Most Online Chaos Magick Is Naming Mnemonic Variables

No matter how intricate your sigil is, it’s still just a semiotic identifier—a signifier. You could call it x, and it would carry the same ontological weight. Sigils point to concepts, entities, or they act as a signature. At the end of the day, you’ve just created a decorative label. Sigils are glyphs, not alphabets or languages like Theban, Celestial, Enochian, or the Alphabet of Daggers.

Sigils made using Austin Spare’s method aren’t languages—they’re stylized abstractions. You’re not writing a sentence in some hidden tongue; you’re making a visual variable. A graphic tag with no linguistic scaffolding. There’s nothing to “read” in it—no syntax, no grammar, no pronunciation. Just an intentional scribble pointing toward a thought.

Compare that to Theban, Celestial, Enochian, or the Alphabet of Daggers. Those are actual alphabets. Magical languages. They follow consistent letter-for-letter substitutions. They can obscure meaning—because there’s real meaning to obscure. You can encode texts, chants, names. They operate like ciphers, because that’s exactly what they are.

Spare-style sigils don’t encrypt—they erase. When you compress a phrase into a symbol, you’re not hiding language, you’re letting it go. You’re collapsing intention into a single mark that doesn’t depend on literacy, just mental association.

Magical languages at least do something. They obscure. They encode. Run a sentence through Theban or Celestial, and you get something arcane-looking and unreadable—because it is, unless you know the key. That’s the point: symbolic misdirection. Encryption with intent.

Sigils, especially the Spare-style ones, don’t do that. You’re not concealing a message; you’re flattening it into a shape. It’s not code—it’s a label. A name tag. You take a phrase, compress it into a glyph, and suddenly it’s a “magickal symbol.” But it’s really just a symbolic pointer—a variable, like in programming. And just like with variables, the more convoluted the name, the more annoying it is to use. If your sigil looks like a spiky eldritch mandala, congrats: you’ve made a beautiful, unreadable label.

Honestly, watching people crank these out like they’re reinventing the arcane wheel—when they’re just decorating the same psychological placeholder—it’s almost a relief. The more time someone spends designing a stylized faux ceremonial symbol symbol for “money now please,” the less likely they are to be doing anything dangerously effective. A lot of what gets called “chaos magick” online is really just overdesigned variable naming by people who think the aesthetic is the spell.

Sure, sigils, metaphors, and myths all operate symbolically—but they don’t hit the same. A sigil is a symbol boiled down to a label. A shortcut. It points to something. A mythology doesn’t just point—it breathes. It moves through story, layers, archetypes. That’s why mythic metaphors and ritual drama land harder: they’re not just signs, they’re immersive systems of meaning.

A myth doesn’t just say “this is like that.” It binds symbols into patterns. It creates tension, resonance, transformation. Allegory can carry cosmology. Sigils don’t do that. They’re more like programming variables—arbitrary labels you assign meaning to. Useful? Sure. But flat. A box with a name. Writing “dragon” on the lid doesn’t conjure the force of a real dragon narrative.

That’s why stories, dreams, and rituals move people—and sigils usually don’t, unless you’ve already decided they will. Metaphor speaks to the deep mind. It speaks with symbols, not just about them. Sigils? They’re like filing tabs. Metaphors are the stories inside the folders.

So yeah—they’re both symbols. But one is a placeholder. The other is a living structure.

Exactly—whether you sketch a swirling, ornate sigil or just scrawl an x, you’re still tagging the same conceptual box. The content doesn’t change just because the outside is fancier. That’s the point: the sigil isn’t the thing. It’s the pointer. It’s the tag that says, “this is where I stored that intention,” or “this represents that entity.” It doesn’t gain power because it looks more esoteric.

People get caught up in the design and forget the purpose. A sigil doesn’t summon anything by itself—it’s a reference. It’s not the payload. You’re not conjuring a spirit with the shape; you’re doing it with the meaning you’ve assigned. The symbol just helps you focus—like putting a label on a folder.

This is why making the sigil “look magickal” is mostly cosmetic. Dress up the label all you want—it still opens the same box. The real work isn’t in the glyph; it’s in what the glyph means and how your mind interacts with that meaning. So yes, swap the sigil for an x—the box still holds the demon. All you’ve changed is the font.

