The recent Memorial Day weekend got me thinking almost the pentagram. Why? Well, read on…

For as long as I can remember, my teachers (and innumerable books) have claimed that the "upright" pentagram is a positive and spiritual epitome. It's upright. What could exist more than positive than upright?

Information technology'southward used as a symbol for Wicca, Witchcraft, and Paganism. It's used for protection equally in the famous Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram as well as in other rituals.

Information technology is said that the five points of the pentagram stand for the 5 elements: Burn at the lower right, World at the lower left, Water at the upper right, Air at the upper left, and Spirit at the superlative. What a great symbol this can be!

It's not only popular among occultists, just amid very patriotic American citizens. It's on the U.S. flag in 50 places…………………….

It'south part of the symbol for the U.S. Air Force.
Here is an older version of the USAF symbol:

And here is a new USAF symbol:

In some of the earliest forms of Wicca, the Pentagram was taken every bit a symbol for the first or almost basic degree of the Craft. The symbol for the 3rd or most advanced degree included the inverted pentagram:

Notwithstanding, every bit Wicca spread to the U.S., it was discovered that Americans tended to despise this symbol. It was said to stand for evil or Satanism. The 2 upright points implied the horns of the Satanic goat. Sometimes, this caprine animal was fifty-fifty drawn into the image:

Only is information technology truly a Satanic or evil symbol?

It is certainly true that some Satanists have adopted it.

Just does a symbol become evil only considering some group uses it?

The clan of a symbol with an evil group,
leading to the assumption
that the symbol is inherently evil is nil new.

Perhaps the most famous example of a symbol becoming evil is that of the universal symbol of good fortune, the Swastika. The Swastika has been found among native cultures all over the world, It'south almost "pre-evil" use was in India where information technology was normally drawn with a apartment side:

Hitler himself chose the symbol to represent the Nazi party, merely tilted it on i point. Today, in India, it is nonetheless a popular symbol and appears everywhere, including on spiritual items. This surprises many Westerners who today just know the symbol for its Nazi associations.

The truth is that a graphic symbol, such equally a pentagram, is cypher more lines. Information technology's what we put into it that matters. If you adopt it to represent evil, and so for you—and for those who hold with you lot—information technology's evil. If you lot think it's positive and put positive values into a symbol, then it's positive.

Although the U.Southward. is a secular country, we exercise take certain places and objects that are so honored they accept caused a quality that can simply be called "sacred." From the Statue of Freedom (the goddess Freedom Enlightening the Globe) and the Washington Monument (a representation of masculine free energy) to the sublime meaningfulness of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, we take our sacred symbols. In the U.S., maybe no symbol is more sacred and more than honored than the (Congressional) Medal of Laurels. Although there are three basic versions of the medal, they are all similar in design:

Practice y'all still think the inverted pentagram
is necessarily Satanic or evil?

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Written past Donald Michael Kraig

Donald Michael Kraig graduated from UCLA with a caste in philosophy. He has as well studied public speaking and music (traditional and experimental) on the academy level. Afterward a decade of personal study and do, he began ten years of didactics courses in the Southern California expanse on such ...