The tag alias #55645 sigil -> deervvitch has been rejected.

Reason: Artist moved to new account: https://www.furaffinity.net/user/sigil

EDIT: The tag alias sigil -> deervvitch (forum #322515) has been rejected by @bitWolfy.

Sigil is also a word for a kind of symbol or signet, generally for occult purposes. I don't think it should be an (alias for an) artist tag, especially since there's a number of characters with the name.

The very first search result for sigil is a mistagged post featuring an actual demonic sigil, not by this artist, and currently missing the actual artist tag. This alias isn’t a good idea. Better to just move all the artist’s posts over to the new tag and change this one back to the general category.

scaliespe said:
The very first search result for sigil is a mistagged post featuring an actual demonic sigil, not by this artist, and currently missing the actual artist tag. This alias isn’t a good idea. Better to just move all the artist’s posts over to the new tag and change this one back to the general category.

Makes sense

scaliespe said: Better to just move all the artist’s posts over to the new tag and change this one back to the general category.

I'll get on that. When I'm done, someone will need to consolidate the artist pages, which I don't know how to do:
https://e621.net/artists/1655
https://e621.net/artists/1656
https://e621.net/artists/47662

I put all the links at the new tag and checked if they were still good, most of them were

shadyguy said: I put all the links at the new tag and checked if they were still good, most of them were

thanx. Almost done. Thank god for watermarks. Sigil/deervvitch put a signature on almost everything, which greatly sped up the process.

Less unambiguous choices:

I only found two true mistags: post #254582, which was actually by peachesmcgee, and post #2985939, which was by masterzoroark666

Also, there's an existing sigil_(symbol) tag, which I am inclined to leave in place, in case people keep tagging sigil for the artist.

Found the source for post #254581, it was indeed peachesmcgee. Also found yet another one of deervvitch's accounts: SigilStuff

matrixmash said:
post #176726, post #223136, post #223432, post #223433, post #223434: All similar style, no source links. In the comments on post #176726 someone says it's deervvitch's work and the signatures all look the same (except post #223433, which has no signature). All the characters are owned by deervvitch.

All of these were uploaded Sigil, an account that was linked to the artist page. That is, it's (most likely) been verified to be the artist.
I changed the tags on all of those to deervvitch.

Thanks for all the hard work sorting those out.

The tag alias sigil -> deervvitch (forum #322515) has been rejected by @bitWolfy.

Now the question is what to do about sigil. Alias it to sigil_(symbol), or the other way around? Invalidate it? Personally, I think the (symbol) suffix is a bit unnecessary, especially since there is no longer any artist by the same name. We could set up a sigil_(artist) -> deervvitch alias in case anyone tries to find the artist via the old name, and just use this tag for actual sigils.

scaliespe said:
Now the question is what to do about sigil.

matrixmash said:
I agree the (symbol) suffix is unnecessary, and if we don't make an alias from sigil_(artist), we should at least leave a disambiguation note on the wiki page for sigil.

Should we keep sigil as a tag? There's no wiki definition for sigil_(symbol) and only about ten images anyway. So my first instinct is to destroy it. However, looking at the tag history,, a lot of people have tried to add the sigil tag for pentacles or other circular symbols, but they all got rolled back. So people are using it; it's just the artist tag got in the way.

It's a useful tag, too: there are a LOT of drawings with these "magical" looking circles.
post #2469830 post #2856456 post #2856964
Looking for existing tags, there's pentacle, pentagram, and alchemical_symbol, which are specific subtypes. There's summoning_circle, which has no definition and presumably only applies if there's creatures coming out, and magic_circle, which applies in many cases but doesn't cover images like
post #2985939, where the circle looks like an ink "stamp" on top of the paper rather than part of the image, and
post #2704359, where the "circle" is a tattoo like object in a diffuse shape, and
post #1930995, where the "circle" is not magical at all, but just ink, and
post #1470818, where the sigil isn't in a circle (maybe that's just a symbol, though).

So option one is alias sigil -> magic_circle, which would work in the majority of cases, and just exclude the edge cases in the definition. I'm in favor of this since it's the least work.

Option two is to try to define sigil to cover the edge cases which magic_circle doesn't get, then put sigil into use. Category:general, give it a wiki page and a link back to this forum, and do a bulk update from sigil_(object) to sigil. Then someone can go through and manually restore the posts that should have been sigil_(object.
If we do go that route, my plan for a definition would be very generic:
"Mystical" is intentionally vague, since artists signal it in a lot of different ways, and there's going to be a bit of "I know it when I see it." We could also do something more specific, like:
And maybe also imply summoning_circle -> magic_circle

Firstly, I appreciate how much thought you put into this reply.

