The Unicursal Hexagram
A bonus card in many editions of Thoth deck
Tuesday, April 11th 2023.
Sun in Aeries
Waning gibbous moon in Sagittarius, entering Capricorn at 10:33am PT.
Card Pulled:
Unicursal Hexagram, a sort of bonus card in the Thoth deck and not technically part of the Tarot proper, but which I will write about nonetheless.
The Unicursal Hexagram: is a six sided star, and the only shape of this sort that can be drawn without lifting a pen. This in contrast to e.g. the hexagram better known as “The Jewish Star” or Star of David, composed of two separately drawn triangles.
Crowley’s unicursal hexagram is modified to feature a five-petaled flower at it’s center, rendering the symbol to be Crowley’s equivalent of the Egyptian Ankh (symbol of life), or Rose Cross described in the previous post. The five-petaled flower here represents a pentacle: the symbol of physical manifestation, of spirit descending into matter.
Hexagrams in general represent the unity of opposites (male and female, chaos and order, etc.), as in the image of the Star of David: one triangle pointed upward united with another pointed downward. The unicursal hexagram indicates this as well, but in its unicursal nature has a stronger emphasis on the unity of the two halves as opposed to the mere coming together of opposite forces.
Perhaps the best way to understand Crowley’s Unicursal hexagram, however, is as a sigil: the shape/drawing equivalent of a motto; quick to draw as a motto is quick to utter, but impactful and containing wisdom and illocutionary force beyond itself. Though some Thelemites might correct me, I have always read the unicursal hexagram—since first coming across it in my youth—as being essentially synonymous with the Crowleyan maxim “Do What Thou Wilt”.
More esoterically yet, the brief, Wikipedia version of the relation between the petaled pentacle and the hexagram surrounding it is thus :
“Crowley’s hexagram represents the microcosmic forces (the pentacle, representation of the pentagram with 5 elements, the Pentagrammaton, YHSVH or Yahshuah) interweaved with the macro-cosmic forces (the hexagram, the representation of the planetary or heavenly cosmic forces, the divine)”
The Pentagrammaton referenced above is an allegorical form of the Hebrew name of Jesus and beyond the scope of the current essay except to say it was adopted by renaissance occultists and Rosicrucian’s to represent Christ and his sacrifice as a magical or alchemical act of spirit becoming matter: transforming the suffering of the terrestrial plane into something affirmative.
The Pentarammaton was often depicted in it’s form as five Hebrew letters: ---יהשוה --- arranged around a pentacle, like so, analogous to the traditional 5-elements image of the pentacle
The Video
I say at the end of this video that I will also talk about the 4 of cups, since the Unicursal hexagram is not a “real card”, but I have to reneg on that; any one card is more than a days work, and 4 of cups will be covered later.
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A Note on the Music used:
Straight To Video by Mindless Self Indulgence, You’ll Rebel To Anything, 2005.
Jimmy Euringer, aka Jimmy Urine has some sexual misconduct allegations against him. But Mindless Self Indulgence were an important band to me for a few months in 9th grade, starting around the time I looked into who Gerard from MCR was married to.
You more commonly see the album this song was taken from (on Spotify, etc.) with the bonus edition cover:
But this is sort of a shame, as I think the video-game controllers as cross cover is fantastic: one could probably even make the case that it is one of the best and most fitting album covers of the 2000’s.
It caught my attention on the shelves of a library in Florida back in 2009, which is how I came to know the album. “Shut Me Up” is the most well known track from You’ll Rebel to Anything, but “Straight To Video”’s melody hooks me in.
In a possible synchronicity, unbeknownst to me until taking to Wikipedia to write this article, Mindless Self Indulgence released an album featuring a version of the universal hexagram on it’s cover in 2013:
