Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Surely, as soon as Catholicism stops making itself such good bait.Can you try it without making biases against Catholicism?
And perhaps more in detail insted of a one liner attack.
Of course.
Wikipedia article entitled; "Pentagram" said:A pentagram (sometimes known as pentalpha or pentangle) is a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes. The word pentagram comes from the Greek word πεντάγραμμον (pentagrammon), a noun form of πεντάγραμμος (pentagrammos) or πεντέγραμμος (pentegrammos), a word meaning roughly "five-lined" or "five lines".
Pentagrams were used symbolically in ancient Greece and Babylonia. The Pentagram has magical associations, and many people who practice pagan faiths wear them. Christians once more commonly used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Jesus[1][2], and it also has associations within Freemasonry.
The pentagram has long been associated with the planet Venus, and the worship of the goddess Venus, or her equivalent. It is also associated with the Roman Lucifer, who was Venus as the Morning Star, the bringer of light and knowledge. It is most likely to have originated from the observations of prehistoric astronomers.[citation needed] When viewed from Earth, successive inferior conjunctions of Venus plot a nearly perfect pentagram shape around the zodiac every eight years.
Early history
Sumer
The first known uses of the pentagram are found in Mesopotamian writings dating to about 3000 BC. The Sumerian pentagrams served as pictograms for the word "UB," meaning "corner, angle, nook; a small room, cavity, hole; pitfall," suggesting something very similar to the pentemychos (see below on the Pythagorean use for what pentemychos means). In the Labat (dictionary of Sumerian hieroglyphs/pictograms) it is the number 306, and it is shown as being two points up. In the Babylonian context, the edges of the pentagram were probably orientations: forward, backward, left, right, and "above". These directions also had an astrological meaning, representing the five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, and Venus as the "Queen of Heaven" (Ishtar) above.
[edit] Pythagoreans
The Pythagoreans called the pentagram ύγιεια Hygieia ("health"; also the Greek goddess of health, Hygieia), and saw in the pentagram a mathematical perfection (see Geometry section below).
The five vertices were also used by the medieval neo-pythagoreans (whom one could argue were not pythagoreans at all) to represent the five classical elements:
ύδωρ, Hydor, water
Γαια, Gaia earth
ίδέα, Idea or ίερόν, Hieron "a divine thing"
έιλή, Heile, heat (fire)
άήρ, Aer, air
The vertices were labeled in the letters of υ-γ-ι-ει-α. The ordering (clockwise or counter-clockwise) and starting vertex varied.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and others, recognized the letters as being the five beginning letters of the words: udor (water, often transliterated as hydor), ge (earth; Agrippa used gaia), idea (idea, as in the Platonic Idea), eile (heat, sometimes written as heile), and aer (air). However, even if one uses the "elemental" scheme that Agrippa used, it's a definite stretch because it uses heat (heile), which is not an element but a quality of the element fire. Had Agrippa used the Attic Greek, which is the language Pythagoreans back then actually spoke and wrote, he could have used (phonetic) "empreesis" for fire or conflagration.
The ancient Pythagorean pentagram was drawn with two points up and represented the doctrine of Pentemychos. Pentemychos means "five recesses" or "five chambers", also known as the pentagonas the five-angle, and was the title of a work written by Pythagoras's teacher and friend Pherecydes of Syros.[3] It was also the "place" where the first pre-cosmic offspring had to be put in order for the ordered cosmos to appear. The pentemychos is in Tartaros.
In very early Greek thought, Tartaros (or Chaos, according to Hesiod) was the primordial Darkness from which the cosmos is born. While it was locked away after the emergence and ordering of the cosmos, it still continued to have an influence. In fact, it was known as "the subduer of both gods and men" (Homer), and it was from this that the world got its "psyche" (soul) and its "daimon". The Boundless Darkness held influence through Mychos or Krater. Apart from being the gateway from "there" to "here" it was also a way in the opposite direction, from "here" to "there", as is evident in the many tales about how Greek heroes, philosophers and mystics descended through Krater to Tartaros/Hades (the distinction between the two was very optional back then) in quest for Wisdom. The Underworld as the source of wisdom was the rule.
Tartaros was also later seen as the "chthonic realm" where all the enemies of the cosmic order were locked away, also called the "prison-house" of Zeus. It was said to lay outside of the aither over which Zeus had lordship; what we today would call space, back then called "Zeus' defense-wall," yet it was also beneath the earth. Plato (in Cratylus) said that the aither had a penetrating power that permeates the whole world, and he found it both inside and outside of our bodies. The pentemychos is outside, or in-side, of the aither.
