Day 1: Health. Because I learned about the challenge on Day 2 or 3, this was done retroactively.
Day 2: Queen. Since I hadn’t quite gotten my teeth into this project yet, there’s a lot I’d do differently now, but I decided to go with the nine planets, seeds (as they’re meant to resemble a lady’s birthing canal), a nine-pointed star, a crown, and declared the moon as the queen. This was very much informed by watching a lot of Sailor Moon as a teenage girl. The objective is smug empowerment.
Day 3: Deliverance. I initially panicked at this as a concept, but then calmed down a bit and referred back to Laura Zakroff’s book. You’re looking for a spiritual moment, that’s your objective. With the color green (green being the universally-ish recognizesd color of nature), you have this seed shedding layers until it’s reached an optimal form. It looks upward to a divine presence.
Day 4: Power. So, uh, during my time with online dating sites, I’ve kind of come to realize the power of a lady’s body, all right. I would like to tell you that it’s not universal except with heterosexual men, it seems universal. Bodies are important, and men have types, and I was several someone’s type. Because I’m pretty inexperienced with dating, and to come out of a marriage into the world of dating at 40 and then kind of fall feet first into some things... I was pretty shocked. I still am. It’s flattering sometimes, mostly upsetting to feel like a commodity first, person last. That’s why you’ve got asymmetrical palm leaves. The user of the sigil may need to shift the balance as needed because with power, there is imbalance. For the user’s protection, there are a couple signs of the triple moon goddess/the divine feminine, Mother Earth, the third eye, and a couple stars for good measure.
Day 5: Advocate. This took significant research and brainstorming. I decided that the Advocate was the King of Swords from Tarot: in Tarot, this is a masculine energy, often a scientist or lawyer, who is very fair and pragmatic. I looked up what astrological signs went with the King of Swords and what planet is associated with this card [neat trivia: tarot cards have an astrological and planetary association], and swords represent the element of air, air/swords are about communication and challenges and the King of Swords is the master of air, so who better to be your advocate? This sigil could be used used when important advice (or medical advice/legal counsel) is needed.
Day 6: Home. It was harder to draw than it was to think about: this is where I grew up and where I live right now and have lived for the past two years. The symbols are pre-Christian Ukrainian pysanky designs for things like home, memory, protection, ripples of time, when something is taboo, and the triad of time (past, present, future). There’s a cluster of six dots that means there’s a strong memory in that space to protect. My parents want to sell the house. I don’t want them to sell it. This is my ward of protection for the house and everything inside, all of the memories it has of my grandparents and my cats and friends visiting and becoming who I am today. Becoming someone else. My grandfather worked so hard for this house and he had so much pride in it. His dream was to have his family living all together.
Day 7: Learning. How many visual metaphors can you pack into “learning” without your sigil becoming unreasonably busy? I thought about trees and what learning means to me, and that means “accumulation of knowledge over a lifetime.” There’s not really a limit on that. Drawing a tree seemed like a bad idea. Stairs would go on forever. Drawing an ouroboros seemed like a copout. Recursive symbols and patterns, though, that I can get behind. Roman numerals for decades of an expected average life span for someone in my family. Shading is real subjective as to amount of knowledge accumulated in a decade. Waviness of lines pertains to aging effects on memory. Infinity symbols because there is actually no cap on what you can learn.
Day 8: Trade. The best part was painting those leopard spots. Complimentary colors representing two different sources trading equal (but you know, varied) elements into my favorite basket, the crescent moon. I was thinking a lot about my cat Gidget [who was diagnosed with cancer while I was working on this challenge] and the Egyptian cat gods and always wanting to improve my digital shading techniques while doing this. Oh, and you know, I wanted to depict an equal exchange between two entirely different entities. Trade should be fair. This sigil would ensure a fair trade. I thought a lot about the concept of fair trade and exploitation while I worked on this. What could I take from Gidget and what could I give her that was equal to what she gives me?
An early version of this sigil looked like a logo that had these abstract shapes based on the concept of tongue kissing. It was much weirder than it was romantic. The diagram approach is much better.
