Pentagram

A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha, pentangle or star pentagon) is the shape of a five-pointed star.Man inscribed in a pentagram, from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia libri tres. The five signs at the pentagram's vertices are astrological.Another pentagram from Agrippa's book. This one has the Pythagorean letters inscribed around the circle.The occultist and magician Éliphas Lévi's pentagram, which he considered to be a symbol of the microcosm, or human.An unidentified work of the Báb.An unidentified work of the Báb.Morocco's flagEthiopia's flagOrder of the Eastern Star emblemFlag of HaaksbergenPentagrammic prismPentagrammic antiprismPentagrammic crossed-antiprismSmall stellated dodecahedronGreat stellated dodecahedronSmall ditrigonal icosidodeca­hedronDodecadodecahedronGreat icosi­dodeca­hedronSnub dodecadodecahedron A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha, pentangle or star pentagon) is the shape of a five-pointed star. Pentagrams were used symbolically in ancient Greece and Babylonia, and are used today as a symbol of faith by many Wiccans, akin to the use of the cross by Christians and the Star of David by the Jews. The pentagram has magical associations. Many people who practice Neopagan faiths wear jewelry incorporating the symbol. Christians once commonly used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Jesus. The pentagram is also used as a symbol by other belief systems, and is associated with Freemasonry. The word pentagram comes from the Greek word πεντάγραμμον (pentagrammon), from πέντε (pente), 'five' + γραμμή (grammē), 'line'.The word 'pentacle' is sometimes used synonymously with 'pentagram'. The word pentalpha is a learned modern (17th-century) revival of a post-classical Greek name of the shape. In early (Ur I) monumental Sumerian script, or cuneiform, a pentagram glyph served as a logogram for the word ub, meaning 'corner, angle, nook; a small room, cavity, hole; pitfall' (this later gave rise to the cuneiform sign UB ?, composed of five wedges, further reduced to four in Assyrian cuneiform). The word Pentemychos (πεντέμυχος lit. 'five corners' or 'five recesses') was the title of the cosmogony of Pherecydes of Syros.Here, the 'five corners' are where the seeds of Chronos are placed within the Earth in order for the cosmos to appear. In Neoplatonism, the pentagram was said to have been used as a symbol or sign of recognition by the Pythagoreans, who called the pentagram ὑγιεία hugieia 'health' The pentagram was used in ancient times as a Christian symbol for the five senses, or of the five wounds of Christ. The pentagram plays an important 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 poet credits the symbol's origin to King Solomon, and explains 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 Wounds of Christ, takes courage from the five joys that Mary had of Jesus, and exemplifies the five virtues of knighthood. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and others perpetuated the popularity of the pentagram as a magic symbol, attributing the five neoplatonic elements to the five points, in typical Renaissance fashion. By the mid-19th century a further distinction had developed amongst occultists regarding the pentagram's orientation. With a single point upwards it depicted spirit presiding over the four elements of matter, and was essentially 'good'. However, the influential writer Éliphas Lévi called it evil whenever the symbol appeared the other way up. The apotropaic use of the pentagram symbol in German folklore (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):