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Saturn and Unicursal Hexagram

To: alt.magick
From: bheidrick@aol.com (B Heidrick)
Subject: Re: Saturn and Unicursal Hexagram (9409.uni-hex.var)
Date: 49940925

Quoting: |nyrath@clark.net (Nyrath)

93

|I first encountered the unicursal hexagram in the works of 
|the Master Therion, but I am unsure if he did indeed invent it.

Crowley apparently thought he invented the figure, but Geordano Bruno used
it centuries earlier.

93 93/93
Bill Heidrick
-------------

From: dpschneider@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 499409xx
Quoting: |> dpschneider
	 |tyagi

93!

|>It doesn't appear that Crowley invented the unicursal hexagram since 
|>there is a picture of it in old G:.D:. materials, 
|
|Which old GD materials.  Could you cite a couple?

Look in Regardie's _Complete Magickal System of the Golden Dawn_ (The
over-priced hardcover book, not the _The Golden Dawn_ which is another book).
That is one of the books I never take with me to college because it cost way
too much to risk ruining it, so I unfortunately can't give you an exact page
number. Check out where Regardie talks about Unicursal hexagrams though and I
think he mentions it there (along with printing the G:.D:. material its in).


|>To my knowledge, there is no "meaning" attributed to it, that is not 
|>attributed to the normal hexagram. 

|You must mean 'popularly'.  We've had a number of people speculate on its
|meaning in alt.magick over the years, including me.  There is an obvious
|tantric (i.e. sexual) relationship there, the central floral being the
|meeting point of the 'clouds and rain' (as one of the taoist folk stories
|I was reading recently put it).

|The unicursal hex is also more obviously extra-planar, in that it could
|be a three (or four?) dimensional object seen along-side.

As with what you wrote above, the only "new" meanings generally attributed to
the unicursal hexagram, are those that only show meanings "more obviously". For
example, I would argue that everything you said above is still symbolism that
con be associated with the tradional hexagram.... its just that the unicursal
one shows it more clearly.

I agree though... I was talking about "popular opinion". There might be some
people who do attribute things to one hexagram that *can not* be attributed to
the other.... I just haven't seen it done, and if it is done, its definitely
not done often :>


|>...I'm fairly sure that the unicursal hexagram with the five rose petals 
|>in the center is a symbol of the "Holy Hexagram", and the plain unicursal 
|>hexagram is a symbol of the macrocosmic hexagram.

|What brings you to this conclusion?  I must say I'm confused on this point.
|The only places I REMEMBER seeing reference to the unicursal hex was in
|relation to the Book of Thoth (book, in which it appears) and one of the
|cards.

Well the first example that comes to mind is from the version of Liber V vel
Reguli that was recently "discovered" in the archives of Syracuse University.
To my knowledge, this is the only version where Crowley shows how the Averse
pentagrams and "hexagram of the Beast" should be drawn. The invoking hexagram
of the Beast is shown as a Unicursal hexagram with Saturn invoking (Using the
traditional method of clockwise for invoking... using Regardie's method, it
would be Saturn Banishing, and that really doesn't make any sense for the
*invoking* hexagram of the Beast. For reasons why Saturn might be used to
symbolize the entire macrocosmic star, see the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the
Hexagram).

Now this hexagram is not drawn with a flower, and this would make sense since
it is clearly the "macrocosmic" star from its position in the ritual. The
magican has just drawn the Sign of the Beast (the circle symbolizing Nuit-Ain
Soph, the point symbolizing Hadit - Kether, and the two testes being Chokmah
and Binah). From there, the magician draws this hexagram, symbolizing the next
six sephiroth, and ends by touching the ground, symbolizing malkuth.

The unicursal hexagram with the five pointed rose, seems to symbolize the star 
of twelve points talked about in Liber Ararita (i.e. the eleven rayed star with
twleve points). The outer six represent the macrocosm, the inner five are the
microcosm, and the center point is the union of all.

As I said, there is no place that Crowley actually makes the statement that one
symbolizes one hexagram, and the other symbolizes another, but the conclusions
seems to make sense. I can't remember off the top of my head other places that
Crowley references the unicursal hexagram, except that I know he talks about it
in _Magick Without Tears_.

|Hsi Wang Mu
|tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com

93 93/93
Dan Scheider
dpschneider@eagle.wesleyan.edu

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