You might say that Mabon is a celebration of the earth element many times over. In addition to celebrating the earth’s bounty in the form of the foods and grains that provide our very sustenance, as day and night reach equal length, we celebrate the earth element’s associated qualities of divine harmony and balance. And naturally, the deities that we commonly invoke at this time are very intimately tied to the earth and the cycles of the harvest: beings such as Demeter, Gaia, Ceres, Cerridwen, and the Green Man.
Mosaic Harvest Pentacle
All of this means that it’s the perfect time to create this potent earth symbol for your altar and magic circle: a mosaic pentacle, created with dried split peas and legumes. As you may know, pentacles are placed on the altar and at the northern cardinal point in magic circles to represent the earth element. The pentacle can also be used as a magical tool of protection, grounding, blessing, and drawing off negativity. In the words of author Ruth Barrett in Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries, “The pentagram becomes a pentacle when enclosed within a circle and inscribed on a disc or stone. The pentacle represents the ‘great round,’ the planet Earth herself, the great cauldron-womb of the Goddess that contains all the elements symbolic of the wholeness and oneness of life.”
This project is so simple and inexpensive to make, and yet the finished product has such a rustic and enduring beauty.
Time to complete: 1 to 2 hours
Cost: $3.00 to $7.00
Supplies
An unvarnished terra cotta or cement saucer (such as something that would go under a potted plant, although I used a cement holder for a pillar candle)
Dried green split peas
Dried green or yellow lentils
Optional: more varieties of dried legumes (if you want to get fancy)
Elmer’s glue
Pencil
Ruler
Protractor
Instructions: Using the protractor and pencil, mark five points around the outside of the inner area of the saucer, each 72 degrees apart from each other. Using the ruler and the pencil, connect each dot to the two dots directly across from it to form a 5-pointed star.
Cover one of the lines with a line of glue and neatly arrange a single row of split peas along that line, flat sides down. Repeat with each line until you’ve formed a five-pointed star out of split peas.
Optional: Add a single split pea to the center of each of the five outside areas of the star, or otherwise add detail as desired.
Allow to dry.
Section by section, fill in the remaining area of the inside of the saucer with glue and then lentils. (You may need to crowd them together a bit here or there, or select smaller or larger lentils according to the space you have to work with. Lentils are good for this part of the project because you can angle them slightly to fit them together if necessary.) Allow to dry.
Pentacle Blessing and Consecration Ritual
To bless and consecrate your new magical altar addition, begin by bathing it in white sage smoke. On the day of a full moon, when the sun is high in the sky, take it outside to a serene natural setting. Spread a white cloth on the ground—perhaps at the base of a tree or in another location that feels particularly powerful to you—and place the pentacle on the cloth. Leave it for 30 minutes to an hour to absorb and align with the energy of the earth.
Repeat this in the evening when the moon is out so that it can absorb the energy of both sun and moon, night and day.
How to Use Your Pentacle
Pentacles are attractive altar additions, but they are so much more, and their magical usefulness is often overlooked! Here are a few ways to use your pentacle as a potent magical tool.
For protection, first charge your pentacle with protective energy. Do this by setting the intention to infuse it with proactive vibes while simultaneously bathing it in very bright sunlight or visualized bright white light. Then, simply walk in a clockwise direction around anything or anyone you’d like to protect while facing it outward like a shield. Or, if you’d like to protect yourself, again face it outward like a shield and then spin one full circle in a clockwise direction. Or, if you’d like extra protection from one or more unwanted visitors, place it on your doorstep or just inside your front door.
For grounding, sit comfortably on the floor or the earth while holding the pentacle flat on your right hand. (Alternatively, sit in a chair with your spine straight and your feet flat on the ground.) Rest your left hand over the top of it. Consciously relax your body and take some deep breaths as you focus on the solidity of the earth beneath you.
To clear negativity from a room or area, place the pentacle in a central location and charge it with the intention to absorb and neutralize any excess negativity. The next day, take it outside and lay it on the earth in bright sunlight for at least 5 to 10 minutes to clear and neutralize it. (Or, if bright sunlight is nowhere in sight, bathe it in white sage smoke.)
To clear negativity from yourself, place the pentacle under a chair and then sit comfortably in that chair with your spine straight and your feet flat on the earth. Breathe deeply and relax. Then imagine very bright white light coming down from above. See it moving slowly but steadily, like caramel or honey, and moving through your entire body and aura, pushing negativity down as it moves toward the earth. Envision this negativity being magnetized and absorbed by the pentacle. Stay with this visualization until you feel sufficiently cleared. Then take the pentacle outside and rest it on the earth in bright sunlight or white sage smoke, as above.
To use your pentacle to bless a small object and infuse it with powerful magical energy, on the full moon, clear 4 to 12 white quartz points with sunlight and/or white sage smoke. Then place the object on your pentacle and arrange the crystals around the outside of it, pointing toward the item. Leave it until the next day.