Wiccan pentacle
A five-pointed star in a circle, the emblem of Wicca. On a Wiccan altar the pentacle is also a disc engraved with the star, used, in the Covenant of the Goddess’s words, “to symbolize Earth and its properties”.
Meaning
The pentacle is two things in Wicca: the religion’s emblem, worn and carved on gravestones, and one of the tools on its altar. Circle Sanctuary calls it the “symbol of the Wiccan religion”, and Ethan Doyle White’s Britannica article on Wicca says followers often use the five-pointed star as “the main symbol of their religion” and lists the pentacle among the common ritual tools with the censer, chalice, wand and athame. The star itself is far older than Wicca, and its history from the Pythagoreans to Éliphas Lévi is on the pentagram page; this page is about what Wiccans make of it. It is used today by Wiccans and other modern Pagans.
Origin and history
Wicca came into the open in England after Gerald Gardner claimed in 1951 that the pagan witch religion had survived in secret, and that he had been initiated into one of its last covens in the New Forest in 1939. Ronald Hutton notes that no confirmation of that coven has been found, and thinks it most likely that Gardner and his friends developed the religion themselves. One of its distinctive features, in Hutton’s account, was the blending of paganism with ceremonial magic, and the altar pentacle is a clear case. The Golden Dawn, a magical order, already set a painted disc with a pentacle for Earth among its four elemental weapons, as a set in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic shows, and the Covenant of the Goddess names “the works of the Golden Dawn and other metaphysical orders” among the sources of the Craft’s revival.
The museum also holds a small copper pentacle, a figure placing a wreath on a stone on one side and magical signs on the other, that was on show at the museum when it stood on the Isle of Man. Its label there called it “circa 1850”. The museum now records it as believed to have been made by Gardner himself, as Philip Heselton has verified.
What is engraved on an altar pentacle
The disc carries more than the star. The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic records the symbols on a brass pentacle that belonged to Anne Darby: an S shape for the kiss, the S with a line for the scourge, a down-pointing triangle for the first degree of initiation, an up-pointing triangle for the second, the pentagram with its point down for the third, a circle topped with a crescent for “the Lord or Horned God” (Horned god) and two crescents for “the Lady or the Moon” (Triple moon (triple goddess)). Practice varies between traditions: Circle Sanctuary’s own Circle Craft says that in its rites “the scourge and measure are not used”. Other pentacles in the collection are simpler. One of grey schist, with a sheaf of corn engraved on the back, was made in the 1980s for a young witch in a London coven. Another, made of matchsticks and glue, is the work of a man serving a life sentence, a Pagan for many years, who used it in his cell.
Earth on the altar
In the Covenant of the Goddess’s account of a witch’s tools, the altar holds one symbol for each of the four elements, and the pentacle is Earth’s, standing for “stability, material wealth, the body, and practical affairs”. A small dish of salt or soil can take its place, and Circle Sanctuary lists “pentacle and/or dish of salt, soil, or herbs” among its tools.
Pentagram or pentacle?
Wiccans use both words, and their own sources don’t keep them strictly apart. The Covenant of the Goddess writes “a pentagram or pentacle (a five-pointed star sometimes surrounded by a circle)”; Britannica calls the emblem the pentagram and the altar tool the pentacle. In Wiccan use the pentacle is most often the star inside a circle, or a disc that carries it; the pentagram page follows the words back to Lévi’s “pantacle” and the tarot’s suit of coins.
Worn today
Circle Sanctuary says most practitioners of its tradition wear consecrated jewellery, “such as a pentacle”. Since 2007 the pentacle has also been one of the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ emblems of belief for veterans’ headstones and markers, number 37, “Wicca (Pentacle)”, after a campaign of nearly a decade; Circle Sanctuary counts more than 200 markers with pentacles in cemeteries across the country. The story of the campaign is told on the pentagram page.
Read next
- Next in Pagan and Wiccan symbolsThe four elementsEarth, air, fire and water, with spirit often added as a fifth. Wiccans set a tool on the altar for each, and write the elements as triangles: fire pointing up, water pointing down, and air and earth the same, each crossed by a bar.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsNsoromma (star)Nsoromma, “child of the heavens”, is the adinkra star. It stands for guardianship.
See also
Pentagram, Triple moon (triple goddess), Horned god, Wheel of the Year, Chakras.
Sources
- General Practices, Covenant of the Goddess, The Tools of a Witch
- Wicca, Ethan Doyle White, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Beliefs and practices
- Circle Craft: the Circle Craft Path, Circle Sanctuary
- Veteran Pentacle Quest, Circle Sanctuary (Lady Liberty League)
- Emblems of Belief, National Cemetery Administration, US Department of Veterans Affairs, no. 37
- 3491 – Brass Pentacle, collection record, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
- 1058 – Pentacle, collection record, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
- 1059 – Slate Pentacle, collection record, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
- 1882 – Pentacle with stand, collection record, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
- 1993 – Pentacle for Earth, collection record, Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
- Modern Pagan Witchcraft, Professor Ronald Hutton, lecture of 14 May 2025 (text), Gresham College, text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or stars.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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