Budge1

Because the ancients were aware of the "Kamea" geometric patterns behind the transformations of components of the "magic sum" number squares, and because they associated these with their folk superstitions of keeping amulets and talismans, they permuted and varied different Kamea patterns as many times as the numbers themselves could be transformed in order to form new ways to cast glamour spells and ward off toxic hexes. The result of this was a new form of Kamea, not based on the numerical geometries underlying the "magic sum" number matrices, but on some other, otherwise unknown measure of geomeric pattern. These were the earliest sigils.

Budge traces these linear sigils at least as far back as Henry Cornelius Agrippa in the fifteenth century. They are also contained in the seventeenth aphorism of the third septenary of the 1575 manuscript the Arbatel of Magick (252 KB .pdf file), which traces their origin back to Zoroaster of Persia.