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“The sigil I created in your class worked amazingly well. But none of the sigils I’ve done since then have worked,” said D, a talented energy worker with no formal training. She was speaking about a sigils / manifesting class taught by M, who has at least a decade of experience with Chaos Magick, Thelema, and other systems.
It might not seem like it, but that’s enough information to make a good guess at the problem. What do YOU think it might be? Yes, you, reading this article. Debugging techniques is an important skill, and here’s a chance to practice. If you want to play along, make a guess, just say it to yourself or write it in the comments.
One friend suggested a possibility: Work done in private can feel different than work done in public. Maybe D just gets better results in a public setting? This lead to much conversation about public vs private and how to adjust.
But that answer didn’t seem to quite fit. If I were to verbalize my reasons, it’s that the difference (“great results” vs “total failure”) was too large to be caused by something as subtle as “work done in private can feel different.” We should be looking for a structural error in D’s technique, some missing piece that was filled in by being in the class. That’s how I’d verbalize my reasoning. But in the moment, it was closer to an unconscious, “No, that doesn’t break enough pieces.”
For those of you playing along at home: Revisit your guess, see how it sounds now, and make another guess if you like.
Here’s my answer: In the class, M was engaging their ethereal software as they demonstrated the sigil techniques. That made it easy for D to (unconsciously) connect to M’s ethereal software. D, being talented with energy, got good results using M’s ethereal software. (And M, being well-trained, has good ethereal software for manifesting. M would refer to that ethereal software as a Servitor or Egregore, btw.)
But D wasn’t conscious of any of this. She didn’t make a lasting connection to M’s software, and couldn’t access it on her own. So at home, D performed the same outward steps, built the same energy, but didn’t have M’s ethereal software to handle the actual manifesting, and therefore got no results.
How can D fix this? Do another sigil with M, and pay attention to the forces involved. Either make a lasting connection herself, or ask a spirit she knows to remember the force for her. (D does a lot of work with spirits.)
M has previously described my classes as “a kick to the side of the head, in a good way.” M pondered my analysis, then excitedly agreed.
This was a fun puzzle for me, debugging D’s technique. It was also validating, to use my work to help a friend. I hope you playing along at home.
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