There is a passage in the middle of this section that has nothing to do with stars or elements, and it is the most direct thing on the page.
Most of the time, humanity enters into a wrongful path knowing full well that the path leads to nothing good, but they lack the will to stop, or to leave, or to separate from those who are leading them astray.1
That is the problem the number five exists to solve. Everything else here — the Mars attribution, the Persian astronomy, the five-pointed shield traced with a wand — sits on top of that sentence. Five is the number of the faculty that lets a person stop.
The correspondences arrive first and they are all hard-edged. In the Kabbalah five is the number for Vigor, Severity, Strength, Righteousness, Justice, War and even Fear — a number associated with order and law, and the number of the warriors of heavens, the celestials known as Hosts. The planet is Mars, which corresponds to the deity of the same name: the god of War, Sickness and Health. So the Kabbalistic set and the planetary set agree, which is not always true elsewhere in this system.
Then the question a reader is expected to be asking gets asked outright: is number Five a number of destruction and death? The answer given is a list, and it is broader than the correspondences suggest. Five is a power for transformation, drastic changes, new opportunities, quick movements, dynamism, challenges, opposition, conquest, war and death.
The five-pointed star has a second owner, and the argument for it is astronomical. The star is associated with Venus because, according to the ancient astrologers of Persia, the planet traced upon the heavens a five pointed star-path as it moved through the celestial vault.
That is a real phenomenon rather than a symbolic claim. Venus does return to the same place against the stars in a pattern of five over eight years, and the figure that traces is a five-pointed rosette. Whatever else this system asserts without support, this one is checkable and holds.
Then the part that reconciles Venus with Mars. Venus was not always a deity of Love, Enchantment and the Arts. As Ishtar she was a powerful goddess of war and love, strife and plenty, culture and desolation — qualities named here as the same double-edged set five has been carrying all along.
The core of the doctrine is borrowed, and this is the only place in the section where an outside title is named. In Lumen de Lumine, by Thomas Vaughan, five is the great architect which choses the good pieces from the bad and cuts the inadequate from the good.2 To do that, a person must develop discipline, a straightforward nature, and be quite strong and diligent.
Then the diagnosis, which is the sentence quoted at the top of this page: people walk knowingly down a bad path because they cannot make themselves stop, or leave, or break from whoever is leading them. Note that the failure is not ignorance. They know. What is missing is the will.
And then the training programme, given as three campaigns. Wage war against fear, desperation and feelings of loneliness — those are named as what the will has to be built against. Destroy and defeat the forces of ignorance and foolishness in order to gain a righteous attitude. And finally, destroy forever the fell forces of thoughtlessness, which enslave mankind and make it fall again and again into the pits of chaos, error, and evil.
Read the order of those three. Fear, loneliness and desperation come first, before ignorance, and long before thoughtlessness — which is the last and is called the enslaving one. So the claim is not that people do wrong because they do not know better. They are frightened and alone first, then unthinking — and the unthinking part is what makes it repeat.
Which is why the definition lands where it does. This is the true meaning of the number Five: to act with valor, courage and bravery. It represents to be in control of your own life.
There is a stated reward, and it comes from the tarot. The fifth card of the Greater Arcana is the Hierophant, described here as the keeper of the secrets of transformation. And the sequence attached is specific: once the Apprentice learns to control his or her life, the secrets of how to transform his or her environment will flourish unhindered and unbound, and the practitioner enters a realm of pure unbound manifestation.
That is a gate, and it puts the whole magical curriculum behind a personal condition. Control your own life first; the power to change your surroundings follows. On this account a practitioner who cannot stop doing what they know is bad for them is not merely flawed — they are locked out of the transformative operations entirely.
The instrument for working five is a traced figure, and it is described as a shield of great power which calls upon the forces of nature and heaven. The five points are assigned as follows. The top point represents the Divine and Celestial. The East Point represents Air. The Right Lower Point represents Water. The Left Lower Point represents Fire. The West Point represents Earth. And in the centre is a vortex where all of these energies collide and are ready to be employed by the will of the Wizard.
When to use it is stated twice, in widening terms. It should be traced before and after every magical operation involving the elementary forces — and, as a precautionary measure, it should be traced always before the casting of any of the invocations. ⚠ This is one of three quarter-schemes in this material that do not agree. The altar guardians run North, East, South, West with different beings at each. The seven-pointed star uses a third arrangement. Here the compass is mixed with left and right, and the divine point is called top in the description and North in the tracing instructions. They are reported as printed and not reconciled.
The procedure has four steps and the middle one is a walk around the figure with a feeling attached to each corner. First, build the sphere. Concentrate on the four elemental energies, first visualizing Water, then Earth, next Air and finally Fire, and see those forces mix together into a luminous sphere. Then visualize as the Divine Energies of God combine with your luminous sphere, which produces a stronger brilliance and sense of power.
