Sigil of Satan

As I began working on the Tarot of Satan, I realized there is no universally-accepted summoning sigil for invoking Satan.

The few Renaissance-era occult manuscripts which provide instructions for invoking Satan fail to provide a specific sigil to aid in the invocation. Even the modern grimoire, The Satanic Bible, relies on the Sigil of Baphomet for facilitating its magical workings, while providing a symbol for Leviathan (the "black sulfur" symbol) as an alternate device for invocations. The Grand Grimoire, and other grimoires from the Pope Honorius tradition, contain numerous signatures and signs for invoking various infernal personages such as Lucifuge Rofocale and Beelzebub, but fail to provide a signature or sign for Satan.

A cursory search of Google Images will return a trove of plausible demonic sigils, but none of which are actually dedicated to Satan himself. The most common sigil used to invoke a devilish entity on par with Satan is the Sigil of Lucifer, an easily-recognizable symbol which, despite its popularity among Satanic magicians, summons an entity related to the planet Venus, having nothing to do with the Abrahamic adversary who challenged Job and will be cast down during the final battle against the Heavenly Host.

Why No Sigil?

Considering the power wielded by Satan as the ultimate ruler of Hell, the first question might be: "Why has no magician-author created a sigil for Satan already?" After all, there are sigils for Lilith, Leviathan, and Moloch , among many other Grand Princes of Hell.

The first answer might be that Satan does not respond to a sigil, or does not require one to be summoned. The precious few grimoires which provide instructions to summon Satan himself seem to rely on circles and invocations without using seals or signatures. A deity as powerful as Satan might not require a sigil, but as the Bible foretells his eventual defeat at the hands of Archangel Michael, an angel with numerous sigils, we must believe that Satan has not transcended the use of sigil magic.

The second possibility is that magicians do not generally wish to summon Satan. In the same way that invoking or summoning God is not viewed as a productive magical exercise, perhaps the same goes for His unholy opposite, Satan. When a magician wishes to access the divine power of God, instead of calling upon Him directly, they invoke the angels or archangels. These spirits carry the divine current into our material world and allow God's will to merge with that of the magician. Perhaps the same can be said for Satan and his legion of demons. There is certainly no shortage of available summoning sigils for demons.

None of these answers solves my problem of needing to acquire a unique sigil devoted to summoning Satan himself... So I endeavored to create one of my own design.

Creating the Sigil of Satan

I started by trying to source some of the oldest texts which mention Satan by name. One of the most curious I stumbled upon is in the early editions of the Bible which were written in the Syriac language. This is a liturgical dialect of Aramaic which came into common usage in during the first century. Syriac, like Arabic and Farsi, is written with a stylized, somewhat artistic appearance which actually resembles many spirit seals.

"Satan" written in Syriac

With the name "Satan" in the Syriac script, I added some adornments from the occult methods of sigil creation as explained by Agrippa and similar authors.

• A cross above: Representing the role Satan plays as God's appointed adversary toward humanity.

• A tail below: Representing Satan's rulership in Hell over the infernal spirits.

• A circle closing the arch: Representing Satan's temporary rulership over the material world.

While the final version of this sigil checks all the boxes for ceremonial invocation, it also looks like an infernal seal or demon signature. Most importantly... Because the core of the sigil is the name of Satan in Syriac writing, if Satan himself saw this sigil, he would recognize his own name. This, perhaps more than any other element, ensures that the sigil presented here will connect the magician directly with the energy and power of Satan and not some other entity.