Presenting: A Sigil for the Housing Crisis
We now have arrived at the 4th of five sigils I am releasing: a Sigil for the Housing Crisis. These sigils were created collectively with the students in my Sigil Witchery workshops on my most recent tour. To find out more about that process, check out the first sigil released here , the second sigil here, and the third sigil here. You can also read about the Power Sigil from 2016.
While these sigils were rooted or inspired by local happenings affecting each community – every sigil struck me as something that deserved to be shared with the larger community. And so I have re-drawn them so they could be easily shared and registered them with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For each sigil, I’ve included a photo of the whiteboard drawing, described it more in detail, and included a high resolution graphic for sharing. The purpose of these sigils is for them to be shared and used.
A Sigil for the Housing Crisis was created at the workshop that took place in Los Angeles at The Green Man (technically North Hollywood for the locals, but for everyone else, it’s LA). The housing crisis is something that encompasses multiple issues – not just most people’s rough concept of homelessness, but displacement from gentrification, lack of proper funding or support, lack of affordable and safe housing, and so much more. It’s a serious problem all up and down the West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego – and it affects most major cities in this country. Some (too many) people harbor the skewed idea that those who are homeless are all mentally ill, did something horrible, deserve it, refuse to get a job, etc – when the reality is that most people are a disaster away from being homeless themselves.
With a failed healthcare system, it’s easy to find oneself in thousands of dollars of debt if you or a loved one gets sick without having insurance, have crap insurance – or get dropped by your insurance. Then there’s low-to-moderate income housing being swallowed up by developers. I can’t even begin to count the number of friends I have in Seattle, Portland, and the Bay Area who have been priced right out of their homes. People who work 2-3 jobs, have college degrees, but live out of their cars or surf couches, while their homes have been torn down for million dollar condos, or landlords switched over to from regular tenants to AirBnB dollars. (New Orleans is experiencing a HUGE problem with this latter situation.) Cities love the idea of being sleek and elite, but it’s a horrible model when the people providing most of the services can’t afford to properly live near where they work due to greed. Ok, really I could go on and on about this, but you get the idea.
Built into this sigil:
-providing home spaces for people
-increase affordable housing for all
-ensuring the spaces are safe and welcoming
-humane treatment, recognition of humanity, reducing the problems that can lead to homelessness
-building a better community that supports all of its members
-create/promote housing that helps with the flow of traffic, accessible to transit/public transportation
-make resources available (physical, emotional, mental needs)
-focus on building stability/structure
What to do with this sigil:
You are welcome to use this sigil however you see fit that is in alignment with the intent of the sigil. As long as it’s not used for profit/commercially, you can wear it, share it, draw it in appropriate places, carve on a candle to help focus energy to the cause, chalk onto walls and spaces, work into legislation, etc.
It is protected by the Creative Commons License, details below:
A Sigil for the Housing Crisis by Laura Tempest Zakroff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
If you’re interested in learning more about this method of sigil crafting, check out www.sigilwitchery.com or even better, check out the book I wrote on it – which is available via amazon, the previously mentioned website, and bookstores everywhere.
