History of the Pentagram

[The Bookwyrm]

I got this from a mailing list I'm a part of and thought I'd share it. Sorry it's so long, though. sweatdrop

THE PENTAGRAM

Gathered From Many Different Sources


The pentagram has long been associated with mystery and magic. It is the
simplest form of star shape that can be drawn unicursally, with a single
line, hence it is sometimes called the Endless Knot. Other names are the
Goblin's Cross, the Pentalpha, the Witch's Foot, the Devil's Star and
the Seal of Solomon (more correctly attributed to the hexagram).

It has long been believed to be a potent protection against evil and
demons, hence a symbol of safety, and was sometimes worn as an amulet
for happy homecoming. The old folk-song : "Green Grow the Rushes, O!"
refers to the use of the pentagram above doors and windows in the line:
" Five is the symbol at your door."

The potency and associations of the pentagram have evolved throughout
history. Today it is an ubiquitous symbol of Neo-Pagans with much depth
of magickal and symbolic meaning.

The Pentagram Through History
The pentagram symbol today is ascribed many meanings and deep
significance, though much of this is very recent. However, it has been
used throughout history and in many contexts:

The earliest known use of the pentagram dates back to around the Uruk
period around 3500BC at Ur of the Chaldees in Ancient Mesopotamia where
it was found on potsherds together with other signs of the period
associated with the earliest known developments of written language. In
later periods of Mesopotamian art, the pentagram was used in royal
inscriptions and was symbolic of imperial power extending out to "the
four corners of the world". Amongst the Hebrews, the symbol was ascribed
to Truth and to the five books of the Pentateuch. It is sometimes,
incorrectly, called the Seal of Solomon (see Hexagram) though its usage
was in parallel with the hexagram. In Ancient Greece, it was called the
Pentalpha, being geometrically composed of five A's. Unlike earlier
civilizations, the Greeks did not generally attribute other symbolic
meanings to the letters of their alphabet, but certain symbols became
connected with Greek letter shapes or positions (eg Gammadion,
Alpha-Omega). The geometry of the pentagram and its metaphysical
associations were explored by the Pythagoreans (after Pythagoras
586-506BC) who considered it an emblem of perfection. Together with
other discovered knowledge of geometric figures and proportion, it
passed down into post-Hellenic art where the golden proportion may be
seen in the designs of some temples.

Early Christians attributed the pentagram to the Five Wounds of Christ
and from then until medieval times, it was a lesser-used Christian
symbol. Prior to the time of the Inquisition, there were no evil
associations to the pentagram. Rather its form implied Truth, Religious
Mysticism and the work of The Creator. The Emperor Constantine I who,
after gaining the help of the Christian church in his military and
religious takeover of the Roman Empire in 312 AD, used the pentagram,
together with the chi-rho symbol (a symbolic form of cross) in his seal
and amulet.

However, it was the cross (a symbol of suffering) rather than the
pentagram (a symbol of truth) that was used as a symbol by the Church
which subsequently came to power and who's manifest destiny was to usurp
the supreme power of the Roman Empire.

The annual church feast of Epiphany, celebrating the visit of the three
Magi to the infant Jesus as well as the Church's mission to bring truth
to the Gentiles had as its symbol the pentagram, (although in present
times the symbol has been changed to a five-pointed star in reaction to
the Neo-Pagan use of the pentagram).

In the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the pentagram was Sir
Gawain's glyph, inscribed in gold on his shield, symbolizing the five
knightly virtues - generosity, courtesy, chastity, chivalry and piety.

In Medieval times, the Endless Knot was a symbol of Truth and was a
protection against demons. It was used as an amulet of personal
protection and to guard windows and doors. The pentagram with one point
upwards symbolized summer; with two points upwards, it was a sign for
winter.

During the long period of the Inquisition, there was much promulgation
of lies and accusations in the interests of orthodoxy and elimination of
heresy. The Church lapsed into a long period of the very diabolism it
sought to oppose. The pentagram was seen to symbolize a Goat's Head or
the Devil in the form of Baphomet and it was Baphomet whom the
Inquisition accused the Templars of worshipping.