Fediverse Reactions

#Archetypes #ceremonialMagic #ceremonialMagick #chaosMagick #Crowley #demons #Discordians #egregore #egregores #exemplification #fascist #grimoire #grimoires #HermeticOrderOfTheGoldenDawn #hermeticism #hyperSigils #invocation #JungianArchetypes #magicalLanguages #magick #mythologies #mythology #myths #occult #occultism #occulture #Ontology #ostension #pagan #paganism #paranormal #paranormalCommunities #postmodernism #poststructuralism #Semiotics #sigil #sigilMagic #sigilMagick #sigils #sorcery #urbanMyth

Another pre-print from me: "»I Program my Home Computer«. Discourse and Computer Archaeological Localizations of a Technology" - where I try to define "home computer" as a term, a technology, and a media historic event:

http://txt3.de/homecomputer

#MediaStudies #ComputerArchaeology #HomeComputer #PostStructuralism #Serres

Everyone really ought to listen to Adam Bahner (Tay Zonday) talk about his political awakening.

I think there's a lot of value to what he has to say, moreso nowadays than ever.

https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/38de5e2a-0671-4ac8-87e3-b10d014842e1/04818673-cc0b-4e55-8b85-b2c1014fc221/audio.mp3 #poststructuralism

For Deleuze, as for Foucault and Lyotard, the activity of political reflection must have as a primary goal the freeing of an individual (be that individual a person, a group, or a practice) for new practices, practices that change, undermine, or abandon the power relationships that keep old practices in place. Foucault addresses the same concern in his description of philosophical “curiosity”:

"...not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself… There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it, or when it works up a case against them in the language of naive positivity. But it is entitled to explore what might be changed, in its own thought, through the practice of a knowledge that is foreign to it." (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure)

#deleuze
#foucault
#lyotard
#poststructuralism

Then articulates 5 main an-pac contributions on: #fetishization of #violence; chronic sliding towards systemic #militarism; intersectional state-enforced #exploitation/#domination; structurings of international politics (current & potential); & questions of #politicalagency.

Throughout & towards end, positions these ideas against more established schools of #IRtheory, from #justwartheory to #realism, #liberalism, #Marxism, #poststructuralism, #feminism & others.

This extract from a recent Rob Horning newsletter left me thinking about my frustration with ‘AI realism‘ in the mode of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. Horning describes what we could think of as the impasse of atomisation:

The Verge articles take it for granted that this “we” won’t come together and will never be ready — it takes tech companies to have already achieved their basic goal of atomizing and isolating everyone into discrete but fungible units that can’t form collectivities on their own terms, that are only ever “populations” bracketed and processed into different sets by some higher controlling force. The articles assume, perhaps correctly, that the possibility of conceiving collective responsibility, of having any faith in other people to do anything other than what strikes them as most convenient in any given moment (as tech companies have instructed them, promising endless amounts of pleasure if they do), has been extinguished.

https://robhorning.substack.com/p/fragments-scraps-the-bits-and-greasy

In making this assumption, which he acknowledges might be correct, we are affirming there’s little possibility for responding to emerging technologies in organised and collective ways. There’s a degree of performativity at work here in the sense that affirming that we are already atomised contributes to that atomisation by perpetuating a social imaginary which is atomised. However in spite of the magical thinking which late-stage poststructuralism was sometimes prone to generating, simply pointing to that performativity doesn’t impact upon the reality the claim designates (fallibly or otherwise).

It confuses the discursive act with the sociopolitical reality in relation to which that action takes place. Those discursive acts certainly, in their totality, contribute to the constitution of that sociopolitical reality but (a) they do not determine it (b) their causal influence is about transformation or reproduction. The causality operates through the role social imaginaries play in conditions agency, rather than be something which operates in a quasi-autonomous way. There’s a degree of performativity but it’s not, so to speak, performative all the way down. Nor is it performative in the present tense.

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/09/15/the-cultural-politics-of-ai-and-the-impasse-of-atomisation/

#AIRealism #capitalistRealism #performativity #poststructuralism #RobHorning #sociotechnicalImaginary

#stirner #philosophy #poststructuralism #maxstirner #anarchism #anarchy #existentialism #anarchisthistory #postanarchism #postleftanarchy #history #germanphilosophy

I would like to follow more people who shitpost about critical theory and continental philosophy generally. I need more jokes and sly allusions to Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, Butler, etc. But not just those. I know it’s niche, but it’s a big fediverse. Please help me find them/you!