So, in order to determine how the sigil tag is to be used, I thought it might be helpful to lay down a dictionary definition for reference.

So… it’s a little vague, but I think we can safely call it an “occult symbol.”

I don’t think aliasing it to magic_circle is a great idea. A magic circle, according to the wiki, is like a circle made from magic. Glowing, projected into the air or onto a surface via arcane powers. It could be a sigil, but I think it often won’t be, and a sigil often won’t have those magical properties. As you pointed out, it could just be something like ink on paper. And not only that, but a sigil doesn’t have to take the shape of a circle.

So, I think we ought to do something different with the tag. Here I must admit I personally have a bit more familiarity with a certain type of sigil. Someone very close to me is an avid student of occultism, particularly demonology. I’ve been involuntarily educated on the topic to a fair degree, and there is a specific type of sigil used in demonology which I associate with the term. Each “known” demon has its own sigil that represents it, and these sigils originate from some very old texts on the subject. The post which I brought up in my initial comment on this thread, and mentioned again by you just now (post #2985939) contains one such sigil that I recognized as the sigil of Asmodeus. The artist didn’t just come up with that one; it’s been around for a long time. This one happens to be circular, but many of them are not. As far as this particular field is concerned, these are known as sigils and aren’t known by any other name that I’m aware of. It’s certainly not a pentagram, pentacle, alchemical symbol, or magic circle.

Granted, this may be the only “real” one on the site currently, and I doubt we’re likely to see very many of these sigils overall. However, I was able to find a couple of posts that appear to contain a fictional demonic sigil, clearly in the same vein as these others, but not one that I recognize as being “real.” post #2856456 is a perfect example; clearly designed after the demonic sigils, but no real sigil would have the letters “OMG” or the phrase “comment and subscribe” contained within it like that. But regardless, I would not really want to restrict the meaning of the tag to only demonic sigils. That’s too limited. But, rather, I think any “occult-looking” symbol could get the tag, and there are many things here with occult appearances. I’d say, if it’s any kind of symbol that seems to have some occult or magical or demonic or angelic purpose or association, and it’s not explicitly something else (ie. an alchemical symbol, pentagram, etc.), I think the sigil tag would be useful there. These sigils might sometimes appear in the form of a magic_circle or summoning_circle, but not always. Both of these are often just pentagrams or pentacles. Summoning circles especially tend to be one of those due to their association with the supernatural horror genre. Here’s one that looks like it might be all three in one: summoning circle, pentacle, and sigil: post #2174413 — that is, the sigil itself appears to contain a pentacle within its design, but it’s clearly not just a pentacle, as it has other recognizable “sigil” features. While we’re on the subject, though, I think a summoning_circle -> magic_circle implication would be valid and useful.

Somewhat tangential, but there appear to be some posts under magic_circle which are not magic at all, but are just plain sigils, ie. post #1738590 — if/when we establish the sigil tag, magic_circle may need some cleanup.

Now I’d just like to give my thoughts on the specific examples you gave because it might help make it more clear what I’m trying to get at.

post #2469830 post #2856456 post #2856964

For the first one, it’s definitely not the kind of sigil I’m used to, but it does look arcane, and so I don’t have a problem calling it a sigil. They tend to be more complex and less geometric, but I feel like that would be limiting the tag far too much. I like “occult symbol” as a straightforward definition.

The second one, as I’ve already stated, is definitely based on sigils of the demonic variety.

The third one is odd. I recognize the little symbols encircling it as runes, so it should get the rune tag, at least. I guess it can be a sigil too? At a certain point, they start to look so simplistic that I begin to question whether or not they actually “look” arcane or occult — I tend to associate that look with much more complicated designs. This, minus the runes, is just a few circles with two curved lines. But, I guess it’s good enough. Any less detail, though, and I’d be hesitant to apply the sigil tag.

post #2985939
post #2704359
post #1930995
post #1470818

The first one, as I stated, is an actual sigil that you could possibly find on Wikipedia.

#2 looks like… some kind of magical injury? Or a magical brand or mark of some kind? I’m not really sure what to make of that. It looks too random to be called a symbol, though.
That reminds me. A sigil is always going to be some kind of symbol, so an implication from sigil -> symbol would make sense.

#3 — judging from the tags, that’s the Gravity Falls thing, I assume? I don’t really know what to make of this one either. The presence of the little dingbat-esque symbols like the shooting star, the llama, the… bag of ice…? etc. definitely detract from any magical or occult connotations I’d have with that particular symbol. It’s only really the circular shape that lends it any relation to these symbols whatsoever, but I personally would not expect to see something like that if I went searching for sigils.

