Okay, this is going to be a quick post.
I’ve been reading up on Chaos magic, which is a magical practice that concerns itself less with worship and more with the mechanics of making magic work.
One tool of the Chaos magician is the sigil, a symbol that represents an intent. Sigils can be letters and/or words smooshed together to make one symbol. Like this.
Image from Wikipedia
These totally reminded me of cartoon characters. So, once you have your doodles, you proceed thus:
“The magician acknowledges a desire, he lists the appropriate symbols and arranges them into an easily visualised glyph. Using any of the gnostic techniques he reifies the sigil and then, by force of will, hurls it into his subconscious from where the sigil can begin to work unencumbered by desire.” Wikipedia
Alrighty, that seems pretty simple, I guess. A further bit of weirdness, a writer named Grant Morrison says that corporate logos are hypersigils.
“Corporate sigils are super-breeders. They attack unbranded imaginative space. They invade Red Square, they infest the cranky streets of Tibet, they etch themselves into hairstyles. They breed across clothing, turning people into advertising hoardings… The logo or brand, like any sigil, is a condensation, a compressed, symbolic summoning up of the world of desire which the corporation intends to represent… Walt Disney died long ago but his sigil, that familiar, cartoonish signature, persists, carrying its own vast weight of meanings, associations, nostalgia and significance.”
Mind blown. I’m going to guess that most logos weren’t designed as a magical means. HOWEVER, the idea makes a kind of sense. And let’s face it, some companies probably wouldn’t be above using whatever means necessary to get their dollars.
Below is a link to a related fun thing, a sigil generator! There are a bunch of options for the form of the sigil. One of them called “Kuji Kuri” is a series of hand movements that look like the spell casting on the SyFy show The Magicians.
http://www.chaostarot.com/wp-content/uploads/generator/
More about Chao magic on Wikipedia
