Ross G Caldwell said:
I'm guessing, but I think Pantacles is Levi's name for Deniers, so this would be around 1860; "Disks" I think is Crowley's name, but it could also be a Golden Dawn appellation.
Michael Dummett and I corresponded about this and he said that Lévi in the French original (1855 Doctrine of Transcendental Magic) never used the word Pantacle (as Waite translated it) but only Pentacle. However Lévi clearly equated it with the Coin suit and used it as a term for "talisman." So the suit of Pentacles could be called the suit of Talismans. A disc is the form for many talismans. Also, I believe it was Lévi who notes that coins were originally also considered magical talismans in that wherever the coin spread so too did the influence of the ruler whose head was on the coin.
Dummett wrote me:
"As I had suspected, both in the passage from Levi that you quoted in
Crowley's translation, and in Book VI of Christian's _Histoire de la
magie_, the translators had substituted their own preferred names of the
suits for those used by the authors they were translating."
In Levi's _Clef des grands mysteres_ (p. 312) he names the suits: baton,
coupe, epee, and denier ou cercle. As Dummett notes, "cercle of course
mean 'circle' (and not 'pentacle')." Crowley translated it as pentacle.
However Dummett fails to note the following from Transcendental Magic (_Dogme et rituel de la haute magie_, published by Editions Bussière).
"Venons maintenant aux quatre signes, c'est-à-dire aux Bâtons, aux Coupes, aux Epées et aux Cercles ou Pentacles, vulgairement appelés Deniers." (p. 115). [Thanks to James Revak.]
Dummett also notes that in Christian's Book VI on the fatidic circles
the suit-names are Sceptre, Coupe, Glaive (Blade) and Sicle (Shekel)
which where also used in _L'Homme rouge des Tuileries_.
Somewhere Lévi speaks of the pentacle being the pre-eminent form of pantacle. And, "Paracelsus ... affirms that every magical figure and every
kabalistic sign of the pantacles which compel spirits, may be reduced to
two, which are the synthesis of all the others; these are the Sign of
the Macrocosm or the Seal of Solomon, ... and that of the Microcosm,
more potent even than the first--that is to say, the Pentagram. ... Now
a sign which summarizes ... all the occult forces of Nature..."
(Transcendental Magic, p. ?, see also Chapter X.)
And, "When conscious of failing will, the Magus turns
his eyes towards this symbol [the Pentacle], takes it in his right hand
and feels armed with intellectual omnipotence, ... provided that he is
familiar with the usages of the Pentacle, the Cup, the Wand and the
Sword." (Transcendental Magic, p. 241).
Note that the term Pentagram or Pentacle referred not to the Quintessence (fifth element) but to the Microcosm (or Below) as opposed to the Macrocosm (or Above).
The Martinist Orders adopted as their seal the "Pantacle Universel" drawn by Louis-Claude de Saint Martin to synthesize his comprehension of the Universe.
Crowley wrote somewhere: "Every fact, and even every falsehood, must enter into the Pantacle; it is the great storehouse from which the magician draws."
In _Magick Without Tears_ Chapter XX Crowley writes about "Talismans: The Lamen: The Pantacle."TALISMANS: THE LAMEN: THE PANTACLE":
"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."
The translation I have of Paul Christian's 1870 _History and
Practice of Magic_, Vol. 2, Book 6: "Theory and Practice of the Horoscope"
calls the suit Pentacles.
The Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript also refers to the suit as Pentacles. While it is impossible to date the manuscript it is probably by Kenneth MacKenzie which puts it around 1870-1886. MacKenzie was strongly influenced by Lévi - having visited him to talk about the tarot.
Westcott in his 1887 Isiac Tablet associates the Diamond or Coin
with: "Female, Circle, Shekel, Pantacle [not Pentacle], Vesica Piscis,
Image of the World, Malkuth, Kingdom."
As early his 1888 booklet on the Tarot, MacGregor Mathers was
referring to Deniers as Pentacles. A chart names them "Money, Circles,
or Pentacles", and he says, "The Ace of Pentacles represents Eternal
Synthesis, the great whole of the visible Universe, the Realisation of
counterbalanced power."
Waite, in his 1889 Manual of Cartomancy, wrote: "It being understood
that the Suits are Cups, replacing Hearts; Swords, corresponding to
Spades; Wands, substituted for Diamonds; and Pantacles, representing
Clubs."
Mary