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We all know what it?s like to be misunderstood. It?s frustrating. The [tag]pentagram [/tag]is one symbol that suffers that fate. The word pentagram comes from the Greek word meaning roughly ?five-lined? or ?five lines.? The geometric proportions of the regular pentagram are those of the Golden Section. A pentagram is a five-pointed star, but not all five pointed stars are pentagrams. The center of a pentagram forms a perfect pentagon within which another pentagram can be made, and the points are connected by five straight lines of equal measure. Pentagons are found throughout the natural world.

The use of the pentagram dates back to 3500 BCE in ancient [tag]Mesopotamia [/tag]where the general meaning seems to be ?heavenly body.? Hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt depict five pointed stars; it is thought that they symbolize Isis. Pentagrams are found on artifacts and tablets from 3000 BCE. It is sometimes incorrectly called the Seal of Solomon, which is more appropriately the hexagram.

The Pentagram has long been associated with the planet [tag]Venus[/tag], and the worship of the goddess Venus, or her equivalent. It is also associated with the Roman Lucifer, who was Venus as the Morning Star, the bringer of light and knowledge. It is most likely to have originated from the observations of ancient astronomers. When viewed from Earth, successive conjunctions of Venus plot a nearly perfect pentagram shape around the zodiac every eight years.

Amongst the Hebrews, the five point symbol was ascribed to truth and to the five books of the Pentateuch. Pythagoreans considered it an emblem of perfection or the symbol of the human being. In Ancient Greece, it was called the Pentalpha, being geometrically composed of five A?s. Medieval Christians attributed the pentagram to the Five Wounds of Christ. The Emperor Constantine used the pentagram on his seal and amulet.

The first English mention of a pentagram appears in the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight where Gawain carries a shield, ??With the Pentangle in pure gold depicted thereon.?
It is a symbol which Solomon conceived once
To betoken holy truth, by its intrinsic right,
For it is a figure which has five points,
And each line overlaps and is locked with another;
And it is endless everywhere, and the English call it,
In all the land, I hear, the Endless Knot.

Here the pentacle represents the five wits, the five fingers, the five piercings of Christ, the five pure joys of Heaven?s queen with her child, and the five virtues: generosity, fellowship, purity, courtesy and mercy.

Although the pentagram does have magical associations, Eliphas Levi, in the 1800?s, claimed, with no justification or historical precedent, that the pentagram with one point upward represents the good principle and one downward, the evil. It should be noted that many authors have repeated this arbitrary distinction since that time.

The pentagram has evolved from a pre-Christian symbol for a Mesopotamian city, to a symbol for health and the heavens, to an early Christian symbol for Christ Transfigured, or truth, and then to a mediaeval talisman to guard against evil. It is only in the later twentieth century and the creation of the American Church of Satan that the inverted pentagram has become popularly perceived as a symbol for Satan.

In ancient times, the ?Star of the Sea? was sometimes depicted as an inverted pentagram. This may explain why some early American flags that displayed inverted stars were connected with the navy. The five pointed star, as a symbol of power and authority, bravery, honor and virtue, is an ever-present icon. Almost exclusively depicted with one point up, the five pointed star is found on police badges, military vehicles, fourteen American state flags, and on at least forty-five national flags. A rare usage with one point down can be found on the American Congressional Medal of Honor.

There are many pentagrams in our nation?s symbolism. Our flag has 50. Our dollar bills show pentagrams. Our Army uses a pentagram as its symbol. Our Defense Department is housed in the Pentagon, and the Dallas Cowboys, ?America?s team,? use a pentagram for their symbol as well.

[tag]Symbols [/tag]are like water flowing through landscapes. As water flows, it collects all the different sediments in each area. So to, symbols collect meanings as they migrate through cultures.

[tags]symbol meanings[/tags]

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