Page 40 of After Life
“I was going for something without hands, and it was either a fish or a caterpillar, then I started picturing a caterpillar with a wee tool belt and all those feet holding hammers and spanners.” Oscar grinned sheepishly. “Rather adorable, really.”
I snorted. “Go check. I’ll start digging around for some ideas on these symbols.”
Oscar bent to give me one more kiss, then headed for the stairs, leaving me with my laptop and the sound of a growing storm outside.
The first several searches were fruitless. Plenty of symbology and leads on witchcraft and folk magic in the region but nothing like what I was seeing with the sigils in the book. It wasn’t until my fifth or sixth search, when I accidentally clicked on the wrong link, that I found a lead.
Create your own sigils! Financial security, love, happiness, success, protection and more! Simple instructions to craft your own!
“Jesus,” I muttered, moving to back page but then pausing when I noticed the twisting symbol on the top of the page.
I glanced at the door; Oscar was still upstairs, swearing at the shutters from the sound of things, so I scrolled down past the eye-searingly purple and green header to the alleged article.
Hey, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! I love love love making my own sigils and I’m always amazed when I meet other witches who think it has to be some arcane knowledge or difficult magicks! It’s super simple and you don’t need anything fancy to do it, but if you want to use your favorite oils and herbs it’s totally cool!
“Oh my god,” I muttered. “Am I about to do this? Take advice from someone who doesn’t know punctuation aside from exclamation points?”
Yes. Yes I was.
So the easy-peasy-pumpkin pie way to do this is get you a piece of paper (any kind will do!) and a pen, pencil, marker, paintbrush—
“We get it, a writing implement! I bet you’re the sort to post recipes with three pages of backstory before you get to the actual ingredients, aren’t you?”
I scrolled down until I found the actual directions about five paragraphs later.
So this is so so so easy, guys! Write out your intention, then mark out each repeating letter. Like if I wrote Protection And Business Success, I’d mark out the c’s, the u’s, the s’s, the n’s, and the e’s. Then take the remaining letters and weave them together!
The example given was so similar to the twisting designs on the sigils in the book that I had to scroll back to the top and start again. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
No. They were not.
I clicked on one of the other tabs, a staunchly academic journal geared toward anthropologists specializing in the study of magical symbolism. “Seriously, people,” I muttered. “Get your shit together. I just got this from Raven Moon Goddess Pixie Pink who may or may not have a PhD but is definitely the head of the Rainbow Cloud Fey Love Coven in Omaha.”
“Are you alright?” Oscar asked, pausing in the doorway with rain-damp hair and his cravat askew. “Fixed the shutter by the way. It wasn’t latched properly. I don’t think he even got ‘round to the back of the house.”
“Talking to myself,” I admitted. “Come see.”
Oscar headed over, letting out a low whistle when he saw the site I had open. “That’s definitely an eye-catching color combination.”
“Keep reading.”
“Shit...”
He scanned the page in silence another few passes, then fished the folded-up blotter paper from his waistcoat pocket. “We’ll never be able to sort out what they were making this for,” he muttered. Smoothing the page out, we both huddled over it on the end table. “Is that an O?” he asked, tracing a particularly large loop with the tip of his finger.
“Maybe. Or a Q.”
“That looks like part of an S,” he noted. “Maybe a B?”
I shook my head. “The way it’s drawn, it’s hard to separate the letters out individually. And even if we could, that doesn’t guarantee we’ll be able to sort out what they were making the sigil for.”
Oscar nodded, troubled. “What about the others?”
I pulled out the paper with the sigils I’d been able to copy from the book before it disappeared. “I wish I’d just thought to take pictures,” I muttered.
Oscar patted my shoulder. “There, there. You know I love me an old-fashioned man.”
“Oh, hush.” He laughed, and I hid a smile as we started examining the first sigil on my page. “Could be an R. Possibly a Y here.”
