Thepentagrammaton (Greek:πενταγράμματον) orYahshuah (Hebrew:יהשוה) is an allegorical form of theHebrew name ofJesus, constructed from the Biblical Hebrew form of the name,Yeshua (a Hebrew form of Joshua), but altered so as to contain the letters of the Tetragrammaton.[1] Originally found in the works ofHenry Cornelius Agrippa (1531),Athanasius Kircher,Johann Baptist Grossschedel (1619) and other late Renaissanceesoteric sources.
The essential idea of the pentagrammaton is of an alphabetic consonantal framework Y-H-Sh-W-H, which can be supplied with vowels in various ways. (Also, the "W" can be converted into a "U" or "V", since the Hebrew letter וwaw writes either a [w] consonant sound—later on, pronounced [v]—or a long [u] vowel sound: seeMater Lectionis.)
The first ones to use the name of Jesus something like "Yahshuah" wereRenaissance occultists. In the second half of the 16th century, when knowledge of Biblical Hebrew first began to spread among a significant number of Christians, certain esoterically minded oroccultistic circles came up with the idea of deriving the Hebrew name of Jesus by adding the Hebrew lettershin ש into the middle of theTetragrammaton divine nameyod-he-waw-he יהוה to produce the formyod-he-shin-waw-he יהשוה.
This was given a basicLatin transliteration JHSVH or IHSVH or IHSUH (since there was no letter "W" orsh / [š] sound in Latin, and "I" and "J" were then not yet clearly distinguished as letters of the alphabet, nor were "U" and "V"). This could then be supplied with further vowels for pronounceability. By coincidence, the first three letters of this consonantal transcription IHSVH, etc. were identical with the old IHS/JHSmonogram of the name of Jesus (from Greekiota-eta-sigma).
In Renaissance occultist works, this pentagrammaton (or five-letter divine name) was frequently arranged around a mysticpentagram, where each of the five Hebrew letters י ה ש ו ה was placed at one of the points (the lettershin ש was always placed at the upward-pointing vertex of the pentagram).[2] One of the earliest attested examples of this diagram is in theCalendarium Naturale Magicum Perpetuum or "Magical Calendar" (published 1620 but dated 1582)[3] of eitherTheodor de Bry (Flemish-born German, 1528–1598) orMatthäus Merian the Elder (Swiss, 1593–1650).[4] The idea of thepentagrammaton was funneled into modern occultism by 19th-century French writerEliphas Levi and the influential late 19th-centuryHermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn favored the consonantal transcription IHShVH or YHShVH, and the pronunciation Yeheshuah.
In Hebrew and Aramaic, the name "Jesus"/"Yeshua" appears asyod-shin-waw-`ayin יֵשׁוּעַ Yeshua and as the longer form of the same name,yod-he-waw-shin-`ayin יְהוֹשֻׁעַ "Joshua"/"Yehoshua". The letter`ayin ע was pronounced as a voicedpharyngeal consonant sound in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, as opposed to the pronounced [h] sound or a silent Hebrew letterhe ה.
