Talk:Sigil

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plural[edit]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
You're gonna depend on a preponderance of google hits to tell you "truth"? The plural of sigillum is sigilla. 68.100.231.72 (talk) 18:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Checked Google Ngram Viewer. The -ia forms are so negligible they could probably be ignored as typoes. --Euniana/Talk 11:07, 27 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Coca-Cola uses sigils?[edit]

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)[reply]

This is sounds like things said by Grant Morrison, yeah, the comic writer... things that people with some relevance say, but I tried to find any reliable reference to this and so far, nothing —Nanami73⚓ (talk) (contributions) 17:40, 18 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hugh Bayard Urban, professor of religious studies at Ohio State Universities Department of Comparative Studies and author of eight books and several academic articles, has described chaos magic as a union of traditional occult techniques and applied POSTMODERNISM. Cam.revillot (talk) 03:19, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse[1][2] defined by an attitude of skepticism toward what it characterizes as the grand narratives of modernism, opposition to notions of epistemic certainty or the stability of meaning, and emphasis on the role of ideology in maintaining systems of socio-political power. Cam.revillot (talk) 03:20, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You're making the article less accurate by removing postmodern "because magic bad!" Cam.revillot (talk) 21:09, 17 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Magikal and Magik[edit]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
I have, but it's rare. Go with the "ck."
Septegram 21:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

The word Magic is spelt with the letter 'c' and not 'ck' . Monzukai (talk) 13:51, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, they are both pronounced the same. Aren't they?! Monzukai (talk) 13:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive reliance on Morrison[edit]

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)[reply]

Pseudoscience[edit]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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.

Merge[edit]

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)[reply]

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


Trivia[edit]

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)[reply]


Modern use[edit]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]

References[edit]

Most of this article appears uncited. I'm takking it as such, and hopefully someone can come up with valid references that meet WP:RS. If not, i'll start peppering the article with little citation needed marks in a few days, and eventually unsourced material will be removed so that we can build a halfway decent article on this. Firestorm (talk) 20:16, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weird Paranoia[edit]

Am I the only one that doesn't like looking at a sigil that I didn't make and that has a purpose unknown to me? I really wonder what that sigil in the picture as made to do. I realize most of you who read this will think I'm crazy for even worrying about something like this, but that doesn't bother me. Does anyone know what the sigil on this page was created to do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.2.61.160 (talk) 08:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Historical uses section needs dates[edit]

Can someone familiar with the sources please edit the Sigil_(magic)#Historical_uses section to add some dates. Approximations or even centuries would be quite helpful, thanks. Bricaniwi (talk) 14:14, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hebrew Influence[edit]

Although ancient Hebrew has the word 'Segula' (meaning something like 'special reserve'), there is no record of it ever being used in this context (meaning 'magical charm') prior to medieval times. So it's more likely that the new Hebrew meaning was influenced by the Latin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.167.106 (talk) 20:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sigil (computer programming) and Sigil[edit]

There are Sigil (computer programming) and Sigil and they should be mentioned in Sigil (magic) as a different meaning. Sorry, don't know how to do it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pavel Senatorov (talk • contribs) 06:47, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Pavel Senatorov:  Done. I used {{otheruses}}, but there are a bunch of “you might be looking for this article” type templates. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 23:15, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:07, 10 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 16 November 2019[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

– The WP:COMMONNAME for a Seal (emblem) is certainly not "sigil" in common parlance. By and large most people know sigil as a magical marking, thus it is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for this word. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 21:08, 16 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • The "sigil" term in programming is evidently derived from the magical term, so the magical one has greater longterm significance versus a predominantly recent, niche tech term.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 07:27, 21 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

make paragraph: modern usage[edit]

Add photos.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Sigil&oldid=1210374729"