The Most Powerful Talisman Is the Triple Triangle of Pythagoras, the Five-Pointed Star

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Black versus White Magic Series · 18 pages

A three-part study, and the most recently revised document in the section — the edition here is dated Easter Sunday 2026. It begins by deflating its own subject. A talisman is a worthless bit of material, magnetised by the human will and thereby imbued with a potency for good or ill; its virtue and efficacy reside in the faith of the possessor, faith being itself a creative power. A lock of hair or anything that has been in contact with a person will serve, being an open book to the soul-eye of the occultist.

From there the argument ascends. Gems and crystals are described as the tears of gods, holding the virtues of the planets under which they formed. The Teraphim are treated as animated talismans — conscious statuettes, more powerful than any magnetised amulet, foreseeing futurity and dispensing sorrow and joy — and identified with the tutelary gods of the Jews and the planetary angels of the Church. But the most powerful talisman of all is not an object: it is the triple triangle of Pythagoras, the five-pointed star, a sign of the supremacy of spirit over brutal matter. The second part sorts out the terminology of pentads encircled and uncircled, and the third closes on a fine passage about the ant, to whom the violet ray is the brightest of all.

Read the full text (PDF, 1.4 MB, 18 pages)