Metal, paper, ink and time
Book I, chapter XVIII describes pentacles engraved in a planet’s metal or written on prepared paper in its colours. It assigns lead to Saturn, tin to Jupiter, iron to Mars, gold to the Sun, copper to Venus, mixed metals to Mercury and silver to the Moon. For paper figures it gives black, celestial blue, red, yellow or gold, green, mixed colours and silver respectively. The chapter requires virgin material or metal purified by fire. The chapter leaves the size open, provided the prescribed form and ceremonies are observed. [2]
Chapter VIII places construction in a newly cleaned room or cabinet, set apart so the writer and companions could work without interruption. It names gold, vermilion and azure blue among the colours, prepared pens and colours, and sheets laid ready before work began. Book II gives these materials their own chapters. Its pen was fashioned from a gosling’s feather, sharpened, perfumed and sprinkled; an inkstand was inscribed with names including IHVH, Metatron and Iah. Colours were kept in a new, clean box. [2]
The text’s “virgin” paper meant paper or card that was new, clean, consecrated and unused. Its parchment chapter describes animal skin preparation, then offers a shorter treatment of ordinary parchment with characters, incense, prayer and psalms. It also permits paper, satin, silk and similar materials for less important operations when duly consecrated. [2]
Timing varies between passages. Chapter VIII prescribes a day and hour of Mercury with a waxing Moon in an air or earth sign; chapter XVIII directs metal engraving to the day and hour proper to the planet. Individual notices are more specific: the fourth Jupiter pentacle calls for silver under Jupiter in Cancer, the last Sun pentacle for gold at a solar day and hour, and the last Moon pentacle for a lunar day and hour. Jupiter’s second design specifies paper or parchment, a swallow’s pen and screech-owl blood. These prescriptions coexist in Mathers’s edition, whose Preface and blood chapter also record his opposition to using blood. [2]