The Dominicans of the Inquisition moved their attention from the
Christian heretics to the Pagan Witches, to those who only paid lip-
service to Christianity but still followed an Old Religion and to the
wise- ones amongst them. In the purge on Witches, other horned Gods such
as Pan became equated with the Devil (a Christian concept) and the
pentagram, the folk symbol of security, for the first time in history,
was equated with evil and was called the Witch's Foot.

The Old Religion and its symbols went underground, in fear of the
Church's persecution, and there it stayed, gradually withering, for
centuries.

After The Inquisition
In the foundation of Hermeticism, in hidden societies of craftsmen and
scholarly men, away from the eyes of the Church and its paranoia, the
proto-science of alchemy developed along with its occult philosophy and
cryptical symbolism. Graphical and geometric symbolism became very
important and the period of the Renaissance emerged.

The concept of the microcosmic world of Man as analogous to the
macrocosm, the greater universe of spirit and elemental matter became a
part of traditional western occult teaching, as it had long been in
eastern philosophies, As Above, So Below. The pentagram, the 'Star of
the Microcosm', symbolized Man within the microcosm, representing in
analogy the Macrocosmic universe.

The upright pentagram bears some resemblance to the shape of man with
his legs and arms outstretched. In Tycho Brahe's Calendarium Naturale
Magicum Perpetuum (1582) occurs a pentagram with human body imposed and
the Hebrew for YHSVH associated with the elements. An illustration
attributed to Brae's contemporary Agrippa (Henry Cornelius Agrippa von
Nettesheim) is of similar proportion and shows the five planets and the
moon, at the center point, the genitalia. Other illustrations of the
period by Robert Fludd and Leonardo da Vinci show geometric
relationships of man to the universe.

Later, the pentagram came to be symbolic of the relationship of the head
to the four limbs and hence of the pure concentrated essence of anything
(or the spirit) to the four traditional elements of matter, earth,
water, air and fire - spirit is The Quintessence.

In Freemasonry, Man as Microprosopus was and is associated with the
five-pointed Pentalpha. The symbol was used, interlaced and upright for
the sitting Master of the Lodge. The geometric properties and structure
of the Endless Knot were appreciated and symbolically incorporated into
the 72 degree angle of the compasses, the Masonic emblem of virtue and
duty. The origins of freemasonry are lost in the depths of history,
obscured by the traditional Craft secrecy of the order, but there are
signs throughout history of the associations of craftsmanship and ritual
and symbolism that have remained known only to a few, and the history of
the pentagram has remained occluded in the same kind of mystery. The
women's branch of freemasonry uses the five pointed Eastern Star with
two points up as its emblem. Each point commemorates a heroine of
biblical lore.

No known graphical illustration associating the pentagram with evil
appears until the nineteenth century. Eliphaz Levi Zahed (actually the
pen name of Alphonse Louis Constant, a defrocked French Catholic Abbé)
illustrates the upright pentagram of microcosmic man beside an inverted
pentagram with the goat's head of Baphomet. It is this illustration and
juxtaposition that has led to the concept of different orientations of
the pentagram being good and evil.

Against the rationalism of the 18th century came a reaction in the 19th
century with the growth of a new mysticism owing much to the Holy
Qabalah, the ancient oral tradition of Judaism relating the cosmogony of
God and the universe and the moral and occult truths of their
relationship to Man. It is not so much a religion as a system of
understanding based upon symbolism and the numerical and alphabetical
interrelationships of words and concepts, the Gematria.

The Golden Dawn did much to advance and disseminate the roots of modern
Hermetic Qabalah around the world in its time of strength (from 1888 to
around the start of the First World War), and through the writings and
work of a number of its adepts and adherents have come some of the most
important ideas of today's Qabalist philosophy and magick.

