Brands, Logos, and Sigils

When I first started studying sigils, or rather was first influenced by the writing of Grant Morrison, I was lead to believe that there was an ironclad connection between corporate marketing techniques and new wave/new age magick techniques. With further research into the topic, I’ve found the connection to be skeptical at best, part of either the demonizing of corporations by associating them with magical practices or perhaps over-run self-promotion, a sense of egotism in magick whereby similar practices are automatically presumed to be identical.

In the same way that few magicians use solid marketing techniques in their magic, few corporations (if any) use magick as part of their marketing strategy. However, what I have seen is an interesting blurring between the lines of magick and marketing with such pseudo-sciences as neuro-linguistic programming. Magick is updating with the times to become in itself a new pseudo-science that utilizes much of the same techniques practices in the business world, but businessmen aren't magicians. To add a final comment before moving on, when magick and marketing mix, as in the case with such geniuses like Grant Morrison, the result is spectacular!

In Anarchy for the Masses, Morrison is asked, “How much do corporations and governments use magick? Are some logos actually sigils?” His response:

Totally. I think we've overlooked it. Some of them know what they're doing; They've got access to some of the smartest minds on the planet. They're paying some of the cleverist people to develop NLPs, hypnotic strategies, to create fantasy realities so that we will buy, buy, buy or partake in these wonderful worlds they're offering. So we have to know; you've got to defend yourself against people who are trying to exploit your ignorance. Magick is actually so democratic. It's so communistic in its way, because it empowers everyone. empowers even the lowest person. I mean, get a Voodoo doll and kill your boyfriend! (254)

My question is then where does Morrison actually make the connection between corporations and magick, logos and sigils? The explanation isn’t there but rather subtly avoided.

Let’s look a little bit at the connection between logo/brands and sigils.

Logos and brands are often confused with each other but share a similarity in concept. Quickly, a brand is a label of ownership attached to a certain product which defines the value and characteristics of the product, what it does, how it is supposed to function, what type of commercial or social value it possesses, etc. The logo is a graphical representation of the brand, the symbol of the brand which conveys the before mentioned connotations of the brand. While logos are often believed to be primarily pictorial (ideogrammatic), most are actually linguistic (logotypal) or a combination of ideogram and logotype to allow cross-cultural recognition where the logotype is unrecognizable but the ideogram is recognizable.

A sigil is a magical symbol that pictorially represents a statement of desire or intent or goal of a magician.

Brands and logos are accused of being related to ancient traditions like Christian crosses or freemason symbols but the functions and origins of brand are unrelated. Branding first appeared as hot iron branding done on cattle to identify what cows belonged to what particular herder. This practice of cattle branding eventually made its way to other products such as wine, timber, and textiles. The association between brand/logos and mystic symbols is more retro-history than a true connection. Perhaps one might see a semantic drift in modern culture, however.

A connection between brand logos and sigils is that they are both symbols (which is really a stretchy connection). The difference is almost immediate because brand logos are representations of specific products while sigils are representations of desire or intent. One might wrap this idea back around and say that brand logos are representations of the desire to sell or the desire to make money, but this is a simplistic answer. The function of a brand is to represent a product with particular manufactured associations (prestige, safety, luxury); a sigil is a representation of a magical intent or a goal that the magician hopes to achieve: do sigils represent prestige, safety, or luxury? Do they build upon this same connotation between symbol and signified? What is the product behind the sigil? These are blind stupid questions that still need answering…

Brands are by nature of memetic. They are meant to be enduring (with the exception of viral companies who want to cash in and get out). They are meant to be widely distributed. Sigils are non-memetic. They are made to be disposable. They are meant to be personal. The intent and construction behind brand logos and sigils is vastly different because their life cycle is different. An enduring sigil, if not an oxymoron, becomes more Masonic, yes, indeed, but what is the difference between the caterpillar and the butterfly? How much is the basic characteristic or nature of the sigil changed if it is made more permanent?

Hypersigilia, on the other hand, more closely resemble brands. A hypersigil is a sigil which has been extended into a work of art, a magical story or film, for example. Hypersigils are meant to be memetic because the magic behind the hypersigil works strongest through a memetic cooperative interaction and investment of energy between the designer and the consumer. The more people who involve themselves in a hypersigil, the more powerful the magic. Likewise, hypersigils add in particular themes or deeper associations to promote the art or engage the consumer, similar to the product association of brands: a particular author might be associated with horror, science-fiction, creativity, high excitement.

