Talk:Sigil (magic)

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[edit] Plural

If sigil is derived from sigilum, surely the plural should be sigila, not sigla? Franey 14:16, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Isn't Latin sig(i)lum a loanword from Phoenician shekel, meaning a unit of weight (12.3g), a coin of that same weight, or a wax seal that kinda looks like a coin of that same weight? --66.18.155.208 02:34, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Searching for google, I find almost all copies of this article using sigila; whereas there are many, many instances of sigilia on google, so I have changed the plural form in the introduction. MeaninglessSemantic (talk) 15:10, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coca-Cola uses sigils?

Does anyone actually think that coca-cola intends its logo to have a magical intent? That is what the article says. I can't imagine why they preface the accusation by saying, "in a postmodern context." How is it a postmodern context? What's postmodern about stupid ideas like magik or the logo for coca-cola (which has been around longer than postmodernism, so its intent could not have been in a postmodern context)?

stupid ideas like magick -- how NPOV of you

I'm going to go ahead and remove the 'postmodern context' bit and try to make the article a little more encyclopedic, with a healthy skepticism so we don't appear to endorse New Age Bullshit.Maprovonsha172 19:13, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New Age Bullshit? Pretty harsh... why can't we look at the idea objectively?

It's not the use of the Coca-Cola logo that is post-modern but the analogy between magic(k) and corporate presentation itself. I don't think the analogy is that far fetched. The aim of sigils is to bypass the conscious mind. Surely there is no doubt that corporations rely on directly reaching the unconscious minds of consumers since that is what advertising is based on. It's a small step from advertising to other forms of corporate presentation such as logos. Of course a quotation would be in order here.--Tchoutoye 17:36, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Magikal and Magik

any reason for the alternative spelling of magical and magic? I can't find these spelling in any dictionary (though I have found magick and magickal in one as occasionally used variant spellings). If not I shall edit it to fix the spellings MrWeeble 13:01, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Practitioners of magic sometimes add the 'k' to the end to differentiate it from illusion magic, but I've never really seen anyone spell it with just the 'k' and no 'c'. Lachatdelarue (talk) 13:31, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I have, but it's rare. Go with the "ck."

Septegram 21:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It should be 'ck', not 'k'.--Tchoutoye 17:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

The common spelling 'magic' refers to magic as slight of hand..illusion magic, etc. The spelling 'magik' refers to the rituals a Magician uses to inforce his will...the 'ck' is used when people either don't know the difference, do know the difference but don't want to defend their spelling, perhaps?

--The 'ck' is prevalent in most Chaos Magick source books. It's an established tradition to use 'ck' in occult works.

It's my understanding that the 'k' in magick comes from Thelema--Crowley who added it so that the word would fit properly with his gematria. It seems to be the generally accepted spelling when discussing the occult. Hope this is helpful. -Anon

Magick is the preferred Chaos and Crowley spelling, but the context is clear enough that we can use magic in this article without any problems. As this is Sigil_(magic), I think the choice of magic over magick is acceptable. --MeaninglessSemantic 00:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Excessive reliance on Morrison

This seems to me to be too heavily biased towards Morrison's thought on sigils. I'm all for Morrison, but this reads like it was drawn 90% from Pop Magic. Phil Sandifer 20:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pseudoscience

Is this really pseudoscience? I'm not sure it's making any claims towards science at all. Phil Sandifer 20:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Despite the issues raised on this discussion page I don't understand how the neutrality of the article is disputed. The article does not make any claims that they actually work. You might as well dispute the neutrality of every article about religion or psychology. Unless somebody can explain me why it is not neutral I propose removing the warning.--Tchoutoye 17:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

There are a lot of perspectives on sigils in magickal theory and philosophy. However, this article takes all of its information from one source - Grant Morrison. It is thus biased towards that POV. Phil Sandifer 03:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider this pseudoscience. If this is considered pesudoscience then a number of religious wikis (for instance, all of the catholic rituals) should fall under the category of pseudoscience as well.

[edit] Merge

Definitely merge Sigils and Sigil (magic). They deal with exactly the same subject, and we shouldn't have articles named with a plural like that anyway, when the singular will do just fine! Fuzzypeg☻ 09:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree; I don't think you even needed to put that one up for a vote because the redundancy is so obvious. Matt Gies 19:38, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

This was done a while back. MeaninglessSemantic (Talk) 18:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

Hey, guys. I killed all that video game trivia. It really isn't neccessary to discuss every time the word sigil is used as a magical artifact in a video game. In fact, I think it kind of trivializes the idea of sigil magick. Feel free to revert it if you want it back, but I think the article would be a lot more, well, credible and concise without that. I mean, Sigil Magick is some pretty serious stuff. We don't have references to every video game a gun has appeared in for the wikipedia article on guns, do we?

Maybe I'm talking out my ass, though. Can we check the article gun to see if they list out every reference to a gun in pop culture, particularly sci-fi laser guns?

Agreed. MeaninglessSemantic (Talk) 18:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modern use

As sigils are PRIMARILY a form of chaos magic, not mentioning modern uses gives an inaccurate idea of what sigils are about. Chaos magic has the process of sigilization in much greater depth than it is in on this article, but my edits only added information while not duplicating very much. -Meaningless Semantic

It would be more correct to say that chaos magic primarily uses sigils, a magical device spanning hundreds of years and encompassing numerous cultures. Chaos magic is a mere thirty years old; discussing it at nearly equal length as the rest of the history gives a misleading impression of its importance. Feezo (Talk) 20:54, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I would concur with Feezo, and would add that while Chaos Magic has added some key innovations, much of its theory regarding sigils seems the same as traditional usage but with a few changes in terminology. Have a read of the sections of Agrippa dealing with signs and their construction and you'll see what I mean. Fuzzypeg☻ 06:43, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That is paradigm piracy, a hallmark of Chaos Magic. I disagree with the assertion that chaos magic uses primarily sigils, as it's not quite that cut and dry. I don't think generalizations are going to help us here, so maybe we should try to come to an information consensus. Arcane/occult/magic signs and symbols have always been part of mysticism/spirituality (or whatever you would like to call it), even before Alchemy was even popular. I was thinking in terms of current trends when I posted my original addition to the talk page, but I agree that this is definitely a somewhat biased article at the moment. I agree with you, Feezo, in that I don't see any need to duplicate the chaos magic article in this one; I was just trying to add some useful information to make this article a nice summary that gives the reader a quick introduction to what a sigil is. I've actually been cleaning up this article for a while, a number of the anonymous edits were me and I was the one who merged Sigils and Sigil_(magic) a few months back in an attempt at cleaning it up. MeaninglessSemantic (Talk) 18:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)