Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pentagrams

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why pentagrams are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

pentagrams known for being stars famous for being spooky nobody thinks much about them so let's have some fun let's find out why pentagrams are secretly incredibly fascinating Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of pentagrams? I look secretly incredibly fascinating. Okay, that's it. I'm not going to do that anymore. Because it will kill my voice. The whole death metal community, I really respect what they can apparently do to their throats all of the time. I can't imagine it. It's an Olympic level physical feat.

I can't understand it. I do like listening to metal. Most of the metal I listen to, though, is not really satanic themed. I think there's this concept that all metal is sort of like, ah, Satan music. But I think there's this concept that like all metal is sort of like, ah, you know, Satan, Satan music. But there's I think there I mean, there's definitely metal that's, you know, satanic themed. And the pentagram I know is not simply a Satanist kind of thing. I think there's there's other uses of it. I think it's a cool symbol, though.

I like it. I think it's a cool symbol, though. I like it. I find sort of Satanist imagery kind of fun because I don't take it seriously. I don't believe in Satan. I don't believe in witchcraft or really any kind of supernatural thing. So I just think the imagery is kind of fun. And it's strange to me that people would find it scary or threatening. I'm saying I'm having the thought that I think of Satan, at least in US culture, almost like a Bugs Bunny or something where like people bring it up for comedy purposes. Like the Church of Satan always does comedic free speech protests. And I don't think does a lot of actual worship of that being,

you know, like, sure, fine, whatever. Now I'm just imagining Satan, like, chomping on a carrot going like, you know, what's up, doc, and then stealing your soul. It's very good. I like that. Yeah, actually, a satanic Bugs Bunny figure tormenting, let's say a fancy opera singer. That's almost the Faust story or something, right? Like, we're getting there. We're getting into classical culture. It's pretty good. Yeah.

That wasco-y Satan. And I have a very similar relationship to this symbol, and that's perfect bringing up the idea that the satanic relationship is overstated, because we're mainly about to get into that. the satanic relationship is overstated, because we're mainly about to get into that. I did a little informal survey of listeners on the Discord, because listeners selected this topic. Thank you very much to Quan for suggesting it, and especially Burrito on the Discord for supporting it. But I asked people, like, hey, what do you think of when you hear the name pentagram, this topic we've selected? And most people suggested a star shape with a

circle around it, and then possibly some kind of supernatural power. And it turns out that's part of it, but not all of it, which we'll get into. Yeah, I thought the pentagram itself doesn't require the circle. I thought it was just the contiguous star shape that it's like, like these two Star Trek badges, you know, kind of intersecting. It's like a geometric, five-sided geometric shape. Five sides, I thought. Yeah, it's five-pointed. And right, that brings us into a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics.

This week, that's in a segment called... Hold me now. I'm six stats from the age and I'm counting Maybe six stats is easy to count I want people to know that there was this visual transformation Alex grew a beard

and then it just disappeared and like it was quite an impressive sideburns. That's the power of pentagrams folks. You just draw one on the floor and all kinds of stuff happens, right? There we go. Yeah, because that name was submitted by Scazzles on the Discord. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Massillion Wacking

Bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to SifPod at gmail.com. But this is, I think, the second episode about a shape after triangles long ago. And so the first number is simple. It is five, because five is the number of sides of a pentagon, like a regular pentagon. It's a five-sided shape with equal sides. And you can get a pentagram by just connecting the sides through the middle. Like you draw five lines and do, I think of it as when you draw a star by hand with just one movement, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You got it. That's a very visual way to describe it and doesn't make sense on a podcast, but the standard like star that you draw

with one line going back and forth five times. I think everyone knows that star and the cool S and the various other doodles that we did. Yeah, it's a leading doodle, but very basics of geometry because it's a pentagram is essentially a five pointed star you can generate from a pentagon. That's the basic geometry of it. It's a very visually pleasing shape. I like it. It's interesting because that star shape, we call it a star shape, right? But stars don't have that shape. Stars are orbs. And I mean, I guess sometimes when we look at them, because like the light is diffuse, like we see them sort of shining or something, not exactly as orbs, but they don't, none of, you don't ever look into the sky and see a pentagram star shape. But we, this is sort of our shorthand for what a star looks like, which I find interesting. That's true.