To further complicate matter, brands are linguistic while sigils are not. Most brands promote a name as a symbol, the logotype as it is called, or add in an ideogram (symbol). The exceptions are McDonald’s, Nike, Playboy, and car companies who invest a lot of money into identifying their company with a simple logo. Sigils are by nature non-linguistic. They are subconscious. If brands are linguistic, how then can they be subconscious? I might be able to answer that later.

But what I would rather do than destroy the dreamy connection between brand logos and sigils is rather try to reinforce that connection by intermingling characteristics of brands with sigils or perhaps vice-versa. I will admit that isn’t easy. What I will do for the remainder of this blog posting is focus on the necessary characteristics of brands and then after some reflection hopefully return to make the brand-sigil connection more pronounced in another posting.

Non-Expansion: The power of a brand is in its name and whatever associations may come with that name. A common mistake that many brand names make is to over-saturate their name by applying it to every possible product to hypothetically increase profit. This brand expansion doesn’t work because it over-extends the brand name and destroys any specific associations. Think, for example, how many different American Express cards there are or how many sub-brands of Chevrolet cars.

Contraction: The more focused a market, the better the branding. Starbucks sells coffee and that’s it. The more a brand tries to sell, the less focused it is. Think about McDonald’s that currently has sixty or seventy items on the menu. How confusing is that for both consumer and employee? The less products sold by a brand, the better.

Publicity: Brands are not made through advertising; they are made through publicity and public relations. Publicity generally focuses on being the first in a new market.

Advertising: Brands are not made through advertising but need to be maintained once publicity fades. Advertising maintains a brand. Advertising generally focusing on being best and foremost.

Association: Brands must create a particular association to their name or logo. Safety, prestige, expensive, reliable, well-engineered. Once this association is made, it defines the product and cannot be crossed. Brands must also define the market, for example, a Kleenex is a type of tissue, Xerox is a type of copier, Scotch is a type of tape, Jell-O is a type of gellatin, Q-tip is a type of ear cleaning utensil, but all of these are brand names. What do you ask for when you want gellatin?

Quality: Brands are not based upon quality but rather the perception of quality. Quality of a product does not mean financial success; rather the image created by a brand name is more important. It’s all about image.

Category: The ultimate goal of a brand should be to create a new category or market. Home pizza delivery, expensive cars, roller skates, takeout only, gourmet takeout, etc.

Non-Generic: Brands need to stay away from logotypes that generally describe the product or company. General Electric, National Broadcasting, Service Merchandise, etc. Brands that use generic titles or names are begging to be ignored because no one can distinguish the brand from its advertising. Instead of an intelligent microchip, we have Intel. Instead of General Video, we have Blockbuster. Name your child Kristen and see how popular she gets: thanks, mom! Naturally, the name should reflect the product. Mountain Side Videos just doesn’t make sense. The name should be unique. Depot and Planet are too common a name. Alliteration also helps: Blockbuster, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Weight Watchers. Lastly, as a side note, names should be kept short and simple: I can’t spell Schwarzeneggar and have trouble with Abercrombie and Fitch as a URL.

Company: A company should use its name as its brand name. Think of all the fashion designers who do this. The only danger is to make sure that the company has proper brand contraction so that the name and brand back each other.

Siblings: A certain brand can only last so long and at certain times, launching a new brand is important. The risk of this is to create brand expansion, the benefit is to maintain control over a market. Wrigley’s chewing gum is the most popular brand family: Big Red, Doublemint, Freedent, Extra, Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, and Wintermint. Notice that in each of these cases, the names are different. Each sibling needs to be unique and not a Diet, Light, or New. NyQuil and DayQuil are not siblings but expansions. Time, Fortune, Life, Sports Illustrated, Money, People, and Entertainment Weekly are all the same company. So are Red Lobster and Olive Garden. Siblings should remain in the same market (gum, magazines, restaurants) but appeal to a different market segment (age, sex, ethnicity, flavor). The brands must be different so that they are not confused.

