Pentagram

A pentagram (sometimes also known as pentacle, pentalpha, pentangle or a star pentagon) is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes. Pentagrams were used as an important religious symbol by the Babylonians, the Pythagoreans in ancient Greece, and the Kabbalists, and several traditions associate it with magic.

H. P. Blavatsky wrote that "the pentagon is the symbol of Man—not only of the five-limbed, but rather of the thinking, conscious MAN". She elaborated further as follows:

The six-pointed star which is the figure of the macrocosm . . . is made to represent the universal spirit and matter. . . . The Pentagram also represents spirit and matter but only as manifested upon earth. Emblem of the microcosm (or the “little universe”) faithfully mirroring in itself the macrocosm (or the great cosmos), it is the sign of the supremacy of human intellect or spirit over brutal matter.

Most of the mysteries of Kabalistic or ceremonial magic, the gnostical symbols and all the Kabalistic keys of prophecy are summed up in that flamboyant Pentagram, considered by the practitioners of the Chaldeo-Jewish Kabala as the most potent magical instrument.

Healing

H. P. Blavatsky wrote:

“What is in a sign?” will our readers ask. “No more than in a name” we shall reply—nothing except that, as said above, it helps to concentrate the attention, hence to nail the WILL of the operator to a certain spot. It is the magnetic or mesmeric fluid flowing out of the fingers’ ends of the hand tracing the figure which cures or at least stops the acute pain in benumbing the nerves and not the figure per se. And yet there are some proficients who are able to demonstrate that the five-pointed star, whose points represent the five cordial [sic] limbs or those channels of man—the head, the two arms and the two legs—from whence the mesmeric currents issue the strongest, the simplest tracing of that figure (a tracing produced with far more efficacy with the finger ends than with ink, chalk or pencil), helped by a strong desire to alleviate pain, will very often force out unconsciously the healing fluid from all these extremities, with far more force than it otherwise would. Faith in the figure is transformed into intense will, and the latter into energy; and energy from whatsoever feeling or cause it may proceed, is sure to rebound somewhere and strike the place with more or less force; and naturally enough that place will be the locality upon which the attention of the operator is at that moment concentrated; and hence—the cure attributed by the self-ignorant mesmeriser to the PENTAGRAM.

Online resources

Articles

• Pentacle at Theosopedia
• The Five-Pointed Star by H. P. Blavatsky
• Footnotes to "The Five-Pointed Star" by H. P. Blavatsky
• The Six-pointed and Five-Pointed Stars by H. P. Blavatsky
• The Pentagram published by Theosophy Trust

Books

• Old Diary Leaves, Fifth Series, Ch. XXXIV, "The Healing Pentagon" by H. S. Olcott