In the play Medea by Euripides, the sorceress Medea calls upon Hecate with the words, "By that dread queen whom I revere before all others and have chosen to share my task, by Hecate who dwells within my inmost chamber, not one of them shall wound my heart and rue it not." Note that she speaks of the Heart. The inmost chamber is the Mychos. Normally, Hecate and Persephone are portrayed solely as the rulers of the Underworld. In Medea, however, Hecate is called the Lady of Tartaros, Phulada (Guardian), Propulaia (Before the Gates), Kleidophoros (Key-bearer) and Kleidoukhos (Key-holder, Priestess). This Underworld of the Greeks and Pythagoreans is also the "inmost chamber" and the Core of Inner Being.
This is an esoteric connection, but the Core is the Greek Goddess Kore (another name for Persephone, alongside Hecate queen of the underworld), whose symbol was the apple. If an apple is cut transversally through its core, it reveals a pentagram. The apple remains a symbol of health ("An apple a day keeps the doctor away").
Religious symbolism
[edit] Christianity
According to Heather Child's Christian Symbols, Ancient and Modern[4], the pentagram is a symbol of the five senses. Also, when the letters S, A, L, V, and S are inscribed in the points, the pentagram is a symbol of health (Latin salūs).
Medieval Christians believed it to symbolize the five wounds of Christ. The pentagram was (ironically) believed to protect against witches and demons.[5]
The pentagram figured in the heavily symbolic Arthurian romances.[5] It appears on the shield of Sir Gawain in the 14th Century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the poem the five lines of the star are given multiple meanings: they represent the five senses, five fingers, the five wounds of Christ[6], the five joys that Mary had of Jesus (the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension and the Assumption), and the five virtues of knighthood which Gawain hopes to embody: frankness, fellowship, purity, courtesy and compassion.
Probably due to misinterpretation of symbols used by ceremonial magicians, it later became associated with Satanism and subsequently rejected by most of Christianity sometime in the twentieth century.[5]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has traditionally used pentagrams and five-pointed starts in Temple architecture, particularly the Nauvoo Illinois Temple.[1] These symbols derived from traditional morning star pentagrams that are no longer commonly used in mainline Christianity. Because of the more recent obscurity of these symbols, the use of these morning stars has been occasionally criticized as use of "satanic" and "occult" symbols, as they are commonly associated in today's culture.
[edit] Satanism
Satanists use a pentagram with two points up, often inscribed in a double circle, with the head of Baphomet inside the pentagram. They use it much the same way as the Pythagoreans, as Tartaros means Hell in Christian terminology (the word is used as such in the Bible, referring to the place where the fallen angels are fettered). The Pythagorean Greek letters are most often replaced by the Hebrew letters לויתן forming the name Leviathan. Less esoteric LaVeyan Satanists use it as a sign of rebellion or religious identification, the three downward points symbolising rejection of the holy Trinity.
[edit] Neopaganism
Many Neopagans, especially Wiccans, use the pentagram as a symbol of faith similar to the Christian cross or the Jewish Star of David. (It is not, however, a universal symbol for Neopaganism, and is rarely used by Reconstructionists.) Its religious symbolism is commonly explained by reference to the neo-Pythagorean understanding that the five vertices of the pentagram represent the four elements with the addition of Spirit as the uppermost point. As a representation of the elements, the pentagram is involved in the Wiccan practice of summoning the elemental spirits of the four directions at the beginning of a ritual.
The outer circle of the circumscribed pentagram is sometimes interpreted as binding the elements together or bringing them into harmony. The Neopagan pentagram is generally displayed with one point up, partly because of the "inverted" pentagram's association with Satanism, however within traditional forms of Wicca a pentagram with two points up is associated with the Second Degree Initiation and in this context has no relation to Satanism.
Because of a perceived association with Satanism and also because of negative societal attitudes towards Neopagan religions and the "occult", many United States schools have sought to prevent students from displaying the pentagram on clothing or jewelry.[7][8][9] In public schools, such actions by administrators have been determined to be in violation of students' First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
[edit] Samael Aun Weor
Samael Aun Weor used the Pentagram to represent man's Atman, or Internal Christ. When a man's limbs are outstretched thus that his feet are planted on the ground while his head is situated atop his body it creates the omnipotent symbol of the pentagram. Through the Mantra "Klim, Krishna, Govindaya, Gopijana, Vallebayah, Swahah" one's inner being is said to be awakened and come to the initiate's aid. Aun Weor stated that no demon could resist the power of this mantra, since one's Logos cannot be overcome by a demon of any stature.
In contrast to representing one's Logos, the inverted pentagram represents one's Umbral Guardian, the malignant antithesis of the divine father. When the pentagram's inferior rays point upwards, it represents Satan. This symbol is therefore shown above as the goat of the Witches' Sabbath, which serves as a call to the vast columns of demons.
. This is a debate thread, is it not? You cant exclude people who disagree with Wicca out of this thread. Its your job to influence the ignorant, not tell them to shut up 
(if they are ignorant, that is - well-founded criticism will be accepted). Arrogance comes in when you refuse to acknowledge your ignorance when it has been pointed out to you.
