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Practice · Tools · Ars Goetia

Pentagonal Figure of Solomon

A solar or lunar figure worn on the breast with the selected spirit's seal on its reverse.

Simple orientation drawing representing Pentagonal Figure of Solomon
Modern orientation drawing—not a reconstruction of a manuscript design.

What the source describes

The Goetia's pentagonal figure is an amuletic plate or parchment worn on the chest. The direction joins a general Solomonic design to the current spirit's individual character by placing that seal on the other side. This makes it a compound object: one face situates the operator under a general sacred figure, the other identifies the particular spirit addressed.

Historical setting

The Ars Goetia is the first part of the seventeenth-century Lemegeton compilation. Its diagrams and implements belong to that textual setting; attribution to Solomon is part of the work's traditional frame, not a historical authorship claim.

Common uses

It is worn during the operation for protection and command as the manuscript understands those purposes. Unlike the hexagonal figure at the skirt, it remains on the breast; unlike the lamen language in the catalogue, it is described as a named general figure with a spirit-specific reverse.

Form, materials and reconstruction

The text appoints the Sun or Moon for making it but gives fewer material details than it does for the hexagonal figure or Secret Seal. Its manuscript drawing and the selected spirit seal should be taken from the same documented textual context where possible.

Element: No fixed element

This source does not assign this particular instrument a fixed element. Its materials or effects should not be turned into an elemental correspondence without a named source.

Sources and variations

The word 'pentagonal' refers to this Goetic figure, not to every pentacle in the Greater Key and not to the Golden Dawn's quartered Earth disc.

Primary account used here

Lemegeton, Ars Goetia, 'The Pentagonal Figure of Solomon' ↗

Further references