Practice · Tools · Golden Dawn
Earth Pentacle
The Golden Dawn's Earth implement: a two-sided wooden disc quartered in citrine, olive, russet, and black beneath a white hexagram and border.
What the source describes
The Pentacle stands under final Heh and the Tarot Pentacle. It is laid beside the salt when the four weapons are assembled and receives its own Earth consecration. Its four coloured quarters represent Air of Earth, Water of Earth, Fire of Earth, and Earth of Earth, so the object presents Earth as a compound field rather than a single undifferentiated colour.
Historical setting
This implement belongs to the Golden Dawn's initiatory and ceremonial system. That system reorganized earlier ritual objects into a coordinated elemental set; the resulting assignment should be dated to the order rather than projected backward into medieval grimoires.
Common uses
It is held in work the manuscript classifies as earthy and while Earth pentagrams and names are traced or invoked. Ordinarily the citrine quarter is kept uppermost, although the text permits another quarter to be raised for a specific reason. In the collective ceremony it supplies the earthy lesser angle of each of the other weapons.
Form, materials and reconstruction
The specified support is a truly circular, polished wooden disc about six inches across and one-half to one inch thick, worked alike on both faces. A white outer ring and white hexagram frame four saltire-divided quarters: citrine above for Air of Earth, olive green at the right for Water of Earth, russet brown at the left for Fire of Earth, and black below for Earth of Earth. Divine and angelic names, followed by their Rose sigils, are written in black within the white border; crosses and the adept's motto may also be added.
Element: Earth
The Golden Dawn consecration manuscript names this the Earth implement in its four-weapon set. This assignment belongs to that set; it does not make every earthlike object in every grimoire equivalent.
Sources and variations
The source itself varies between the spellings 'pantacle' and 'pentacle.' This object is not one of the planetary pentacles of the Key of Solomon, nor is its white figure a pentagram: the manuscript specifies a hexagram.
Primary account used here
Further references
- Crowley, Book 4, Part II ↗A later ceremonial interpretation of the wand, cup, sword, pantacle and temple furniture.
- Book 4, Part II: 1913 first edition ↗Bibliographic record and page scan for checking Crowley's later illustrations and wording.