Pentagram

The word pentagram comes from the Greek word πεντάγραμμον (pentagrammon), from πέντε (pente), "five" + γραμμή (grammē), "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 c. 3500 BCE, 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.

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 (c. 475 – 221 BCE) 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 ירשלם (YRŠLM). In Modern Hebrew, Jerusalem is spelled יְרוּשָׁלַיִם (Yĕrûšālayim).

In the Serer religion and the Serer creation myth, the pentagram, called Yooniir (also spelled Yoonir) in the Serer language, is the symbol of the Universe. The Serer religion posits that the peak of the five-pointed star represents the Serer creator deity, Roog. The other four points represent the cardinal points of the Universe. The crossing of the lines ("bottom left" and "top right" and "top left and bottom right") 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 Christ. 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

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa 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' (point-up) 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' (point-down) 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 heirolgyphic [sic] 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."

The apotropaic (protective) use in German folklore of the pentagram symbol (called Drudenfuss in German) is referred to by Goethe in Faust (1808), where a pentagram prevents Mephistopheles from leaving a room (but did not prevent him from entering by the same way, as the outward pointing corner of the diagram happened to be imperfectly drawn):

Mephistopheles:

I must confess, I'm prevented though

By a little thing that hinders me,

The Druid's-foot on your doorsill–

Faust:

The Pentagram gives you pain?

Then tell me, you Son of Hell,

If that's the case, how did you gain

Entry? Are spirits like you cheated?

Mephistopheles:

Look carefully! It's not completed:

One angle, if you inspect it closely

Has, as you see, been left a little open.

Also protective is the use in Icelandic folklore of a gestured or carved rather than painted pentagram (called smèrhnút in Icelandic), according to 19th century folklorist Jón Árnason:

A butter that comes from the fake vomit is called a fake butter; it looks like any other butter; but if one makes a sign of a cross over it, or carves a cross on it, or a figure called a buttermilk-knot,^* it all explodes into small pieces and becomes like a grain of dross, so that nothing remains of it, except only particles, or it subsides like foam. Therefore it seems more prudent, if a person is offered a horrible butter to eat, or as a fee, to make either mark on it, because a fake butter cannot withstand either a cross mark or a butter-knot.

* The butter-knot is shaped like this:

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 (Arabic: "temple"), 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

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 (referred to as a pentacle by the plaintiffs) 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 US$225,000 to settle their pending lawsuits.

Other religious use

Satanism

The inverted pentagram is broadly used in Satanism, sometimes depicted with the goat's head of Baphomet, as popularized by the Church of Satan since 1968. LaVeyan Satanists pair the goat head with Hebrew letters at the five points of the pentagram to form the Sigil of Baphomet. The Baphomet sigil was adapted for the Joy of Satan Ministries logo, using cuneiform characters at the five points of the pentagram, reflecting the shape's earliest use in Sumeria. The inverted pentagram also appears in The Satanic Temple logo, with an alternative depiction of Baphomet's head. Other depictions of the Satanic goat's head resemble the inverted pentagram without its explicit outline.

Serer religion

The five-pointed star is a symbol of the Serer religion and the Serer people of West Africa. Called Yoonir in their language, it symbolizes the universe in the Serer creation myth, and also represents the star Sirius.

Other modern use

• The pentagram is featured on the national flags of Morocco (adopted 1915) and Ethiopia (adopted 1996 and readopted 2009)

• The Order of the Eastern Star, an organization (established 1850) associated with Freemasonry, uses a pentagram as its symbol, with the five isosceles triangles of the points colored blue, yellow, white, green, and red. In most Grand Chapters, the pentagram is used pointing down, but in a few, it points up. Grand Chapter officers often have a pentagon inscribed around the star(the emblem shown here is from the Prince Hall Association).

• A pentagram is featured on the flag of the Dutch city of Haaksbergen, as well on its coat of arms.

• A pentagram is featured on the flag of the Japanese city of Nagasaki, as well on its emblem.