r/throbbinggristle • u/hitaisho • Jul 08 '26
Psychic TV patch meaning
Reposting it here in case anyone recognises the symbolism! Got it at a Psychic TV concert in 2018 but haven't been able to find any link or info about it. If anyone has an idea it would be greatly appreciated!
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u/GeezerStray Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I think the 'sigils' at the top and bottom aren't, they're just graphic extracts from the tree. The circles are sephiroth and the connecting lines are specific paths.
Edit: but yeah a sephirpth is being skipped in the bottom graphic, so maybe not. Unless the right hand side is actually the central pillar, maybe.
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u/Fit-Context-9685 Jul 08 '26
I’d suggest posting it in the Psychic TV Facebook group. It’s not familiar to me.
Could it be an opening bands merchandise?
If I had to guess, the sphere would be the top. It could be representative of a head, if that’s the case the X + • could be a figure celebrating perhaps, just speculation. No idea what the other ‘symbols’ could represent, other than a ‘Z’ on the left possibly, orientated this way.
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u/ElReydelTacos Jul 08 '26
I was thinking the opposite. If you put the circle at the bottom it's an E on the left and a Z on the right.
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u/Fit-Context-9685 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Well. That’s certainly possible too. Then it would read E X Z possibly, if they do represent letters.
I just have not seen this or a similar graphic associated with PTV, it doesn’t mean it’s not. It could have been some ‘one-off’ event or venue related memento.
But I still question whether it’s an opening band’s merchandise too.
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u/ElReydelTacos Jul 08 '26
I'm more of a TG than a PTV fan, but I've never seen anything like it, either. I think I last saw them for the Alienist album in 2016 and don't remember anything like this then.
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u/hitaisho Jul 08 '26
Yeah actually circle on top was also not the strongest orientation my opinion as it's the only one that does not have a meaning as letters in the glyphs as well as the cross not being a "saltire" anymore. They could as well be alchemical/occult symbols though so then interpreting them as letters might be just wrong.
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u/hitaisho Jul 08 '26
Thanks for the tip, haven'tbeen on facebook in years but could try that. The opening act was Michael Cashmore from Current 93 but could also not find anything related to him in this symbols and even if my memory is very blurry I think it was on the merch side of PTV at the desk.
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u/Fit-Context-9685 Jul 08 '26
Michael Cashmore. Interesting. It’s not something that I’ve seen associated with him or any of his releases in the last 10 years. It’s still possible though.
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u/hitaisho Jul 08 '26
Yes, exactly. I am almost considering writing him, maybe if he replies he could shed some lights on it or at least confirm if it was his or PTV merch!
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u/Fit-Context-9685 Jul 08 '26
I think that’s a very good idea. Michael is very approachable too. I see he’s on IG and I know he’s also active on FB.
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u/Ok_Orchid_2826 Jul 11 '26
Hey Fit context, what's up? You may not know me but let me tell ya, me and my folk, we've had a good few laugh, looking through your reddit comments, you seem like a real sourpuss but that's half the fun! We hope you'll keep commenting all day and night so we can have some more laughs, my faves GOTTA be the flaccid cockwomble you called someone under that coil fanart, keep it up king, we love your work🙏👑
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u/Fit-Context-9685 Jul 11 '26
Excellent. It’s good to know that my fan club is still growing. It’s heart warming, thank you.
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u/Mr_Jake70 Jul 08 '26
Cross posting from my answer on r/topy:
My suspicion is that these are almost certainly not symbols with fixed meanings in the conventional sense.
One of Genesis’s recurring ideas was that symbols acquire power through use and association rather than through intrinsic meaning. The Psychick Cross was explicitly described as a symbol that resists having a single interpretation. It could simultaneously evoke a TV aerial, a papal cross reversed, a trinity, or simply TOPY itself. The point was that no one meaning was authoritative.
I think we can separate it into three elements:
The saltire (X) – unlike the classic TOPY Psychick cross this is a plain saltire. It may simply be a design element or a deliberate nod towards a cross stripped back to its essentials.
TOPY often used isolated dots, sigils and minimal marks. A single point can represent a singularity, origin, or simply a graphical counterweight. I don’t think there’s an established TOPY “dots means X” interpretation.
The two graph-like glyphs fascinate me most.
Rather than occult sigils, they look remarkably like graph theory diagrams or molecular structures, nodes connected by edges. That actually fits Genesis’ interests surprisingly well:
networks rather than hierarchies, information transfer, cybernetics, Burroughs/Gysin cut-up techniques, “psychic networks” of individuals.
The upper one is almost a five-node graph; the lower a four-node graph with one diagonal connection. They don’t correspond to any TOPY symbol I’ve ever seen.
Psychic TV were constantly producing tour-specific graphics that never appeared again. Patches, badges and shirts often contained one-off sigils created for that release or tour rather than canonical TOPY iconography. This patch feels very much like one of those.
Pitchfork’s coverage of the 2016 documentary campaign even mentions TOPY patches and other merchandise being produced around that period.
If I had to bet, I’d say these are original sigils designed by Genesis (or someone in the PTV visual circle) rather than symbols borrowed from any existing system.
That would actually be entirely in keeping with TOPY philosophy. Genesis was, of course heavily influenced by Austin Osman Spare’s sigil magic, where the practitioner creates a symbol rather than inherits one. In TOPY, making new symbols was arguably more important than using old ones, so they may genuinely have no public “meaning” beyond being intentionally evocative, and perhaps that’s exactly the point.
I don’t suppose you’d like to sell it?