Pentagrams

THOSE PESKY PENTAGRAMS
News and Commentary by Khrysso Heart LeFey
from the April issue of CUUPS TwinCities Pagan News

The pentagram, among Pagans, symbolizes wholeness and elemental balance.

Among Satanists, who invert it and superimpose the figure of a goat's head on it, it is known as the Sigil of Baphomet and symbolizes evil.

Recently, the Sigil of Baphomet has gotten young men in trouble both here and abroad. (Imagine that--evil bringing trouble!)

In Manhattan, Kansas, a 17-year-old Satanist priest who wears the
Sigil of Baphomet to school was sent home for wearing a long red robe to school on his birthday, which he considered to be a holy day. The school insisted that a robe could not only interfere with normal
moving about in a school setting, but could conceal weapons.

Apparently the young man's troubles would have been limited to peer harassment had he stuck with wearing his Sigil and clerical collar, but the school administration drew the line at the robe and blackface that he wore with it. The American Civil Liberties Union has become involved in the disagreement.

The student, who has been frustrated at his teachers' lack of respect in not calling him "Reverend Cookman," advised the school that he would again wear his robe on May 1. Associated Press reporters failed to recognize any significance to that date...

In Lebanon, Internal Security Forces recently arrested four young men on charges of devil-worship. The men wore tattoos of the Sigil of Baphomet and apparently admitted to partaking in "shameless feasts" involving sex and rock 'n' roll.

This reporter finds it chilling that a US student would have to resort to the ACLU for advocacy in expressing his religious beliefs, but shudders at the thought of being in a trickier scrape and knowing that there is no Lebanese Civil Liberties Union to provide advocacy in an even more repressive environment, regardless of the wholesomeness of one's chosen forms of entertainment.

Regarding the public's failure to distinguish pentagrams from inverted pentagrams, therein lies the hidden cost of invoking symbols that are held in the public domain and that may not be as free as they appear. It seems to this reporter that we should see the public's confusion as a call preparedness to articulate our beliefs and to distinguish them belief-systems that run counter to ours.

See also: Liberty and Schools

The Planet Venus and the Pentagram

Carl G. Liungman describes the unique phenomenon in Dictionary of Symbols (W.W. Norton & Company. Pp. 333-334. 1991):

"If one knows the ecliptic, and can pinpoint the present position of the planets in relation to the constellations of fixed stars in the zodiac, it is possible to mark the exact place in the 360 degrees of the zodiac where the Morning star first appears shortly before sunrise after a period of invisibility. If we do this, wait for the Morning star to appear again 584 days later (the synodic orbital time of Venus) and mark its position in the zodiac, and then repeat this process until we have the five positions of Venus as the Morning star, we will find that exactly eight years plus one day have passed. If we then draw a line from the first point marked to the second point marked, then to the third, and so on, we end up with a Pentagram."

http://www26.brinkster.com/pagansou/pentagram.htm

Last updated March 1, 2004