Description

Origin & Traditional Use

An altar pentacle is a flat disc engraved with a pentagram, placed at the centre of the altar. In witchcraft it represents the element of earth, and in ceremonial magic the pentacle is the magician’s shield and the seat of the working.

Uses in the Work

Place it at the centre of the altar and set tools, offerings, candles or charged objects on it to consecrate and empower them. Use it to represent earth at the north quarter, and place a sigil, petition or poppet on it during a working so the pentagram anchors the spell. Inverted, the pentagram marks a left-hand path altar: spirit beneath matter, the carnal and earthly honoured first. The cut-out design lets candlelight or a sigil show through the star, which is striking on a dark altar cloth.

Pairs Well With

Pentagram Altar Table 9″ x 9″; Alchemy Wand 14″; Pentagram Stainless Steel Chalice 4.75″

Lore

Sir Gawain in the fourteenth-century romance bore a gold pentangle on his shield, the “endless knot” of five virtues. Agrippa drew a man inside a pentagram to show the human being as a microcosm of the universe.