Pentacles

A pentacle or pantacle is an amulet used in magical evocation, generally made of parchment, paper or metal (although it can be of other materials), on which the symbol of a spirit or energy being evoked is drawn. more...

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It is often worn around the neck, or placed within the triangle of evocation. Protective symbols may also be included (sometimes on the reverse), a common one being the five-point Seal of Solomon. Many varieties of pentacle can be found in the grimoires of Solomonic magic; they are also used in some neopagan magical traditions, such as Wicca.

Owing to their similarity, the words pentacle and pentagram (a five-point unicursal star) are sometimes confused, although their etymologies are different. Adding to this confusion, in modern Tarot decks and in some forms of modern witchcraft, pentacles often prominently incorporate a pentagram in their design.

Pentacles as magical objects

Pentacles, despite the sound of the word, had no connotation of "five" in the old magical texts (see etymology). They were, rather, magical talismans inscribed with any symbol or character. When they incorporated star-shaped figures, these were more often hexagrams than pentagrams. Pentacles showing a great variety of shapes and images appear in the old magical grimoires, such as the Key of Solomon; as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa summarises it, their use was to "fore-know all future things, & command whole nature, have power over devils, and Angels, and do miracles." Agrippa attributes Moses' feats of magic in part to his knowledge of various pentacles.

A Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy (c. 1565) spuriously attributed to Agrippa gives detailed instructions as to how pentacles should be formulated:

But we now come to speak of the holy and sacred Pentacles and Sigils. Now these pentacles, are as it were certain holy signes preserving us from evil chances and events, and helping and assisting us to binde, exterminate, and drive away evil spirits, and alluring the good spirits, and reconciling them unto us. And these pentacles do consist either of Characters of the good spirits of the superiour order, or of sacred pictures of holy letters or revelations, with apt and fit versicles, which are composed either of Geometrical figures and holy names of God, according to the course and maner of many of them; or they are compounded of all of them, or very many of them mixt.

Francis Barrett, in his influential work The Magus of 1801 (Book 2, part 2), repeats these instructions almost verbatim.

Another common design employed in pentacles is a magic square, such as the Sator-Arepo-Tenet square.

In the Golden Dawn magical system, the Earth Pentacle is one of four elemental "weapons" or tools of an Adept. These weapons are "symbolical representations of the forces employed for the manifestation of the inner self, the elements required for the incarnation of the divine." Other pentacles for the evocation of spirits are also employed in the Golden Dawn system; these are engraved with the name and sigil of the spirit to be invoked, inside three concentric circles, having painted on their reverse a circle and cross like a celtic cross.

Read more at Wikipedia.org