The sigil of Doom

The sigil of Doom is the emblem of Thulsa Doom and his Cult of Set: two black serpents face to face, their tails interwoven as one, upholding the disk of a black sun. It first appears in Conan's childhood as the symbol of the raid that destroyed his village and killed his father, and it recurs throughout his life as the mark of his vendetta, the object of his quest, and the banner he finally destroys. More than a mere flag or badge, the sigil is the visual signature of a death-cult that worships annihilation, and its recurrence marks the stages of Conan's journey from traumatized boy to avenging warrior.

Origin and First Appearance

The sigil enters Conan's life at the moment of his greatest loss. During the raid on his Cimmerian village, as the boy hurtled toward his mother Maeve, who stood barefoot in the snow with a broadsword clenched in her hands and the bloody remains of several Vanir heaped before her, Conan glimpsed a gigantic figure bestriding a sable stallion, like a statue, dark and motionless, looming above the brow of a hillock at the edge of the village. The child could not discern the features of the giant form, but his frantic eye was arrested by the emblem that the horseman bore upon his armoured breast and iron-bound shield. It was a strange device: two black serpents face to face, their tails so interwoven that they might be one, and between them, supported by their coils, the disk of a black sun. The symbol, unfamiliar as it was, filled Conan's heart with fear and foreboding.

The emblem's second appearance came moments later, after Corin the smith had fallen. As Conan stared in fearful fascination at the lifted blade that no man could have wrested from his father's living grasp, a shudder suddenly erased the grins from the faces of those still ringed around the embattled pair. High against the rising sun, a standard set upon an ebon pole came slowly into view. Suspended from a wooden frame adorned with the horns of beasts, the rich fabric hung immobile in the still air, and embroidered on the cloth the boy saw once more the symbol that long would haunt his dreams—the ominous, emblazoned symbol of writhing serpents upholding the orb of a sable sun. A grisly fringe of scalps dangled from the frame, and gaunt skulls grinned mockingly from the spikes that adorned the upper reaches of the structure. Even Rexor, the warrior who had taken Corin's sword, bowed his head as that hideous standard entrapped the eastern light and was incarnadined thereby. Conan recoiled when he saw the bearer of the banner, a deformed thing, more beast than man, despite his iron helm and armoured leathern garments; the pride with which he raised aloft his fear-inspiring device declared his lack of all humanity. Behind this misshapen offspring of the devil rode the magnificent figure in armour of overlapping leaves, gleaming like the scales of a serpent in the opalescent light—Thulsa Doom himself, whose bejewelled helmet covered his nose and cheekbones so that only his eyes, flaming with unholy fires, were visible.

The Sigil as Object of Quest

Years later, the sigil becomes the key to Conan's quest. In Shadizar of Zamora, the crossroads of the world, Conan encountered a woman who seemed to know of the symbol. When he described it—"A standard... on a shield, perhaps, or on a banner. There are two serpents, face to face; yet they are one, joined at the tail"—she completed his description: "Upholding a black sun, with ebon rays." When Conan moved forward, grasping the woman by her upper arms, she slid out of his grasp, her shadow not quite keeping up with her, and named her price for the knowledge. The sigil thus functions as a password or shibboleth, a shared recognition that binds those who know of Doom's cult and separates them from the uninitiated.

His friend Subotai, the Hyrkanian Kerlait, also used the sigil as a probe. Claiming that standards were a matter of interest to him and that perhaps he should have been a herald, Subotai confided with a disarming grin, "I came on one you may have seen—two black snakes face to face, upholding a black sun with their knotted tails..." The food-vendor he addressed yawned indifferently, claiming ignorance, but the exchange revealed that the only snakes in the region were those of Set, worshipped in accursed towers. The sigil thus serves as a test of knowledge, a way of identifying who belongs to the cult's orbit and who merely passes through it.

The sigil also marks the physical objects of the cult's power. When Conan and Valeria plundered the altar of the serpent-god, Conan took a bronze medallion—the plaque that bore the sigil of Doom, two snakes facing each other upholding a black sun. This medallion became the emblem of his divided loyalties. In the chamber where Valeria lay sleeping, after she had scooped up a handful of bright jewels and poured them playfully down his naked chest, urging him to live and be rich, Conan wordlessly shook his head. Slowly he opened his clenched hand, and on his palm rested the bronze medallion taken from the altar. The next morning, Valeria woke to find him gone, his gear and clothing vanished, only a handful of glittering stones—his share of the king's advance payment—left on the empty pillow. The sigil, in this moment, is the concrete token of Conan's obsession, the thing that pulls him away from love and comfort toward his destiny of vengeance.

The Sigil in Cult Ritual and Doctrine

The sigil is inseparable from the cult's worship of death. In the great temple, the Faithful of Set gathered to hear the exhortation of their master, hundreds of candles throwing a dim radiance over the chamber and reflecting the eager faces of the congregation. Thulsa Doom, resplendent in his reptilian armour, mounted the dais and faced his followers, his eyes dark and filled with sorcery but with no humanity in them. He fixed his gaze beyond the uplifted faces massed before him, as if he saw some vision of the future that he alone could see, and intoned: "The day of doom is here. The purging is at last at hand. All who stand against us in high places, all who have lied to you and tried to turn you from me—parents, teachers, judges—all shall depart in a night of blood and fire. Then shall the earth be cleansed and ready to receive the god we worship." The listeners moaned in ecstasy, "Set!"