#4 is not a sigil at all, but an alchemical symbol: specifically, it’s the sulfur symbol. It may look occult (alchemy isn’t that far off from occultism, plus sulfur specifically is associated with demons, so you may often see the sulfur symbol in an occult context), but it’s still just an alchemical symbol, and I think those should be kept separate from sigils… unless maybe the sigil contains such alchemical symbols, which is possible.

Sorry for the rant. I hope this is actually helping us get somewhere.

EDIT: I just found this incredibly relevant tag: sigil_of_baphomet, which appears to just be an inverted pentacle with a ram’s skull on top. A tad different from the traditional demonic sigils (I assume this one is a more modern creation? But I don’t know for sure), but with a name like that it only makes sense that it should imply sigil — as well as, perhaps, inverted_pentacle and maybe even skull and ram horns?

scaliespe said: ...Sorry for the rant. I hope this is actually helping us get somewhere.

It's helpful. My big takeaway is, there's a whole class of occult symbols that are already called sigil, including the existing sigil_of_baphomet. So we probably shouldn't try to redefine sigil. But I still think we need a vague, generic tag for any "magical" symbols, because that's a common theme in artwork, and normies like me need an easy, generic tag to remember. Then we can have sigil, magic_circle, and other things make it more specific. I still kind of want to include posts like post #2704359 (the gay wolf curse mark), possibly as a curse_mark tag? But I don't know how common curse marks are. If it's just that one comic, we shouldn't bother.

I think we need more data. I will go through the images that were tagged sigil and put the ones that were not by deervvitch into a set, and we'll see from there.

P.S. I also added sigil_of_asmodeus to that one image, and guess what? There's two more images on this site with that already.

Edit:
Ok, I filled out the set and removed the truly obviously bad ones. There were 27 images total that ever got tagged with sigil and were not a character/artist mistag.

Because there are only 27, I can't justify an overtag for general mysticism like I was talking about. In fact, every one of them would be adequately covered by some combination of sigil, pentacle, symbol, and magic_circle, except for the tattoo stuff, which should go under magic_tattoo, tribal_tattoo, or pattern_tattoo. Unfortunately, that leaves images like post #1930995 (the gravity falls Bill Cipher zodiac) without a specific tag. But I can't find enough like them to justify making a new tag.

So my current vote is: Make sigil into a proper tag, alias deervvitch's characters, then we forget about this thread. If nobody has any complaints within a week, I'll make the BURs myself.

matrixmash said:
It's helpful. My big takeaway is, there's a whole class of occult symbols that are already called sigil, including the existing sigil_of_baphomet. So we probably shouldn't try to redefine sigil. But I still think we need a vague, generic tag for any "magical" symbols, because that's a common theme in artwork, and normies like me need an easy, generic tag to remember. Then we can have sigil, magic_circle, and other things make it more specific.

I wouldn’t mind creating some kind of tag such as occult_symbol or mystical_symbol which all of these imply. Then, if we ever do get some ambiguous thing that is not quite a sigil, not a pentagram/pentacle, not actually made by magic, etc., it can get the occult/mystical_symbol tag directly.

Just to make things more complicated, I noticed we also have a glyphs tag with 80+ results. It appears to be a pretty mixed bag, with even a bit of overlap with your sigil set. What do we do with this? According to the dictionary, a glyph is just “a pictograph or hieroglyph.”

I still kind of want to include posts like post #2704359 (the gay wolf curse mark), possibly as a curse_mark tag? But I don't know how common curse marks are. If it's just that one comic, we shouldn't bother.

I’m sure there has to be other things like that somewhere on this site. We might even have tags for it already, but I wouldn’t know what they would be. There are so many things that something like that could be called.

P.S. I also added sigil_of_asmodeus to that one image, and guess what? There's two more images on this site with that already.

Wow. I hadn’t expected that.

I found a couple more, for Lucifer and Marbas, by searching sigil_of_*. I also created sigil_of_astaroth and sigil_of_stolas after identifying them in post #2174413 and post #3003055, respectively. A note on the second one: the design is from the sigil of Skolas, but the letters encircling the symbol appear to have been replaced by Lilith. There is also a sigil of Lilith, but that’s not it, lettering aside, so I tagged it as Skolas regardless. Anyway, it might be useful to collect as many of these that I can find and have them all imply sigil.

