Hello I just wonder why pentagrams are always associated with mysticism, or often, black magic or evil. What's so special with that star inside circle thing?
I was wondering the same thing myself...why is the star-inside-of-the-circle considered to be evil? Or associated with Black Magic? Some people refer to that symbol as a 'hex,' too...
Only when the pentagram is used upside down, is it associated with black magic. This is a pentacle as it is supposed to be: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! *link*
The Pentagram has MANY mystical connotations, including the five wounds of Christ, geometric representation of the ram/goat's head, truncation of the Star of David (which has six points), and the five elements (including the void, or darkness, from which all elements decend). It also has associations with the Lunar calendar. Geometrically, it's an extremely powerful symbol, in either of its two common representations...Five and Three are both power numbers, which can be found several times and expanded upon infinitely in the Pentagram, and it's one of few recurring shapes or designs that contains both harmony and symmetry.
Whoops, so I think I've been badly infested with animes and games...... there they often represent evil wth pentagram (pentacles are less popular....)
Now, that greatly explains why pentacle gets its bad name.... As an extra (and possibly out of topic) question, what gave goat such a bad reputation? Is it just because goats have something mimicing mephisto (the beard)?
Good question. A lot of Celtic druids were credited with the ability to transform into various animals (including goats). It's possible (or even likely) that arcaic/folk representations of these beliefs and imagery were considered heathenistic and evil by colonizing English, and attributed to devil-worship.
I suppose the reason is EXACTLY as rational as the reason why the number 666 is suposed to symbolize the devil. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Hans
You mean goat often 'appears' in Bible? I exactly remember that the New Testament wrote 666 as a devilish number, what about goat?
Circe, I've read some of your posts other than on the religion forum, and you appear to have a vast knowledge of areas in which I am interested. As for the pentagram, have you read anything about Rennes-le-Chateau in France or the mystery that goes with it. What about the cathedrals built in France in the shape of a pentagram? This is a mystery I've been following for a number of years. Also, I liked your post about the different names of Isis. Intriguing! Also, I apologize for any ugly posts I might have replied to you on the religion forum. The forum turned into a barroom brawl, and I purposefully helped to trigger that. That's not the message I intended to give but one more of spirituality than religion. They're still going at it, but I feel the need to escape from it, so I'm reading these other forums. Peace!
cathedral built in shape of pentagram? Odd.... but may be amusing........ Does anyone has the picture of it?
You may be able to find it under "cathedrals in France," "Rennes-le-Chateau sacred geometry," for example. These cathedrals were supposedly built directly upon the sites of pagan worship centers. I believe Scotland also has a sacred pentagram geometry in the far northeast area.
The 5-pointed star inside a pentagon was an important symbol of the Pythagoreans in early Greece, because some of the line-segments in that figure were in a ratio equal to the golden ratio. They were mathematicians, and had never heard of devil-worship. As for why later many seemed to associate it with devil-worship, who knows. But human nature in those days seemed to tend toward finding devil-worship nearly everywhere. Walker's explanation of how the invading English identified paganism as satanism sounded very plausible. Mike Ossipoff
Wow, it surprises me that pentagram has existed for that long. As for your explanation, what do you mean by golden ratio?
The golden ratio, also called the golden mean and the golden section is a ratio that occurs in nature, and is considered especially aesthetically pleasing. It's the ratio of B to A if: A/B = (A+B)/A So A is to B as (A+B) is to A. For simplicity, we might as well let B be 1: A = (A + 1)/A or A^2 - A -1 = 0 Solving that (by the quadratic equation) for A, gives A = 1.618... Taking the reciprocal of that (dividing 1 by it) gives .618... (It's a curious fact that the goden ratio's reciprocal, 1.618..., is the same number that one gets by adding one to the golden ratio). That's the golden ratio. It's called the golden section or mean because it often divides a line into 2 parts, A & B. As I was saying, the golden ratio occurs in nature, where shapes are recursively repeated, as in the growth of the chambered nautilus shell. When placing an object on a table, it's often considered most aesthetic to place it so that its distances in the 2 dimensions are the golden sections of the table's dimensions. In such ways, the golden section is considred aesthetically pleasing. As for how the golden ratio or golden section occurs in the pentagram, I'm not geometer enough to be qualifed to say. But the pentagram has definitely gotten an unfair rap. Because of the golden ratio, people considered the pentagram interesting and significant. And there were others, in the centuries after the middle ages, who wanted to find devil-worship in anything that someone else considered significant. Mike Ossipoff Mike Ossipoff
I'd like to clarify a few things in my posting about the golden ratio: When I said that for simplicity we could let B be 1, that's justified because, whatever length B is, we can define that length as one unit of measure. Then we just have one variable, A, to solve for. When I said "solving (by the quadratic equation)", I meant to say "solving (by the quadratic formula)". The quadratic formula solves all quadratic equations. All quadratic equations have an exact solution (though it isn't always in real numbers), and that solution can always be gotten by the quadratic formula. What I meant by 1.618... is a number with a decimal fraction that starts out like that, but continues on with more digits. It's an "irrational number", and so the decimal fraction doesn't repeat and has infinitely many digits. Square rootes, cube roots, trig functions, etc., are typically irrational numbers. The reason I said to take that number's reciprocal was: At the outset I said that the golden section is B/A, where B and A are related as I described. Since I said to choose the unit of measure so that B = 1, A = A/B. So then, since I had an answer for A, or A/B, and I wanted B/A, that's why I said to take the reciprocal. I should say that the exact expression of what the quadratic formula gives is (where "sqr" means "square root of": (1 + sqr(5))/2 The reciprocal of that expression evaluates to the golden mean, which is about .618... Again, that's a nonrepeating decimal fraction with infinitely many digits, an irrational number. They're called "irrational" because they can't be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers. Since I mentioned the quadratic formula, maybe I should state it here: The general quadratic equation is: Ax^2 + Bx + C = 0. Where "sqr" means "square root of", and +/- means plus or minus, the quadratic formula says: x = (-B +/- sqr(B^2-4AC))/2A That formula is derived by "completing the square": A quadratic expression can be gotten by squaring a binomial like Ax + B. You get (AX)^2 + 2AxB + B^2. Any quadratic expression can be made into something of that form by adding something to its constant term. So that something is added there, and of course to the other side of the equation too (One is starting with the equation Ax^2 + Bx + C = 0), and then the square root of each side is taken. The resulting linear equation is easily solved for x. In that way the quadratic formula is derived. I say all this because I feel that I shouldn't leave unexplained statements. I'd write out the derivation of the quadratic formula by completing the square, but that would probably be adding too much explanation and lengthening this post too much. I may have glossed over the psychology of the pentagram too dismissively. Notice that the star has a rather attention-getting appearance, especially inside a more prosaic figure like a circle or polygon. Someone could say that its explosive or radiant appearance suggests energy, strength, power, etc. Maybe the radiance reminded someone of the Lucifer account, and suggested the notion of people seeking strength in the wrong place, etc. I don't know much about paganism, and I don't even know if pagans really used the pentagram. I didn't know that it was often represented with a circle instead of a pentagon. Since this thread has been about how the pentagram got its bad connotation, that sounds more like psychology than parapsychology. Does sciforums have a psychology forum? That's more where this thread fits best. Mike Ossipoff
Thanks a lot for the info..... though actually I'm going to need great time to fully understand that (cuz this is new to me).
