Pentacle

The word comes from the medieval Latin pentaculum, derived from the Greek pente (five). The figure of the five-pointed pentagram was used from Antiquity: the Pythagoreans of the 6th century BCE made it a symbol of recognition, and it is attested on earlier Mesopotamian amulets. The distinction between pentagram (five-pointed geometric figure) and pentacle (circular talisman bearing symbols, not necessarily a pentagram) became clearer in medieval ceremonial magic. The Keys of Solomon (a medieval grimoire dated between the 13th and 17th centuries) describe dozens of pentacles attributed to King Solomon, each consecrated to a specific operation.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, in De occulta philosophia (1531), codified the planetary correspondences of pentacles. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888) systematized the pentagram rituals (lesser ritual of invocation, lesser ritual of banishing) that are still taught in contemporary ceremonial magic. The pentagram pointing up classically symbolizes spirit dominating matter (the four elements at the lower four points, spirit at the top). The pentagram pointing down, sometimes used in traditional witchcraft, was charged with satanic meaning in the 19th century by Eliphas Levi, a reading popularized and then taken up by Anton LaVey's Church of Satan (1966).

The pentacle is used in ceremonial magic as a talisman worn or placed on the altar. In contemporary Wicca, it is one of the four traditional ritual tools (athame knife, chalice, wand, pentacle), representing the element Earth. In the 1909 Rider-Waite tarot, Pamela Colman Smith replaced the traditional Coins with Pentacles, transforming the Earth suit of the deck. On Tarotoui, the pentacle appears both as a ritual symbol and as an alternative name for the Coin suit in the Anglo-Saxon tarot. The technical distinction between pentacle (ritual object) and pentagram (geometric figure) is useful for precision.

Confusing pentacle and pentagram is a frequent simplification. Strictly, the pentagram is the geometric figure of the five-pointed star, the pentacle is a talismanic object that may or may not bear a pentagram. Note also that identifying the inverted pentagram with a satanic symbol is a 19th-century construct, not a historical given: before Eliphas Levi, the inverted pentagram did not carry this connotation.