I’ve been sitting with my thoughts about Laura Tempest Zakroff’s Visual Alchemy: A Witch’s Guide to Sigils, Art & Magic for about a week now. After all, what can I possibly say about this powerhouse of an artist and witch that hasn’t been said before? Anyone even remotely aware of her work already knows she’s an amazing creatrix and a much-loved and vital contributor to our community.
Visual Alchemy is a follow-up work to Zakroff’s Sigil Witchery: A Witch’s Guide to Crafting Magick Symbols, in which she introduces her method of crafting symbols. That’s a book I haven’t read because I’ve never really done much with sigils – I tend to find them confusing and, although I can intellectually grasp the concept, I’ve never felt intimately connected to sigils I’ve seen. So, when Visual Alchemy came my way I came to its teachings as a tabula rasa – a reader with no preconceived notions beyond my own puzzlement.
I found this book to be enormously satisfying, particularly Part One: Create. In her first chapter, Zakroff quotes Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, and this quote quite suddenly snapped a sigil connection into place for me:
I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. […]. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.
Elizabeth Gilbert, as cited by Laura Tempest Zakroff (p. 29)
With elegant and straightforward prose, Zakroff guides her readers through the Sigil Witchery method of identifying a goal or issue, sandboxing the marks to include in the sigil, and designing what you’ve come up with to represent that goal or the issue’s solution. She generously shares her creative process, and breaks down and explains the reasoning that helps a sigil-maker get from a blank space to a finished sigil that is throbbing with the potential and power you’ve imbued it with.
Throughout the book she includes the perspectives and art of guest contributors. As a result, the reader feels fully welcomed into the community as a person who is capable of creating prophetic art. Zakroff encourages her readers to cast off the shackles of severe self-judgment or self-criticism. “The understanding,” she writes, “comes in the doing, not in the labeling.” (p. 19) She challenges readers to question any previously held notions about art, and to focus on the process (“do the thing!”) rather than the end result.
The second half of the book, Collaborate, covers communal sigil work as a form of shared magic-making. Included are several (over 50!) public sigils that can either be utilized as is or serve as inspirations for your own creations. Their applications cover personal (good health, time management), communal (defense of transfolx, refugee safeguard), environmental (containing wildfires, protection of water), and a wide array of additional concerns.
Visual Alchemy is a terrific addition to your Laura Tempest Zakroff shelf. You’ll come away feeling confident, empowered, and ready to manifest your will through the creation of the sigils that you bring into life. Really, one of the most transformative books I’ve read.
You can hear more of The Corner Crone during her Moments For Meditation on KPPR Pure Pagan Radio on TuneIn or on YouTube. Follow her on Facebook and on Instagram.
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