The Hidden Mark

I’ve got a sigil tattoo running down my spine. It’s been there since early 2022 and it’s a protection sigil. Its story isn’t the topic for today, but the important part is that it’s there, permanent, stretching right along the center of my back underneath everything I wear, day in and day out.

The thing is, usually nobody sees it. Not because it’s tiny or hard to notice; because it’s not. It’s just tucked away. The only way you’d know is if I took off my shirt and turned my back to you.

That kind of hidden is different from something like an inscription inside a ring or a pentacle around your neck. Those are technically in the open, visible if someone looks closely, even if the meaning escapes them. This sigil though? It’s not hiding in plain sight. It’s just plain hidden. Unless I’m walking around shirtless, you’ll never know.

That’s where I want to land this episode. There’s this whole category of marks that live in that space. This isn’t the tattoos meant to announce things to the world, or the jewelry that acts like a quiet wink for those who get it. This is the stuff that exists purely between you and your practice. The mark the world never sees. The one that was never meant for public display.

I want to explore what that really means. What it’s like to make something permanent but choose to keep it private. What kind of practice asks for nothing from other people. No recognition, no validation, no audience. Just the mark, doing its job, every single day.

I didn’t just sit down one day and whip up the sigil. I know some people can do that, but that’s not how it works for me. It took about four months. Lots of sketching, setting it aside, coming back, adding things, stripping things away. Rushing it would’ve ruined the whole point. It turned into this long, slow game of refining and rethinking, bit by bit over months.

That’s a lot of time to spend on a single symbol. But honestly, I think that’s important from a practical angle. When you give something your attention over and over, it changes. The design collected all those tiny moments of patience and adjustment, all those times I paused to look at it and thought, “maybe just one more tweak.” By the end, I’d lost count of the revisions. I’d examined every possible angle I could.

I knew it was done when I finally hit that point where nothing needed fixing. It was exactly what it was meant to be, while being completely different from how it started. That whole process feels like its own ritual, really. It’s an important part of the meaning of the sigil. Steady, quiet attention, drifting through the weeks. I worked on it in everyday places, completely unnoticed. No one had any idea. Anyone who saw me just assumed I was another guy sketching in a pad. That’s the same feeling as a secret inscription hidden inside a ring, or the sigil once it’s tattooed and tucked away. A private practice, woven into a regular day, nobody’s business except mine.

Most things that really matter come together like that. They don’t just flash into existence. They are built up from returning again and again. You keep coming back, making small changes, until finally, it stops shifting. That’s how you know it’s finished.

Some sigil work ends with destruction. You draw it, fill it with intention, and then you get rid of it. Whether you burn it, bury it, or tear it to shreds, breaking it apart is what sets it free. That final act kicks your intention out into the world and gives it room to do its thing. You’re not supposed to keep it. Holding on traps the energy in place and blocks its purpose.

Tattooing flips all that upside down.

There are many spiritual traditions in this world that believe that tattoos can hold energy, magick, and power. Some believe that tattoos act as talismans, or harness the powers of an animal spirit. Others see them as protection from evil spirits or harm. There are even those who believe tattoos mark you so that your ancestors will recognize you in the afterlife.

When I decided to get that sigil tattooed back in 2022, I wasn’t letting go. I was anchoring it in my skin. Making it permanent. Instead of destroying it, I chose the exact opposite: the ultimate form of keeping. Once it’s under your skin, the sigil isn’t released—it’s absorbed. It turns into part of you, the body that carries out the work.

That’s not poetic language. It’s literally how this kind of working functions. The sigil keeps doing its job for as long as it’s there on your skin. Permanence is the mechanism, not a show. No end date, no recharge, no special ritual to keep it alive. It just is, humming along as steady as your heartbeat.

It changes how you relate to the mark itself. Everything else—the hematite ring, the bracelets, the pentacle—you can take off, and pack away. But this? It came with me into the studio that cold February, and it hasn’t left. It tags along to work, to the store, when I sleep, when I wake up. It’s always there. My body can’t step away from it—just like my body can’t step away from itself.

That’s a serious level of commitment, and one you should carefully weigh before you make it. I don’t mean be afraid, just take a good, honest look. This is forever. Choosing to ink a working into your flesh isn’t like scribbling it on paper and burning it. You’re carrying it, day in, day out, for the rest of your life and that is significant.

I spent months designing it. I knew exactly what it was and what it meant. I meant it to last. The permanence wasn’t an accident. It was the whole point.

There are solid, down-to-earth reasons for putting the sigil on the spine, and there are deeper, more meaningful ones too. Both count.

