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No, it's not Monday. But this post is about magick anyway.
Twice in the last couple of days, I have been asked about using traditional spirit sigils versus deriving kamea sigils. For my elemental, planetary, and zodiacal work posts I have been using the kamea method, which (to my knowledge) was first published by Agrippa. At the same time, traditional sigils also exist for many of the same spirits that I am calling upon in those operations.
To be clear, the kamea sigils do not replace traditional sigils, or necessarily work better, or anything like that. Both the traditional sigil and the kamea sigil can be used to connect with the spirit, just like calling a person who has multiple telephone numbers. The advantage of the kamea system is that it is general enough to apply to any spirit, whether a traditional sigil is available or not.
There are even variations within the kamea method that can produce different sigils for the same spirit. In the Saturn installment of the planetary work, I include two possible sigils for Cassiel, as there is some disagreement regarding the traditional spelling. I have no trouble getting results with the version I use, but I expect that the other version likewise works for the magicians who employ it.
As another example, for the zodiacal work series, you can take a look at the Magical Calendar over on Esoteric Archives, you can find sigils for the same angels of the signs whose names I am mapping onto the kameas. Those sigils will work too, so you can go ahead and use them if you like them better. And this is true of just about any sigil, from just about any grimoire, that is attributed to the spirit with which you want to work.
Going further, kamea sigils can also vary by language. I normally transliterate to Hebrew, which is Agrippa's method, but magicians also report success with kamea sigils derived from English. Sometimes that can be a better way to go than trying to puzzle out the Hebrew spelling of an English name. In order to employ that method, you number the English letters thus:
The pattern is just like that used with Hebrew, but following the order of the English alphabet. The same reduction rules apply as well when mapping an English name. So here's the kamea sigil for Gabriel, the angel of the Moon, from my planetary series.
That's using the Hebrew. But here's how it would look using English. You have G (7), A (1), B (2), R (90 -> 9), I (9), E (5), and L (30). That sigil would look like this:
It looks quite different, but it still will connect with the same angel. Basically, the name is the word corresponding to the angel, and the sigil is the shape. Or, more to the point, one shape out of several possibilities. For Gabriel I prefer to use the Hebrew because the English spelling is already a transliteration, but that may very well just be a personal preference.
The one limitation on this is that I am of the opinion that you should not mix languages within the same figure. So if you are using the Hebrew sigil for the angel and want to encode a target's English name onto the kamea as well, transliterate the name to Hebrew and render it that way. Otherwise, use the English spelling for the angel with the English name.
I don't see any reason why this method wouldn't hold for other languages besides English and Hebrew as well, but I have yet to test that out in order to make sure. There's certainly nothing special about English, and despite all the folklore I'm not sure that there's anything about Hebrew either, aside from its association with traditional Jewish Kabbalah from which the magical Hermetic Qabalah is derived.
So the deal is this. Go ahead and use whichever type of sigil you want, traditional or kamea. Using one or the other will not change anything besides what you write out for the sigil itself, and the ritual procedure remains the same in all cases. And if you try one and it doesn't seem like it's working for you, try another. It's possible that different sigils could resonate better with different people, and that could very easily affect how well your operation works.
10 comments:
I think we talked about this a few years back when it comes to transliterating certain names into Hebrew alphabet, one example being the spirit of the 3rd lunar mansion as per Agrippa - Amixiel. While I can easily use the Arabic version Annuncia, it came to me I've come across at least a couple angel names out there that consist of the letter X.
I think I remember Crowley using Tzaddi for X, which is fine with me since I have little knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet and sounds, nor do I want to learn more about it because it serves no oher purpose for me except for transliterations. But I came across the following link in which theyinstruct using Qoph Samekh for the X sound. And in a name like Amixiel the X is ever so present and audible. This is fine at first sight since Qoph is 100 and Samekh is 60, resulting in their added value being 160 for X. In the lunar kamea that would be reduced to 16.
https://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_One/Transliteration2/transliteration2.html
But what about names containing X that require their sigils to be rendered using the 3x3 kamea of Saturn, since there are no numbers over 9 and one can't reduce 160 to 1.6? Does that mean the two letters/sounds (Qoph and Samekh) are to be reduced separately, i.e. 100 to 1 and 60 to 6?
You do not add values like that. If you want to transliterate the X as KS it's two phonetic letters, K and S. So 100 -> 10 -> 1 followed by 20 -> 2, resulting in two separate points on the kamea. Transliteration based on sound is just that - you do not need to pay attention to the number of letters for each sound or even the number of English letters in a word, depending on what they are.
If you look at my transliterations of angel names, for example, you will see there is not necessarily a 1-1 letter correspondence, since some of vowels from English drop out. The same is true of adding letters. You don't need to necessarily transliterate a vowel that would not be part of the Hebrew spelling for a word.
Got it. Thank you!
Well that was one of the best articles I ever read by you. It occurred to me recently to ask you whether using the traditional grimoire sigil would be stronger by direct association with the spirit than a newly derived Rose cross or kamea one?
2nd, instead of using the sigil nor the tarot card, can one pathwork directly into the Hebrew name of the angel? Pathworking is done with individual hebrew letters as well to their corresponding path, so can I successfully do the same with the name?
3rd, does the sigil need to be physically at hand to travel by spirit vision into it or can I use the images on my phone?
4rth, finally can I try something like chant the angel's name, psalm, title and the godnames over it in a mini ritual to petition it? I've been told a few times that the simplest way to work with our benevolent angels is to just ask the via their psalms, godnames and an invocation and if your request doesn't get fulfilled as simple as that then no ritual will. Sad but the truth.
1. I personally do not like to use rose cross sigils because I find the way they are derived too arbitrary. Kamea sigils are built using a precise mathematical method, which I prefer. Some magicians do claim rose cross sigils work fine, though, so I don't know if that's a general principle.
2. You probably can, but I haven't personally tried that.
3. I would think you could use a sigil on a phone, but again, haven't tried that.
4. You should be able to do that as well, but again, haven't done it myself. I will say that the idea that if one method fails no others will ever succeed is ridiculous. Magick is a technology - this is like assuming if you can't build a microprocessor using architecture A, you also won't be able to build it using architecture B regardless of what architecture B is. Hopefully in that context it's clear that this idea makes no sense.
1. I took a look at the Magical Calendar seals for the 12 Sign archangels and they look far too incoherent and unintelligible. Seals are names drawn as signatures. Some of those Calendar seals had planetary glyphs not associated with their ruling planets. If they really are linking us to the 12 archangels, I'll stick with your Kamea seals. Even during the earliest grimoires like Liber Juratus, their seals are not shown, only their names.
2. Also is the seal needed once you have made connection with the spirit. I have personally experimented with this and found this to be untrue with King Djinn. Once a good connection has been made, perhaps it is not needed.
I personally prefer the kamea sigils as well. But I have talked with other magicians who claim to get good results with the traditional ones.
I always use the sigil in the context of the conjuration myself, regardless of how much I have worked with the spirit. I see it kind of like the spirit's phone number - you use it to "dial them up," essentially. But again, I know of some practitioners who claim it isn't necessary once you have a strong connection with the spirit.
Hi Scott,
Sorry for posting such a general question to a specific post.
I've always wondered exactly how to use Kameas, apart from constructing sigils. Are there any practical ways to use them?
Thank you
Personally I mostly use them for constructing sigils. However, there are some applications - in Hoodoo, for example - of drawing the kamea on an object to associate it with the planet. Technically the character of the planet from Agrippa is a figure derived from the order of numbers in the kamea, so the kanea itself should work like a planetary character. I expect you could use it the same way.
Thank you Scott!
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