Tetragrammaton
Also called YHWH, the four letters, HaShem
Biblical Hebrew; the four-letter formula is the Name
Jewish symbolsTetragrammaton meaning
The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter name of God in the Hebrew Bible: yod, he, vav, he. Jewish reading practice substitutes Adonai or HaShem rather than pronouncing the letters as written. Hermetic and Christian magic later treated the same letters as a formula to arrange on talismans.
Four letters. In Jewish practice, not a word you sound out.
Where it comes from
The name appears throughout the Hebrew Bible. Out of reverence, synagogue reading replaces it. “Jehovah” is a later Christian hybrid that puts the vowels of Adonai onto those consonants. It is not an ancient pronunciation recovered. Renaissance Christian Kabbalists and ritual magicians placed the letters on pentacles and in triangles. That is a reuse by another tradition, not the Jewish rule for the Name.
Jewish
A name with a fence around it
The point of the practice is restraint. Writing the letters and shouting a reconstructed pronunciation are not the same act. HaShem, “the Name,” is what you say when you are pointing at it without using it. This entry follows that restraint on purpose.
Hermetic
A formula taken abroad
Once the letters leave the reading tradition, they become an arrangement: four characters on a seal, sometimes with a fifth, the pentagrammaton. That literature is real and early modern. It does not cancel the Jewish rule. It shows what happens when a name is handled as a diagram.
Near this
Sources
- The Hebrew Bible, the four-letter divine name
- Jewish reading practice: Adonai / HaShem in place of pronunciation
Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.
Your margin
Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.
symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.