Modern systems: close reading
Chaos magic:
sigils, belief, evidence
Chaos magic began in England in 1976-1978 with Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin; it treats belief as a tool and makes sigils by Austin Osman Spare’s 1913 method. No study shows that sigils change events; a sign you made can still work as a reminder.
Chaos magic is a modern magical practice, started in England in 1976-1978, that treats belief as a tool and makes personal sigils by Austin Osman Spare’s 1913 method. Its founders, Peter J. Carroll (born 1953) and Ray Sherwin (born 1952), wanted magic without fixed doctrine, judged by results (Otto, 2019).
Who started chaos magic, and when?
Chaos magic was started by Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin, who worked together from 1976 at the latest; its birth is usually dated to 1978, the year of Carroll’s Liber Null (Otto, 2019, p. 762), which Otto also gives for Sherwin’s The Book of Results; a 2023 study of the early editions gives 1979 (Meletiadis, 2023).
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1913 | Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) self-publishes The Book of Pleasure in London, with his sigil method (LoC) |
| 1972 | Kenneth Grant (1924-2011) revives Spare’s sigils in The Magical Revival (LoC) |
| 1976-1977 | The two announce an order, the Illuminates of Thanateros (IOT) |
| 1978 | Liber Null, first edition; The Book of Results (1978 in Otto, 1979 in Meletiadis) |
| 1986 | Seminar in Bonn with Ralph Tegtmeier: the IOT re-formed as “the Pact” |
| 1987 | Liber Null & Psychonaut, one volume, Weiser, USA (LoC) |
| 1992-1993 | Phil Hine’s Condensed Chaos and Prime Chaos (Otto, 2019; Open Library) |
Sources give 1976, 1977 or 1978 for the order because the IOT was announced in 1976-1977, was at first “rarely more than a loose correspondence network” in the order’s own 2002 history, and was re-formed only in 1986 (Otto, 2019, pp. 774-775). The 1976-1978 dates come from Otto and Meletiadis; library records confirm 1913, 1972 and 1987. Why we date claims: Ask for the date.
How did Austin Osman Spare make a sigil?
In The Book of Pleasure (1913), Spare tells you to write a wish as one sentence, merge its letters into one simple sign, hold that sign in mind when you are exhausted, and then deliberately forget it.
- The sentence. His example: “This my wish to obtain the strength of a tiger”.
- The sign. The letters are joined into a shape that is easy to picture and does not look like the wish.
- The state. He calls it “vacuity”, reached by tiring mind and body; his list runs from mantras to tennis and patience (the card game), and he says drugs are useless.
- Forgetting. Outside the ritual moment the sign is to be pushed away, “a deliberate striving to forget it”.
Spare called sigils “the art of believing”. He also rejected what we would now call affirmations: telling yourself you are great while you feel incapable is, in his words, “ceremonial insincerity”. His promise that what is believed by sigils “is always fulfilled” is his claim (1913), not a finding. We quote a typed transcription (Internet Archive); Otto places the method on pp. 29-30 of the 1913 print.
Spare drew for Aleister Crowley’s journal The Equinox (1909) and stayed in Crowley’s order, the A∴A∴, until 1912 without becoming a full member (Baker’s biography, 2011, via Wikipedia).
Are sigils ancient?
The word is old, the method is not: sigil comes from Latin sigillum, “seal”, and older magic used set seals of spirits, some traced from a spirit’s name on a number square (Wikipedia, citing Greer, 2003), but building your own sign from the letters of a wish appears first in Spare’s 1913 book.
Historian of religion Bernd-Christian Otto (2019, pp. 766-767) describes earlier sigils as set drawings, copied from books and often tied to lists of demons; he suggests, as a guess rather than a finding, that Spare may have drawn on printed editions of the Key of Solomon (1889) and the Goetia (1904), the latter with 72 spirits and their seals.
Online, the story is told backwards. A 2023 guide, quoting a TikTok creator, calls a sigil a way “to make your affirmations come true” and says sigil magic is “rooted in ancient history” (YourTango, updated 28 January 2023). The record shows a method from 1913, by an author who rejected affirmations.
What does “belief as a tool” mean in chaos magic?
“Belief as a tool” is the chaos-magic idea that you choose a belief for what it does, hold it for a set time and then drop it, instead of holding it because you think it is true.
