The Characters of the Planets
Agrippa finished his three books of occult philosophy around 1510, and they were printed at Cologne in 1533. The second book is the one about number. In it each of the seven planets is given a table — a magic square, three cells across for Saturn and nine for the Moon — along with a seal for the planet and a character apiece for the intelligence and the spirit set over it.
The characters are not free drawing. Each one is a name written out across the planet’s own table: the Hebrew letters are read as numbers, each number is found in the square, and the cells are joined in the order the letters come. That is why the letters of every one of these names add up to a number belonging to its own square — the total of all its cells, or the figure each row comes to.
20 characters, free to read
The seal of a planet is printed as a figure in its own right. It is not made by joining the numbers of the square in order, whatever is often said: draw that path and the result looks nothing like the printed seal. The figures here are traced from the English printing of 1651 and from no later redrawing.
De occulta philosophia libri tres, Cologne 1533. English translation 1651. The text and the characters are in the public domain.
The Ars Goetia — The seventy-two spirits of the Lesser Key of Solomon, each with the seal set down beside it. 72 seals.
The Olympic Spirits — The seven governors of the Arbatel, who divide the world between them and each rule it in turn for 490 years. 7 characters.
The Pentacles of Solomon — Forty-four pentacles from the Key of Solomon, seven to a planet, each with the use the book puts it to — many of them protective. 44 pentacles.
The Angels of the Days — The seven angels who govern the days of the week, each with the sigil the Heptameron sets beside him. 7 sigils.
The Elder Futhark — The twenty-four runes of the oldest runic alphabet, each with the stanza the Old English Rune Poem gives it. 24 runes.
The Theban Alphabet — A cipher alphabet of the Renaissance, one character to a letter, as Agrippa printed it in 1533. 24 characters.