The Pentagram

Documented origin

The five-pointed star was used by the Pythagoreans as a sign of mutual recognition and appears across many ancient cultures; its proportions embody the golden ratio. Set upright, it stands on two points with a single point raised toward the sky. In the Renaissance and after, it was read as a figure of the human body — head, two arms, two legs — fitted into the geometry of the wider cosmos, the small world matched to the great one.

The reading

Éliphas Lévi taught that the upright pentagram represents the microcosm, man, and the triumph of spirit over matter — “the Blazing Star,” the sign of intellectual omnipotence. Manly P. Hall places it among the emblems of the mysteries, the star of the awakened mind set above the elements. Mark Passio reads it as a teaching figure: spirit raised over the four elements of the body, a diagram of mastery rather than a mark of menace.

Where it hides today

It marks national flags and military insignia, the sheriff’s badge, the rituals of Wicca and ceremonial magic. A single star can mean, depending entirely on who drew it and which way up, the body, the cosmos, or the mind.