In seeking to deepen my spiritual connection to Marbas, I venerate him every day, opening myself his knowledge and energies. I asked him what could I do to further my ascension with him and he responded, as he has before: “Never Climax Alone.” Knowing that I have attempted rounds of NoFap — and failed — I decided to pick up this challenge and work harder at it. I considered designing a ritual around the ideal and, in support of that, I have designed a sigil as a focal point. Because I wanted this journal to include some “how to” information, I have decided to document the process.

Conception

Developing a solid idea of the concept one wants to codify into a sigil is the first major step to the design. This is not exactly the process of sketching out literal patterns or designs for the sigil itself, but more the design of the ultimate meaning of the sigil itself.

Joseph Campbell, a seminal historian and mythologist, drew a distinction between a “sign” and a “symbol.” A sign is defined as the literal shape or physical representation of a pattern, a figure, an image. While a symbol is “front loaded” with a sign, it’s the depth of the meaning behind the pattern that makes it powerful.

When designing a sigil, thought must be given to the symbol aspect of it. When I look at the sigil, what emotion, what thought, what magickal spark do I want to experience by looking at it.

To design the “Never Climax Alone” sigil, I had to stop and think about the aspects of the request from Marbas. This behavior — this avoidance of gratuitous climax and/or ejaculation when I’m alone — has meaning for Marbas because my spiritual education with him keeps coming back to this point. I thought about how masturbation turns me inward to a selfish place, where I care only about my own immediate gratification and nothing much else. I thought about how it relieves me of sexual tension to the degree that I would rarely seek out partners, and thus, would end up lonely. I remembered the cycle of this inward turning, how it fed on itself into a deeper and deeper negativity.

So, abandoning masturbation itself would seem a boon, right? Only, without masturbation, there comes the inevitable stress of being horny and the assumption of all the stress that, otherwise, would be dispelled by masturbation. I would have to shoulder all of that. NoFap did not feel like a new positive behavior.

Yet, Marbas keeps placing it in front of me, so I have to trust that a valid experience is being made by my practicing NoFap, and that maybe I hadn’t quite gotten through the hump of transition to it, or hadn’t been open to the experience enough to glean the benefit.

So, in designing the sigil’s symbolic meaning, I decided to take a different approach. Instead of this being something Marbas imposes on me, it’s something I willingly take up as valuable guidance from him. Instead of it being a deepening chore and a state of denial, it instead focused on the interesting experience of being perpetually horny and being capable of edging, something I know many bators swear by. NoFap, which implies total denial, became “Never Climax Alone,” which means I can stimulate myself, just not orgasm or ejacualate.

This new approach feels energetically different, as it moves me from feeling like a victim, to feeling like an active participant in the behavior change. I decided this would be the “payload” that the sigil would delivery when I looked at it or focused on it: I, as the Beast of Marbas, would adhere to his wishes as an act of devotion and I would use my power to bind myself to the ideal of never climaxing while alone.

Word Play

My method for creating a sigil comes from the practice of Chaos Magick, and I honestly forget where I learned the method itself. I might’ve been from forums or other websites, but I believe the foundational method derives from Chaos Magick.

When pondering the concepts above, I basically wrote down a lot of words: chastity, orgasm, cum, ejaculation, NoFap, Fap, stroking, edging, goon, bator, etc. I used these words to help frame the concept and basically came up with what has become a mantra: “Never Climax Alone.” These three words encapsulate what I feel is Marbas’ intent behind the practice, both on the restrictive sense (what I’m not supposed to do: orgasm or ejaculate without another human present) and the permissive sense (what I’m allowed to do: stroke, edge, goon, stimulate myself, etc.).

From these words — “Never Climax Alone” — we strike out the vowels to give us “N V R C L M X L N.” To design the sigil, these consonants should then be arranged into a shape.

I have a small sketchbook that I use for this sort of exercise, so I sketched out some shapes with the letters. I usually go through several iterations, discarding the ones that don’t resonate in the moment. The magician has to make the determination if a sigil is “right,” I suppose, as it has to align subconsciously with the concept that’s been designed for it to embody.

Once it’s right, the sigil can be used in ritual activities. I took mine out for a test drive by drawing up a spell card and leaving it on my altar to charge. Even when I drew the spell card, the sigil changed slightly in format, so I figured the process hadn’t yet completed.

Over several days, I sat down with my illustrator application on my laptop and hammered out the final form of the sigil. Presented in the gallery is the final and several variations that highlight how the individual characters are incorporated into the overall design.

When designing the sigil and incorporating the letters, be on the look out for how they can form other occult shapes or signs, or how you can incorporate other occult symbology into the design. For instance, one of the spokes of the sigil I designed has a compound symbol. Part of it is the alchemical symbol for sulfur (representing desires and emotions, which are in play in this concept). Part of the sulfur symbol is an upward pointing triangle, the alchemical representation of fire (representing passion and willful action, again ideas that are in play in the concept). Finally, the point of the triangle can be read as the letter “V,” which is in our list to incorporate from the mantra “Never Climax Alone.”

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The exercise of creating a sigil is layering meaning by encoding it in lines, curves, shapes, colors, etc. The more of of these that can be worked into a sigil, as long as the associations pertain to the overall concept, the more subconsciously meaningful the sigil will become when used.

Using the Sigil

Now that the sigil has reached it’s “final form,” I can definitely use it ritual. Chaos Magick suggests that the sigil needs to be charged, which implies it needs to be in a physical form that can be used bodily during a ritual. My spell card may suffice for that, as an example.

Sigils can be charged through meditating on it, either with a physical copy, or by envisioning it through directed concentration.

There’s no one way to make it work. Pick a method that is meaningful to your practiced and connected to the overall concept. For myself, I have used the spell cards before and burned them as a means to release the embodied concept into the Universe. For more permanent measures, I have gotten tattoos of sigils (one I designed, one a more traditional Goetia symbol).

It’s not clear yet whether I’ll be getting the Never Climax Alone sigil as a tattoo, but it’s on the table. Given the sigil’s effects, I’m leery about placing such a permanent restriction on myself without guidance from Marbas. In the meantime, I have charged the sigil many times through meditation and am planning to print the sigil (for quality sake) for a ritual I plan to design around it. This sigil will be the keystone of the spells I will cast on myself to enforce the prescription Marbas has made and as a touchpoint for me when I begin to waver or need reinforcement.