Lamen (magic)

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John Dee's Heptarchic Lamen

Lamen is a general term for a magical pendant worn around the neck so that it hangs upon the breast over the heart. Its uses vary but generally is a comandment of authority. The magician wears a lamen which is a symbolic representation of his relation to his godhead. He will wear lamens made of the sigils of spirits he wishes to command.

Crowley says: The Lamen is a sort of Coat of Arms. It expresses the character and powers of the wearer.

A talisman is a storehouse of some particular kind of energy, the kind that is needed to accomplish the task for which you have constructed it.

The Pantacle is often confused with both the others; accurately, it is a "Minutum Mundum", "the Universe in Little"; it is a map of all that exists, arranged in the Order of Nature. There is a chapter in Book 4, Part II, devoted to it (pp. 117 - 129); I cannot make up my mind whether I like it. At the best it is very far from being practical instruction. (The chapter on the Lamen, pp. 159 - 161, is even worse.)

An analogy, not too silly, for these three; the Chess-player, the Openings, and the Game itself.

But—you will object—why be silly at all? Why not say simply that the Lamen, stating as it does the Character and Powers of he wearer, is a dynamic portrait of the individual, while the Pantacle, his Universe, is a static portrait of him? And that, you pursue flattering, is why you preferred to call the Weapon of Earth (in the Tarot) the Disk, emphasizing its continual whirling movement rather than the Pantacle of Coin, as is more usual. Once again, exquisite child of our Father the Archer of Light and of seaborn Aphrodite, your well-known acumen has "nicked the ninety and nine and one over" as Browning says when he (he too!) alludes to the Tarot.

Various Magical Orders used Lamen Ordo_Templi_Orientis and Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn. They were used to mark members just as secret handshakes have been used though the ages.