Body Paint Sigil Technique

It seems that every sigil I work out using Roman or Greek letters eventually can be collapsed into the shape of a cross within a circle. The circle-cross can then be reduced further and further until it becomes nothing more than a dot. I do not find it desirable to have the same sigil for everything I do.

To get around this I have started to write down my statements of intent in a different alphabet which I devised myself in my youth in order to properly represent the sounds in a "channeled" trance language. Later I added more letters to represent phonetic values in languages I know. I have come up with some very pretty sigils, simple enough so I can hold them in  my mind at gnosis, and complicated enough so that when I'm done they don't linger too much in the long term memory.

Writing Sigils on the Body:

It has a nice shamanistic feel to it, and seems to work. I have so far used it in spells which draw things to myself, and in that drawing things on the body makes a kind of poetic sense. In one instance, I drew the sigil (created with above method) on my left hand with a blue pen on Friday, and on Saturday I had the thing I desired (which I had been seeking for two months in the mundane manner).

Body Paint:

I have since childhood been making herbal concoctions for magickal purposes. So it seems almost natural that I ended up combining hedge witch cookery with sigil magick, my new favorite thing. I made mendhi paste with which to draw on my body. There are many recipes for mendhi and many things can be added in addition to the henna to make it darker/yellower/redder, or what have you. This gives the opportunity to add herbs of an occult significance. My recipe was:

In a pot boil:
3 or 4 teaspoons of coffee
3 or 4 teaspoons of black tea
1 tsp crushed cloves
3 stick cinnamon
3 tsps turmeric
2 tsps tamarind
1 tsp sugar

Note: don't add the turmeric. It's a thickener and will turn the whole mess into a pudding. It adds a nice bright yellow, but it's not worth the trouble. The longer you boil the mixture, the darker it will be. It shouldn't be boiled for less than 10 minutes. Then let it cool, so it's hot, but touchable. Filter out the crud, and add the liquid little by little to some *sifted henna*.

Then put the whole mess in a sealed (not metal!) container. It's good to let it sit over night. When paining time comes, spoon it into a plastic baggie, and cut a tiny bit off one of the corners. Then you can squish the paste through the corner into the desired shape. Depending on your skin it can last for a couple of weeks. On me it's about 2 weeks. It's really good to have an assistant for the painting part, or at the very least have all sorts of clean up material very handy.

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