In the 1940's Gerald Gardner adopted the pentagram with two points
upward as the sigil of second degree initiation in the newly emergent,
Neo-Pagan rituals of Witchcraft, later to become known as Wicca. The
one-point upward pentagram together with the upright triangle symbolized
third degree initiation. (A point downwards triangle is the symbol of
First Degree Initiates)

Today
It was not until the late 1960's that the pentagram again became an
amuletic symbol to be worn. Co-incidentally with the rise of popular
interest in Witchcraft and Wicca and the publication of many books
(including several novels) on the subject, there was a reaction to the
Church.

In its extreme, one aspect of that reaction was in the establishment of
the satanic cult - The Church of Satan - by Anton LaVay. For its emblem,
this cult adopted the inverted pentagram after the Baphomet image of
Eliphas Levi. The reaction of the Christian church was to condemn as
evil all who took the pentalpha as a symbol and even to condemn the
symbol itself, much as had been the post-war attitude to the swastika.

The distinction between the point-upwards and point-downwards pentagram
forms became accentuated in the minds of Pagans and led to the concepts
of white Witchcraft and black. Those who took on board the strong
personal ethical code of Wicca, the Wiccan Rede of "An it harm none, do
what you will" did not wish to be tarred with the same brush as the
Satanists who's philosophy is one of the domination of the spirit by the
physical body - the priority of matter and physical existence.

Hence, despite the use and the different meaning of the inverted
pentagram as a symbol of Gardnerian initiation, other Wiccans, notably
in the USA where the fundamentalist Christians are particularly
aggressive to those who do not share their beliefs, are against any
usage of the symbol. It is sad to say that even the use of the upright
pentagram gives rise to social discrimination against Pagans in some
communities.

Otherwise, the pentagram or pentacle has become firmly established as a
common Neo-Pagan and Wiccan symbol, acquiring many aspects of mystique
and associations that are today often considered to be ancient folk-lore !

The antiquity of the pentagram is certain; its meanings and associations
have evolved and richened throughout its history. Its use within modern
Neo-Paganism as a group symbol is as important as the cross has been in
the history of Christianity and it is in the ubiquity and the attributed
meanings of the symbol that its potency lies rather than in its
antiquity. From the Earth aware attitudes and respect of life of modern
Pagans has already come the movement towards protecting and conserving
the ecology and resources of our planet. Perhaps they will see the dawn
of a real new age of hope or perhaps just the end of an age of humanity.

http://journey1.org/freedom/pentagram.htm  

[Akwila]

this would be good for the library  

[Panther Nightwind]

akwila

this would be good for the library

I second this. Plus, I'm considering printing it out and adding it to my Grimoire if you don't mind 3nodding  

[The Bookwyrm]

I'm planning on doing the same with it. I put it up to be shared 3nodding  

[The Wallaby]

Gypsy Blue

I'm planning on doing the same with it. I put it up to be shared 3nodding

::shares:: ninja biggrin  

[Keistera]

Wow, that's quite thorough. I knew the Masons use(d) it. Very cool article, thanks for sharing it with us. ^__^ heart  

[The Bookwyrm]

My pleasure ^^  

[Jameta]

Blargh... I can't just put it in the library the way it is: it needs to be on a webpage or from a book that way I can link or reference it. The library is supposed to be a reference center, not an area to simply store pieces of information. Unfortunately, we dont' have a file-sharing system like Yahoo! Groups does... and I'm not about to make one. xp So, Gypsy, I'm not sure if you're allowed to, but if you're able to know where that was gathered or compile your excerpts on a web site, then I would be able to source it.  

[The Bookwyrm]

There's a link at the very bottom of the article where it's posted that takes you to a webpage, Jameta. That should work for you.  

[Jameta]

Gypsy Blue

There's a link at the very bottom of the article where it's posted that takes you to a webpage, Jameta. That should work for you.

Thank you. heart  

[The Bookwyrm]

Any time hun 4laugh  

[Nihilistic Seraph]

Very nice  

[Shani05]

That was a good read. 3nodding Thanx for posting it! biggrin  

[MOD66]

That's great! I knew the symbol was never meant to be evil. biggrin  

[silver-neko]

To add to it:

The pentagram also appears in the Stars every 8 years. It was the tall tell sign that the olympics were going to start. It wasn't until later on that the olympics were halfed and now are done every 4.