Let’s start with the obvious: it needed space. After months of tweaking and fine-tuning, the design outgrew smaller patches of skin. The spine just had enough real estate. Long, mostly flat, right down the back. It let the sigil breathe, instead of cramming it up and making it look like a weird, squished version of itself. Cramming a design into the wrong spot messes with it, plain and simple.

But the spine is more than just a blank slate. It’s literally the backbone of the whole body. Everything links up there: muscles, bones, nerves. The spinal cord runs right through, handling almost all the traffic between your brain and the rest of you. Structurally, it’s the linchpin. Without it, nothing stays together.

So choosing the spine for the sigil wasn’t just about space. It was about putting it smack in the middle of everything that holds you upright. Not out on the arm where everyone would see it, or over the heart where it sits at the front. It goes along the spine, hidden but crucial, right at the body’s core.

Where you put a mark on your body says a lot about what you want it to mean. When people tattoo something spiritual over their heart, that makes sense. It matches the feeling. Putting a protection sigil down the spine works on the same level. That’s the body’s central column, the axis everything builds around. You want your protection at the core, not hanging around the edges.

This isn’t only about practical reasoning. The spine carries its own significance, in many traditions. From the concept of chi running through the body’s central channel to the chakra system with its energy rising along the spine, this isn’t a neutral part of the body. It’s the axis along which something essential moves. Placing a protection sigil there isn’t just logical. It’s intentional in a way that goes beyond where the design fits.

The spine is where it belongs. Not just where it fits.

I’ve got other tattoos. There’s the pentacle and the udjat on my right shoulder. These always on display when I’m in a sleeveless shirt. Further down, my right forearm is lined with an OM, a lotus, and the Gayatri Mantra in Sanskrit. If my arm’s in the room, so are those symbols. Then there’s Bast, sitting quietly on the back of my left calf. These marks are out in the open. Anyone who knows what they’re looking at will get a clear message. For everyone else, it’s just cool artwork.

But the sigil running down my spine—well, that one doesn’t play by those rules.

It doesn’t try to say anything. It’s not searching for recognition or waiting to be decoded. There’s no overlap between my practice and someone else’s interpretation. This sigil exists only between me and the practice itself. Nobody spots it unless I make the choice to reveal it. It demands nothing and most people don’t even know it is there.

That’s really the heart of what Season 2 keeps circling.

The first episode was all about the ordinary cloak. The daily rituals we tuck out of sight, hidden but present. The second episode dove into the things we carry around—the little objects doing quiet, steady work, slipping through the day with us. Both episodes still lived in the realm where you might get noticed if someone’s paying attention. The pentacle is there for someone who can read it. The finger armor might catch an eye. The stuff you keep on you sits somewhere between hidden and on display.

But the sigil on my spine? It’s buried even deeper. There’s no regular day where that tattoo shows up in the world. Clothes keep it out of sight, and the outside world has no part in what this mark does.

That’s the point. It’s not a flaw, but a feature.

A mark that doesn’t need to be seen to matter is probably the truest form of practice there is. No performance. It doesn’t broadcast anything. It’s not evidence for anyone else. It just is, working away, tucked at the center of me, whether anyone knows about it or not.

The Gayatri Mantra on my forearm is one way I practice. The sigil down my spine is another. They each interact with the world in their own way, and both are real. The hidden one isn’t any less because it stays hidden. It’s just set free from anybody else’s opinion, and honestly, the further away my practice gets from the question of what others think, the closer it gets to being purely itself.

As we close out this episode, I want to clarify something.

Just because people can see some of my spiritual tattoos doesn’t make them less important. Visibility doesn’t shrink their meaning. They’re meant to be out in the open, doing their thing right where everyone can see. A mark that’s visible isn’t fake or shallow, it just lives differently in the world.

The sigil on my spine, the one nobody ever sees, isn’t somehow more serious or sacred because it’s hidden. It’s just different. Its relationship to the world never included being looked at, and that’s the whole point.

Both kinds are real practice and one isn’t better than the other. People choose hidden marks for all kinds of reasons — a workplace that wouldn’t understand, family members who carry different beliefs, or simply because some things belong only to the person wearing them. None of those reasons make the mark less. Hidden or visible, the practice is the practice.

Here’s what the spine sigil is: it’s a mark I’ve carried since 2022. It’ll be there tomorrow. Nobody sees it or needs to see it. It’s there for its own reason, doing exactly what I meant it to do—deep at the center of my body, underneath everything else. No ceremony. No announcements. No need for anyone’s approval.

That’s not a lesser practice. In fact, it’s probably the most honest version—just being there because that’s where it belongs, no performance, no façade.

The sigil’s still here. It always has been. Right in the middle, under everything.