The Pentagram

[C h e r r yADE xx]

I was just reading the article on from the links page The Problem With Silver Ravenwolf and I just would like some clarity on a paragraph here.

Quote:

"...use Satanic symbols. The Witches' pentacle, or five-pointed star point-up within a circle, represents the four elements and the human, encompassed by Spirit. The pentacle has nothing to do with Satanism, and Witches get very, very upset with people who match the point-up pentacle with Satanism. Just as Witches do not invert the Christian cross, they don't appreciate it when someone inverts their symbol either."


This is absolutely beyond laughable. I'm nearly at a loss as to where to even begin. Yes, the pentacle is representative of the five Elements (Spirit or Akasha, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth). With the point up, it represents Spirit ascendant above matter. Inverted it represents Spirit descending into matter. For someone who claims to be an initiated Elder of Wicca, she seems completely ignorant of the symbolism used in Second Degree initiation (which is not yet Elder status) by admonishing her readers that inverting the pentacle is a "bad thing". As to the use of the inverted pentacle as a Satanic symbol, it would stand to reason that it is used by them as such specifically because it represents Spirit descending into matter. Since many Satanists, particularly the LaVeyan Satanists, worship the self rather than any literal entity known as Satan, glorifying the practitioner as divinity in flesh and materialism are natural, logical steps with the symbolism. Upright or inverted, the pentacle has no moral "value" beyond that which the observer delegates to it, and what is implied by the context in which it is used.

Does this mean that the pentagram isn't neccarsarily good or bad?
How do wicca,'s/pagans/santanists use the pentagram?  

[Satyr Prince]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagram  

[Esiris]

C h e r r yADE xx

Does this mean that the pentagram isn't neccarsarily good or bad?
How do wicca,'s/pagans/santanists use the pentagram?

Yes- that means the pentagram isn't necessarily good or bad- but I think very few things fall into good or bad exclusively. I mean- magic isn't necessarily good or bad either. Guns, hammers, video games, movies, the internet almost any tool you care to name falls into the "neither but can be both" group.

Pagans can use it in anyway that makes sense to them- I know a friend of mine on Gaia even mentioned that it can represent the 5 wounds of Christ and I've heard of people using that in my community too.  

[rmcdra]

Esiris

Pagans can use it in anyway that makes sense to them- I know a friend of mine on Gaia even mentioned that it can represent the 5 wounds of Christ and I've heard of people using that in my community too.

Yep and it's also been used as a visual representation of the Trinity (God in three persons and the dual nature of Christ).  

[X-Yami-no-Ko-X]

Esiris

Pagans can use it in anyway that makes sense to them- I know a friend of mine on Gaia even mentioned that it can represent the 5 wounds of Christ and I've heard of people using that in my community too.

I've heard this too. This one lady I was talking to that sells her New Age stuff at the flea market until she can get her own shop told me that the Church took the pentagram when they were trying to convert Pagans and that's where that meaning came from and how the Satanist started using the pentagram. I was ify on the whole thing since she interchanges Wicca and witch and told me to read Silver Ravenwolf and that the Christian God is her Lord and I forget the goddess as her Lady. I almost wanna say it was Isis. But either way that's what she told me about the pentagram.  

[Esiris]

X-Yami-no-Ko-X

... the Church took the pentagram when they were trying to convert Pagans and that's where that meaning came from and how the Satanist started using the pentagram.

I get skeptical about people saying "the Church" did this or that- I think a lot of it is hooey.  

[rmcdra]

X-Yami-no-Ko-X

Esiris

Pagans can use it in anyway that makes sense to them- I know a friend of mine on Gaia even mentioned that it can represent the 5 wounds of Christ and I've heard of people using that in my community too.

I've heard this too. This one lady I was talking to that sells her New Age stuff at the flea market until she can get her own shop told me that the Church took the pentagram when they were trying to convert Pagans and that's where that meaning came from and how the Satanist started using the pentagram. I was ify on the whole thing since she interchanges Wicca and witch and told me to read Silver Ravenwolf and that the Christian God is her Lord and I forget the goddess as her Lady. I almost wanna say it was Isis. But either way that's what she told me about the pentagram.

The pentagram wasn't exclusively used by any one Gentile group and most of the founders were Gentiles themselves. Also Christianity is synthesis of Hebrew and Greek thought so it's no surprise if there were "pagan" elements in the religion. I doubt that it was incorporated to convert since the religion already had an appeal to the under classed and outcasts that other religions at the time didn't.  

[X-Yami-no-Ko-X]

rmcdra

Also Christianity is synthesis of Hebrew and Greek thought so it's no surprise if there were "pagan" elements in the religion. I doubt that it was incorporated to convert since the religion already had an appeal to the under classed and outcasts that other religions at the time didn't.

I don't doubt that. When I was taking a mythology course my first semester of college there were so many archetypes that appeared in all of the different mythologies that we studied. So whenever someone tries to tell me that the Christians did something just to convert people I just shrug it off.  

[rmcdra]

X-Yami-no-Ko-X

rmcdra

Also Christianity is synthesis of Hebrew and Greek thought so it's no surprise if there were "pagan" elements in the religion. I doubt that it was incorporated to convert since the religion already had an appeal to the under classed and outcasts that other religions at the time didn't.

I don't doubt that. When I was taking a mythology course my first semester of college there were so many archetypes that appeared in all of the different mythologies that we studied. So whenever someone tries to tell me that the Christians did something just to convert people I just shrug it off.

What's even more intriguing is the twist on the archetypes they took. All the flavors of early Christianity had one thing in common in the mythos they took, their God living a life in a shameful state, dying a shameful death, and then still living and becoming honorable. For the Mediaterrian world that was revolutionary.  

[Yanueh]

Esiris

I get skeptical about people saying "the Church" did this or that- I think a lot of it is hooey.

Oh yeah.

There's no reason to doubt that the Church was responsible for the systemic destruction of pagan beliefs and texts, but when you start getting into Da Vinci Code territory and beyond... gah.

(Funny how writers and conspiracy theorists are always happy to declare Catholicism a massive government plot deliberately created to control people, but never jump on the possibility that Judaism started this way as well, even though there is circumstantial evidence to suggest it.)