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By
Lionel Pepper
Part
1 - " In The Beginning "
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 civilisations, 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 (e.g. 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. Pythagoras was known to have travelled all over
the ancient world from the mysteries into which he was initiated,
and it seems likely that his travels took him to Egypt, to Chaldea
and to lands around the Indus.
There may be a connection here with the presence of the pentagram
in Tantrik art. To the Gnostics, the pentagram was the 'Blazing
Star' and, like the crescent moon was a symbol relating to the
magic and mystery of the nighttimes sky. For the Druids, it
was a symbol of Godhead. In Egypt, it was a symbol of the 'underground
womb' and bore a symbolic relationship to the concept of the
pyramid form. The Pagan Celts ascribed the pentagram to the
underground goddess Morrigan. 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,
using as an instrument a forged document - 'The Donation of
Constantine'. 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 it's
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, symbolising 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 symbolised summer; with two points upward,
it was a sign for winter.
The Knights Templar, a military order of monks formed during
the Crusades, gained great wealth and prominence from the donations
of those who joined the order and from treasures looted from
the Holy Land. The centre of the Templar order around Rennes
du Chatres in France is noteworthy for the almost perfect natural
pentangle of mountains spanning several miles around it. There
is good evidence of the creation of other exact geomantic alignments
and pentagrams as well as a hexagram in the area, centred on
this natural pentagram, in the location of numerous chapels
and shrines. It is clear from remaining traces of Templar architecture
that architects and masons associated with the powerful order
were well aware of the geometry of the pentangle and the golden
proportion and incorporated that mysticism in their design.
Alas, the whole Templar order fell victim to the avarice of
the Church and of religious-fanatic Louis IX of France in 1303
and the black times of the Inquisition, of torture and false-witness,
of purging and burning, began, spreading like a slow-motion
replay of the Black Death, across Europe.
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 symbolise a Goat's Head or the Devil in the form of
Baphomet and it was Baphomet whom the Inquisition accused the
Templars of worshipping. Around this time also, poisoning as
a means of murder came into prominence. Potent herbs and drugs
brought back from the East during the Crusades had entered the
pharmacopoeias of the healers - the wise - the witches. Prominent
deaths by poisoning caused the Dominicans of the Inquisition
to move 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 who knew about drugs and poisons. 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.
Part 2 - " 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',
symbolised Man within the macrocosm, 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 centre 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' 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 (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 Kabbalah, 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.
Eliphas Levi was a profound expositor of the Kabbalah and was
instrumental in opening the way for the rise of the Victorian
lodges of western mystery tradition - the Order Temporale Orientalis
(O.T.O.), the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (G.D.), the
Theosophical Society, the Rosicrucian’s (Fellowship of
the Rosy Cross), and several others, even the modern lodges
and traditions of speculative freemasonry. Levi was also instrumental
in taking the tarot from being a gipsy fortune-telling device
to a powerful set of symbolic images relating closely to the
Kabbalah (or as it is now called in the west, to distinguish
it's development from the original Judaic form - Qabalah). It
was Levi who designed upon the form of the pentagram such associative
inscriptions as in the Pentacle of the Tetragrammaton and he
who renamed the suit of 'coins' as 'pentacles'.
The workings of ritual magick in the orders took the symbolism
of the pentagram and it's elemental attributes, along with those
of the hexagram and incorporated them as ritual flourishing
or signing of the athame (ritual knife) to symbolise invoking
or banishing in respect to elemental associations. 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,
notably Aleister Crowley, have come some of the most important
ideas of today's Qabalist philosophy and magick. Aleister Crowley
also had association with the remaining traces of the old pre-Reformation
'hereditary' witches, notably through Old George Pickingill
and with Gerald Gardner, generally considered the founder of
modern witchcraft.
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 symbolised third degree initiation. (A
point downward triangle is the symbol of First Degree Initiates).
The pentagram was also inscribed on the altar pentacle, it's
points symbolising the three aspects of the Goddess plus the
two aspects of the God in a special form of Gardnerian Pentacle.
The writings of Gerald Gardner, an initiate of old Dorothy Clutterbuck,
and of his associate Doreen Valiente, brought the long-withered
stem of witchcraft - the Old Religion - out into bloom once
more, after centuries of occlusion, with the caution that the
general misrepresentation of it's former nature had made wise,
and the new religion of Wicca was born.
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 it's extreme, one aspect of
that reaction was in the establishment of the satanic cult -
The Church of Satan - by Anton LaVay. For it's 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 that 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 folklore!
The antiquity of the pentagram is certain; its meanings and
associations have evolved and richened throughout its history.
It's 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 it's potency lies rather than in it's 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.
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