Doom's catechism made explicit the death-worship that the sigil symbolizes. "Who amongst you fears the warm embrace of death? When I, your father, ask it, will you take life for me? Will you strike true to the infidel heart, whether it be the heart of friend, or lover, or loved one in your former life?" The votaries moaned, "Doom! Doom!" swaying in rhythm to the beat of his utterances. The litany continued: "Will you slip the silken noose over the heads of Set's enemies? In the wide world, will you stay true, ignoring the blandishments of the leaders, judges, and parents who have taught you falsely? Will you clutch the hilts of your daggers and spill the heart's blood of the infidels, to give them the infinite benison of eternal peace?" Doom promised his followers that they would feel naught but joy when they performed their duty to their god and lord, and that they would grow in love of the Dark Master, the Wise Serpent, in the embrace of whose coils lies eternal life and bliss unutterable; for the day of Doom was at hand, the day of the Great Cleansing. The sigil, with its twin serpents and black sun, is the visual condensation of this doctrine: the serpents are Set himself, and the black sun is the darkness of death that the cult embraces as salvation.

The cult's processions made the sigil's meaning visible in the streets. A procession in Shadizar was led by a group of girls and young women, some scarcely more than children, who danced and chanted to the rhythm of myriads of tambourines, all draped in soiled white garments with garlands of wilted flowers crowning heads of unbound hair. Behind them marched ranks of youths beating time on deep-voiced drums, or making discordant music with cymbals, lyres, and plaintive flutes. The eyes of all were glazed, unaware of the scene about them, like dreamers walking in their sleep. Among them stalked robed men with shaven pates, bearing brazen pots in which incense smouldered. As the procession approached the dark tower, a chant arose: "Doom... Doom... Doom..." Young men, scarcely more than boys, staggered along with faces blank and drained of colour, lashing their naked flesh with whips made of the hides of serpents and barbed with snakes' fangs, so that with each stroke their flesh was beaded with blood. Seemingly unaware of pain, they chanted as they went: "Doom... Doom... Thulsa Doom... Thulsa Doom..." The sigil is thus not merely a static emblem but a living practice, enacted in the self-mortification of the faithful and the hypnotic repetition of the cult's name.

The Sigil as Challenge and Defiance

Doom himself used the sigil's power to demonstrate his philosophy of strength. In the garden, after a young girl had leaped from the wall at his command and fallen with a heavy thud on the tiles below, Doom laughed, the music of his laughter spun through with a note of triumph. Then he said: "That is strength, boy—that is power! It is strength against which the hardness of steel or the resilience of human flesh are as naught. What is steel, compared to the hand that wields it; what is the hand, without a mind to command it? There is the secret of strength. Steel, bah!" The sigil, in this context, is the emblem of a power that transcends mere physical force—the power of the mind to command absolute obedience, even to the point of self-destruction. Conan's impassive face, the set of his bruised shoulders, seemed to Doom to diminish his power, to offer an unspoken insult to one unused to insults, and the cult leader made one more attempt to reassert his authority over the stubborn youth whose body was in chains but whose soul remained free.

The sigil also marked the cult's servants as less than human. The merchant who warned Conan in Shadizar spoke plainly: "Stranger, beware. The servants of Set are deceivers. They worship Death." When Conan expressed shock—to him, Death was ever the enemy—the merchant nodded and added that they would murder their own parents, thinking to confer a boon by relieving them of the burden of life. The sigil, borne by the deformed beast-man who carried Doom's standard, is the mark of this inhumanity, the sign that those who serve the cult have surrendered their humanity to embrace death.

The Sigil at the Final Battle

The sigil appears one last time as the banner of the cult's final assault. At the Battle of the Burial Mounds, as Conan rested leaning on the handle of his axe, depleted from the Herculean labours of the day, his barbarian instincts told him that something was about to happen. Like figures materializing out of Conan's boyhood nightmares, a score of mounted riders, black against the grey and shrouded passage of the day, exploded into a storm of trampling hooves and clanking armour. They thundered toward the mound on which Conan and Subotai had set up their defences, and above the standard-bearer's head floated the well-remembered banner of two writhing serpents with fanged mouths, intent upon upholding the black orb of a ragged sun. Faceless in their ornate helms, the minions of the snake god raised their spears and swords and howled like wolves beneath a gibbous moon. The sigil, which had haunted Conan's dreams since childhood, now confronted him in the flesh, and the battle that followed was the culmination of his lifelong vendetta. The sigil of Doom, which had first appeared as a device on a shield and a banner over a burning village, thus frames the entire arc of Conan's story: it is the mark of his loss, the object of his quest, the doctrine of his enemy, and finally the banner he overcomes in battle. Its recurrence is the thread that ties together the scattered episodes of his life into a single coherent narrative of blood and vengeance.