#CriticalTheory #poststructuralism #bigOtter

What do you understand by the verbs 'construe' & 'construct'?

Which would you use & why to describe the way language (or we/#AI) refers to/represents reality?
#CriticalRealism

#Hermeneutics

#CriticalDiscourseAnalysis

#Contructionism

#CriticalTheory

#PostStructuralism

#Deconstruction

#Discourse

#LLM

Catherine Malabou’s Stop! Thief! Anarchism and philosophy with Carl Eugene Stroud and Reed

https://anarchy.tube/videos/watch/8dcd26bd-c386-453c-9d51-962afe85a62f

Someone described me using a term I’d never encountered. Turns out it refers to an elaborate system for classifying women’s bodies. What fun

Anyway feel free to tag yourself - I’m (n)

#Order #Borges #Foucault #TheOrderOfThings #Knowledge #CriticalTheory #Theory #Classification #Fantasy #Poststructuralism #Kibbe

Antonio Negri (1933-2023)
#Multitude #Empire #PoliticalPhilosophy #Marxism #PostStructuralism #Globalization #Decentralization #Cooperation #Networks

When I was studying #cinema in college, much of the underlying theory fueling my research was #structuralism, #PostStructuralism, #semiotics, #constructivism, and #AuteurTheory. I knew nothing of #Psychoanalysis, nothing of #Freud or #Lacan.

When #Zizek came out with his 2006 #film, THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA, it blew me away. Though I was done with college I still continued with a strong interest in cinema. I found his insights fascinating and provoking.

https://vimeo.com/512328135

[Continued] Then articulates 5 main an-pac contributions on: #fetishization of #violence; chronic sliding towards systemic #militarism; intersectional state-enforced #exploitation/#domination; structurings of international politics (current & potential); & questions of #politicalagency.

Throughout & towards end, positions these ideas against more established schools of #IRtheory, from #justwartheory to #realism, #liberalism, #Marxism, #poststructuralism, #feminism & others.

Pēc 20 gadu tvīkšanas izlasīju Fuko drauga R. Seneta Flesh and Stone: aizraujoši ģeniāls ceļojums pa iemīļoto pilsētu vēsturi, atklājot kā to plānojumus ir notiekusi sava laika izpratne par ķermeni. No zēnu politiski-seksuālās audzināšanas Perikla Atēnās līdz Ņujorkas 1980to AIDs un noziedzības drāmai. Kristiešu dzīres Adriana Romā, noziedzība viduslaiku Parīzē, no-krūtīm-pienu-šļācošas Fr. Revolūcijas skulpūras, Šailoks Venēcijas geto, Londonas metro un vēl un vēl. #poststructuralism, #urban

Out now (1/23):

https://www.beltz.de/fachmedien/soziologie/zeitschriften/zeitschrift_fuer_theoretische_soziologie/51349-zeitschrift-fuer-theoretische-soziologie-1-2023.html

Themen | Topics:
#phaenomenologie #phenomenology #poststructuralism #newmaterialism #KI #Ai #offentlichkeit #PublicSphere #evolution #MultipleDifferenzierung #MultipleDifferentiation

Archive (OA):

https://www.uni-muenster.de/Ejournals/index.php/zts/issue/archive

Ideas I have are: "queer theory", syndicalism, social ecology, marxism, "a tankie", #postmodernism #poststructuralism , "recuperation," "dual power," "propaganda of the deed" cybernetics, #neoliberalism "hegemony," "discourse" and even like "capitalism" "fascism." Like a glossary of terms relevant to social struggle that's both explicitly anarchist or anarchist adjacent.

#Poststructuralism - a short introduction

Western "common sense", itself a cultural construct, conspire against us to think us that we are what we are what we think.

#Poststructuralism - a short introduction

" We are born organisms of course, but we become subjects.
How?
By internalising our culture which is inscribed in the signifying practices which surround us by the moment we come into the world. We turn into subjects by the process of learning language, which means we become capable of signifying. "