Sigil Shoaling and Goal Mapping

Last time we spoke about sigils and the no 1 reason your sigil work may have gone awry. 

Today I want to actually talk about sigil shoaling, and what it really has to do with fish.

Sigil shoaling was created by Gordon White. Check out his blog runesoup.com if you haven’t already. Excellent blog and he also has a great podcast.

Sigil shoaling is basically a gathering of sigils in order to reach the main objective.

When we think of a group of fish, we usually refer to a “school of fish” as opposed to a “shoal of fish”, however, there is a difference between shoaling and schooling. When they’re shoaling they are gathered socially in the same spot, and it’s usually quite a large group. When they are schooling, they are all swimming in one direction and going to a destination.

Taking this into consideration, the basic principle is that you create a number of sigils for the directive of the bigger intent or larger intent, and you throw them all in. You then shoal your sigils. A term that Gordon White actually likes to use is “increasing the chaos”.

Imagine a group of fish that is shoaling. If you view it from the outside, from quite a distance, it looks quite chaotic, so they build up this chaos and then all of a sudden, they will start swimming in one direction to their destination.

So what we are going for here with the sigils is this increase in the chaos, building the energy up and then allowing it to explode so that they all move in one direction toward your larger intent, your objective, your target. That’s the main principle and it works pretty darn well.

In the last discourse I mentioned that your intent can’t be too broad, such as I want money, I want sex, I want love, I want lots and lots of marshmallows, okay marshmallows are quite specific, unless of course you want a specific colour of marshmallow. But if it’s something very broad then it’s very difficult to know how it’s going to actually manifest, because you haven’t set a proper specific intent.

So if you just throw it out there, then the subconscious, universe, whatever we want to call it, will go ok, well here it is. However, it then comes through a path that simply doesn’t align with what you had in mind.

Regarding this, someone previously asked, “Is it possible to write a larger sentence or even a paragraph, including directives you desire your spell to follow, such as specific conditions and dates?” and also went on to say, “…if broken up into chunks and sigilised, is this shoaling?”

Concerning the first part, it would be a bit difficult to write a long paragraph and then create a sigil from it because, as you know, when creating the will sentence, you break it down into consonants, into letters and then from those letters you then create your sigil. But if you’ve got a very long paragraph you’re going to end up with probably all the letters of the alphabet.

What you can do in this instance however (just to get a little off topic) is to use it as a prayer paper in conjunction with candle magick. A nice method to use in relation to this is to put a candle inside a jar, put herbs in just to boost the energy, and then write an entire page, with exactly what you want and with all of your directives, dates, everything and very specific. Then fold up that entire page and put it inside the jar. You can wrap it around the inside, but wrapped around in such a fashion that you can still burn the candle in the middle. Then you will take a small candle, put it inside and burn it down, seal it with a lid, and then store it somewhere, or bury it depending on what the actual intent is.

But when it comes to sigil magick what you could actually do is write an entire page or paragraph, whatever it may be, a bit like externalizing your intent, get it out of your head and into a solid form which is onto a piece of paper and into words. From there you can create an image that symbolizes your entire intent. If you are an artist, this would be a great deal easier. You can take that entire written piece and create an artwork out of it. There are no hard and fast rules to this. If it works for you through experimentation, then use it.

Concerning the second part, can you break it up into parts?

Yes you can. If you took that paragraph and broke it into chunks that you can actually make into sigils, then you can put them all together, throw them all in the pot, and do sigil shoaling.

So that is definitely an option.

The other thing I wanted to mention has to do with actually creating your goals.

I battle greatly with this myself.

You know, people ask, “What do you want?” I don’t know what I want half the time. I may say that I want lots of money, but I don’t want lots of money. 

If I have enough to pay the bills and be comfortable, buy a book every month and things like that, then I don’t need lots of money, I only need enough money.

People may say they want a new girlfriend or new boyfriend or a new spouse. I’m single and enjoying it, I don’t need any of that.

Maybe, to go on holiday, yeah sure, I want to go on holiday, but it’s really not that important. 

I enjoy my life, but the one thing I do require is a constant income every month, a constant base income.

Ok, so I could consider it from that point of view, that I need or I require this base income.

It is difficult to get to that point if you are listening to everybody else and I think this was my problem. If you are having the same problem, you might find the solution the same way. Break it down and be honest with yourself.

When you are watching all these videos on YouTube about people manifesting things,people filming from Bali or doing this or that, and they have this fantastic life. They probably don’t, but they portray themselves to have this fantastic life, and they portray themselves as extremely happy and it makes you want that as well. 

