sigil · wish · forget

A sigil is a sentence you collapse into a shape. Charge it once, then forget it.

JM Thomas · 21 August 2026

You wanted a mark that could hold the wish after you stopped staring at it.

A sigil is a mark you make from a wish. You write a sentence you can still read, then you collapse the letters into a glyph. A glyph is the shape after you fold those letters together. You charge that mark once, which means you put attention and feeling into it, and then you try to forget it. Austin Osman Spare wrote that method in 1913 in The Book of Pleasure. You came here because you still want a mark that can hold the wish after you look away.

What is a sigil?

A sigil is a mark you make from a wish. People who use this method start with a sentence of desire, and desire here means the thing you want, written in plain words. Then they collapse the letters into a glyph, so you can no longer read the old sentence as English. Spare set that method down in The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy. Keep the sigil name.

How do you make a sigil?

You write the wish as a sentence, then you collapse the letters into one shape. That shape is the glyph. You charge it once, then you try to forget it. Spare called that last step a deliberate striving to forget it, which means you try on purpose to stop staring at the wish. You still want the life you asked for. You just stop staring at the mark.

Ray Sherwin later wrote Book of Results. He said you hurl the glyph into the subconscious unencumbered by desire. The subconscious is the part of the mind you are not watching. Hurl here means you send the shape there. Unencumbered by desire means you do not carry the wish in the thoughts you are looking at while you send the mark. A later writer, Frater UD, said the same move in other words. You plant the mark into the part of the mind you are not watching, then you forget it.

Why forget the sigil after you charge it?

Spare asked for that forget because he wanted the mark to hold the wish after you look away. If you keep staring at the glyph, you are still holding the wish in the part of the mind you are watching. You put the wish into the mark, feel it once, and then look away so the mark can hold it.

You can still want the life you asked for. You only need to stop staring at the mark.

What did Spare mean by lust for result?

Lust for result is Spare's phrase for keeping the wish in front of you after you charge the mark. You keep asking if it already happened. You keep trying to read the old sentence in the shape. That checking is the habit he asked you to drop.

He named the habit because it is easy. You charge the mark, then you keep looking at it, and that is how you keep the wish in the part of the mind you are watching. So you never send the glyph into the part of the mind you are not watching.

What does the front of the brain have to do with a goal?

The prefrontal cortex is the front of the brain. The DLPFC is a part of that front that holds a goal. Hathaway and Newton wrote that chapter in StatPearls, a free medical book on NCBI. You can read it at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499919.

Earl Miller and Jonathan Cohen wrote in 2001 that the front of the brain holds a goal and can tilt other parts toward that goal. They called those patterns goal representations, which means pictures of a goal that the front of the brain can keep. You can read that paper at doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.24.1.167.

Nobody ran a scan of a person making a sigil for this page. The part that holds a goal is the part you use when you keep a wish in mind. Spare asked you to put the wish into a mark, charge it once, and then stop holding the wish in the part of the mind you are watching.

Why does checking the wish bring it back?

Daniel Wegner wrote in 1994 about ironic processes of mental control. Ironic here means you can bring back the thing you tried to push away. He said you have an operator and a monitor. The operator is you trying to push a thought away, and the monitor is you checking whether the thought came back. When you keep checking, you keep the wish in the part of the mind you are watching. You can read that paper at doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.101.1.34.

That is why Spare asked you to forget after the charge. If you keep checking the mark, you are still holding the wish in front of you.

How is a sigil different from a vision board?

A vision board is a board with pictures of what you want, kept where you can see them. A sigil is a mark you charge once and then try to forget. People use both when they care about a wish. Open the vision board page if you want the board that stays up. Stay here if you want the mark you look away from.

Peter Gollwitzer wrote in 1999 about if-then plans, which are sentences like, if the kettle clicks, then I sit down and write. You keep that plan. Open the if-then page if you want it.

If this work or the wish brings unusual distress, talk to a clinician, because this page is educational.

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