the context of our personal gnosis, too. Because the original Goetic spirits weren’t actually spirits, but rather names associated with recipes, ideas, concepts for both spiritual and sometimes even laboratory alchemy and the original authors of the grimoires were alchemists, psychologists, and philosophers, and magick was both the shadow work (psychology) involved in the betterment of the self, and the precursor to the sciences of metallurgy and chemistry.

But, over the centuries, for a lot of people the alchemy was lost, and the Ars Goetia became this mystical, mythical, and magickal text in its own right. All because we need to label and classify things and put them into neat little boxes – we’ve separated the branches of Western Magick which were never meant to separated. They’re all interconnected and if you don’t understand one part, you won’t understand the other. I’ve been saying this for years.

These are just some thoughts I’ve had this fine April 2nd. If any of this intrigues you, paperbacks, hardcovers, and ebooks of Alchemy of Goetia will be available toward the end of the month.