To shoal sigils, split one goal into several small intents, draw a sigil for each, shuffle them so you cannot tell which is which, charge the whole batch in one sitting, then forget the batch on purpose.

Shoaling is the use of several related sigils in one working instead of a single sigil. The name comes from fish: a shoal is a loose group that swims together without a fixed destination.

Loose, together, no fixed destination. Build the batch to that spec.

Gordon White described it under that name in a 2010 post on Rune Soup. He died in May 2026. His family has said Rune Soup will continue.

If you can make one sigil, you can shoal. Start with how to make a sigil and come back.

Why shoal instead of firing one sigil?

One sigil bets everything on one road to one outcome. A shoal spreads the bet.

More doors, same sitting.

White's argument was that a big goal like "money" is really a pile of smaller events: a client, a well-timed phone call, a budget moving. If any one of them lands, the odds on the whole goal shift. Aim at the pieces and leave the route open, because a sigil that insists on one exact route can block the better one.

Whether sigils change outside events at all is a separate question, and the Log is how you check.

How to do it, step by step

1. Break the goal into small pieces

Write the goal in one line. Then list three to six events that would count as progress toward it. Each one should be small enough to check.

"More money" becomes "a new client calls," "my invoice gets paid early" and "my manager approves the budget." Three fish.

2. Write each piece as a present-tense sentence

Same rules as a single sigil: present tense, no "I want," no negatives. "A new client calls me this week" works. "I stop being broke" doesn't, because it names broke.

3. Add the extras

White's method adds a few unrelated nice-to-haves, like a lucky find or a small good thing, and launches in groups of four or more.

Some practitioners also add one "robofish": a sigil for something almost certain to happen anyway, such as "I drink tea tomorrow," meant to give the batch momentum. The robofish is also a free control. If the near-certain one lands and the others don't, you've learned something about the others.

A sigil for a cup of tea. Write it anyway.

4. Draw one sigil per sentence

Reduce each sentence and draw it with the wheel, the grid or the monogram. The Shoal tool takes up to six intents and draws all of them with one method.

5. Shuffle

Shuffle the glyphs. Put the sentences away. You want to lose track of which glyph is which, so the conscious mind has nothing to reopen.

6. Charge the batch once

One sitting, all glyphs in view, eyes soft on the whole set. Use slow breathing for a few minutes. See Gnosis: ways to get there for the calm options.

White himself preferred inhibitory gnosis, the still kind.

7. Forget the batch

Destroy the glyphs or close the file. Then go do something else. Something dull. Forget the shoal as a batch. Don't go hunting for which sigil was which. That hunt is the whole working undone in five minutes.

How to check a shoal

White wrote that sigils shoaled together seem to have interrelated outcomes. You can test that.

Write the date a month out and the words "check the results." On the day, go down the list and mark each intent held, partly or nothing. Count them.

White rejected the idea that a magical diary is required, partly on the grounds that memory and causation are unreliable. Turn that objection around and it's the best case for a log there is. Unreliable memory keeps the hits and drops the misses. A written list keeps both.

Common mistakes

Six near-identical sigils. That's one sigil drawn six times. Make the pieces different events.
Peeking. Opening the list every day reattaches the meaning you stripped.
A target that's too big. "My whole life improves" can't be marked held or nothing.
Skipping the check. An unscored shoal is six drawings you threw away.

Run it on screen

The Shoal tool takes the intents, draws the glyphs, hides which is which, times the charge, and files a receipt with a check-back date in your Log. It runs in your browser and nothing you type leaves it.

Now do it: open the Shoal tool.

How to do sigil shoaling