A star is so impossible to look at because of the brightness and fuzzy and weird. Yeah. And we said, okay, a five-pointed shape from a pentagon. That's the symbol. And we just never looked back. We're all set. Yeah. It's the kind of star shape that you just doodle on your calendar to mark a date, the

date that you've got with Satan. Yeah. mark a date, the date that you've got with Satan. Yeah, and as you said earlier, to be a pentagram, it turns out it doesn't have to have a circle, which is a really quick takeaway. Number one, a pentagram is technically just a star shape. Yeah, pentagram is an official geometric term just for this regular five pointedpointed star that comes from the shape of a pentagon. And I think most people suggesting this based on my survey are thinking of also a circle and also powers. And we're going to talk all about that because

it's what people are thinking of. But it turns out geometry-, like if you add a circle to a pentagram, some people call it a pentacle. But the technical word that we're talking about here is not the whole circle and additional stuff. You heard Alex, we're gonna summon some demons later, kids. And I guess I hope I'm an okay person to bring you into the world of this topic. Because like I said at the top, I've always found demons kind of corny. And I don't like hate them or nothing. I just I don't have a huge reverence for the world of demonic stuff. And maybe other people do.

That's the way I'm at. Alex sees like a little girl crawling spider walk down a staircase and her head spinning. He's like, oh, you, you little scamp. Stop being such a goofball. It's like, like, you know, projectile vomiting. And Alex is like, quit it, quit it. Just the worst best friend for an exorcist. Like, why are you working so hard?

Let's let live and let live. Come on. Right. We're late for the movie. Let's just go to the movie like we planned. So are heads on backwards. There have been stranger trends in fashion. That's her journey, right? Come on. We have dinner reservations. We're late for the dinner. I'm always telling them they're late for stuff. I'm putting the pressure on them that way. I feel like that would actually be the best way to combat sort of a satanic force

would be like, it's like, wait, aren't you scared of me? It's like, oh no, it's cool. You're like a little girl. I don't, why would I be scared of a little girl? You should have picked a big guy. That would have been smart. Right? Yeah. Yeah. What are you doing, Satan? Come on. Anyway, I have movie tickets and a dinner reservation. I'll see you later. Yeah, because the whole rest of this numbers section, it's for either takeaways mixed in because we're going to look a lot at the culture here. And takeaway number two.

Pentagrams and pentacles have meant pretty much everything a symbol can mean across history and cultures. How interesting. It turns out, like, there's no fundamental or standard meaning to this star shape. Any satanic element is pretty recent. But we're going to sample a bunch of other things that either simply a pentagram or pentagram plus circle has meant. Hmm. I mean, for me, it means I did an extra good job on my homework and the teacher thinks so too. I also like that I'm not that great at drawing.

And yet I think me and everybody else can just do one of these symbols very easily. Yeah. It's just second nature somehow. We all pick it up. Maybe not with perfect geometry. If you start drawing these and they're all coming out perfect, then you know you're possessed by a very artistic demon. We got a lot of sources here, including Lapham's Quarterly,

National Geographic, and Encyclopedia Britannica. Every source says this pentagram symbol is many thousands of years old. There's no one culture that invented it. There's just a parallel invention of either this five-pointed star shape or turning a pentagon into one. And in ancient Sumeria, people drew these with cuneiform, and that was done to symbolize the regions of the universe. So oddly, they had kind of an interstellar meaning to it. Now, you know, sort of a nice etchable language.

Yeah, a lot of little wedge shapes, and they could put a lot of different meanings and words into those wedges. And so one thing they bothered to do is pentagrams, even though that's relatively complicated if you just have this little stick and you're working with clay. People love to get tattoos in like other languages. And then it's, you know, you think you get a tattoo and say like kanji that says, you know, fierce warrior, but it turns out it says butt face. But why no cuneiform tattoos? I think Sumeria is in a zone where a lot of us have

heard of it and none of us feel connected to it. You know what I mean? It's just kind of a thing that is in the list of concepts that folks have heard of. I guess they would be a good SIF topic as I describe this. But you know, nobody's quite passionate enough to be like cuneiform on me now. You know know you just get a baseball logo or something now i want it new merch in the sip store cuneiform baseball hats yeah and many other cultures use this for something too a lot of folks have used pentagrams to symbolize a human body because the five points can represent a head and two hands and two feet and are sort of like a, like a live, like a live human body. Not necessarily when you say human

body, for some reason, my mind jumps to dead. Oh, that's that Narwhal's show we did. I think, I think it's a hangover of that. It makes sense. Yeah. Learning that narwhal is like means bloated, dead human body. It's it's changed my brain chemistry in a fundamental manner. I'm glad we're moving on to a calming topic like pentagrams. So that's good. It's really chilling us out. It's cool. Another cultural use of this is it started in ancient China, because there's a system of five classical elements in Chinese culture.

