Starfish

[sdi]

I was looking at a pentagram the other day and noticed something. It has a threefold vertical structure to it: it has one "head" on top, two "arms" in the middle, and two "legs" on the bottom. This is a lot like the structure of a human being, both physically (you have a head, two arms, and two legs—at least, I hope you do!) and metaphysically. See, there are three worlds: the transcendent Good, the intelligible, and the sensible. The Good is inherently unitary, but you have two parts in each of the intelligible and sensible worlds, at least according to Porphyry:

world	level of being	power	element
transcendent	the Good	being	spirit
intelligible	the Intellect	intuition	fire
	soul	reason	air
sensible	pneumatic vehicle	imagination	water
	body	sensation	earth

(The pneumatic vehicle is, I think, what Plotinus calls the "lower soul." It's your mind, your imagination. Also please forgive my crude table: the pneumatic vehicle isn't a "level of reality" in the same way the others are, and exists at the level of nature alongside your body.)

Each limb of the pentagram, therefore, represents a power you possess. The head is your being (thanks to the Good). The arms are your thinking capacities: the intuitive (thanks to the Intellect) and the rational (thanks to your soul). The legs are your sensing capacities: the imaginative (thanks to your pneumatic vehicle) and the perceptive (thanks to your body). The head and arms are eternal (indeed, only one of the arms can be said to be "yours"—the other arm and head are common to all), but you periodically lose the legs and regrow them until you learn how to get around without them.

While you technically have all of these capacities, most of us are weighted towards the bottom. The point of practicing meditation is to climb your way back up the ladder as far as you're able.

Comments

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the analogy! Porphyry's order of the elements matches the one at learn religion. Their reminder picture for the order is also a pentagram.

[sdi]

Oh, interesting! I haven't studied modern occultism to any depth, so it's nice to see corroboration!

[boccaderlupo]

Factor this among the reasons why I associate the pentagram with descending energies—those things becoming manifest and incarnate—as opposed to the hexagram, which I associate with the ascending.

Axé

[sdi]

Now that is interesting—you are a step ahead of me, Br'er Wolf, and I don't see how you get ascending or descending from either! Would you mind elaborating for me?

[boccaderlupo]

I don't use pentagrams—I suppose that makes me more of "mystic" than a "mage," per the distinction I have seen bandied about, although I'd argue theurgy is magic, even perhaps the ground of all magic—but I suspect this is why you see the pentagram in use in "traditional" magical contexts. Five is, appropriately enough given today, for Mars, that of the will, and located along the (sometimes misunderstood) left-hand path of the tree of life, which in generally can be associated with things descending into manifestation or incarnation. The mage, then, is channeling the celestial forces to bring forth something from the "occult" in accordance with her will.

The six-pointed star, on the other hand, is associated with Tifaret (or Sol, Apollo), at the heart of the tree of life—apt enough for he who represents harmony, resounding upon his golden lyre—and is comprised of two triangles intertwined, one down (▽) and one up (△), indicating a balance of the ascending and descending paths. It is in this sense that some employ the latter symbol to stabilize the descending forces (we might associate these with Dionysius, if we were so inclined) and recalibrate them so they are focused on the return phase, the right-hand path, which leads to the Root of All Things.

At least, so I've heard ;)

Axé

[sdi]

This is a lot to meditate on—and it looks like I'll need to put the Tree of Life onto my to-do list one of these days. Thank you for outlining it for me!