Description
The five-pointed star known as the pentagram or pentangle, often circumscribed by a circle, symbolizes the five classical elements in Wicca (earth, air, fire, water and spirit), as well as the five appendages of the human body, the five senses and various other magical and symbolic associations. The pentagram was used symbolically in ancient Greece (particularly among the followers of Pythagoras), Mesopotamia and Babylonia, and was also used as a Christian symbol for the five senses or the five wounds of Christ. Cornelius Agrippa and others perpetuated the popularity of the pentagram as a magic symbol, keeping the Pythagorean attributions of elements to the five points. Six- and seven-pointed stars were also used with different symbolism. By the mid-19th Century, a further distinction had developed amongst occultists regarding the pentagram’s orientation: it was considered essentially “good” when shown with a single point upwards (depicting spirit presiding over the four elements of matter), but Eliphas Lévi called it “evil” when it appeared inverted (point down). The inverted pentagram came to be associated, particularly by Christians, with Satanism and evil, and the modern Satanism movement adopted the inverted pentagram (often with the head of a goat inside it) as the Sigil of Baphomet.