Pentagram
A pentagram is a regular five-pointed star polygon, formed from the diagonal line segments of a convex regular pentagon. Drawing a circle around the five points creates a similar symbol referred to as the pentacle, which is used widely by Wiccans and in paganism, or as a sign of life and connections.
The word pentagram comes from the Greek word πεντάγραμμον, from πέντε, "five" + γραμμή, "line".
The word pentagram refers to just the star and the word pentacle refers to the star within a circle, although there is some overlap in usage. The word pentalpha is a 17th-century revival of a post-classical Greek name of the shape.
History
Early history
Early pentagrams have been found on Sumerian pottery from Ur, and the five-pointed star was at various times the symbol of Ishtar or Marduk.Flinders Petrie mentioned that the pentagram started to appear as a decoration on Predynastic Egyptian pottery at around "Sequence Date" 64 in his system, corresponding to the early Naqada III era.
File:Japanese Crest Abe no Seimei Hann.svg|thumb|Abe no Seimei's pentagram mon represents the Wu Xing.
Pentagram symbols from about 5,000 years ago were found in the Liangzhu culture of China. A pentagram appeared in a Chinese text on music theory from the Warring States period as a diagram of the mathematical relations between the five notes in a particular Chinese musical scale.
The pentagram was known to the ancient Greeks, with a depiction on a vase possibly dating back to the 7th century BCE. Pythagoreanism originated in the 6th century BCE and used the pentagram as a symbol of mutual recognition, well-being, and good deeds and charity.
During 300–150 BCE, preceding the Hasmonean period, the pentagram was the symbol of the Judahite administration of Jerusalem, the seal of which was denoted with the Hebrew letters rtl=yes. In Modern Hebrew, Jerusalem is spelled .
In the Serer religion and the Serer creation myth, the pentagram, called in the Serer language, is the symbol of the Universe. The Serer religion, in its understanding of era following the Big Bang, posits that the peak of the five-pounted star represents the Serer creator deity, Roog. The other four points represent the cardinal points of the Universe. The crossing of the lines pinpoints the axis of the Universe, through which all energies pass. The top point is "the point of departure and conclusion, the origin and the end". Yoonir also represents "good fortune and destiny"—in a Serer religious sense, and in an ethno-nationalistic sense—following centuries of religious and ethnic persecution, it also represents the Serer people, an ethnoreligious group with members in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania. The Serer have a detailed pictorial representation of the Universe, representing the three worlds in Serer primordial time: the invisible world, the terrestrial world, and the nocturnal world.
Western symbolism
Middle Ages
The pentagram was used in Christendom during the Middle Ages as a symbol for the five senses and of the Five Holy Wounds of Jesus of Nazareth. The pentagram is featured with a symbolic role in the 14th-century English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which the symbol decorates the shield of the hero, Gawain. The unnamed Gawain Poet credits the symbol's origin to King Solomon, explaining that each of the five interconnected points represents a virtue tied to a group of five: Gawain is perfect in his five senses and five fingers; faithful to the Five Holy Wounds; takes courage from the five joys of Mary, mother of Jesus; and exemplifies the five virtues of knighthood, which are generosity, friendship, chastity, chivalry, and piety.The north-facing rose of Amiens Cathedral—built in the 13th century—exhibits a pentagram-based motif. Some sources interpret the unusual downward-pointing star as symbolizing the Holy Spirit descending on celebrants.
Renaissance
and others perpetuated the pentagram's popularity as a magic symbol, attributing the five neoplatonic elements to its five points, in typical Renaissance fashion. Agrippa depicts the human body inscribed in an 'upright' pentagram and another with its hands in rotated pentagrams, among numerous other geometrical figures, in the section on 'the proportions and harmonious measures of the human body', and an 'inverted' version of the Pythagorean 'hygeia' pentagram in the section on 'characters, received only by revelation, which no other kind of reasoning can discover', alongside variations of the Chi-Rho and the Hebrew word Makabi.'Of this type are the signet shown to Constantine, which most people called a cross, inscribed in Latin letters, 'in this conquer', and another revealed to Antiochus who was surnamed Soteris, in the shape of a pentagon, which issued health, for resolved into letters, it issued the word ὑγίεα, that is, 'health', in the confidence and virtue of which signs, each of the kings won a notable victory against their enemies. Thus Judas, who for this reason was afterwards known as Maccabeus, was about to fight with the Jews against Antiochus Eupatorus, and received that noble seal מׄכׄבׄיׄ from the angel'.
Romanticism
By the mid-19th century, a further distinction had developed amongst occultists regarding the pentagram's orientation. With a single point upward, it depicted the spirit presiding over the four elements of matter and was essentially "good". However, the influential but controversial writer Éliphas Lévi, known for believing that magic was a real science, had called it evil whenever the symbol appeared the other way up:- "A reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, is a symbol of evil and attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things and demonstrates the triumph of matter over spirit. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns, a sign execrated by initiates."
- "The flaming star, which, when turned upside down, is the sign of the goat of black magic, whose head may be drawn in the star, the two horns at the top, the ears to the right and left, the beard at the bottom. It is a sign of antagonism and fatality. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns."
- "Let us keep the figure of the Five-pointed Star always upright, with the topmost triangle pointing to heaven, for it is the seat of wisdom, and if the figure is reversed, perversion and evil will be the result."
Also protective is the use in Icelandic folklore of a gestured or carved rather than painted pentagram, according to 19th century folklorist Jón Árnason:
Uses in modern occultism
Based on Renaissance-era occultism, the pentagram entered the symbolism of modern occultists. Its primary use is a continuation of the ancient Babylonian use of the pentagram as an apotropaic charm to protect against evil forces. Éliphas Lévi claimed that "The Pentagram expresses the mind's domination over the elements and it is by this sign that we bind the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the spectres of water, and the ghosts of earth." In this spirit, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn developed the use of the pentagram in the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, which is still used to this day by those who practice Golden Dawn-type magic.Aleister Crowley made use of the pentagram in the system of magick used in Thelema: an adverse or inverted pentagram represents the descent of spirit into matter, according to the interpretation of Lon Milo DuQuette. Crowley contradicted his old comrades in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, who, following Levi, considered this orientation of the symbol evil and associated it with the triumph of matter over spirit.
Use in new religious movements
Baháʼí Faith
The five-pointed star is a symbol of the Baháʼí Faith. In the Baháʼí Faith, the star is known as the Haykal, and it was initiated and established by the Báb. The Báb and Bahá'u'lláh wrote various works in the form of a pentagram.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
is theorized to have begun using both upright and inverted five-pointed stars in Temple architecture, dating from the Nauvoo Illinois Temple dedicated on 30 April 1846. Other temples decorated with five-pointed stars in both orientations include the Salt Lake Temple and the Logan Utah Temple. These usages come from the symbolism found in Revelation chapter 12: "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars."Wicca
Because of a perceived association with Satanism and occultism, many United States schools in the late 1990s sought to prevent students from displaying the pentagram on clothing or jewelry. In public schools, such actions by administrators were determined in 2000 to be in violation of students' First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.The encircled pentagram was added to the list of 38 approved religious symbols to be placed on the tombstones of fallen service members at Arlington National Cemetery on 24 April 2007. The decision was made following ten applications from families of fallen soldiers who practiced Wicca. The government paid the families to settle their pending lawsuits.