Shape: Logotypes should be horizontal because of the way a person’s eyes function: left to right, not up and down. Logotypes tend to be more widely used than ideograms because of recognition value. Arby’s and Mobil use vertical ideograms that complicate their logo. Similarly, logtypes work better than ideograms because a connection needs to be made between the ideogram and the logotype. Billions of dollars have been spent connecting Nike with its swoosh. Why spend the money?

Color: Red catches attention. Blue indicates stability. White means purity, black means luxury. Green is healthy and environmentally safe. Light blue or silver refers to diet foods. I’ve been meaning to talk about the use of color, particularly color magic; someday I will.

Consistency: The market is always changing so should a brand. Uh, no. A brand has to create a particular association to its name which is impossible if the brand is constantly changing. It is best to limit your brand. Think Jack Daniels beer and think about the confusion.

Mortality: Sometimes a brand needs to be killed off. The time usually comes when a market ceases to exist, for example, non-digital cameras are going the way of the dinosaurs, so what are non-digital camera companies going to do? Launch a new brand and kill their old brands.

I’m exhausted and still have maybe another half a dozen brand characteristics to go over.

If you are thinking, hey, how do any of the above characteristics relate to sigils or magick, you’re getting the idea. They don’t, not really. In my next post, I’ll finish off brand characteristics and possibly force a connection between sigils and brand logos.

Maybe you can do that for me…

Sigils part 1

A sigil is a spell in visual form.

To summarize quickly before going into greater detail, the spell-caster begins with a statement of intent, a declaration of what the spell-caster hopes to achieve, the ultimate effect or goal of the spell. This statement of intent is written down and then linguistically stripped down until it becomes a symbol rather than a sentence or even a word. The spell-caster “charges” the sigil with emotional energy and then destroys the sigil to allow it to work its effect. Sigils work best when the spell-caster forgets about the magic and lets it do its own work.

The sigil begins as a statement of intent. What is it that the spell-caster desires? In many ways the statement of intent is similar to the dramatic need of a character in a story. Every character has to be motivated by some desire to achieve a personal goal. The achievement of this goal is the resolution of the story or perhaps just a scene. As you are plotting your hypersigil, you might turn your statement of intent into your character's dramatic needs.

Like with any wish, the statement of intent needs to be thoughtfully declared to avoid any Monkey’s Paw. Make sure you are asking for what you really want. For example, wanting a new boyfriend or girlfriend may be an obvious need but do you really want a new significant other? I admit that right now I simply do not have the time or energy to invest in an intimate relationship so a new boyfriend would be counter-productive to my life. Sex is always a goal but as much as I fantasize about sexual encounters, I don’t think about them realistically. Perhaps I would like more of an activity partner with benefits but I am so stressed that my creative drives are at their lowest: I wouldn’t even know what to do on a date. My statement of intent would be less looking for a new boyfriend and more about looking for things to do, either by myself or with some type of heterosexual partner.

Statement of intents best start out small and practical. Otherwise you are setting yourself up for failure. Casting a spell to lose 10 lbs in one week is asking for failure, and even asking to lose 10 lbs in two months is too ambitious a goal. How might you go about losing that weight? Through exercise, dieting, changes in life-style? It is better to set a series of subgoals rather than one larger goal. It is better to cast a spell like “I want to eat healthy for a week” and then follow up with the same spell again along with an additional “I want to exercise properly for a week.”

Joseph Max comments

First there is the need for absolute precision and lack of ambiguity. I've heard of a test that is used in military officer's training schools, in which the squad leader is assigned a mission and required to cut a set of orders for the squad that he or she thinks is totally unambiguous. Then those under his or her command will try to follow those orders to the letter, but in such a way that is NOT what the leader really intended -- they try to purposely misinterpret the orders. If they find it impossible to do so, the leader passes the test. So a good way to test one's Sentence of Desire is to see if you can come up with any alternative meaning other than what was intended. If so, try formulating it in another way.

The simpler the statement of intent, the better the effect. Max continues,

Also, the sentence must be expressed only in positive, not negative terms. The subconscious has the annoying habit of perceiving everything positively. For example, if you want to create a Sentence to protect you from traffic accidents, do not express it as "I will not be in a traffic accident" -- the deep mind ignores the "not" and hears this as "I will be in a traffic accident"! Instead, express it as something like "I will drive safely".

