A silver plate beneath water is said to bring heavy rain for as long as it remains submerged. The sixth Moon pentacle joins that unusual condition to eight radiating lunar characters and words from the biblical Flood. [1]
Mathers 1889 · Book I, chapter XVIII; printed p. 70; figure 54, Plate XIII; plate PDF page 116
Source reproduction The 6th Pentacle of the Moon, with paired lunar characters and a verse from the Flood account. Mathers 1889, Plate XIII, figure 54; notice on p. 70.
Rain held beneath water
Engraved on a plate of silver and placed beneath water, it is said to cause heavy rain for as long as it remains there. [1]
A separate sentence assigns the making of the figure—whether engraved, drawn or written—to the day and hour of the Moon. That timing belongs to its preparation, not to the act of immersing it. The rain claim itself specifically names an engraved silver plate. Chapter XVIII also gives silver as the Moon’s general metal and permits paper pentacles in the appropriate planetary colour, but the notice’s silver condition remains part of this particular account. [1]
Eight spokes, four paired characters
Four straight lines cross at one centre to create eight spokes. Their ends repeat in opposed pairs: circles with short crossbars above and below; triangular ends with several transverse bars at left and right; angular, lozenge-like characters on one diagonal; and looped characters on the other. A small six-pointed star sits above the field, in the outer band. [1]
Mathers identifies the interior signs as mystical characters of the Moon. These radial forms occupy the inner circle; the Hebrew biblical inscription runs in a separate band around them. [1]
Words from the Flood
The biblical words come from Genesis 7:11–12. Mathers’s English quotation selects the breaking open of “All the fountains of the great deep” and the rain falling upon the earth. In the biblical narrative, the windows of heaven also open, and rain falls for forty days and forty nights. The pentacle draws its language from that catastrophe, but its own notice measures the rain by the silver plate’s continued submersion. [1][2]
This is the lunar sequence’s clearest weather-making claim. The second pentacle has an opposite task: it protects against danger by water and is shown to lunar spirits to stop the rain and tempests they raise around the ritual circle. The sixth produces heavy rain through immersion. Each connects a different action with a different relationship to water. [1]
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, 1889; printed edition, including editorial restoration of Hebrew characters. Book I, chapter XVIII, printed pp. 69–70; figure 54, Plate XIII (PDF p. 116); general lunar material and paper alternatives, chapter XVIII, pp. 56–57