So, I just went down a bit of a rabbit hole after finding post #26544… I went through some of the character tags and found that many of them have multiple results, and several of them actually depict have posts featuring their sigil, posts we never encountered here as they were never tagged as sigil or anything else that would have allowed us to encounter them… and while many of the characters are tagged, many still are not, though there may be other depictions of them on the site. Fortunately, somebody went through the laborious effort of adding a note for each one with its name, so I could probably search for them manually and see if any of them have a post featuring their sigil. There’s also a helpful Wikipedia article showing most (but not quite all) of the sigils used in demonology. I think, when I have time, I’d like to go through these and tag all the specific sigils I can find. But put simply, I think it’s clear we have far more sigils on the site than I realized, most of which simply never received the proper tag.

EDIT: damn, post #215471 has ALL of them.

Edit:
Ok, I filled out the set and removed the truly obviously bad ones. There were 27 images total that ever got tagged with sigil and were not a character/artist mistag.

Because there are only 27, I can't justify an overtag for general mysticism like I was talking about. In fact, every one of them would be adequately covered by some combination of sigil, pentacle, symbol, and magic_circle, except for the tattoo stuff, which should go under magic_tattoo, tribal_tattoo, or pattern_tattoo. Unfortunately, that leaves images like post #1930995 (the gravity falls Bill Cipher zodiac) without a specific tag. But I can't find enough like them to justify making a new tag.

At the very least, I think all of these should imply symbol, if not a more specific mythical_symbol or occult_symbol tag. Like I said before, I do think a general occult symbol umbrella tag could be useful, though. At the very least, it might give something for “normies” to tag instead of the much broader “symbol” tag, which might allow more dedicated taggers to look through on occasion and assign one of the more specific subtags to.

There’s also no shortage of specifically occult symbols that can utilize a tag like that, many of which I’m sure can be found on the site. I know we do have a tag for the ankh already, with a very large number of posts featuring this particular symbol. I might even put in the work to figure out how many of these occult symbols we have tags for and compile a BUR for it eventually.

As for the Gravity Falls thing… I guess it could just get its own tag, no? There are at least two posts that feature precisely that thing, maybe more. Fans of the series might want to search for it.

re: gravity falls: What the heck. I made the tag. bill_cipher_zodiac

matrixmash said:

sigil_of_lucifer: Not really a sigil. More of a seal if you ask me. Wikipedia says sigil is the common name for it, though.

I would say yes it is; sigils are not strictly circular, though the ones originating from the Ars Goetia all are. The Wikipedia article lists it as a sigil along with all the others, at the bottom.

post #215471 (every sigil): We shouldn't make all 72 sigil tags just for this, but add them as we go.

Fine, though I think I’d like to add that post to the wiki page for sigil so others can find it if it ever becomes necessary to identify another one that is found.

post #1222070: pretty sure this isn't a sigil, but not 100%

I couldn’t see anything that I would call a sigil… though there’s a lot that “looks like” occult symbolism, for whatever that’s worth.

re:occult_symbol (I'm not in favor)

Sorry to crap out on you. I've spent an hour or so chewing this over, and I've just run out of steam.

The question is, where do we draw the line for occult_symbol? There's no good schelling points. Everything is on a spectrum of acceptability and notoriety, especially religious stuff. Some occult symbols are so common they're basically symbols. Is a crucifex occult? I wouldn't say so. But there's definitely symbology, e.g. Catholic stuff from the middle ages, that I would say is occult. Crosses can be used in secular contexts as well. If a cross is an occult symbol because it is religious, then do self-proclaimed secular groups get a pass? New age stuff often presents itself as being secular, e.g. pseudoscience from scientologists. What do you do with fictional stuff? Like slaneeshi_symbol from warhammer, which is in-universe occult, or heartless_symbol from kingdom hearts, which is arguably not. What about symbols that are embedded in other things? Does a taoist_talisman count? runes? celtic_symbol? Western zodiac symbols are probably in...

I give up.

I’m sure the writers of that Wikipedia article had the same issue; however, personally, I wouldn’t have a problem outsourcing the matter to their authority. If its on the Wikipedia article, we can call it occult. If it isn’t, we don’t. Though there’s also plenty of made-up symbols used in artwork just to “look” occult even if they don’t mean anything, and if the tag gets used for any occult-looking symbol in addition, I don’t have a problem with that. The only issue is that it may be a tad subjective, but I think most could agree in the majority of cases when something “looks” occult.

All right. I'm fine with everything you said in your last post. I'll submit the BURs/make edits to the wiki a week from now, if you don't beat me to it.

