A hypersigil is a sigil extended over time into a story, song or long project, a term coined by the comics writer Grant Morrison.

Morrison is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.

Morrison defined it as "a sigil extended through the fourth dimension." That's the whole idea in seven words. A normal sigil is a static mark. A hypersigil adds characters, drama and plot.

The fourth dimension is time. You draw this one in installments.

Where does the term come from?

It appears in "Pop Magic!", Morrison's chapter in Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult (2003). Morrison used it for their comic series The Invisibles, which they described as a six-year-long sigil in the form of an occult adventure story.

The Invisibles ran from 1994 to 2000 from DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. Morrison has said they practice chaos magic, and Wikipedia reports that the series drew on their practice in Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.

Six years of one comic. The term was built at that scale, and you don't have to start there.

Read Morrison's account of the effect before you copy the method. They wrote that the series consumed and recreated their life while they were writing it, and called the method powerful and sometimes dangerous.

What counts as a hypersigil?

People disagree. Morrison's description points to serial narrative: a comic, a trilogy, a run of songs. The writer at Technoccult took that reading. Others argue the term should cover extended non-static sigils generally, with street-art campaigns as the example.

Morrison's suggested forms were a poem, a story, a song, a dance, or any other extended artistic activity. Pick a form you can finish. An unfinished hypersigil is a working with no end date, and you already know how those go.

How to start a hypersigil

Learn the ordinary sigil first. Morrison's own instruction was to become familiar with the traditional method before attempting one. See how to make a sigil.

1. Choose a small, checkable aim

Write it as one present-tense sentence, the same way as for a single sigil. "I finish a draft I am proud of" works. "My life becomes extraordinary" doesn't, because nothing could ever prove it wrong.

2. Choose a form with an end

A twelve-part story. A six-song EP. A thirty-day run of drawings. It needs a last page.

3. Put the aim inside the story

Let a character want what you want, try what you could try, and get past what's in your way, on the page and on schedule, where a setback costs you a rewrite instead of a month. The story is a model of your situation where you get to change the variables.

4. Set a schedule and keep it

Morrison asked for deep absorption while the work unfolds. Book a fixed slot. Waiting for the mood means waiting on something that shows up late, if it shows up at all.

5. Write the exit before you begin

Decide how you'll end it. Morrison noted that absorption can lead to obsession and said you can always banish at the end. Write the banishing now: a last page, a closing line, a thank you, and a day you stop thinking about it as a working.

6. Log it

Put a check-back date in the Log. Mark what moved, what didn't, and what you would have done anyway.

Is a hypersigil safe?

A short, bounded one is a creative project with a goal attached. The risk grows with length, and with how much of your life it takes over. Keep the first one short. Weeks, not years. If it starts to take over your sleep or your relationships, finish it or put it down, and talk to a person.

Hypersigil: where the term came from and how to start one