Given all the occult confusion surrounding what sigils are and what they do, it's best to address what they mean in Cherinob literature and comics.
In The Gerosha Chronicles:
- Sigils themselves carry no power. They're merely a pictorial signature, aligned with predetermined phonetic rose structure.
- They identity an Apthalan or Biroot by the name most recently assigned unto them by Dolondri, the Giver of Titles.
- They can be generated as projections in mid air by an Apthalan or Biroot, but only if God allows it.
- A sigil detector gun, like Krystal's, may force an Apthalan or Biroot to generate a sigil of their own names on a nearby wall, giving away their identities and making it harder to remain in disguise via Humanoid Manifest Construct.
- Since demons make more convincing human disguses, since their goal is to deceive, Krystal's gun is more useful against demons.
- Angels have a lot less to hide.
- This process works by stimulating them into doing so by bombarding their HMC with a neutrino signal that reverberates off an HMC's already disrupting neutrino patterns in its presence.
- Hence, exploitation of an Apthalan's "neutrino footprint" can compel them to betray their true identities.
Since a real human body and spirit has too weak a comparative signal and disruption, human bodies that are real produce far less significant neutrino footprints, and thus don't yield a sigil.
To even come close to the gun being powerful enough to make a human body project a sigil, it would need enough power boost to potentially produce electromagnetic fields capable of generating beta, X-ray, or even gamma radiation. In which case, a normal human subject is more likely to get cancer than produce a sigil.
This doesn't mean all sigils are completely harmless. In Cherinob 2, Cherinob scolds Krystal against becoming reliant on them, as focus should be on the character of others, not a fancy way of spelling their names. She also warns Krystal that studying demon names carries "memetic hazards," allowing the demons whose names are invoked a way to take root in a victim's psyche, producing unhealthy obsessions that can turn the mind into a weapon against others - or against itself.
The location where the Shard of Kritchobol lodged itself in the back of Cherinob's shoulder blade often manifests as a tattoo. This tattoo is of Kritchobol's sigil. By this, Kritchobol taunts his ancient enemy, painting his sigil on her in a sort of domineering manner, as if marking his territory, or branding her as "his." He blasphemously tries to steal from God the credit for Cherinob's creation, especially in her original Velithia form. Instead of acknowledging God created her, Kritchobol declares Cherinob to be his own creation. His sigil on her is his failed attempt to claim ownership of her.
- Sigils generated of Apthalans' and Biroots' names in The Gerosha Chronicles all consist of an Anglicized version of the Hebrew Rose Cross method for phonetic linking.
- Fallen angels' names have beginning and end caps, each made of a two-pronged fork symbol. This simulates devil horns, to indicate an evil being.
- Holy angels have circular caps, symbolic of retention of a halo.
- Invoking their names by drawing them can backfire. Demons are more likely to respond, if any respond. Angels will only respond if God's prior counsel permits.
While angels do periodically instigate conversations with human characters in The Gerosha Chronicles, few mortals get to instigate two-way communication with an angel first. Rather, they usually insist on concerns being taken directly to God in prayer.