And here I may observe that, according to ancient custom, the goddess Juno Lucina should be represented with one hand empty and, as it were, ready to receive the coming infant, and with the other holding a lighted torch, a symbol of life. The torch should be erect, for when the flame is turned downward it signifies death. In the seal of the American Gynæcological Society, a woman, possibly meant for Juno, is represented with a torch in her right hand and in the other a sprig of evergreen, with a baby resting on the arm. This is of obstetric import. The members of the society, however, consider themselves something else than midwives. Judging from their title, they might be petits maîtres.
CHAPTER XX.
THE PENTACLE.
By way of conclusion, and at the risk of running too deep into occult learning, I will give some account of a remarkable magic figure, of interest to the physician, about which little appears to be generally known, but which is often referred to in certain out-of-the-way lines of study. I refer to the pentacle, or triple triangle, the pentalpha of Pythagoras, the formulator of a celebrated system of philosophy, the basal idea of which is that all things sprang from numbers. A representation of it in its simple form is given herewith. On inspection, it will be observed that the figure has five arms, or points, five double triangles, with five acute angles within and five obtuse ones without; so that, if five—a number made up of the first even (2) and the first[533] odd one (3)—be possessed of the virtue which the occult philosophers have asserted, the pentacle must have much. It is, in fact, the famous legendary key of Solomon, which has played a remarkable rôle in history. Tennyson, one of the few well-known authors by whom reference to it is made, speaks of it when he makes one of his characters (Katie) thoughtlessly draw (it can be done through one stroke)—
“With her slender-pointed foot,
Some figure like a wizard’s pentagram,
On garden gravel.”[534]
Fig. 27.—The Pentacle.