101 Clarity

Introduction to the "Q-ism" Series, NOW AVAILABLE!!

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Excerpt from 101 Clarity: Early Influences--Signs and Symbols.

Pentagrams were used symbolically in ancient Greece and Babylonia. In more modern heraldry, a mullet is a star with straight arms and typically five points. A star with wavy rather than straight rays is called an estoile. The mullet, used as a heraldic charge, is the ensign of knightly rank, and every order of knighthood incorporates this symbol into their iconography in some way. It has traditionally been used in British heraldry as a mark of cadency for the third son.

Originally, the five-pointed star (pentangle), forming a pentagram within it, represented the ten tribes of Israel that broke away from the ruling class of Judah, Benjamin, and the Priests. To earth-centered religions throughout history as well as many contemporary pagans, it represents the feminine spirit or force, the cosmos or a spiritualized Mother Earth, and a sacred space." The five-pointed star is representative of the four primal elements (earth, air, fire and water,) and traditionally a fifth, called spirit.

When pointing up, the pentagram can represent spirituality's dominance over the material (pentagram) bound inside the laws of the cosmos (circle). The upside-down facing pentagram, meanwhile, represents the physical world ruling over the spiritual, and has therefore been associated with dark magic. These directions also have an astrological meaning, representing the five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, and Venus as the "Queen of Heaven" (Ishtar) above.

According to Ivan Sache, on the Moroccan flags, the pentagram represents the link between God and the nation. (Sache 2003). It is also possible that both flags use the pentagram as a symbol of King Solomon (see Seal of Solomon), the archetypal wise king of Jewish, Christian and Muslim lore, although the Star of David is a more common and more widely accepted symbol.

Key 20: What do the five points represent? Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom and Justice.