Day 9: Strength. I wished that this could have been Day 8 because the usage of roman numeral 8 would have folded into the day better, but hey, no problem. My original plan was to make something based on tungsten. I changed my mind and decided to look at Tarot again and went for major arcana # VIII, Strength (possibly my favorite of the major arcana, and definitely up there). In the Smith-Waite deck, Strength is depicted by a young lady and a lion. In some old and modern Ukrainian easter egg designs, strength is shown by lions (but mostly goats). I decided to take a lot of time drawing a fine lion head.I also consulted a Victorian language of flowers guide and discovered cedar symbolized strength as well. Lots of strength! Red is strength! Gold is a good secondary color! I hurt my wrists while working on this one.
Day 10: Solve. Since my wrists hurt from the day before, I went with an uncomplicated approach... a maze. Solving the maze (which isn’t that hard) which bears the tools and number of The Magician tarot card reminds you that you have everything you need to solve your problem. Do the maze anyhow. The answer lies within you.
Day 11: Ward. My wrists still hurt from working on the Strength sigil with bad posture, so I kept this simple.I kept thinking of scenes in anime where someone conjures a ward that involves a six-sided star with some magick geometry and included some tiny six-sided stars. Ukrainian easter eggs had swirls because the swirls were meant to trap and confuse any spirits who wandered into your home unwanted. There were all kinds of variations of swirls, but because I like patterns and recursive layers, I went with swirls on swirls inside a barrier inside another barrier. This is then a ward meant for banishing or trapping bad energy.
Day 12: Expansion. You want to grow something? Here’s your sigil for that. It was a nightmare to create because Sketch kept bugging out and I kept losing track of what symmetry setting I used to create the different design elements and kept drawing over things, so I redid this many times. Once again, using a hodgepodge of symbolism, including Ukrainian symbols. Ladders are for growth, the sun is for prosperity, there are plants for a good harvest... this is for luck and abundance.
Day 13: Eliminate. This is the least successful sigil because I put the least amount of thought into it. I thought taking the pentagram, which to me is a symbol of magick and protection, and swiping the eraser tool through it got the point across that you are using magick to eliminate something. Upon reflection, this looks more like I’m trying to eliminate the pentacle and what it symbolizes. Not successful. If I were to do this again, a pentacle wouldn’t be involved. I’d look at pysanky vocabulary for the answer. The Tower card is a good starting point. There were much better ways to handle this.
Day 14: Faith. This is a very personal sigil, so I would say that it’s best deployed for crises of faith. I’m not very interested in discussing the meaning, but I’ll talk about some of the details, like the tarot cards and some of the design elements. My six favorite tarot cards are shown at the bottom. The tarot cards are The Star, Queen of Swords, Three of Swords, Strength, Ten of Wands, Ace of Pentacles, and Five of Cups. They’re tiny illustrations based on the Modern Witch tarot deck by Lisa Sterle. There are seeds, eyes, stars, moons, and symbols of the divine feminine used in this design to remind me of my dad’s favorite Samuel Langhorne Clemens quote: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
Day 15: Preparation. This is the only one where I used a witch’s sigil wheel to create the sigil itself and the only one so far with a colored background. I made this as the West Coast burned.
This is also the first time that I used Procreate instead of Sketch on my new iPad. The witch’s sigil looked like a boat or a cooking tripod in relief. I tried to remember what tarot card was about preparation and remembered (looked up) that it was the Three of Wands. The Three of Wands depicts a man with three wands looking about with a pretty satisfied look as he’s getting ready to move on to some big new plans (in the Four of Wands) and he’s checking out three sailboats in the water. My three sigils looked horribly phallic in the water. Thus, I wondered “why am I redrawing this card?” so I looked up what astrological signs went with the Three of Wands.
