by Nicola Windmill

Created on: June 11, 2008

The media has associated the Pentagram with everything unclean and unholy, from devil worshipping to mass murders.

Thanks to Hollywood, with its endless stream of occult movies, the five pointed star has been degraded and abused over and over again.

Show anyone in the street a picture of this misunderstood symbol and the first thing that will, more than likely, spring to their mind is Satanism, evil, black magic etc.

So where do the origins of the Pentagram come from, and why is it seen as a symbol of hatred and cruelty?

IN THE BEGINNING

The Pentagram dates back further than the countless crude movies and T.V programmes with make believe demons and evil witches who can summon fire in the palm of their hand.

To discover the true identity of the Pentagram we have to travel back some 3500 years before Christ was believed to have been nailed to the cross. We have to delve into the very place where many believe agricultural civilisation was born.

The earliest evidence of the Pentagram has been found on pieces of broken pottery at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates Valley, which was once the kingdom of Uruk.
This symbol was found along side signs relating to the foundations of written language.

There is also considerable evidence that suggests the Pentagram was used as a seal of royalty by these ancient Mesopotamian people.

So, from the very beginning of recorded time we see that the now mistrusted and evil' symbol of the five pointed star was once a powerful symbol representing knowledge and power.

There are hundreds of examples of the Pentagram being used through-out history; from carvings on clay tablets and pottery, to the mention of it in ancient myths and legends.

The symbol of the five pointed star has appeared on numerous artefacts many religious - found through-out Jerusalem and Palestine, and on a variety of Greek coins from Melos and southern Italy, and later on Roman, Gallic and even British coins.

In many of these examples a letter was inscribed at each of the five points of the star. On the Greek coins the letters Psi, Gamma, Iota, Theta, and Alpha spelled the name of a Goddess Ygieia or Hygieia, which was also the word for health.

These Pentagrams are thought to have been symbols to promote health by warding off disease and death.

Even the ancient Greek Pythagorean Brotherhood (Pythagoras; 586-506 B.C), who were devoted to the study of mathematics, chose the Pentagram as there symbol, seeing in it a mathematical perfection.

RELIGION

Venus, the ancient Roman Goddess

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