Compendium · Esoteric Symbol / Solomonic Talisman

The Pantacle

A pantacle is the inscribed talisman on which the magic of the Key of Solomon depends, a disc carrying the names of God. The one drawn in the Dictionnaire Infernal is a Seal of Solomon hexagram ringed with Arabic script, and it comes with a recipe: virgin parchment, three circles of gold, cinnabar, and green, exorcised ink, and the name AGLA beside a triangle.

Type Esoteric Symbol / Solomonic Talisman

Origin Solomonic magic (Arabic and Latin grimoire tradition)

Period Medieval to the 19th century (the illustration is from 1863)

Primary Sources

Jacques Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal, 6th ed. (1863), the entry 'Pantacles' and the seal engraved by Louis Le Breton
Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis, 14th–15th century), the grimoire whose 'science' the pantacle serves
Ahmad al-Buni, Shams al-Maʿārif (13th century) and the wider Arabic tradition of Solomonic talismans (the Seal of Solomon, Khātam Sulaymān)

Related Beings

Cosmic Principle

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This is a real page from a real book: a hexagram ringed with Arabic writing, printed in 1863 in a French dictionary of demons. Louis Le Breton engraved it for the sixth edition of Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal, to illustrate the entry on pantacles. It shows a tool: the inscribed talisman the whole system of the Key of Solomon was built to make.

The tool, not the sign

A pantacle, spelled pentacle as often as not, is an inscribed talisman: a disc of parchment or metal covered in divine names and sacred geometry, made to give its maker power over spirits. The Dictionnaire Infernal puts the claim bluntly. The whole science of the Clavicule, the Key of Solomon, depends on the use of pantacles, “which contain the ineffable names of God.”

It helps to keep the pantacle apart from the sign at its heart. The Seal of Solomon is one figure, the six-pointed star of two interlocking triangles, tied since late antiquity to Solomon’s command over demons. A pantacle is the finished object, and it usually carries a seal like that at its center, wrapped in a ring of names and words. The seal is the emblem. The pantacle is the working device built around it.

The recipe

What makes the Dictionnaire entry worth an entry of its own is that it does more than describe the pantacle. It tells you how to make one, in the flat procedural voice of a grimoire.

The pantacle is made on a Wednesday, in the first quarter of the moon, in a room freshly whitewashed and aired, where the maker lives alone and burns fragrant plants. It is drawn on virgin parchment with three concentric circles in three colors, gold, cinnabar, and green. The ink and the quill have to be exorcised first, and so does the skin the seal is applied to. Inside the circles goes a triangle carrying its words, among them reformatio and transformatio, and beside the triangle the great name AGLA, which the book calls very powerful for stopping the malice of spirits. The finished parchment is turned to face the east.

Did You Know?

AGLA is a notariqon, a word built from the initials of a Hebrew phrase, Atah Gibor Le-olam Adonai, “You are mighty forever, O Lord.” The grimoires treat it as a name of power in its own right, and it turns up on amulets and magic circles across medieval and early-modern Europe.

The Arabic ring

The thing most people miss about this seal is the writing. The hexagram at the center is a Seal of Solomon, but the six triangles of the star and the whole outer ring are filled with Arabic, invocations and names in the Islamic-Solomonic style. We are not going to hand you a confident word-for-word translation of a rough 19th-century woodcut of Arabic script, because that is exactly the kind of place a plausible invention slips in. What the Arabic does tell us is real and worth saying plainly.

The “Key of Solomon” that European magicians treasured was downstream. Long before the Latin Clavicula Salomonis circulated, the Arabic world had a deep, worked-out tradition of Solomonic talismans, the Khātam Sulaymān, the seal of Solomon, elaborated in works like the thirteenth-century Shams al-Maʿārif of al-Buni. The hexagram and the divine names of power, the discs of protection: much of what the grimoires present as ancient Hebrew wisdom reached Europe through Arabic hands. Le Breton’s woodcut, sitting in a French demonology dictionary with its Arabic ring intact, is an accidental record of that route.

In the compendium

The pantacle sits in the Signs wing as the working end of Solomonic magic, the object the whole apparatus of the Key of Solomon was built to produce and to use. Where the Seal of Solomon is the sign, the pantacle is the thing you actually make, on the right day and in the right colors. The seal in the Dictionnaire Infernal carries the whole story on its face: a Hebrew king’s name carried through a Greek and Latin inheritance, ringed with the Arabic that quietly admits where the craft really came from.

Sources

Bibliography. The same list is held in the article’s frontmatter for the citation tools that read it programmatically.

Jacques Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal, 6th ed. (1863), the entry ‘Pantacles’ and the seal engraved by Louis Le Breton
Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis, 14th–15th century), the grimoire whose ‘science’ the pantacle serves
Ahmad al-Buni, Shams al-Maʿārif (13th century) and the wider Arabic tradition of Solomonic talismans (the Seal of Solomon, Khātam Sulaymān)

Common Questions

What is a pantacle?

A pantacle (also spelled pentacle) is an inscribed talisman, usually a disc of parchment or metal covered with divine names, sacred figures, and geometric signs. In the tradition of the Key of Solomon it is the central working tool: the object through which the magician claims to summon, bind, and command spirits. Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal says flatly that the whole science of the Clavicule depends on the use of pantacles.

Is the pantacle the same as the Seal of Solomon?

They overlap without being identical. The Seal of Solomon is a specific sign, the hexagram of two interlocking triangles tied to King Solomon’s power over demons. A pantacle is the whole inscribed talisman, which often carries a Seal of Solomon at its center, as the one in the Dictionnaire Infernal does, along with a ring of names and invocations. The seal is the sign; the pantacle is the finished object built around it.

What does the Dictionnaire Infernal say about making a pantacle?

It gives a recipe. The pantacle should be made on a Wednesday, in the first quarter of the moon, in a freshly whitewashed and aired room where the maker lives alone, burning fragrant plants. It is drawn on virgin parchment with three concentric circles in gold, cinnabar, and green, using an ink and quill that have themselves been exorcised. A triangle is enclosed in the circles carrying certain words, and beside it the name AGLA, said to be powerful for restraining the malice of spirits, with the parchment turned toward the east.

What is written on the seal in the illustration?

The central hexagram is a Seal of Solomon, and both the six triangles of the star and the outer ring are filled with Arabic script, invocations and names in the Islamic-Solomonic style. We have not set out a verified word-for-word reading of the Arabic here and will not invent one. What the writing signals is clear enough: the ‘Key of Solomon’ that European grimoires copied grew out of a much older Arabic tradition of talismanic magic.