Paganism!! Natural Way!!

(The below given write-up is a mere sharing of knowledge and interesting points I read in a book and not to hurt any particular faith, belief or religion.)

Dan Brown, everyone knows is a very credulous author of these times. I cherished his narration in my first read “The Digital Fortress”. That book proved to be the best cryptogram ever. So hard to crack and yet so wanting to keep on trying. After that I had a mysterious and exhilarating journey to the Vatican with Robert Langdon in “Angels and Demons”. Right now I am reading Mr. Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”. Brown had kept his promise. He had helped me join him in another of the interesting journeys, now to the beautiful country of France. So far, I am really finding it hard to keep the book aside for a whole eight hours while I sleep! Oh why can’ I just sit alone and keep on reading, without a need for food, sleep etc.

Now coming to the purpose of this write-up, Mr. Brown had introduced me to a very worthy phenomenon called Paganism in this book. This write-up is just to share some of the idea he had provided about the Pagans and the Church’s hatred for them and their beliefs.

The term Pagan is derived from Latin paganus, meaning country-dwellers. Pagans were literally unindoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old, rural religions of Nature Worship. In short, Pagans can be called Worshippers of Nature. They believed that Nature is God! When Christianity started to flourish, Paganism proved to be a great threat to their beliefs. Christianity wanted people to believe that only God could help them out of their trouble and only He could heal the sick. Paganism used medicine acquired from Nature to cure illness. Even this simple deed, challenged the utmost belief and existence of Christianity in those days.

Pagan Symbolism acts as an important part of this book. The author had given interesting details about Pagan symbols and their meanings. I really can’t stop sharing about those awesome facts.

Pentacle:

Pentacle is a symbol made of five straight lines intersected to form a five-pointed star. Its one of the oldest symbols on earth used almost four thousand years before Christ. This symbol related to Nature Worship. Pagans believed in balance of power between the Masculine and Feminine. Pentacle is a symbol of the Female Goddess. It is also called the symbol of Venus, the goddess of female sexual love and beauty. As worshippers of Nature, the Pagans believed that the planet Venus and the Goddess Venus are one and the same. The Pentacle is also said to have an astonishing property, a tie of its origin from the Venus. It is said that Venus traces the path of a perfect Pentacle across the elliptical sky every eight years. It’s said that, being stunned by this phenomenon, the ancient Greeks arranged their Olympic games every eight years.

After being provided with some sort of breath-taking introduction about the Pentacle by the author, I made some little search in this regard. Well, thanks to Google and Wiki. I found some more interesting facts. They are as follows:

Sumerians:

According to wiki, the first uses of a Pentagram or Pentacle were by the Sumerians. In Babylonian context, the five points represented five directions, forward, backward, left, right and above. These directions also had an astrological meaning, representing the five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, and Venus as the "Queen of Heaven" (Ishtar) above. This is a very strong proof of the tie between Venus and the Pentacle.

Pythagoreans:

The Pythagoreans (followers of Pythagoras), believed the five vertices to denote the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and the last what they call idea (a divine thing).

Europe:

Out in Europe, the Pentagram is considered a symbol of good, but when turned upside down, with two vertices pointing upward, it’s a symbol of evil and sinister.

• "A reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, is a symbol of evil and attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things and demonstrates the triumph of matter over spirit. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns, a sign execrated by initiates.


• "The flaming star, which, when turned upside down, is the hieroglyphic [sic] sign of the goat of Black Magic, whose head may be drawn in the star, the two horns at the top, the ears to the right and left, the beard at the bottom. It is the sign of antagonism and fatality. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns."

Christianity:

Let’s get to the most interesting part of this. In early Christianity, Pentagram isconsidered a symbol of good with the vertices representing the five senses. Medieval Christians believed that it symbolized the five wounds of Christ, and protects against witches and demons. It is said; most Christians due to misinterpretation of symbols used by magicians, considered the Pentagram as a symbol of evil and subsequently rejected it in the twentieth century. But the author provides a point that it is the deed of the Church that defamed the famous symbol because of its importance to Pagans.

NeoPaganism:

In Paganism, Pentacle is a symbol of faith, as like the Christian Cross. In this faith, the Pentagram is always accompanied by a enclosing circle.

Satanism:

Satanists used the Pentagram upside down, with the two vertices up. They also feature a goat within the Pentagram with its two horns forming the top two vertices, its ears in the two side vertices and the goat's beard formin the bottom vertex. It means similar as discussed in the European context.

Geometry:

Now, lets leave aside all the faiths and groups we have dealt with and analyze the Pentagram as a geometrical structure and see its importance. In geometry, it is the simplest regular star polygon. Most important of all, it follows the ‘golden ratio’, φ ≈ 1.618. Each intersection of edges sections the edges in golden ratio: the ratio of the length of the edge to the longer segment is φ, as is the length of the longer segment to the shorter. Also, the ratio of the length of the shorter segment to the segment bounded by the 2 intersecting edges (a side of the pentagon in the pentagram's center) is φ. As the four-color illustration shows:

SAVE THIS GEOMETRICAL IMPORTANCE IN YOUR MEMORY! I HAVE A LOT MORE TO WRITE ABOUT THIS ‘PHI’!!

FreeMasonry:

While writing this text up, I found another interesting tie of Pentagram with an International organization. Order of the Easter Star, a fraternal organization associated with Free Masonry has employed a point-down Pentagram as its symbol. Freemasonry explicitly and openly states that it is neither a religion nor a substitute for one. "There is no separate Masonic God", nor a separate proper name for a deity in any branch of Freemasonry. Regular Freemasonry requires that its candidates believe in a Supreme Being, but the interpretation of the term is subject to the conscience of the candidate. This means that men from a wide range of faiths, including (but not limited to) Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, etc. can and have become Masons. Although members of various faiths cite objections, certain Christian denominations have had high profile negative attitudes to Masonry, banning or discouraging their members from being Freemasons. The denomination with the longest history of objection to Freemasonry is the Roman Catholic Church. The objections raised by the Roman Catholic Church are based on the allegation that Masonry teaches a naturalistic deistic religion which is in conflict with Church doctrine.

After all this back-paining write-up, I also found some internet links that could help know more about the Pentagram and its related mysteries. Here it is, for your kind reference.

Oh! By the way, I forgot to tell about another interesting incident happened today! After readin about the Pagns Symbolism and Pentacle in the book, I was determined to make this post. In the noon, I incidentally got to watch the movie "King Arthur". I have a passion for historical movies. I enjoyed the film very much. The special part of the film, for me was that, it featured some scenes involving torture of village people by the Church for involving in Paganism. The Church calles them Sinners and say they deserve death as a punishment. Arthur enrages at this insane behavior and frees the pagans and vaults the priest. Should this be called a mere coincidence or some premonition trying to draw me deep towards Paganism ???!!!!

http://www.religionfacts.com/da_vinci_code/pentacle.htm

http://www.mikecrowson.co.uk/pentagram.html

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=QY4Ewrnc22YC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=Venus%2BPentacle%2Bwiki&source=bl&ots=dCuJl1Oa9Y&sig=VWpG1dmjk3W1Xb5KAEaaRZ8tmVM&hl=en&ei=dAqDSojhGeWfmAfght2hDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Please do visit these links!!