Oh, yeah. Which are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood. And so some people used pentagrams for diagramming the relationship of those. Like there's a cycle of them and then also some crossover between the steps. And so pentagrams were handy for those five. Sort of like a food pyramid, but for the elements. Also, why is the food pyramid a pyramid? That's a stupid shape for food.

Now, the food pentagram that we're pitching. Here we go. There we go. Visit the SIF store for a poster of foods that we've arranged and we will figure out. Don't worry about it. We're going to make it good. The only five food groups. Sugar, meat, milk, bread, and other.

And wood. One of the Chinese elements. It's amazing. Wood. Eat your wood. Lots of fiber. There's another use of pentagrams where some early astronomers used them as a symbol and also a map for the path of the planet Venus. What?

This is very visual, so it's hard to describe, but the short version is that the relative positions of the Sun, the Earth, and Venus go through a set of five arrangements within an eight-year period, like a repeating cycle of five arrangements. And so as a representation of Venus's movements vis-a-vis the Earth and the Sun, some people drew a pattern with a pentagram star shape to represent it. My brain is not very good at visualizing movement and geometry, so I'm just imagining Venus going doot, doot, doot, doot, doot in a little star shape out and really messing with our tides. I don't think Venus has any impact on our tides, actually. But I think if it did that, it might. Yeah. And then all the other planets are just

in smooth orbits. So then there's just near collisions all the time, like somebody being weird in traffic on the East Coast. Yeah, a rogue planet going wrong on the planetary highway. Yeah, and that meaning then became interesting culturally because some people started to apply cultural beliefs about Venus to the pentagram shape in a way that none of us think about, I think, today. In a way that none of us think about, I think, today. Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider. Girls go to Venus. This is a child-friendly show, correct? Yeah, more or less. Yeah.

Well, we'll end it there. I'm realizing this might be the most child-friendly piece of media about pentagrams in the entire world. Right? The rest of it's all like hard Satan stuff. And this is going to be like, think about the Chinese elements, man, and Venus. And like, just hang out with the symbol. It's cool. It's just a shape, guys.

Calm down. And another symbolic use is the Freemasons. Apparently, the Freemason societies have been using these for hundreds of years. In particular, an upside down pentagram with a circle is the symbol for the Order of the Eastern Star, which is sort of an auxiliary group for women. Oh. There's weird stuff with whether women could be Freemasons or not, but they had this sort of attached group, I think mostly for wives of men in the Freemasons. I see, I see. So Freemasons, were they ever actual Masons, like practicing Masonry?

Apparently there's some early actual architecture or building, but then it just became its own thing. Yeah, I guess I don't know what goes on in this Freemason. I imagine it's mostly drinking and chatting. Yeah, but they like the secrecy vibe, I think. So good for them, you know? Yeah, secret drinking and secret chatting. Would you care for some secret little mini sandwich bites? Secretly.

And they're extra secret once they're in your mouth. They're gone. Wow. Magic. We practice the dark arts of disappearing these deviled eggs. Another whole set of meanings here actually comes from Christian iconography. There's a long history of pentagrams in Christian stuff. Those Satanists. Right. You'd never expect. But yeah, one symbol is that in the story of Jesus's crucifixion, Jesus receives five wounds on the way to being crucified,

which is further wounds, but the pentagram can symbolize those five wounds. There's also a medieval legend of Sir Gawain, where he uses a pentagram as a symbol to represent a set of five Christian virtues. And then especially in Germany, pentagrams were used in pagan culture and then co-opted by Christians as a cool symbol. Sort of like Christmas trees is another example, where there were German pagan roots, and then Christians said, you're Christian now, but like, let's do this fun shape and tree, like great, awesome. Yeah, it was basically telling people, you can keep your cool Yule logs and Christmas trees and pentagrams, but now it's Christian. So it would make it a little easier to convert people. Best of both worlds.

You get all this rad stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And with the pentagram in particular, there was German folklore about evil nighttime spirits called Drude. And the Drude could be warded off. Drude? Yeah.

Drude. The Drude could be warded off with an upside down Yeah. Drude. The Drude could be warded off with an upside-down pentagram, which was called a Drudenfuss. So you could say, take that, I have a Drudenfuss. Take that, Druden, you are scared of my Drudenfuss. I am a demon, you silly willy. I'm not scared of shapes. Right, and then they're trying to convert the Germans to Christianity. And it's like, I'm not giving up any of my funny Drude voices. All right.