- Random beliefs. Liber Null has a chapter of six beliefs to try in turn (paganism, monotheism, atheism, nihilism, “chaoism”, superstition), each for a week, a month or a year (1987 edition, pp. 73-77, as summarised by Otto, 2019, p. 770).
- Gnosis. Carroll’s word for the altered state in which, he says, beliefs can be implanted for magic, reached either by stilling the mind or by excitement (p. 31, via Otto, p. 772).
- “Chaos”. Not just disorder: Carroll gives the name Chaos to the force he believes animates the universe (p. 157, via Otto, p. 765).
Otto (2019, p. 771) puts it in one line: chaos magicians “filed away the whole issue of truth”. If you hold a faith, this is a claim about method inside one small movement, not a verdict on your faith.
Is chaos magic Hermetic?
Not in any documented sense: chaos magic grew out of twentieth-century English occultism, which had itself borrowed Hermetic names, tables and rituals, so the line runs through borrowings, not one unbroken teaching.
| Link | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Golden Dawn, London, 1888 | Ritual magic with Hermetic and Qabalistic tables; its rituals in print 1937-1940 (Regardie) |
| Crowley, The Equinox, 1909 | Spare drew for it; Sherwin’s New Equinox (1976) echoes its title |
| Spare, 1913 | The sigil method; the transcription we read never mentions Hermes |
On our Modern systems line it stands near Neville Goddard and Reality Transurfing, which also put the mind at the centre of change. Spare’s advice to stop thinking of the wish sits closer to Transurfing’s “lower the importance” than to Neville’s living as if the wish were fulfilled: a likeness, not a borrowing. Old texts, such as the Picatrix (about 959 CE, set images for planets) or the tables of correspondences, are a source of questions here, not proof.
Do sigils work? What research shows
No published study has tested whether sigils change events: a PubMed search on 12 November 2026 found no trial of sigil or chaos magic, only one history paper; research tests the parts instead, such as expectation, ritual and reminders.
| Technique | From | What studies show |
|---|---|---|
| A sign made from a wish | Spare, 1913 | No trials. A distinctive cue where you act helped people follow a plan: 74% vs 42%, N = 77 (Rogers and Milkman, 2016) |
| Forgetting the sign | Spare, 1913 | Trying not to think of something tends to bring it back later (Wegner, 1987; reviews 2001, 2020) |
| Belief chosen for its effect | Carroll, 1987 ed. | Pills known to be placebo eased self-rated IBS symptoms, N = 80 (Kaptchuk, 2010); in healthy people, an effect on self-reports but not on objective measures (2023 review) |
| Ritual against nerves | Rites in general | Small or mixed effects in preregistered tests: N = 180 (2018), N = 268 (2022) |
| Gnosis before “charging” | Carroll, 1987 ed. | Not tested as such |
| Intention as a plan | Psychology | If-then plans: d = 0.65 across 94 tests (2006); 0.27-0.66 across 642 (2024) |
A much-cited 2016 study, in which a short ritual calmed people before singing in front of others, was retracted in 2024 at the authors’ request; an internal audit by one co-author found no raw data for any of its six studies and problems in several datasets (retraction; audit; Many Co-Authors). We also leave out a 2014 study of rituals and grief, co-written by Francesca Gino, whose co-author reports lacking the data to reproduce it (entry). None of the studies above tests a sigil.
How can you use a sigil in five minutes? A sigil as a reminder
Use a sigil as a reminder you designed, not a spell: turn one if-then plan into a small sign and put it where the decision happens, so that seeing it cues the step.
- Write the plan (1 minute). One line: “When [situation], I will [step you control]”.
- Make the sign (2 minutes). Cross out repeated letters (many guides also drop vowels) and join the rest into one shape you can draw in five seconds.
- Place it (1 minute). At the point of decision: laptop lid, phone lock screen, fridge door.
- See it, act. When it catches your eye, take the step. Unlike Spare, do not try to forget it: this sign is meant to be seen.
- Count after a week (1 minute). Times you saw it, times you acted. Keep it, move it or drop it.
Example.
Plan: when I sit down at my desk, I open the draft first.
Letters left: W H N S T D M Y K P R F.
Sign: one knot of lines, on a note on the laptop lid.
Day 7: seen 7 times, acted 5; email won twice.
Next week: same sign, also on the phone lock screen.
Why it might help. A distinctive cue at the moment of action helped people follow through in a one-session lab test with a statuette chosen by the researchers (Rogers and Milkman, 2016); a sign seen daily can fade, so step 5 lets you move it. The if-then line does the planning. If AI tools plan much of your day, this is one cue you chose yourself (cognitive offloading).