Instead of focusing on negative aspects, it is better to focus on positive solutions. These positive solutions provide more probable solutions to the negative behavior. If your statement of intent goes something like, “I will not eat like a pig today” the question will pop up, well, how exactly do you plan to not do that? What is your plan of action?

Once a statement of intent is formulated, write it down. Always write your magic down. Writing it down makes it real.

The statement of intent must then be stripped down linguistically until it is in its rawest form.

Begin by removing all letters except for the first letter of each word, eliminating any repeated letters. For example, a statement of intent like “I want to eat healthy for one week” would become i w t e h f o or possibly i w t e h 4 1 or i w t e h f 1 or whatever strikes your fancy with capitalization and other grammatical issues depending upon your creative whim.

Next, combine the letters into one shape, keeping the shape as simple as possible.

The process of creating the sigil is part of the process of empowering it. Care, effort, and creativity should be exercised while fashioning a sigil. Simply scratching it out on a slip of paper isn’t the best thing to do. I usually use a photoshop program to construct mine after experimenting with different hand-drawn forms.

Keep streamlining your sigil until it gets to a pleasing shape. The sigil I drew above eventually looked like this:

The sigil needs to be kept as simple as possible but also artistically satisfying and unique so that the sigil can be easily visualized. I’ve read many magicians who recommend enclosing a sigil within a greater geometric form such as a circle or square. I’ve yet to do that but see no harm or reason not to.

By investing time and organization into the creation of the sigil, we are temporarily changing our psychic makeup. We are unintentionally meditating and focusing upon a desire and the result is a greater focus on the achievement of that desire. We clear our heads, concentrate, and meditate into the right state of mind required to actualize our goal. We’re getting ourselves together.

I’ve seen a couple sigil generators online. The Rose Cross Sigil Creator uses a calendar like tool that draws zig-zag lines from letter to letter. I don’t like the shape of these sigils but if I ever become bored, I may use it for variety. Also, the XaoGnosis Sigiliser automatically creates sigils from statement of intents. I used this for awhile because it allowed me to create a quick sigil and to forget what the sigil was for. However, the sigils that the XaoGnosis Sigiliser creates are too complex and too un-artistic for me.

Max adds that a more complex sigil can be less of a symbol and more of an actual picture of the ultimate intent. I will fantasize about this later but in anticipating a transition from sigil to hypersigil, a picture form is more easily translatable into some type of structure or system, like the panels of a comic book. I’m not quote sure how to turn ordinary sigils into a sentence.

The reason the statement of intent is stripped down in such a fashion is to destroy its linguistic representation. Magic stems from what is called the collective unconscious which is part of our psychic landscape made up with all intelligent beings and their thoughts in harmony with the universe. When we cast a spell, we are synchronizing with the universe and asking it to fulfill our desires. However, the universe does not understand language because language is a human technology. The universe only understands communication through symbols. The statement of intent is reduced to symbolic form that the universe can understand.

Once a sigil is created, the hardest part is to forget about the statement of intent. By focusing on the results, the spell-caster is being counter-productive. This is called lust for result. Have you ever watched a pot boil or downloaded a movie off the internet? These things take forever but if you walk away and come back later on, you’ll find the task finished. Similarly, if you start growing a garden and then sit there waiting for it to grow, you’ll go bonkers. You plant your seed, water it occasionally, tend to it, and let the garden grow on its own.

Likewise, psychologically speaking, the more you focus on the results of the sigil the more you pressurize your results. Have you ever had someone looking over your shoulder while you’re doing something and you find it impossible to concentrate on even an easy task? Or perhaps you suddenly become self-conscious, aware that an audience of friends and strangers is watching you perform and you choke? The best performances ignore the audience. Don’t think about the magic – that is your conscious mind working, not your subconscious – just do the magic. The sigil becomes like a subliminal message acting without you knowing.

The best way to reduce the lust for results tendency is to work on simultaneous sigils. Create a lesser sigil whose ultimate outcome you could care less about. Keep your focus on that sigil and forget about the more important one. I did that once where I made a sigil to help me stay in control of my mood swings and another sigil love spell. I got so caught up in the control sigil that I forgot what the love sigil was for.