That’s when some remarkable things happened with this sigil. Wands are fire and it’s about hot-blooded flaring passions and whatnot. My color dictionary says black and red = “preparedness.” Here you go. Your fire safety preparedness sigil. I’m a pretty big fan of the law of threes and the illuminated three shining a light on the contained fire, flanked by the three of wands, to remember the consequences of being stupid with fire. How many times does California have to burn? Fire is as beautiful an element as water, wind, and earth. All three have lethal force. I was worried that this might not say “preparation” well, but I think I explained it well enough.
Day 16: Permission. My thoughts went back to the times where my permission was not sought when doing something that significantly changed my circumstances. There have been a few. This is a sigil encouraging permission to be sought before doing something that’s going to interfere in my life. Look how happy I’ll be! So many hearts are generated when you just ask permission first.
Day 17: Goal. This is meant to become a pysanky in the future. Birds are about goals, wheat is about a successful harvest, the sun is about happiness, I like pussy willows and I wanted to use them so I did, the mesh is a protective motif and you need to protect your goals as much as you can. Swirls acknowledge that you can get sidetracked, but confining them in four walls tries to keep that to a minimum. One of the sun’s spokes has 21 lines, 21 is the number of The World tarot, the penultimate card and end of The Fool’s journey. It’s a number of luck and success. There is your motivation to achieve your goals on an egg. This is more of a lucky charm.
Day 18: Challenge. I hadn’t started on that day’s sigil challenge yet when I got the news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away. From there, the challenge sigil was obvious: her Banana Republic dissent collar was it. Where sew-on gems would have otherwise gone, symbols of protection or power instead went. Who better to embody when facing a challenge than RBG [in dissent]?
Fun fact: Banana Republic reissued the collar in 2019. Don’t think I’d be shocked if it came back again in 2021.
Day 19: Distorted. This is based on The Moon tarot card. I don’t know why I chose an Eye of Horus, but it turns out that it’s associated with the moon, so good call. The Moon it’s a warning or a bit of caution about all not being as it seems. Things are hidden in the moon’s shadow and such. There’s a distorted eye obscuring a cleared-up eye. This sigil is for getting to the bottom of weird information, or things that seem off. Wait a bit, and the right answer will come around.
Day 20: Revive. Shining and glowing like the sun, I wanted to use the color of my favorite citrine (which is really every citrine) to show an energetic swirling pattern with an infinitely shining sun with two watchful eyes (I love eyes). Like a shot of caffeine. Look at it to feel revived, especially in the late afternoon or whenever is your peak low-energy time.
Day 21: Authority. What does that mean to me? At first, I was going to go really negative. I decided what was needed was protection from authority. So, let’s call upon everyone and everything possible—triple moon goddess, TWO different evil eyes, guardian angels, earth elements, and hey let’s throw in the kitchen sink and ask for the aid of the planets—for protection from those in authority who might not have our best interests at heart.
Day 22: Transmute. Let’s turn a broken heart into something lovely! I looked up alchemy symbols and admit here and now to knowing nothing about alchemy and hope that this doesn’t mean “bismuth lawyer” or something nonsensical. Dark pink is simply because I like the color. There’s a crane-ish bird because they symbolize good fortune and all kinds of good things. There are dahlias for inner strength and peonies for good fortune. When I started this challenge, it was to distract myself from a few unhappy thoughts, so I thought a sigil to remind myself of my ability to turn heartbreak into art was a good one.
Day 23: Locate. First, I thought “GPS! Google Maps! Mapquest!” and then I thought “dowsing rods because it has to be supernatural” and then I thought vintage maps because it has to be anachronistic. I spent far too much time on all of these things coming up with something that wasn’t a sigil. I got frustrated and suddenly, an idea came to me. Third eye, dowsing rods, chevrons, curves to show movement. Locate. Locate what you need to locate... person, place, or thing.
Day 24: Whole. What better to remind yourself that you are here and whole and part of something bigger than yourself than a view of the solar system? The sun is made out of the lunar cycle, yes. Artistic license.
Day 25: Prize. Another pysanky design. The center is a clover (luck) and repeats for love, happiness, prosperity, good fortune, love, repel negativity, and puts a nice barrier around all of your good fortune. That seems like a good prize.