Where it stops. It reminds you; it does not act on other people or on events. If checking, redrawing or fear of having “done it wrong” starts to take time or cause distress, stop and talk to a doctor.
What does this not promise?
Neither chaos magic nor the exercise above promises money, health, love or a changed life; at best, a sign you made reminds you of a step you have already chosen.
- Not a treatment. If rituals, checking or intrusive thoughts take over your day, see a doctor or a licensed therapist.
- Not a recommendation of any order. We describe the IOT’s history only; both founders later left it: Sherwin around 1986, Carroll after a split in the early 1990s, publicly in 2016 (Otto, 2019, pp. 778-779).
- Not the risky routes. Chaos-magic books list drugs, pain and exhaustion as roads to gnosis (Otto, 2019, pp. 771-772); we do not recommend them, and Spare himself called drugs useless.
| Began | England, 1976-1978 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Peter J. Carroll, Ray Sherwin |
| First books | Liber Null (1978), The Book of Results (1978 or 1979) |
| Sigil method | Austin Osman Spare, 1913 |
| Core idea | Belief as a tool |
| Order | IOT, announced 1976-1977, re-formed 1986 |
| Research | No trial of sigils; cue studies are related |
| Also spelled | Chaos magick |
| Checked | 13 November 2026 |
Fair questions
What is chaos magic?
Chaos magic is a modern magical practice started in England in 1976-1978 by Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin. It treats belief as a tool chosen for its effect and makes personal sigils by Austin Osman Spare’s 1913 method.
Who invented sigil magic?
Signs of spirits are old, but making your own sigil from the letters of a written wish goes back to Austin Osman Spare’s The Book of Pleasure (1913). Kenneth Grant revived the method in 1972, and Carroll and Sherwin made it central to chaos magic from 1978.
How do you make a sigil?
In Spare’s method you write a wish as one sentence, join its letters into one simple sign, fix it in mind in a state of exhaustion, then try to forget it. Many modern guides first cross out repeated letters, often vowels too.
Do sigils actually work?
No published study has tested whether sigils change events; a PubMed search on 12 November 2026 found no trial. Related research shows that a distinctive cue placed where you act can help you follow a plan, which is how a sigil can serve as a reminder.
What does “belief is a tool” mean in chaos magic?
It means choosing a belief for what it does, holding it for a set time and then dropping it, rather than holding it because it is true. Peter J. Carroll’s Liber Null, in its 1987 edition, suggests trying six beliefs, such as paganism or atheism, for a week, a month or a year.
Sources & further reading
- B.-C. Otto, “The Illuminates of Thanateros and the institutionalisation of religious individualisation”, in Religious Individualisation (De Gruyter, 2019), pp. 759-796, open access, doi, read from an archived PDF. Our source for 1972-1987 and for Carroll and Hine, whom we did not read.
- A. O. Spare, The Book of Pleasure (London, 1913), LoC; quoted briefly from a transcription. Public domain in the US (Cornell chart: published abroad before 1931); in the UK protected for 70 years after the author’s death (gov.uk), so by our count to the end of 2026.
- Records only, not read: Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987, LoC); Sherwin, The Book of Results; Hine, Condensed Chaos, Prime Chaos.
- V. M. Meletiadis, “‘Book Zero’ through the Years”, Aries 25:1 (2023), open access, doi; abstract only: The Book of Results 1979, 1980, 1981.
- Wikipedia, Chaos magic, Sigil, Austin Osman Spare (read 12 November 2026), only where the text says so.
- Cues and plans: Rogers and Milkman, 2016, text; Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006, abstract; Sheeran and colleagues, 2024, abstract.
- Thought suppression: Wegner and colleagues, 1987, abstract; meta-analyses 2001, 2020.
- Open-label placebo: Kaptchuk and colleagues, 2010, text; meta-analysis of healthy samples, 2023.
- Ritual and anxiety: Karl and Fischer, 2018, abstract; Lang, Krátký and Xygalatas, 2022, text.
- Brooks and colleagues, 2016, retracted (notice); internal audit by J. Schroeder, OSF, 2024; Many Co-Authors 53, 82 (read 12 November 2026).
- PubMed, chaos magic and sigil magic, 12 November 2026: one history paper.
- Online claim: YourTango, updated 28 January 2023.