Fourth Pentacle of Saturn: Ward of Ruin

The Fourth Pentacle of Saturn appears in Book I of the Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis), chapters 18 and 19, among the seven pentacles attributed to the sphere of Saturn. The old grimoire is blunt about its documented purpose: it is described as being of great use "for executing all terrible and mortal operations," traditionally invoked in operations of ruin, destruction, and death directed at an enemy. It is, without question, the darkest of the Saturnian seals, and this entry treats it with the gravity that history demands.

In this catalog the Fourth Pentacle is not offered as a tool for settling scores, jealousy, or ordinary conflict. It is presented strictly as a justice-working: a last-resort seal raised against a person who is engaged in active, serious, ongoing harm — the abuser, the predator, the one the law has failed to stop — and only after other remedies (protection, binding, mundane recourse) have been exhausted. The pentacle is inscribed on dark parchment paper under the hour of Saturn, sealed with the traditional letters ascribed to it in the manuscript, and then bound rather than launched outward: it is buried, sealed in a locked box, or committed to a river, so that its force is contained rather than unleashed into the world at large.

Workers who take up this pentacle should understand that Solomonic tradition treats Saturn as the planet of limitation, judgment, and consequence — this is a working that asks the universe to impose consequence, not a working that grants the practitioner control over the outcome. It is slow, it is heavy, and it should never be entered into lightly.