NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/magick/6497

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-25 | 1.7 KB

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From: [e-mail] (LeGrand Cinq-Mars)
Subject: Re: Pentagrams
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Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 02:04:44 GMT
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To say "the pentagram was considered an evil symbol by the Christians" is
a little ... well, general.

I haven't searched the whole corpus of Christian literature, and tallied
up all the mentions of pentagrams-good and pentagrams-bad, but I would
like to point out that (a) the pentagram occurs in "Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight," and not as an evil symbol; (b) the pentagram was often regarded
as emblematic of the Five Wounds of Christ; and (c) the pentagram was
not an evil symbol for Pythagoreans, and there was a strong current
of admiration, in Christian tradition (though not a unanimous one), for
"noble pagans" -- Pythagoras, Plato, various Stoics, Plotinus, and so
on.  A good example of the ambivalence in Christian tradition toward
writers and thinkers is Dante's treatment of Virgil.

Can anyone come up with a specific text originating from the first
thousand years of Christianity denouncing the pentagram as an innately
evil symbol?  I wouldn't be surprised, myself, if the first occurrence
of such texts was some time within the past two centuries.  Or five
centuries.

--LeGrand