The pentacles of the Clavicula: history and iconography of the figures
The pentacles of the Clavicula Salomonis read as images: origin of the word, the seven-planet system, colours, psalms, Hebrew letters and copyists' errors.
Among the pages of the Clavicula Salomonis the most famous are not the written ones but the drawn ones. These are the pentacles, discs decorated with letters, names and geometrical figures, which in the manuscripts fill whole leaves and are often painted in colour. Seen through the eyes of the historian, and not as tools to be used, they form a small repertoire of graphic and religious culture in which the Bible, Kabbalah and astrology are blended.
A word of uncertain origin
The term pentacle is old, but its etymology is disputed. Many link it to the Greek pénte, “five”, and hence to the pentagram; others suspect the influence of the Old French pendre, “to hang”, because these objects were worn around the neck. In Renaissance texts the word refers in general to a protective figure, not necessarily five-pointed, and the pentacles of the Clavicula are indeed almost always circular.
The system of the seven planets
In the version published by Mathers in 1889 there are forty-four pentacles, distributed among the seven planets: seven each for Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and the Sun, five each for Venus and Mercury, six for the Moon. Other manuscripts contain a different number and order them differently. The planetary distribution reflects the astrological framework of the book, in which every operation is tied to a day, an hour and a star.
Each planet had a traditional colour, which the most carefully made manuscripts respect: black for Saturn, blue for Jupiter, red for Mars, gold for the Sun, green for Venus, mixed colours for Mercury, silver for the Moon. These colour correspondences are not uniform across all sources, but they reveal a desire to give each figure a visual identity recognisable at first glance.
Psalms, divine names and alphabets
The content of the pentacles is largely religious. Around the edges run verses from the Psalms and other biblical books, often in Hebrew or Latin. At the centre are divine names, names of angels, letter squares and geometrical figures. The first pentacle of Saturn, in Mathers's version, contains for example a square of Hebrew letters built like the Sator square, a sign of how different traditions flowed into the same book.
Many copyists did not know Hebrew and reproduced the letters as mere drawings, introducing errors that accumulated from copy to copy. Scholars comparing the manuscripts can thus reconstruct the genealogies of the texts, just as is done with the codices of the classics. In some cases the inscriptions became completely illegible, while still being carefully transcribed by hands that no longer understood their meaning.
Art and devotion
From an artistic point of view, the pentacles belong to the same visual culture as cosmological diagrams, emblems and devotional medals. Their concentric forms recall compass roses and the astronomical tables of printed books. It is no coincidence that some eighteenth-century collectors commissioned copies of the Clavicula on parchment, with gilding and miniatures, treating them more as precious library objects than as tools.
Studying the pentacles as images allows us to appreciate their richness without falling into either credulity or contempt. They are documents of a heterodox religiosity deeply steeped in the Bible, evidence of the circulation of Hebrew among Christians and of the taste for symbols that marked early modern Europe. It is a history that deserves to be read with philological care and with the eye of an art historian.