Day 26: Immune. I looked at a diagram of an antibody on Wikipedia and it looked a little like an IUD. I filled that shape with magickal symbols for wellness and prosperity, plus the double-whammy of a caduceus and the Staff of Asklepios. The latter was the person who really deserves to be associated with healing, the former is the staff of Hermes, God of Commerce and often the preferred choice of insurance companies and ambulance services. It’s a bit like my sigil for health, but everything is in pairs.
Day 27: Articulate. Articulate is a visual pun for me, a person who collected ball-jointed dolls for a zillion years and who is forever tripping over words. There’s also nothing I find more satisfying than dropping an SAT word in where a totally sublunary (ha!) one would do in my writing, which is never as articulate as I’d like. Here’s a dang sigil reminding me of the basics: a ball-jointed doll, the English alphabet, eight parts of speech, punctuation, and how those things might get expressed are suggested in empty speech bubbles. There’s obviously a ton more nuance to language than that, but for someone who gets tongue-tied and carried away and writes too much where a simple statement would do, this works for me.
Day 28: Multiply. This is meant to increase a thing in your life that you’d like. It was also an excuse for me to use Pantone Neons. How I imagine this being used is as an embroidery on a patch or directly on a denim jacket. My hope would be for little miracles... eggs with two yolks, buy one, get one free sales, your plants grow new shoots or bud when you never knew they did, you get more good news than usual... everyone can use some more good multiplication.
Day 29: Integration. . My original thought and concept was to do a racial integration sigil. I showed the design to my mom, and she had a visceral reaction to it as looking like something from a horror movie. Not the reaction I hoped for. I thought about it some more and thought that there are going to be other opportunities to address racial inequity through art, so I’d table this for now. I went witch. I integrated traditional witchcraft with the conveniences of modern technology to make it easy to get a symmetrical result when combing the unbroken line used to write the word “Coven” and create an eight-pointed starand then rejoin that line with the first C in “coven,” creating an unbroken line with eight others. There’s your integration and then some. For use when you need to combine what appears to be unlike elements, or maybe when combining old traditions with new ideas.
Day 30: Reset. For the culmination of everything, boy, did I feel pressure to make something spectacular, except that I already made my most spectacular sigil (Challenge is my personal favorite). Today, after watching the debates and reading the news and having some conversations and ruminating about the past, I was feeling ready for that reset when I lost my temper with my mom over a discussion on ranked-choice voting.
The thing you want to forget about is trapped in a barrier. Venus is summoned to clear the slate and put you at zero. The seven-pointed fairy star gives you an extra boost of luck to go forth and make a new future from the one you’re leaving behind. You can’t change the past, but you can regain control your future. It’s hard and sometimes it feels impossible to know where or how, but people do it every day.
Last thoughts
While I don’t think it’s wise to talk about my personal beliefs in my professional portfolio of work, this is personal work (and I sometime question the wisdom to include it, but this felt like a relevant exercise in abstraction of abstraction of abstraction for a niche audience). I’m not Wiccan or Pagan, I’m even Catholic though fairly agnostic and I have a lot of candles and crystals as I hear a lot of millennials (and those on the cusp like myself) do these days. Experiencing witchcraft as a not-as-young woman offers rebellion, feminism, sisterhood, friendship, understanding, safety, respect, and support for one another, regardless of length of practice. What I’ve discovered is that the practice of making sigils and spells and tarot is a lot like goal-setting and affirmation with accessories. The artistry of tarot, candlemaking, stone polishing, jewelry making, pottery, and the many material works involved in the world of the witch are constantly booming. The creativity being shown is inspiring. It bummed me out a little to see that sigil magic wasn’t getting terribly creative on Instagram... things tended to look similar. My biggest concern was not wanting to make sigils that looked like logos. The least successful sigil I made is the one that looks most like a logo. At the same time, the most popular one [of all the ones I posted on Instagram] is the one that takes a recognizable item and adds the witch’s symbols. This taught me quite a bit about magick sigils, was useful practice for logo making, and was a neat diversion.