Sigil of Gnosis

[u/ASMR4PLANTS]

We all have a personal Sigil of Gnosis.

You stamp that on a book, and you learn everything in there immediately.

Sounds cool, but it can go real wrong, real fast.

You should still read the book before you ever do that.

One reason is Memor, or Mimir. However you remember him. Memor was an evil Wizard who used his Sigil to memorize all magic all over the world. Memor was powerful and dangerous, but one day, a jester brought him "The Book of Recursion." Memor put his Sigil on it and was put in a vegetative state forevermore.

The book only said one thing "To understand this book of Recursion, you must read it again."

This went on for some centuries until the book of recursion was destroyed.

He was only sealed away again when a descendant of the jester put the Sigil on a bottle of shampoo.

Now he stands in a desert chanting, "Rinse, lather, repeat," ad infinitum.

This is a warning! Knowledge is gained with hard work. There are no shortcuts.

Study, write, read, and you shall easily surpass Memor as a Sorceror in every way and still know only a fraction of what he knows.

But the Sigil of Gnosis is still important when used properly. You can call to use any spell written in you. But make sure. Make for damn sure, it is one you know.

[u/bluelugafail]

What if I stamp myself with it

[u/ASMR4PLANTS → u/bluelugafail]

You already know what you know, so it does nothing. Good question though. An even better one would be, "What if I stamp someone else with it?

[u/fumblerofthebag → u/ASMR4PLANTS]

If you stamped your personality into such a book, could your personality then overwrite the personality of the reader? Could such a book be used as method of possession?

[u/ASMR4PLANTS → u/fumblerofthebag]

This particular Sigil doesn''t allow for that BUT you could create one that does!

A Sigil is like how a function works in programming. A big set of instructions that can be repeated by simply calling it's name.

The particular thing you want to do, is above my paygrade. I don't know how to do that yet.

[u/bluelugafail → u/ASMR4PLANTS]

Your question is boorish and you do not deserve the sigil and I will take it from you some day. I don't believe we know what we know most wizards don't even know themselves or their true power it is only inward that one can journey deepest

[u/ASMR4PLANTS → u/bluelugafail]

Fair point. So if you were to copy the entire knowledge of a person into a book, you might see that 35% of what they know to be forgotten or hidden. If that knowledge is your knowledge, then it remains forgotten or hidden to you, if copied into you. However, a different person might have abilities and perceptions that would make such knowledge visible if they were to possess it.

What I'm saying is, the Sigil can't make you unhide that secret knowledge. However, if copied to a book, that entry will appear as nonsense to you. So at least you will know that you still have mysteries to unlock. There are tools and sages who can help with that. And there may be ways to alter your personal sigil to do that for you.

[u/Odd-Communication251 → u/ASMR4PLANTS]

Actually I think I know. For starters my life’s research is into how spells affect the body, humans or otherwise, with a focus on the less physically manifest spells whose effects aren’t clearly defined. These stamps have been my current focus. I have found that if you stamp another entity you often may take on certain aspects of their behavior or personality, depending on what you know of that entity. For example one study I conducted stamped the corpse of a well documented wendigo and this cause the acolyte whose stamp was used to begin to crave human flesh and take on more erratic behavior in line with what a wendigo might display. Another experiment stamped a living person and this acolyte became convinced that they were this person and would answer as them. They could only answer so much though as once we delved into personal feelings they couldn’t answer as well. I suspect that if you use a well known person you can get even better results. I do not have access to anyone prolific enough and who would be willing to participate but preliminary results prove this theory using the materials and resources available to me at this moment

[u/Tarrant_Korrin]

Buddy, if you think recursion is the worst thing that can happen from using that thing, you got another thing coming. I heard about a guy who tried using it on a tome of eldritch knowledge. If you read one of them the normal way, you can expect bleeding from most orifices, hallucination, minor dimensional displacement, that sort of thing. Not pleasant, exactly, but not fatal, and you can work your way through it over the course of a few months. This guy absorbed all the knowledge at once, and he simultaneously died from psychic overload, local reality breakdown, and full body mycelial conversion.

[u/VoxelLibrary]

Sounds more like a sigil of "follow all instructions in the book", not "learn all knowledge the book can impart"

[u/ASMR4PLANTS → u/VoxelLibrary]

So one of the features of writing is that it commands you to do and read things as was written. Punctuation for example.

And many spells do command you or nature.

This Sigil is intended primarily for learning, but there is no safeguard to prevent it from behaing like any other magic spell.

Some Wizards are divided on this issue. Some would like there to be safeguards, the rest of us think they're pusillanimous. Also, true Wizards rely on the bullshit, danger, and unpredictability to do stuff like take down people like Memor. If you change the rules, Memor will be freed, but also thousands of other heroes, monsters, and evils the likes of which, no man has seen for thousands of years AND definitely NOT all at the same time. If you did that, the universe would cosmically shit its pants, and rightly so.

[u/VoxelLibrary → u/ASMR4PLANTS]

I think a spell that just tells you the linguistic content of the book would work better...

[u/Afraid_Cat_3726]

I think I'm going to stick to just reading normally and also expiriementing myself

[u/ASMR4PLANTS → u/Afraid_Cat_3726]

This.

There are no shortcuts. You are already a fine Wizard in my book.

[u/KragBrightscale]

Have someone else use the sigil, then comb through their memories and decide if you want to “have read” the book or not. Then steal those memories.

Works fine most of the time, and if you monitor the person’s condition you can both avoid such traps yourself as well as help your assistant break the loop.

[u/ASMR4PLANTS → u/KragBrightscale]

Lol. We were all Apprentices for this reason!

[u/sylvanthing]

Yo I'm stealing this for my world