It creates resentment.

You might not want to actually admit that but it can create a bit of resentment, because this person has this life and it’s a life that you want. They’ve got it and they got it so easy, but you have been struggling for so long, why haven’t you got it?

This can make it very difficult to figure out what you want because you are clouded.

You know what you want, but you can’t put it into a specific thing.

So, forget about all of those people, they really don’t matter to you.

Their life is different, you have walked your own path through life and your experience in life is completely different to everybody else’s.

So, forget about me, forget about everybody else, it doesn’t matter. What matters is you.

And really think about it and if it does help to write it down, then write it down.

If it’s total nonsense, then it’s total nonsense. It doesn’t matter.

Through that nonsense you are going to find some order.

Just start trying to pinpoint what it is that you need. Taking my example again, my biggest is a basic income that is regular every month. Instead of it going up one month and down the next, just allowing me to survive, just to have a regular base income every month, and then anything extra is a bonus.

I don’t want to be rich, but if I say I want to be rich, that will solve the problems won’t it? But it’s not what I really want. I don’t want to be famous, but again, that will solve my problem because I will have a large income, but again, I don’t want that. What I do want is just that base income, and then I can save everything extra and go on holiday.

What I am trying to demonstrate here is that if you ask for things that you don’t really want, you are going to end up fighting against yourself, and you won’t be able to manifest anything. Your brain will start to ask why. Why do you want to be rich? Why do you want to be famous? It knows you don’t want those things, so it will push back. This creates doubt.

You need to become mindful of what you actually want, how you feel about things, how you feel about money.

If you don’t like money, you are going to reject it. That may sound strange, who doesn’t like money? But a lot of people will complain about money. As it comes in, it goes out; I hate money; money is evil, etc. etc. If you have said these things then you are creating a hatred for money. So you have to love money first of all, but if you don’t really need to be rich and it wouldn’t actually make you feel comfortable and happy, because it wouldn’t, then you’re going to start doubting.

Those doubts are going to come in and therefore it’s not going to manifest in any meaningful way.

So get down to what it is you really, really want.

Once you have gotten to that point, what’s next. Continuing with my own example, how do I make that income?

Web development has been my main business for many years, but what do I really want to be doing? I want to be teaching magick, healing people, writing books, and helping people by providing services for them. That’s what I really want to do, but that side of my business life needs to develop more, so I need to continue getting my main income through web development for a period of time, and at the same time, building my personal brand.

However, to develop my personal brand I need to make it the primary focus, otherwise I will be stuck in web development and the thought that that needs to take the primary lead, so a mind shift needs to take place. One by which I shift from thinking of web development as my main source of income, to my personal brand being that. Whatever comes from web development is then a bonus.

Now I have a more defined goal, some direction. Now I need to break that up into smaller bits which will determine how I will get there, what I use to make that reality manifest. So how do we do that? Because to create a sigil just for the above mentioned goal would be too broad.

I need to do marketing to create new clients.

I need to create synchronised moments where people find me during the time that they specifically need what I’m providing.

I need to create a loyal audience and the audience I have created thus far is incredible, they are my community.

Okay, there’s three already, there’s a few other things I could come up with.

Be more present on Facebook and Instagram, which I haven’t been, in order to grow audiences there as well.

So, there are four things. I can now create a sigil for each one of these, and then throw them all into the pot.

What you can also do is throw in completely and utterly random things. I want to have better health, I want to cure cancer, whatever, throw that in with everything else and that will add to the chaos, which increases the chaos and it builds up the energy more and more.

Then, as soon as one of the sigils starts to manifest, it creates more energy for the others to start manifesting, and you cause a chain reaction.

You can think of it like a spinning wheel with all your sigils attached. It spins faster and faster until all of a sudden one flies off and starts to manifest.

As it manifests, it bounces back and brings the energy in, adding to the chaos. Then the next one flies off, goes and manifests, comes back and builds up more energy, and on and on.

That’s the way I have come to understand and see sigil shoaling.

To take this even further, you can break down your smaller goals even further. Earlier I mentioned four things that I can do to get more business and build my personal brand. Take each of those and break those down, treating them as goals to get to, which then all comes together to reach the main objective.

As always, get creative and don’t limit yourself.

Hopefully you now understand sigil shoaling a bit better, and I hope this also helped anyone who is battling with their goals to actually create, understand and define those goals.