Symbols, Sigils & Spirals: The Secret Codes of the Soul


Yesterday I sat in at the Silver Street Studios again at Sawyer Yards, surrounded by art supplies, thin sheets of paper, and the comforting chaos of creative energy. Cheryl Russell was guiding us once more, this time beginning our class with the story of Artemisia Gentileschi. A woman who painted her truth when the world tried to silence her. A woman who transmuted pain into power. A woman who, centuries ago, held her rapist accountable in a time when few women had the voice—or were allowed the voice—to do so.

We listened as Cheryl told us about Artemisia’s paintings—fierce heroines, mythic scenes layered with justice, rage, reclamation. Her most famous work depicts Judith beheading Holofernes, and in it, you feel her fury, her refusal to remain small. I thought about how art can hold energy that words fail to express. How brushstrokes can be spells. How pigments can whisper what the soul has never been able to say out loud.

After the story, we were invited into our own process. We dipped found objects into paint and made marks on the page. I used a feather—soft, sweeping, feminine. Then an acorn—dots like eyes scattered across the surface. I played with rune symbols and created sigils, drew out the symbols with markers or painted them with a stick, cut and pasted and layered them in my art journal like secrets. I didn’t know what I was saying exactly, only that it felt like truth. A coded truth. A sacred map to my soul’s journey that only I could read.

Layer by layer, my art journal became a visual alchemy of this journey—symbols covered, revealed, reborn. It reminded me of my trip to Sedona. How, when I returned, I wanted to share the experience but felt like most people didn’t have time—or maybe the capacity—to hear what truly happened. I told the surface story: the land, the hikes, the drives, the ceremonies. But the deepest shifts? Those were layered beneath the surface, like the runes in my journal, visible only to those who look closely, who listen with more than ears.

In Sedona, I did shadow work, inner child healing, ancestral reconnection. I saw my life from a new altitude and walked away with a clearer vision of my soul’s purpose and how deeply we are all connected—through time, through symbol, through frequency.

That evening, I went to Galveston with some spiritual sisters and reunited with Stephanie, one of my Sedona soul mirrors. She led us in a ritual journey called The Spiral Key—a co-creation blending the physical and metaphysical. On the surface, it looked like a scavenger hunt and a trip to a restaurant. But beneath that, it was a symbolic quest.

We each collected “keys” from a list that Stephanie had provided.  Examples included:

  • The Flame Key was something that ignited our spirit—I captured a band playing “Dancing in the Dark,” a song that lit up my creative spark in my twenties.
  • The Message Key appeared in graffiti on a brick wall: Love Yourself.
  • The Wing Key was embodied in a photo of me standing with arms open beside a mural of a bird wearing goggles, flying underwater.
  • The Root Key was shown in a photo of four of us touching the ground near a vortex
  • The Portal Key was captured by me exiting the gateway of a private garden space
  • The Flow Key and Mystery Key moment happened when we were stopped at a red light and a homeless woman danced around our car in beautiful and interesting movements

More examples like this happened.  There were twenty items on our list and I feel like we captured most of them.

We walked The Strand that night, and I was noticing symbols everywhere. A painted sigil on a park bench. Runes hiding in restaurant art. Sacred geometry on posts. The same symbols I had painted earlier in class were now showing up in the world around me. The inner and outer worlds were folding into each other like two wings of the same bird.

Later that night, as Stephanie and I walked barefoot into the surf, I told her about my recent fascination with Robert Edward Grant’s work—how he’s decoding da Vinci’s paintings, the secrets of the pyramids, the ancient geometry that ties together time, space, spirit. I told her about the zodiac carvings he found in the King’s Chamber and how they mirror the mythic journey of Orion. At that very moment, one of our companions was photographing the night sky—and captured Orion overhead.

Coincidence? Or cosmic breadcrumb?

This is the nature of soul work. It speaks in symbols. It hides in layers. It reveals itself in spirals, not lines.

There are truths we shout from the mountaintop and truths we only whisper to the sacred pages of our journals. Some are meant to be seen now. Others must be uncovered later, when the soul is ready. Some people see only the surface. But those with eyes to see? They will feel the frequencies embedded in our art, our words, our stories.

Like Artemisia, we paint our truths.
Like the Spiral Key, we walk the hidden path.
And like the sigils in the night, we become the code and the key.


One response to “Symbols, Sigils & Spirals: The Secret Codes of the Soul”

  1. What a beautiful sacred unraveling of a mystical sister journey and fellowship. I can feel the love you are.

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