Pentagram appears in 2 systems: the same name is used for more than one thing. Both are shown below.

Symbols

Pentagram

Symbols

The five-pointed star drawn in one stroke: the four elements plus spirit, and the human figure with arms and legs outstretched.

Tradition · Wiccan,Western Magic
On the glyph

The pentacle entry already carries the encircled form; this entry is the star itself, the line without the circle.

Correspondences

Element
AllAether
Chakra
All chakras

Practice

Magical Uses
ProtectionBanishingInvokingElemental workConsecration

Nature and meaning

Meaning

The five-pointed star drawn in one stroke: the four elements plus spirit, and the human figure with arms and legs outstretched.

Deities
All gods

Details

Keywords
ProtectionFive elementsMicrocosmWill
Orientation
Upright protectionInverted matter

Sacred geometry

Tradition · Pythagorean Hermetic
A note on this entry

The five-elements reading, with aether or spirit at the top point, is a Renaissance and later Hermetic overlay; the Pythagorean pentad is a number doctrine, not an elemental one. The inverted pentagram as a sign of evil is a 19th-century reading, fixed in the occult revival, and has no medieval authority. pentagon is catalogued separately as the figure the pentagram is drawn from.

Correspondences

Element
Aether

Practice

Magical Uses
ProtectionBanishingInvocationConsecrationElemental work

Nature and meaning

Meaning

The five-pointed star traced by joining every second vertex of a regular pentagon. Because the diagonals cut one another in extreme and mean ratio, the pentagram is the golden ratio drawn rather than computed, and it was the Pythagorean sign of recognition. In the Western magical tradition it is the figure of the five elements and the standard mark of a consecrated space.

Details

Dimensions
2D
Keywords
FivePentadPythagoreanGolden ratioProtection
Sacred Ratio
phi (its diagonals cut one another in the extreme and mean ratio)
Construction

Draw a regular pentagon (Euclid, Elements IV.11) and connect each vertex to the second vertex from it, skipping one; the five lines close and cross five times. The inner figure is a smaller pentagon, and the operation can be repeated inside it without end, which is the self-similarity that produces phi.

Appears in
PentaclesTalismansRitual geometryFlags

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