I may observe that if the plan of the great pyramid was fashioned after the pentacle, and Mr. Proctor be right in saying that it is identical with “the ordinary square scheme of nativity,”[548] the figure of the astrologers used in casting horoscopes, it follows that the pentacle furnishes also a key to the latter. Then, if it be a fact that the pyramid was designed by and constructed under the superintendence of early Chaldeans, one has reason to infer that the pentacle was of Oriental origin. Probably it was at first a symbol of the sun,—a purpose for which it has been used by different bodies of mystics, and others.
It is interesting to notice that the figure was one of the symbols of the great hero-myth, Quetzalcoatl, a light-god according to some, but really, according to Reville,[549] a god of the wind, who was generally represented in the form of a feathered serpent. Thus Dr. Brinton says: “In one of the earliest myths he is called Yahualli ehecatl, meaning ‘the wheel of the winds,’ the winds being portrayed in the picture-writing as a circle or wheel, with a figure with five angles inscribed upon it, the sacred pentagram. His image carried in the left hand this wheel, and in the right a sceptre with the end recurved.”[550]
The pentacle has been accorded great potency, and used extensively to keep off witches and all sorts of evil influences, including the devil himself, and hence it has served purposes very similar to those to which the horseshoe has often been put. Aubrey says that it was formerly used by the Greek Christians, as the sign of the cross is now, “at the beginning of letters or books for good luck’s sake,”[551]—something which old John Evelyn was wont to do in his works, and as Southey placed the puzzling monogram,[552] meant, perhaps, to have similar significance on the title-page of his book, “The Doctor.” One is found in the western window of the south aisle of Westminster Abbey, which, doubtless, the black monks, as they chanted in the choir, often looked on with superstitious emotion. It may be seen on many a cradle and threshold at the present day in the Fatherland.
The readers of Goethe’s great work will remember that Dr. Faust had one on his threshold, and that, when he began to perceive that there was something decidedly suspicious about the character of the “poodle,” he remarked that
“Für solche halbe Höllenbrut
Ist Salomonis Schlüssel gut.”
How Mephistopheles himself got in was afterward explained by his showing that one of the angles of the “Drudenfuss” was left open.
Fig. 29.—Hygeia, a Symbol of Health.
Disciples of the Samian sage, cabalistic[553] Jews and Arabians, and others, especially Gnostics, long viewed the pentacle as a symbol of health, and made use of it as an amulet, calling it Hygeia, the name of the goddess of health. It was so called, and to some extent, likely for a similar reason, regarded as a sacred symbol of health, because it could be resolved, it was believed, into the Greek letters which form the word Hygeia; and these were placed one on each point of the figure.[554] It was accepted, in fact, as a sort of rebus of the name of the celebrated daughter of Æsculapius. The scholarly and ingenious reader may be able to trace, more or less definitely, this reputed similarity. It is an interesting feature of what is certainly a very remarkable figure.