The Hexagram in Magick

The hexagram is a six-pointed star formed by the interpenetration of two equilateral triangles, one pointing upward and one pointing downward. In Western occultism and Kabbalistic tradition it represents one of the most fundamental principles: the union of opposites, the meeting of heaven and earth, the divine descending into matter and matter rising toward the divine. It is the geometric expression of “as above, so below,” the Hermetic axiom attributed to the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus.

The hexagram appears in religious, decorative, and occult contexts across many cultures, though its current Western magickal use traces primarily through the Kabbalistic and ceremonial streams that converged in the nineteenth-century occult revival.

History and origins

The hexagram as a symbol appears in ancient India (the Satkona Yantra in Hindu and Jain traditions), in early Islamic geometric design, in medieval European decorative art, and eventually in Jewish communal symbolism. The Magen David became a widespread symbol of Jewish identity from approximately the seventeenth century onward, appearing on synagogue buildings and, from the nineteenth century, on Zionist and later Israeli national emblems.

In Kabbalistic thought the hexagram carried metaphysical significance as a representation of the Seal of Solomon and of the divine structure of creation. The six points corresponded to the six directions of space, and the overlapping triangles to the union of fire (upward triangle) and water (downward triangle), male and female, spirit and matter. This framework passed into the ceremonial magick tradition through the Kabbalistic study that was central to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The Golden Dawn, active from 1887, systematized the hexagram’s planetary attributions and developed the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram as a formal working tool. Aleister Crowley further elaborated hexagram ritual in the A:.A:. system and in his own ceremonial practice, and the Golden Dawn hexagram rituals have remained standard in ceremonial magick lineages to the present day.

In practice

The hexagram is worked with primarily in planetary magick. Each of the seven classical planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon) is associated with a specific configuration of the hexagram, drawn in a particular sequence and color. To invoke or work with a planetary force, the practitioner traces the appropriate hexagram while vibrating divine names and planetary godforms, within a ritual structure that also includes the banishing hexagram forms for closing the work.

Beyond formal ceremonial practice, the hexagram appears as a protective and balancing symbol. It can be drawn, painted, or inscribed on ritual tools, talismans, and working spaces. Its two triangles can be meditated on directly: the upward triangle as aspiration, inspiration, and the movement toward higher understanding; the downward triangle as grounding, manifestation, and the embodiment of spiritual insight in material life. Their union at the center is the point of balance where effective magickal work occurs.

Working with the hexagram as a symbol of integration rather than as a purely ceremonial diagram offers a straightforward entry for practitioners who are not in a formal Golden Dawn lineage. Contemplating both triangles, and the central space where they meet, as a meditation on wholeness is both psychologically and spiritually productive.

In myth and popular culture

The hexagram’s wide distribution across cultures gives it an unusually rich and sometimes contested symbolic history. In Hindu and Jain traditions, the Satkona Yantra, a hexagram formed by two interlocking triangles, represents the union of Shiva (upward triangle, masculine, fire) and Shakti (downward triangle, feminine, water), and is used in devotional and tantric practice as an image of the union of cosmic principles. This usage is genuinely ancient and independent of either Jewish or Western occult traditions, demonstrating the symbol’s cross-cultural resonance.

The Magen David (Shield of David) became strongly associated with Jewish communal identity from approximately the seventeenth century, appearing on synagogue buildings and community buildings across Europe before becoming the symbol of the Zionist movement and, from 1948, the central element of the Israeli flag. Heinrich Heine, the German-Jewish poet writing in the nineteenth century, was aware of the symbol’s dual secular and religious dimensions; the Nazis’ use of the yellow Star of David as a badge of persecution gave the symbol an additional layer of historical weight that is inseparable from its contemporary meaning in Jewish contexts.

In popular culture, the hexagram appears in fantasy and role-playing contexts as a standard symbol of magical power and protection, often without specific attribution to either Jewish or occult sources. The Dungeons and Dragons game and its descendants use hexagram-like symbols as standard components of magical diagrams and spell circle imagery. In the television series Supernatural, The Magicians, and numerous other works in the occult drama genre, hexagrams appear regularly as protective and summoning symbols, reflecting their Golden Dawn heritage in a popularized form.

Eliphas Levi’s 1855-56 Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie was instrumental in transmitting the hexagram’s Kabbalistic and planetary symbolism to the nineteenth-century occult revival. His illustrations of the hexagram, including its relationship to the macrocosm-microcosm doctrine, were directly influential on the Golden Dawn founders and on Aleister Crowley, who reproduced and extended Levi’s symbolic framework.

Myths and facts

Several persistent misunderstandings about the hexagram and its significance are worth addressing directly.

• A common belief holds that the hexagram is inherently a Jewish symbol that was adopted by Western occultism. The symbol has a genuinely multi-cultural history, appearing independently in Hindu, Jain, Islamic, and European decorative traditions; its strong Jewish association is real but dates from the early modern period rather than antiquity, and its occult use draws specifically on Kabbalistic frameworks that developed within Jewish tradition.
• Many people assume that the six-pointed star and the Star of David are exactly the same symbol with the same meanings in all contexts. The geometric form is shared, but the contexts of use, the communities that use it, and the meanings attributed to it are distinct enough that conflating them can misrepresent both traditions.
• It is sometimes claimed that the hexagram is “the mark of the beast” or carries Satanic connotations in its Western occult use. The symbol in ceremonial magick is associated with the seven classical planets and with the solar principle at the center; the tradition does not associate it with infernal or adversarial forces.
• A persistent assumption treats all hexagrams in Western occultism as identical in their function. The seven distinct hexagram forms of the Golden Dawn system, one for each classical planet, are significantly different in their tracing sequences and in their specific planetary attributions; they are not interchangeable.
• The hexagram is sometimes assumed to be a recent invention, with its Kabbalistic associations fabricated by early modern occultists. The Kabbalistic use of hexagram-like forms is attested in medieval texts, and the planetary attributions draw on astrological frameworks that predate the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn by centuries.