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The Real (and Boring) difference between a Pentacle and a Pentagram.

        My priestess taught that the things that went untaught were the simplest things, and that, left untaught, spawned the worst falsehood. If, for example, we do not teach why we use the Athamé, every new Wiccan raised outside a tradition, not given the opportunity to ask a question of people who know, will assume there is no real reason, and make one up to fill in the hole.
        Nowhere is this more obvious than in the story of the pentacle and the pentagram.  A brief websearch will give you all of the myths: That a pentagram faces one way and a pentacle another, or that one has a circle around it and one does not, (as good as Scott Cunningham is, he promoted this myth of the pentacle/pentagram (in all his books, this is the lone thing I feel he blew it on)), that Wiccans only use a pentagram one way, and not the other.

Let's play a game....
Which of the following, if any, are pentacles?????  Which are Pentagrams??????


Scroll down slowly for the facts.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

They Are ALL Pentagrams.

        A pentagram is a 2D,  five pointed figure that is not a polygon. It can have a circle around it or not. It can be regular, or not, it can be one point up, or not. It comes from the word penta (five) and gram (of drawing or writing.) There is also a Pentalpha, which is not really a synonym for pentagram,  because a pentalpha is drawn by taking 5 alphas and intersecting them,it looks slightly different than a pentagram when drawn this way, but the similarity is enough that "pentalpha" and pentagram can mean the same thing.
 
 

Now, this should be easy. Which of the Following are Pentacles? (Assume they are all 3 D)


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

You're (probably) right! That is, if you said that they were ALL pentacles, you were right. Like Pentagram, this, too, comes from Penta (five) and the latin stem -culum, which is often (but not always) used to incidate a thing. We see culum in icicle, and in latin in bacculum. A pentacle can be a wooden, clay or wax disk inscribed with a pentagram, or a 3D representation of the same thing.

Is this 2D/3D thing confusing you?

Take this circle:

Do you know what the 3D version of it is???

Did you say sphere?? Like this Globe:

 

WRONG.  The 2D representation of a Sphere is THIS:

I know, this was ages ago for most of us.  Of course, the rest of us know that the 3D representation of the circle is a HOOP:


Well, If you can remember that a pentagram is to a pentacle as a circle is to a hoop, you'll get it. Don't say you weren't taught.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Pentagrams by Alpha.
First 4 Pentacles from http://members.tripod.com/~mystyway/PPAGAN.html
Fifth Pentacle is public domain.
I turned the last two upside down on my own, I have pitiful skills at such. but you get the point, right?
other graphics are public domain, supposedly.
 

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