Gal Sofer
(Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Abstract of Paper
presented at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies
(Kalamazoo, 2026)
2026 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program
Session on
“Grimoires of the Greater West: Conversations on Solomonic Magic“
Sponsored by
- Societas Magica
- Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Organized by
Gal Sofer (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Matthew Melvin–Koushki (University of South Carolina–Columbia)
Paper Title:
“From Circle to Marketplace: The Early Modern Career of the Solomonic Pentacle”The Book on the Four Rings of Solomon”
Abstract:
This lecture explores the ‘pentacle’ as a Solomonic instrument and a multifaceted term that shifts between ritual magic and medicine. In the Clavicula Salomonis, pentacles serve as textual amulets that safeguard magicians and constrain spirits. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the term migrated into medical writing and practice, when iatrochemists used the term to market their drugs.
Using magical manuscripts, printed medical books, and legal records, I show two dynamics. The first is terminological plasticity, as the term ‘pentacle’ absorbs older labels and sheds its demonological overtones. The second is functional feedback, as medical branding prompts magical works to recalibrate Solomonic pentacles, culminating in newly framed “planetary pentacles” that are compatible with magia naturalis. Following the term from circle to marketplace and back, the lecture reads the pentacle as evidence of boundary work among theologians, magicians, and medical practitioners.
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