Most of the objects in this practice send something out. A grid broadcasts a number, a pentacle carries a written word, a wand releases what the sphere has gathered. The solids do the opposite. Each of the five is described first by what it means and then, almost in passing, by what it will hold.
A tetrahedron can be employed to keep a fire elemental nicely confined. A cube can be used to keep earth elementals and land faeries. An octahedron keeps air elementals and works with aerial faeries and other mystical creatures of air. A decahedron can be used to keep water elementals and sea mythical creatures.1
And the footnote attached to the first one says when that becomes real: in the future, when the Apprentice has been able to learn how to conjure elemental beings from the Elemental Planes, he or she will be able to place in this geometric figure such beings through the use of a Binding Incantation. So these are cages, and the beginner is being shown the cages before being taught to catch anything.
The rule about material is unusually permissive and then unusually specific about the exceptions. Almost every single material is suitable, as long as the form is as exact as possible. Shape is what matters; substance mostly does not.
Then five materials are ruled out entirely: dead animal matter, rubber, sand, salt and lime. Two different reasons are given. Dead animal matter will only incorporate into the operation a negative charge. The other four rebound the magical operation, actually ending it instead of harbouring it or furthering the incantation.
That is a sharper failure than most warnings here. A rubber tetrahedron does not merely work poorly. It bounces the working back and stops it.
The recommended materials are the opposite case, and they come with a claim about what they are: metals, the nobler the better, gemstones, semiprecious stones, crystal quartz and woods. All of these are considered living in the magical world, since they possess a living spirit inside — and so they add a potent quality of life and energy to whatever operation is running.
Every recommended material turns out to be occupied. The spirits in question get their own names, in a footnote that runs to one sentence.
The spirit of metals are called dactilads, the spirits of gemstones are called polones, the spirit of semiprecious are called klomes, the spirits of quartz are called xalads, and the spirits of woods are known as dryads.2
Four of those five names are unattested. Dryad is Greek and genuine — a tree nymph — and it is the only one a reader can look up. Dactilads, polones, klomes and xalads follow the same pattern the Archprimes do: a real name at one end of the list, and the rest built to match.
But look at what the naming does rather than where it comes from. It converts the material list into a population. A brass tetrahedron is not made of brass; it is made of a dactilad. And that turns the recommendation into something with a consequence — the reason the noblest metal is best is that a better spirit is living in it.
One of the five carries a restriction that appears nowhere else in the practical material, and it is worth reading exactly. The octahedron can be specially used to entrap harmful spirits, dark entities and creatures of darkness and evil. And then: of course, this should be done with the help of other Wizards and by no means alone.
That is the second operation in this whole curriculum a solitary practitioner is forbidden. The first is destroying a spirit outright; this is confining one. Everything else — consecration, scrying, the schools, the grids, the sphere — is written for one person in a quiet room with the door shut and nobody else present.
So the pattern holds: the two things you may not do alone are both about taking a hostile being out of circulation. Not summoning one, which the conjuration school teaches to a single operator. Not addressing one. Trapping it.
Nothing states why. What is stated is the shape of the object doing the trapping — the octahedron is Mercury, reason, communication, judgement, the form which develops ideas and concepts — which makes the cage for dark entities the same figure that governs thinking clearly.
Beyond the elementals, each figure has an ordinary working life, and the uses are domestic. The tetrahedron is Jupiter and Fire — the mystic fire of abundance, happiness and geometric expansion, four triangles, used for friendship, devotion and spirituality. Its practical list is a run of very human wants: to find a job, to receive help from other people, to ask for the blessing or support of a superior, and to be endowed with good luck at competitions and games.
The hexahedron is Saturn and Earth, six squares, the symbol of harvest, fortune and the passage of time. In its structure it represents the year and the hours of the day and the night — so the cube is a calendar as well as a shape. It blesses the harvest of any activity, not necessarily tied to the earth, and it can be used to synchronize with events in such a way that events take place in a favorable way for the practitioner.
The octahedron is Mercury and Air: magical wisdom, liberty and freedom, and the figure that develops ideas. Beyond its cage function it is for communication, success, being able to sell or buy with favorable effects, protection from swindlers and thieves, and operations involving Astral Travel and Communion with Celestial and Elemental Spirits. The schools of Alterations and Benedictions are said to belong to it.
The decahedron is the Moon and Water: fluidity and transformation, the emotional aspect of humanity, and the profound mystery of light over darkness. It handles emotions, knowing the truth, the mind, the unconscious, and the destruction of deceits. The dodecahedron is the Universal Stars and Constellations, twelve pentagrams — Life, Order and Evolution, union and cohesion with other beings, and a representation of the One in All. It carries the sacred forces of the Nihilus and the Additus, and it is the figure used to deal with the gods, since it holds the seven planets expressed through the twelve zodiac signs. The caution attached is firm: read and learn a great deal about a deity before ever wanting to use this device to talk to the gods.
One line in the octahedron entry reaches back into the curriculum and reorganises part of it. The magical schools of Alterations and Benedictions, among others, belong to this geometric figure.
