Sigil magic is the practice of encoding a specific intention or desire into an abstract symbol, a sigil, which is then "charged" and released, on the theory that the intention will thereby be impressed upon the unconscious (or the cosmos) and work toward its own fulfillment. The word and the older practice come from the grimoire tradition, where a sigil (from Latin sigillum, "seal") was the distinctive graphic signature of a spirit, angel, or demon, a seal by which the entity could be identified and summoned, catalogued in works like the Lesser Key of Solomon. The modern, do-it-yourself method, however, was developed by the English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare in the early twentieth century and later became central to the improvisational, results-oriented current known as chaos magic.
In Spare's method the practitioner writes out a statement of desire, removes the repeated and vowel letters, and combines the remaining letters into a single abstract glyph; the conscious meaning is then deliberately forgotten, and the sigil is "charged" in a moment of intense focus or altered consciousness and destroyed or set aside, so that the desire may work on the unconscious without the interference of the conscious mind. Understood in psychological terms, sigil magic functions as a technique of focused intention and unconscious suggestion. It is one of the most widely practised techniques in contemporary do-it-yourself occultism, valued for requiring no elaborate apparatus, deities, or dogma, only a desire, a pen, and the will to work it.