The Pentagram

Pentagram

Pentacle

The pentagram is a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes (intersecting lines in the middle). A five-pointed star with a circle around it is called a pentagram.

These symbols are both used extensively in many different religions throughout history. The Sumerians used it (two points up, also called inverted) to represent the five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Venus as the "Queen of Heaven (Ishtar). The Pythagreans of ancient Greece saw it as mathematical perfection.

Wu Xing, the five phases, or five elements, is an ancient Chinese symbol used in medicine, acupuncture, fang shui and Taoism.

Early Christians used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of christ and the five senses.

The Pentacle and it's Neopagan elements

In the 14th century English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain has a pentagram on his shield, and the unnamed poet credits the origin to King Solomon. Each point represents a virtue tied to a group of five: keen in the five senses, dextrous in his five fingers, faithful to salvation through the five wounds of christ, courage from the five joys of Mary and the five virtues of knighthood.

Later, in European occultism, the pentagram took on a magical meaning, with the five points being the four elements (fire, air, water, and Earth) with Spirit on top.


By the mid 19th century, orientation became important. One point up represented the spirit presiding over the material world and was seen as "good". Inverted, the material world was suppressing the spiritual, thereby becoming "evil"

Neopaganism and Wicca (modern witchcraft) have adopted the pentagram as a symbol for the faith in the same way the Cross represents Christianity and the Star of David for the Jewish Tradition. It is always represented one point up, most often due to the association with the inverted pentagram with Satanism and black magic. The circle around a pentagram is a symbol of unity, wholeness, infinity, the goddess, protection and the circle of birth, death and rebirth. The circle is also seen as binding. The way a circle is drawn can be invoking or banishing.

Satanism has claimed the inverted pentacle, with a second circle inclosing the first and a goat's head in the middle (also called the Sigil of Baphomet). It represents the Satanic tenement of the material world over the spiritual and the banishing of social and moral constraints.

Pentacles in Japanese Anime

Pentacles have also been used as a Tarot card suit (sometimes also called Stones or Coins). The suit rules the material world and all it offers (reference to the occult association of the elements and spirit)

In literature, it was an incomplete pentagram that prevents

Mephistophles from levying a room in Goethe's Faust. H.P. Lovecraft used a warped pentagram to represent the Elder Sign. In Japanese culture, the pentagram is a symbol of magical power and is used extensively in modern manga and anime, as a predominantly non-Christian country, it has no social stigma associated with it.

Queen of Pentacles from the classic
Rider-Waite Tarot deck

H.P. Lovecraft's Elder Sign