The Triangle of Solomon as a Textual Apparatus
The Triangle of Solomon is one of the central implements of classical Solomonic ceremonial magic, especially in the Goetic tradition of the Lesser Key of Solomon or Lemegeton. In Richard Cavendish’s The Black Arts, it appears in the chapter on ritual magic, where the book shifts from occult cosmology into the practical mechanics of ceremonial operation.
The standard form is a triangle with a circle inscribed inside it. Around the three sides are divine names. In the photographed diagram from Cavendish, the visible names appear to include TETRAGRAMMATON on the right side, ANAPHEXETON or a variant spelling such as ANACHEXETON / ANEXHEXETON on the left, and PRIMEMATUM along the base. The smaller letters at the corners — something like “ch,” “M,” and “el” — point toward MICHAEL, the archangelic guardian presence invoked around the operation.
In classical ritual terms, the magician stands inside a separate protective magic circle and commands the spirit to appear inside the triangle. The circle protects the operator. The triangle contains the entity. The inscribed circle within the triangle marks the place of manifestation. The spirit is not meant to leave the triangle during the operation.
What is striking, read with a twenty-first-century chaos magick and narrative alchemy lens, is how much work the geometry is doing. The divine names are not decorative. They create a bounded symbolic field. They compel, ground, and constrain. The magician’s will does not operate alone. It is supported by apparatus: names, timing, diagrams, materials, ritual sequence, preparation, and closure.
The Solomonic system can look legalistic from a chaos magick perspective. Everything matters: the names, the seals, the words, the tools, the planetary timing, the correct procedures. Chaos magick later strips much of this away and says, in effect, that belief is the technology. The sigil, the altered state, and the directed act of consciousness become the functional core.
But stripping the apparatus away also costs something. The elaborate grimoire ritual is not mere superstition or clutter. It is a technology of state management and attention direction. Fasting, robes, tools, timing, and repeated formulae saturate consciousness before the operation begins. By the time the magician steps into the circle, ordinary mind has already been displaced by ritual mind.
This suggests a third position: not a return to literal medieval ceremonialism, and not a total reduction to minimalist chaos technique, but an updated narrative apparatus. The grimoire becomes script. The ritual becomes performed narrative. The entity is not necessarily a literal demon to be compelled, but a story-structure, an autonomous complex, an imaginal presence, or a charged pattern called forward into form.
In that reading, the Triangle of Solomon becomes a stage.
You are not simply containing a spirit. You are creating the conditions in which a particular kind of story can appear.
The triangle made of words
If the triangle were rebuilt as a textual practice, its three sides might be understood functionally rather than theologically.
- Ground — the principle or orientation that anchors the operation.
- Call — the question, prompt, or invocation that draws something forward.
- Contain — the constraint that gives the summoned material a form it must inhabit.
In the traditional diagram, the divine names do this work. TETRAGRAMMATON grounds the operation in the ineffable name, pure being, the highest authority. ANAPHEXETON functions as a compeller or calling force. PRIMEMATUM binds or stabilises the manifestation. The exact historical theology can be debated, but the operational pattern is clear enough: ground, call, contain.
A twenty-first-century textual triangle could use different names entirely. One side might carry Wittgenstein. Another Hillman. Another a personal seed phrase or north star. The point is not the inherited name as such, but the function the name performs inside the apparatus.
For a writing practice, the three sides might become:
- The framing question — what am I really asking?
- The generative prompt — what am I calling into speech?
- The constraint — what shape must this take before it can dissolve back into possibility?
The journal becomes the circle: the protected place where the operator stands. The question becomes the triangle: the bounded field of evocation. The thing that appears in the middle is the essay, fragment, image, insight, daemon, or pattern asking to be recognised.
This turns writing into a kind of ritual technology. Not metaphorically only, but structurally. To write is to call something that was not yet visible into a bounded field where it can be encountered. Without the frame, it remains mist. Without the call, nothing arrives. Without the constraint, it diffuses back into potential.
The license to depart
The Solomonic texts are serious about closure. The spirit must be given licence to depart. The operation must be ended properly. The circle is not a place to live. The triangle is not to be left open.
This may be the most useful part of the analogy for a contemporary creative practice. The modern equivalent of licence to depart is publication, release, or deliberate closure. The fragment goes out. The note is saved. The essay is published. The operation ends. The practitioner steps back into ordinary time.
Without closure, the summoned material haunts the operator. Drafts pile up. Ideas remain half-evoked. The triangle stays open and the spirit keeps leaking into the rest of life.
So the updated operation might be simple:
- Stand inside the circle: enter the protected practice space.
- Draw the triangle: define the question, prompt, and constraint.
- Call the entity: let the pattern, fragment, or essay appear.
- Hold it in form: write, shape, name, and bind it to the page.
- Give licence to depart: publish, archive, release, or consciously close.
- Step out of the circle: return to ordinary time.
Read this way, the Triangle of Solomon is not merely an old diagram from ceremonial magic. It is an image of disciplined imagination. A way of thinking about how symbols contain force. A reminder that the creative act needs both invocation and boundary.
The triangle made of words is still a triangle.
It still asks: what are you calling, what contains it, and how will you know when the operation is complete?
Source context
- Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts, chapter 6, “Ritual Magic.”
- The Goetic / Solomonic grimoire tradition, especially the Lesser Key of Solomon or Lemegeton.
- Later transmission through editions such as Mathers and Crowley’s Goetia and Francis Barrett’s The Magus.
- Contemporary interpretive lens: chaos magick, narrative alchemy, journaling, and writing as symbolic apparatus.