Your goal is to forget the original statement of intent and visualize only the sigil. Although I am recommending forgetting the sigil, I don’t necessarily mean forget about it but rather forget its linguistic form and visualize on its symbolic subconscious form. I generally keep new sigils nearby so that I can visually cram their image into my imagination. Most often, I’ll draw a sigil on the back of my hand. It becomes a part of everyday life like the sun or the moon, but when was the last time you really noticed the sun or the moon?

A period of time from roughly three days to a week should be taken between creating a sigil and “charging” the sigil.

I call this the RAP period. RAP stands for

R = Subconscious Resistance
A = Conscious Awareness
P = Probability of results

During this period, you will want to look at various factors related to the success of your sigil and actively reduce negative influences.

Subconscious Resistance (R) means that there are a variety of blocks to power hidden in your subconscious. Your subconscious is part of the true power of magic and from whence comes the creative faculties and potential of magic and art. However, events well-hidden and forgotten in the past put blocks on our ability to access our subconscious power. These blocks are generally some type of powerful feeling related to a repressed event, like shame or embarrassment or feelings or rejection that have affected your behavior. We have forgotten about the events associated with these lingering feelings but they are still there. Once the gates to the subconscious are opened through magic, these repressed feelings swim down the stream of consciousness and block the water-flow. For example, I find that I constantly pick losers for boyfriends and every time my relationship turns to hell, I curse all men for being losers, but in truth I am subconsciously choosing my boyfriends for their self-destructive potential as a way of escaping from relationship commitment. Likewise, when I first started real estate, I was afraid of being successful because success lead me into areas that were beyond my familiarity and thus, scary. In both, and many more, circumstances, I was subconsciously sabotaging myself.

At another time, I will go over ways to reduce this subconscious resistance, but in the meanwhile, be aware, and focus within this RAP time on possibilities of sabotage in order to decrease resistance to sabotaging your magic and increase the likelihood of the magic succeeding.

Conscious Awareness (A) refers to the above “forgetting” of your sigil. You want to take time to forget your statement of intent. Once it’s forgotten then you can prepare for the charging.

Probability of results (P) simply means, what are the chances of your sigil actually working? You need to increase the probability of the magic working through mundane actions. You’ll never win the lottery if you never play. How will you lose weight? Do you know anything about eating healthy or exercise? Take time to bone up on necessary information, tasks, and/or skills that will make your success more likely. Connecting this with hypersigilia, a character has a dramatic need (statement of intent) but plot and conflict occur as the character is trying to realize this goal. How will the character achieve his goal?

Bear in mind that magic isn’t always instant and may take days, weeks, months, or more to take effect. The rule of thumb is that sigils work within a period of three: 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, even 3 years. One particular love sigil took three months to work.

Charging a sigil requires a change in consciousness. The two methods can be Hermetic or Orphic. Hermetic charging involves quiet meditative states like, uh, well, naturally, meditation, tai chi, sleep, juggling, and the like. Orphic charging involves high emotional stimulation, usually a heightened emotional state: laughing until you cry at a comedy movie, being frightened while watching a horror film or bungee jumping, getting the adrenaline pumping or blood flowing while dancing, spinning, exercise, etc. One author recommended playing the bongo in a dance routine: whatever floats your boat but that sounds a little too retarded to me.

The most commonly recommended method of charging a sigil is, sigh, help me, the wank method. For those of you not familiar with the term wank, it is British slang for masturbation. Yes, this is true: that dizzy pleasure at the moment of orgasm is perhaps the most powerful way to charge a sigil.

The key is to visualize the sigil throughout Hermetic meditation or at the moment of emotional Orphic intensity. I re-draw the sigil in my imagination. This visualization at the moment of temporary transcendence symbolically shoots the sigil from your conscious to your subconscious.

Once the sigil is charged, it must be destroyed. Sigils dealing with creativity and action should be destroyed by fire. Sigils involving emotional states should be disposed of in water, during a rainy night or thrown in a river. Sigils involving practical, material, or financial issues should be buried. Sigils involving intellectual pursuits, honestly, I don’t know what to do with them; these are air sigils so something more creative involving the air is needed.

