Pentacle / Disk

The Pentacle / Disk is one of the magical weapons, or elemental tools, of Western ceremonial magic, the set of implements the magician consecrates and uses in ritual. It stands for the body, the material and the manifest; it grounds and gives form.

Tool and element

In the four-fold scheme it is attributed to the element of Earth. The four elemental weapons, Wand, Cup, Sword and Pentacle, correspond to the four suits of the tarot's Minor Arcana and to the four points of the ritual circle, a scheme drawn together in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn from 1888 out of older Solomonic and grimoire material.

A word with two meanings

In the older grimoire tradition, including the Key of Solomon, "pentacle" more often names an inscribed talisman or seal, a disc or parchment bearing a divine name, sigil or geometric figure and worn or displayed for a specific purpose, rather than a standing elemental tool kept on the altar; the Golden Dawn's fourth elemental weapon, a plain engraved disk representing Earth itself, is a narrower, later repurposing of that older word for a new, more structural role within its own fourfold scheme. The two uses now coexist in modern practice without much confusion, since context, a single ritual disk on an altar versus a specific talisman made for one working, usually makes clear which is meant. The weapon is described here as an element of that documented tradition of ceremonial magic, a body of practice studied historically rather than endorsed.

Sources The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order 1887-1923Ellic Howe with Grimoires: A History of Magic BooksOwen Davies

The Pentacle is the elemental weapon of Earth and the first of the four the Golden Dawn aspirant makes, at the Zelator grade. Its prescribed face is not a five-pointed star. It is a hexagram divided into segments and painted in the four colours of the elements as they sit within Earth, with the black and white ground of Malkuth behind them, so that the disc shows the element containing all the others rather than standing beside them.

Three confusions are worth clearing. It is not the pentagram: the five-pointed figure is a sign used in ritual, drawn in the air or on paper, and it is not what is painted on this disc. It is not the pentacle of the Key of Solomon, which uses the word in its older sense for the printed protective medals the book supplies by the dozen, each with its own inscription and purpose. And it is not the paten of the altar, although the two share a shape and a position.

What the implement is for follows from the element. Where the Wand acts and the Dagger divides, the Pentacle holds, and the discipline attached to it is patience with slow material things: money, body, ground, the parts of a working that cannot be hurried. It is made first in the grade sequence for that reason, and several commentators have noted that the order of the four implements is itself a teaching about where to begin.

Sources The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie with Grimoires: A History of Magic BooksOwen Davies