I’ll probably write the sigil wiki soon. Just so I don’t forget (and/or for inclusion in the BUR), I’ve found a couple more existing sigil tags:
seal_of_solomon
helm_of_awe
The latter is part of the Icelandic magical staves, which is a tradition of sigils distinct from the ones used in demonology. In that sense, I’m not sure if it would be better to have those under a separate tag, but considering that this one post seems to be the only one I can find with this symbol on it, it may not be that valuable to do so. Wikipedia just calls them “sigils” anyway, so I think having it imply sigil would still be fine.

The bulk update request #1792 is active.

Reason: Sigil the artist moved accounts to deervvitch. Now that cleaning the artist tag is done, it's time to update the characters.

Evidence all these characters are owned by deervvitch and not some other random named sigil: All of the images on e621 for these characters have only been drawn by deervvitch, except for dahlia. I'm pretty sure dahlia is a deervvitch original too, since for the sourced dahlia images drawn by other artists, they were posted under the SigilStuff FA.

The reason why I went for updates instead of aliases is in case deervvitch eventually goes for a third name change. I think transitive aliases are not allowed? If I'm wrong on that, lmk and I'll put in aliases instead of updates.

EDIT: The bulk update request #1792 (forum #323763) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #1793 is active.

Reason: I’ve continued to think this over, and I’ve decided for this current BUR to retain sigil only for sigils as used in the demonic/angelic sense, and leave the various “sigils” of unrelated traditions to the side. In this sense, at least, occult_symbol has a clear purpose in encompassing these other not-quite-sigils. (I am open to changing the name “occult symbol” to something else, if anyone has any suggestions.)

To that end, I’ve left sigil_of_baphomet out since it’s not a sigil in the same sense as the others are. Also, I think it should imply inverted_pentacle and Satanism due to the irrevocable connotation it has. It will indirectly imply occult_symbol through pentacle.

I hesitated on seal_of_metatron since it’s completely fictional and it departs at least slightly from the style typical of sigils, but I figure it should still count. It seems like it at least tries to mimic the Goetian sigils, and from what I could tell from brief research (I’m not familiar with Silent Hill in the least), it seems to serve the same purpose, ie. it serves as a pictorial representation of some kind of angel/demon.

I’ve left other possibly-occult symbols out for now pending further discussion (ie. should ankh imply occult_symbol? It is one, technically, but it’s also just such a common symbol that I’m not sure if the implication would be going too far. Also, runes… typically occult, yes, but they’re also just letters from an ancient language, so I’m not sure.)

Side note: I’m still at a loss for what to do with glyphs. Is it a valid tag? Should it imply something?

EDIT: The bulk update request #1793 (forum #323775) has been approved by @slyroon.

scaliespe said:

I just created seal_of_haagenti, you might want to add it

shadyguy said:
I just created seal_of_haagenti, you might want to add it

I went ahead and renamed it to sigil_of_haagenti to match the others, and added it to the complete ars_goetia board as well.

matrixmash said:
I went ahead and renamed it to sigil_of_haagenti to match the others, and added it to the complete ars_goetia board as well.

Nicely done.

Added the new tag. Nice find! I would’ve missed that one.

scaliespe said:

sigil_of_astaroth is also missing from the BUR.
Yes it's been 6 months and I only found it now

shadyguy said:
sigil_of_astaroth is also missing from the BUR.
Yes it's been 6 months and I only found it now

It’s already in there: line 7

scaliespe said:
It’s already in there: line 7

For some reason I though it was in alphabetical order, sorry

The bulk update request #6643 is active.

create alias symbol_of_chaos (0) -> chaos_star (86)

Reason: Just another name for the same symbol, related to the above pending BUR. This concept was split between these two tags until somebody moved them all to the latter tag a few days ago. The alias will prevent them splitting again in the future, and will help users find the correct tag.

EDIT: The bulk update request #6643 (forum #391667) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #1792 (forum #323763) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #1793 (forum #323775) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #6643 (forum #391667) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #6928 is active.

create implication necronomicon_gate_sigil (18) -> sigil (240)
create implication necronomicon_gate_sigil (18) -> h.p._lovecraft (759)

Reason: Pop culture sigil appearing on the necronomicon and reused wherever else people feel like. For when a pentagram isn't enough. I'd seen this on art of two characters I'd uploaded and finally decided to take a moment to find its name.

https://evil.fandom.com/wiki/Necronomicon_(Lovecraft) - scroll to the bottom for example images and the trivia section that talks about the necronomicon gate.

Not a historic sigil, but its design and purpose were close enough to get called a sigil. This sigil is three symbols overlaid atop each other.

EDIT: The bulk update request #6928 (forum #393802) has been approved by @slyroon.

The bulk update request #6928 (forum #393802) has been approved by @slyroon.