Read that as filing rather than as decoration. The ten schools were built by sorting existing incantations by the kind of effect they had, and here two of those ten are assigned a solid — which means the sorting has another axis nobody mentioned. A school is a planet, a station and a focal point; now it is also a shape. And among others says the assignment covers more than two, without saying which.
Two problems sit in this list, and both are worth stating plainly. ⚠ There are five Platonic solids and six are given. Tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron are the five; the decahedron is not one of them. Its description — ten triangles, a pentacle on the top and a pentacle on the lower portion — is a pentagonal bipyramid, which has no regular faces meeting the Platonic condition. And it has been given Water, which in the standard scheme belongs to the icosahedron.
The icosahedron is here too, and it has been given something else entirely. It is the symbol of Magic — twenty triangles, the harboring of light, the bringing of enlightenment to the world — and it is described as a storing device for magical energies and a representation of the Philosophical Sphere. It reaches the celestials, watchers, archons and the supreme archangels of heaven.
And it is withheld. It arrives as a magical artifact and is then declared not suggested for the Apprentice just yet. Its regular use is by other wizards, to keep magical formulas intact, conjurations and many other magical operations of higher degree.
So the one solid that stands for the sphere itself, and stores magical energy rather than holding a being, is the one a beginner is told not to use.
The whole procedure, with the constraints that bind it. Get the shape right first. Almost any material will serve, provided the form is as exact as possible — so accuracy of shape outranks quality of substance.
Then choose the substance well. Noble metal, gemstone, semiprecious stone, crystal quartz or wood, because each carries a living spirit. Never dead animal matter, rubber, sand, salt or lime: the first adds a negative charge and the rest bounce the operation back and end it.
Match the figure to the job. Tetrahedron for work, favour from a superior, luck and fire. Cube for harvest, timing and earth. Octahedron for trade, communication, astral travel and air. Decahedron for emotion, truth and water. Dodecahedron for approaching a deity — and only after studying that deity properly.
Then order it. Perform the Exorcism of the Solids, with a consecrated wand in the right hand and the left hand pointing upwards, exactly as the Exorcism of the Forms is performed over a grid. The formula opens EXORCISO IGITUR TE CREATURA GEOMETRICA FORMATA, PER PENTAGRAMMATON ET IN NOMINE TETRAGRAMMATON.3 And never set the octahedron against a dark entity alone. That one waits for other wizards.
The material rules, the spirit names and the per-solid uses are asserted with no tradition named and nothing quoted. This is the Eldest Tradition warrant on the source stub. 🚩 SINGLE SOURCE.
The Platonic elemental assignments are conventional where they are conventional: tetrahedron to fire, cube to earth, octahedron to air, and dodecahedron to the cosmos are all standard from Plato's Timaeus onward. ⚠ Six figures are given for five solids, and water has been moved. The decahedron is not a Platonic solid; the icosahedron, which conventionally carries water, has been reassigned to Magic and the Philosophical Sphere. Reported as printed.
🚩 Four of the five spirit names have no external attestation. Dryad is genuine Greek; dactilad, polone, klome and xalad are this system's own coinages, built the same way the Archprime names are. ⚠ The Exorcism of the Solids is another instance of the shared EXORCISO IGITUR TE CREATURA [X] frame, here with geometrica formata in the substance slot. Treated as a template rather than as a unique formula.
Unresolved: nothing states what happens to a being once it is confined in a solid — how long it stays, whether it can be released, or what a wizard does with the object afterwards.
Follow the material rule and the shape is what matters. Almost any substance will do as long as the form is exact, which makes a solid a piece of geometry that happens to be made of something. Follow the list of living materials and the substance is what matters. Metals have dactilads in them, quartz has xalads, wood has dryads — and the reason to prefer a noble metal is that a better spirit is living in it. On that account a solid is a being that happens to have been cut into a shape.
Both are in the same short passage. And they disagree about the exact cardboard tetrahedron a beginner can make in an evening: perfectly formed, and inhabited by nothing at all.
Asum — Akan Talisman Doctrine — Both traditions treat a made object as a working component rather than a symbol, and both specify what it may be made of, because in each the material is doing part of the work rather than merely carrying a design.
The two disagree about which half is decisive. The Akan doctrine puts the operative property in the substance and its conditioning — what the object is and what has been done to it.
Here shape is declared decisive and substance is then declared alive, and neither corpus notices the collision. The rule says almost any material will do as long as the form is as exact as possible — geometry first. Two sentences later, the recommended materials are recommended because each has a living spirit inside it. A tradition that locates the power in the substance never has to answer what an accurately shaped inert object does. This one does, and does not: the forbidden list says rubber and sand rebound an operation, which means substance can veto a perfect form — and if that is true, form was never sufficient in the first place.
Sharpest implication. Two operations in this entire curriculum may not be done alone, and both are about removing a hostile being: destroying a spirit, and entrapping harmful spirits, dark entities and creatures of darkness and evil in an octahedron. Summoning one is a solitary skill. Getting rid of one is not.
Generative questions.