Pentagram
Also called pentacle, pentalpha
Drawn in antiquity; moralized in the nineteenth century
Hellenic symbolsPentagram meaning
A pentagram is a five-pointed star drawn in one stroke. Pythagoreans cared about it for its geometry. Point-up “good” and point-down “evil” is a nineteenth-century assignment, mostly Éliphas Lévi’s, not an ancient law.
Five lines in one stroke. The doctrines came later, and they disagree.
The name. Greek pente, five, and gramma, a line. A pentacle is the star set in a disk.
Where it comes from
The figure is full of the golden ratio, which is why it fascinated Pythagoreans. Later sources remember it as a sign of health, hygieia, the letters of that word set at the points. Medieval Christians could use five for the wounds. Éliphas Lévi, in the 1850s, assigned point-up to spirit over matter and point-down to the reverse. The “satanic” inversion is a modern polemical layer on top of Lévi. Wicca generally uses the point-up star in a circle, as a blessing.
Hermetic
Context is the whole reading
A pentagram in a church window, on a Pythagorean cup, in a Golden Dawn ritual, and in a late-twentieth-century scare are not one intention repeated. The geometry is patient. It will hold whatever is hung on it. That is not the same as meaning everything, or meaning nothing.
Geometry
One stroke
The unicursal drawing — you need not lift the pen — is the old wonder. Five is the first star that closes that way. The circle around it, when present, is the pentacle: the human figure inscribed, or the elements bounded, depending on the teacher. The bare star and the circled star should not be collapsed in a hurry.
Near this
- Star of DavidTwo triangles locked, asked to stand for a people.
- Vesica piscisTwo equal circles, each through the other’s center. A third shape appears.
- KhandaTwo sovereignties, held together and not sheathed.
- SaltWhat the fire cannot talk out of staying.
- Golden ratioA cut where the whole stands to the larger part as that part stands to the smaller.
Sources
- Pythagorean interest in the pentagon and the golden ratio
- Éliphas Lévi, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1850s)
Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.
Your margin
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symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.