Unicursal hexagram

The unicursal hexagram is a hexagram or six pointed star that can be traced or drawn unicursally, in one continuous line rather than two overlaid triangles. The unifying of the symbol into one represents the synthesis of opposites.

The ability to draw it in one continuous movement, like the pentagram, is significant in ritual magick.

History

The hexagram, like the pentagram, was and is used in practices of the occult. The hexagram can also be depicted inside a circle with the points touching it.^[1]

Aleister Crowley and Thelema

The unicursal hexagram, as pictured to the right, is one of the key symbols within Thelema, the tradition founded by Aleister Crowley in the early part of the twentieth-century. Crowley did not invent the unicursal hexagram, the emblem was created by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and adapted by Crowley for his own use.^{[citation needed]}

Crowley's adaptation of the unicursal hexagram placed a five petaled rose, symbolizing a pentacle (and the divine feminine), in the center; the symbol as a whole making eleven (five petals of the rose plus six points of the hexagram), the number of divine union.

Combined with the Marian Rose, the unicursal hexagram becomes Crowley's personal sigil, which is the magical union of 5 and 6 giving 11, the number of magick and new beginnings.

When Crowley introduces the unicursal hexagram in his The Book of Thoth he writes that "The lines, however, are strictly Euclidean; they have no depth."

The ritual where he makes use of the unicursal hexagram is 'Reguli' (He also uses the "averse" pentagram in it). In the commentary he writes that

"...for the True Will has no goal, its nature being To Go. Similarly, a parabola is bound by one law which fixes its relation to two lines at every point; yet it has no end short of infinity, and it constantly changes its direction."^{[attribution needed]}

and

"Perhaps he may come at long last, leaping beyond the limits of his own law, to conceive of that sublimely stupendous outrage to Reason, the Cone! Utterly inscrutable to him, he is yet aware that he exists in the nature thereof, that he is necessary thereto, that he is ordered thereby, and that therefrom he is sprung, from the loins of so fearful a Father."^{[attribution needed]}

The unicursal hexagram is not the invention of the Golden Dawn order. It has been used as early as the beginning of the 15th century in works by painter Andrey Rublev.^{[citation needed]}

Notes

Further reading

• Israel Regardie The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic

External links

• Unicursal Hexagram - About.com
• Hexagram (Shatkona, Seal of Solomon) from AltReligion

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