Sacred Geometry in art, design, music, video, cinema, photography, architecture, nature and life!: PENTAGRAMS, HEXAGRAMS AND SACRED GEOMETRY

Excerpted from “The Book of Magick Power”
by Jason Augustus Newcomb

The "Greater Rituals" of the Pentagram and Hexagram are part of our magical inheritance from the 19th century occult group The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. They have been reprinted in so many books that I was almost going to skip them as a topic in this already crowded manual. However, they have a useful function within your magical work, so I though I had better give them a little space. Besides, I have a few unique viewpoints that you will hopefully find helpful in understanding and using these techniques.

In the Order instructions given out by the Golden Dawn, pentagrams are supposed to be drawn in a specific way to invoke and banish elemental energies, and hexagrams to invoke and banish the energies of the planets. It is said that when you trace the symbols carefully in the air, “From each re-entering angle… issueth a ray, representing a radiation from the Divine.” This is the only explanation offered by the Order for exactly what these symbols are for, and why you should use them. This has always seemed a strange statement, and one that explains very little.

The pentagram is generally considered a symbol representing the microcosm, or humankind, and that the upright pentagram shows the triumph in humans of spirit over the elements. Humans can control the elements through spirit, and this symbol is a representation of that. If you look at Diagram 18 you will see the attribution of an element to each of the points of the pentagram, with the element of spirit at the topmost point. However it is still unclear exactly what is meant by the ray that “issueth forth,” from each re-entering angle.

However, recently, I’ve been exploring sacred geometry, and discovered within the geometry of the pentagram is an interesting ratio known as “phi” or “the golden mean.”