Second, trace. With the wand already consecrated by a Magicartifex Ubertas incantation, raise it and begin at the Right Lower Point with Water, feeling the body filled with the pressure of rushing waters. Draw the line to the West Point where Earth is, and fill that connection with the ground below and its firmness. Then to the East Point where Air is, observing the rushing gales of air all around. Then to the Left Lower Point, feeling the intensity of the purifying fires. And finally, infused with all four, trace the line to the North Point where the divine is, visualising a powerful fire, energy and brilliance enveloping everything.
Third, speak. At the North Point say: EGO DICO SUPER COPIUM ELEMENTUM, UNDA, TERRA, AERIS ET INCENDIA, GRATE SUO LUCIS EMPIREUM UT DIVINUS ENTELOGOS INTUS NOS JEHOVA JEHE-HORUS. AMEN. Fourth, and this is the step most likely to be forgotten: concentrate on the job at hand, and repeat the operation once the job is finished. The pentagram is traced twice — once to open and once to close — and the closing is not optional.
Three constructions are given for the number five, in ascending permanence. Trace the pentagram before and after any operation touching the elements, and always before an invocation. Four elements into a sphere, the divine added, then wand from Water to Earth to Air to Fire to the divine point, then the Latin formula, then the work, then the whole thing again to close.
Build a five-object grid when you want change, strength, or protection from unwanted troubles. Five stones, objects or images. Enchant the grid with Magicartifex Ubertas and the Exorcism of the Forms. Then place a written petition inside the grid convoking the power of Five, and observe it daily until the needed operation comes to fruition. Other incantations can be added to push the intention further.
Lay a Munio Catena — a Chained Wall — for standing protection. Five stones in a straight line, each one enchanted individually with Magicartifex Ubertas and Exornita Potens Lapidus. Then place the line anywhere, keeping the straight formation. It was used primarily for protective invocations, defensive spells and incantations, and is now also used to give energy and vigor to a person, project or situation.
Note the two placements that differ. A grid is watched — observed daily until it works. A chained wall is simply put somewhere and left.
The correspondences, the pentagram scheme and the three constructions are asserted with no tradition named except where noted. This is the Eldest Tradition warrant on the source stub. 🚩 SINGLE SOURCE for the procedure.
Two claims here are genuinely checkable and both hold. Thomas Vaughan's Lumen de Lumine is a real 1651 text by a real alchemist, and the Venus star-path is a real astronomical pattern — the planet's synodic cycle returns five times in eight years and traces a five-fold figure. Ishtar's double portfolio of war and love is also well attested.
🚩 The specific formulation attributed to Vaughan — five as the great architect which choses the good pieces from the bad — is not quoted with a location and could not be verified against the text in this build. Reported as attributed. ⚠ Three quarter-element schemes in this material disagree, and this is one of them. They are reported as printed. The divine point is described as top and then traced as North within the same procedure; the tracing order also visits the points in an order that does not match the order the elements are visualised in at step one.
Unresolved: nothing states what happens if the closing pentagram is skipped, though the instruction to repeat it after the job is explicit.
Follow the doctrine and five is an inner discipline. Its true meaning is to act with valour and to be in control of your own life, its training is a war against fear, loneliness and thoughtlessness, and its reward — the Hierophant's secrets of transformation — arrives only after that control is won. Follow the constructions and five is equipment. Five stones in a star, a written petition in the middle, five more in a line against the wall, each enchanted with named formulas. Nothing in those procedures asks anything about the operator's character, and a frightened, unfree person can lay out five stones as competently as anyone.
Both are in the same section. And they answer differently for the practitioner the doctrine describes — the one who knows the path is wrong and cannot leave it. On the first account there is nothing for them here until they change. On the second, there is a grid they could build this afternoon.
Shutting Off Human Willpower — Both traditions put the sense of running your own life at the centre of everything, and both agree it is the hinge on which a person's behaviour turns. Neither treats it as a minor feature of personality. They face opposite directions. This system's whole doctrine of five is the construction of that faculty: wage war on fear, desperation and loneliness, defeat ignorance, destroy thoughtlessness, and the result is a person in control of your own life who can then transform their surroundings. The influence material documents the reverse operation, and it starts from a claim that most people's felt control is largely an illusion.
And it names, precisely, the condition this page treats as the goal, as the one that makes a subject easiest to move — which neither corpus notices. A person deeply convinced of their own free will is described there as easier to steer, because whatever direction they end up going, they will construct a story afterwards making it theirs. So the graduate of the doctrine of five is, by the other account, the ideal target. The test this system offers — that you can now cut the inadequate from the good — is a judgement made by the same faculty whose reliability is in question, which is exactly the check the influence material says does not work.
Sharpest implication. The transformative operations are gated on a personal condition, not on skill. Once the Apprentice learns to control his or her life, the secrets of how to transform his or her environment will flourish unhindered — so a practitioner who cannot stop doing what they know is bad for them is not merely unpolished. The Hierophant's door is shut.
Generative questions.