A Serpent Sigil Story

One of my students in the apprentice program*, wrote up an experience of receiving a sigil directly from Hekate. Rather than generating it from letters, inventing something that looked good, or something like that, this method of seeking sigils creates very potent and multi-faceted organic seals. It is something that even he did not think would work, and really blew him away when it did.

Sadly, we cannot share the actual sigil as it is very much still a part of his private and active work, but here s his description of the work:

Hi everyone, I wanted to share a story that may interest those of you who want to learn about artificial spirits and obtaining sigils for various uses through direct channeling. It’s about a servitor in the form of a snake, about Hekate, and an awesome sigil she kindly provided.

The original concept for this artificial spirit was that of a guardian for my wealth altar. During the last four months, my training with Jason has made my practice evolve a lot faster than anticipated, so that when the time came to write the programming for this spirit, I could see many more possibilities than what I was able to see only a few weeks earlier.

I have some experience in screenwriting, and I wrote this servitor – a snake reminiscent of Simbi, though I didn’t know the Simbi when I wrote it – as a character in a novel, or a movie. The writing process took about one month and a half. The snake has a psychological profile, a set of basic features, and about 20 special powers than can be combined in different ways. It may seem like a lot, far too many to allow the necessary focus, but as Jason will conferm, these abilities appear entirely consistent and “natural”, as if it was an actual living creature. Here’s the trick. The programming is entirely based on:

– the Serpent as an archetype, legends (charming, hypnosis, immunity to fire..)

– the biology and behavior of actual snakes (venom, hybernation, predator, powerful sense of smell, mimic, simulation…)

– his natal chart, that is, the chart of the moment I have selected for his creation/birth

Though this will be my first artificial spirit, the idea is to keep him around long-term. Since this creature will require maintenance, I wanted my snake to be useful in a wide variety of ways and situations.

He specializes in tracking people, their wealth, and transfer it to me via the informational and the astral level, but these abilities are rooted in basic powers that also enable him to do many more things. It could easily work as a messenger, a healer, a hacker, a detective, a bodyguard, perform psychic and physical attacks attacks of various kind, and much more.

Now, though I was entirely satisfied with the servitor as I had written him, actually CREATING it would require much more than that. Jason instructed me to do two things:

1. establish a strong connection with the “universal” Serpent by meditating with the Serpent’s Song (Protection and Reversal Magic, page 85) 

2. use the Song to obtain a sigil for the spirit, that I would have to use in the creation ritual.

Number 1 posed no challenge, as I meditate daily, number 2 was a different matter. Anyone can create a decent Sigil with the A. O. Spare method or linking letters on a square, but Jason insisted the best sigils are always the ones that are obtained through direct intuition or revelation. Now, I had never tried to obtain so much as a yes/no answer in this way, let alone an intricate visual design. 

So I practiced the Song for a few weeks, but as the date of the ritual  drew near, I didn’t feel at all more confident that I could make it. Having never tried it before, I couldn’t even picture how it COULD be done, how it would happen. Luckily for me, it just so happened that I was also doing my first Hekate Suppers during this same period, trying to propitiate the goddess in order to lay a foundation for an entirely different project. Since I wasn’t asking for anything in particular during the Suppers, it came to me that I could ask to be helped in obtaining a sigil in this way, despite my complete lack of experience. 

I always get a very good feeling when I work with Hekate, and she had given me unexpectedly powerful results before. Maybe she would be willing to help me with this.

A few more days passed, and it came to me that since the Serpent features as HER servitor in the ritual I got from Jason, and since her relationship with snakes in general is a very close one, I could just try to ask HER for the sigil. And so I did.

On the last dark moon, I prepared an altar with my written program for the snake (4-5 pages of bullet-points divided into sections like Character, Look, Basic Abilities, Special Abilities), I did the standard invocation, and offered her two hard-boiled eggs, honey, 15 or so peeled garlic cloves, a glass of red wine, and an incense I made with crushed juniper berries and powdered benzoin.

I wrote a prayer, and read it out loud during the ritual. Jason said I had to go into a trance with the Song. Yeah, well, that would be a first too…but as soon as I uttered the prayer, I started to feel calm and confident, letting go of expectations and tension. I closed my eyes, entered meditation mode and started chanting, still kind of wondering HOW on earth I could “receive” something visual, since I didn’t see anything at all. But I relaxed and just kept my mind empty and open. I expected a looooong chanting session, long enough to make my mind receptive the hard way. 

I couldn’t have chanted the Song more than 30 times when it started. 

I don’t know how to describe what happened other than to say that instead of the image I was looking for, it was the “idea” or intuition of the image that entered my mind. Like REMEMBERING an image.  The sigil came through starting from the center, the core, the essence, and was completed in three or four “steps”, gradually adding the missing parts. I couldn’t have got it all in one “packet”. I first got the “memory” of what looked like empty eyes, then the lines that connected them, and then a spike where the mouth would be, and every time I got something, I just put some more incense on the coal and started chanting again. Within seconds, I “remembered” what I should add next. The whole process lasted about 5 minutes.

An interesting detail is that though I was immersed in a cloud of smoke, the incense had almost no smell at all, way less then when I had burned it on other occasions. Perhaps a sign that Hekate was “taking in” the offerings.

Anyway, when the sigil was completed, I was astonished at how powerful and appropriate it looked. Jason was right: it was not something that I could have made by shuffling and combining letters. I couldn’t even have invented it, certainly not in mere minutes. It looks both “mine” and “not mine”, appropriately so since I wrote the servitor, but not the sigil. I am quite good at drawing and visualizing, but I could never have captured the character and qualities of this creature with such perfect synthesis. 

I am now left with the responsibility of putting this powerful gift to good use – I haven’t created the servitor yet – and a sense of deep gratitude and awe for the great goddess that gave it to me. It never fails to surprise me how peaceful it feels to work with Hekate. You would expect “dark” tones from a Witch Goddess surrounded by untimely dead and wild, violent spirits of every kind, but no; to me, it just feels deep, strong, and actually maternal. The greatest gift she gave me that night was perhaps a sense of great accomplishment, the feeling that I am finally starting to tap into the power I was seeking.

I also feel that all the hours I spent on practicing the basic exercises during the last eight months or so are really starting to pay off. I only tried to get a sigil this way because Jason recommended it, and because I think you must be willing to fail a few times, before you succeed; I didn’t expect to actually get the sigil, and a very powerful one. But I did, and if Hekate thought I was ready, it is no doubt thanks to the many hours I spent practicing meditation, sandpiling, working with the elements, and so on.

I hope this story will provide some inspiration for your own work with Hekate, with the Serpent and artificial spirits, and to practice the basic exercises Jason gives in the books and Strategic Sorcery Course. There is a LOT more to them than meets the eye at first.

*The apprentice program different then the Strategic Sorcery Course. This is a long term program where I give personal mentoring based on individual interests, gifts, and goals – exactly how I received most of my own training. It is closed right now, but if you want to be added to the waiting list, write me at inominandum@gmail.com. I will likely be accepting more apprentices later in the summer.