I had a situation occur a couple times where I forgot what a sigil was for and then couldn’t dispose of it properly because I couldn’t remember what its intent was. A trick around this is to color code your sigils. I’ve studied a little bit of color magic and admit that I’m not fond of it. When I’m in a different mood I will delve more deeply into color magic and graphic design but for now I tend to focus on the four basic colors or range of colors: red for “fire”-based sigils, blues for emotion sigils, earth tones for earth sigils obviously, and lighter colors or pastels for air signs. I admit I am being lazy and I will come back to this topic and flesh it out better at another time.

Once you have charged and disposed of your sigil, you must Banish. Banishing is important to shut the door between your conscious and subconscious and return to your normal life. You'll find particularly that once you have entered into an Orphic state, calming yourself down is difficult.

I'll continue with more focused uses for sigils in next week's post.

Barbelith Advice part last

To review from last week’s posting,

1. Have goals in your writing and life
2. Study literary conventions to help increase the symbolic power of your hypersigil
3. Study cognitive psychology to get an understanding of how cognition and narration interact
4. Do preparatory work: find your influences, bind your demons, etc, before you start your hypersigil
5. Focus on a realistic fiction suit rather than an impractical fantasy suit
6. Focus on your negative aspects, your demons, and personify them as your enemies
7. Focus on your positive aspects and summarize them into your hero
8. Work your writing into smaller steps of accomplishment
9. Expect consequences and imbalance in your life at each stage

Today I’m finishing off a review of advice from Barbelith.

RiffRaff advices

Don't use generic characters,

I’m not quite sure what generic characters mean. Perhaps he means stock characters, don’t use stock characters, instead using characters based upon people important in the life of the hypersigil writer or perhaps focusing on characters that the writer wants to meet. The characters have to have some type of personal meaning or motive.

and don't do bad things to characters based in any way on yourself or people you like.

Another point of contemplation: magic is continuously about self-destruction, it seems. Grant Morrison’s experience with his King Mob torture scene related illness is an example of what can go wrong in writing a hypersigil. The Shamanic illness, whereby a magician is torn apart and reconstructed and enhanced is a traditional theme of magic. Stories themselves are based upon conflict so bad things happening to the hero is almost impossible to avoid. A good writer should do the worst to the hero, kill and destroy everything he loves!

However, looking at my own writing and the Mary Sue writing of many beginning authors, I can see that some writing is psychoanalytically self-destructive. This self-destruct may be a defense mechanism within the writer that will only come out during the writing process.

How then does one promote conflict but not self-destruction?

If you must write a greek tragedy, base the hero on someone you hate.

I had never thought about that. I tend to get obsessed with ex-boyfriends and write stories about them. A friend asked me recently if I have every cursed anyone. Even though I am a volatile, spiteful, vengeful person, I’ve never focused my magic to hurt anyone. The thought simply isn’t there. I’m more concerned with destroying myself or improving myself rather than hurting other. Hmmn, some insight there about me.

You could also, perhaps, create servitors of recurring characters, and then whatever you write about would be directed at the servitor instead of yourself or whoever the character was based on.

Self-destructive hypersigils directed at a fake fiction suit does seem interesting. It is the classic scapegoat, sin-eater style of magic. This is something I will need to mope on, but since stories often have a rival to the hero, and since all characters in a story are reflections of the unconscious of the writer or main character, a good scapegoat in a hypersigil story might be a rival or enemy.

Mordant Carnival refers to the Nine Muses

I'm thinking of chumming up to one or other of the Nine Muses on this- not sure which one though. Calliope, maybe. (Although... how epic do I really want my life to get?)

As mentioned before, becoming aware and attuned with godforms of communication is an important step of magic. In addition to Thoth, Mercury/Hermes, and Odin, the Nine Muses of classical mythology can act as inspirational figures. The Nine Muses and their reflective spheres of influence are:

1. Calliope: muse of epic poetry
2. Clio: muse of history
3. Erato: muse of love poetry
4. Euterpe: muse of music
5. Melpomene: muse of tragedy
6. Polyhymnia: muse of sacred song
7. Terpsichore: muse of dance
8. Thalia: muse of comedy
9. Urania: muse of astronomy

In addition, other figures like Orpheus or Morpheus may be added to the list of magical godforms.

Next week, hopefully, I start going over the basics behind sigils themselves. Start from the bottom and work our way up.