I do very funny voices. I am not getting rid of my Drudenfuss. You don't know how many times this Drudenfuss has saved my little hiney. Yeah. And this has resulted in, especially in Germany, a lot of major Christian buildings or situations where there are huge pentagrams in them. In particular, the city of Hanover, Germany, their main Lutheran church, the whole side of the building has a giant upside down pentagram in a circle. of the building has a giant upside down pentagram in a circle. By the time they built it, that symbol began to mean the event called the Epiphany in the New Testament, where people like behold the physical manifestation of Jesus. But then, you know, later on, people put Satan stuff around the symbol. And then they were like, Hey, that's weird about this church. Yeah, I mean, it's such a like, basic pleasing shape. It makes sense that it's been used in a lot of different contexts. And I think it's silly, the idea that like, well,

not that it's the devil's shape. Right? Don't give him such a good one. You know? Yeah, give him a rhombus. Yeah, like a pentagon is kind of a first regular shape when you count up an amount of sides where you can make this cool shape inside it. Like you can only make an X and a square and nothing inside a triangle. So that's why this is blowing up. You know, that's why this is popular. Here's the thing that I don't understand about Christianity is they don't want people to like Satan, but then they give them all this cool stuff. He's like, he's got this pentagram, which is a cool shape. And he's got like a trident,

which is basically like Poseidon, who's cool. He's got hooves. Hooves are kind of cool. Fire. Fire's neat. Cool, like red outfits, you know, just like all this cool stuff. Make him lame, like make him have a like a rhombus as his shape. And he's just wears like khakis and a polo. He's just not very interesting. Nothing against khakis and a polo, but I'm just saying. Right. Like don't go way out of your way to seek out the hottest trends and give them to Satan. Yeah. Cut it out. the hottest trends and give them to Satan, yeah, cut it out. Like, don't hire the staff of Vice magazine to make Satan awesome, you know?

Yeah. Just make him find his own stuff. He'll struggle. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Satan skateboards. It's like, okay, that's fun. He wears sunglasses and it looks cool on him.

Yeah. And meanwhile, the Pope is in like a weird sedan with a big bubble over it. Forget it. Not cool. Stop it. You should be skateboarding. Yeah. Put the Pope on a skate mobile.

And speaking of faiths, there's also a big meaning across a couple of religions for pentagrams. It's in Christianity and Judaism and Islam, because pentagrams are one version of something called the seal of Solomon. Solomon is a major biblical king of Israel. He was the son of David, revered for being wise. The cutting a baby in half story is Solomon. Oh, yeah, that guy. And he's important to many faiths. He's considered a major prophet in Islam. And over time, people started doing a symbol called the Seal of Solomon, which was either a five or six pointed star that influenced pentagrams. They were seen as a exciting symbol of this wise and powerful biblical king. The six-point aversion influenced stuff like the Star of David symbol that we have today. But all of that means that pentagrams are relatively positive for a lot of faiths in a lot of ways.

On the topic of King Solomon, you know, the baby riddle he has for like the idea is you have this baby, you have two women claiming to be the mother. And then he says, I will cut the baby in half. And the idea is the real mom mother would be like, no, I don't want the baby cut in half because that kills the baby. But the true answer is you want the not butt end. Cause the butt end is the worst part of a baby. Cause it's always pooping.

So, you know, you take the not butt and riddle solved. Yeah, that's true. There's an obvious better part. That's true. Also, you would think both ladies would just object like that stinks. Like, I just think that's bad. It's not even my kid. Don't do that. Yeah, because in that scenario, for some reason, the other woman wants this baby. She's not there. Neither one is going to want half a baby. It's not like half of a dead baby.

Good enough for me because I'm not the real mother. Yeah, I feel like King Solomon just didn't do a lot of listening and then claimed the ladies said this. I think King Solomon just liked cutting up babies. Right. Yeah. We're back to Satan stuff now, I guess. It think King Solomon just liked cutting up babies. Right. Yeah. We're back to Satan stuff now, I guess. It's evil once again. Here we go.

A king can't enjoy a baby sandwich once in a while without being called a Satanist. Right. Cancel culture or something. Definitely. Definitely. Gone amok. Yeah. And so that's sort of a range of older meetings for this symbol. And it's not all of

them either. Like listeners might have other ones pop into the Discord, please, and tell us about it. There's a link in the episode description to join because this is such a almost universal geometric symbol that lots and lots of people have found something to do with it. And the majority of meetings have been like exciting because there's nothing intrinsically evil about this easy to make fun geometric shape. Yeah. It's just the thing. Yeah. Again, it's like, it's like, hey, you did a good job on your homework symbol that I know. I didn't realize that it had roots in either King Solomon or Satanism or the Freemasons. It's just, you know, it's a nice, it's a nice shape. Yeah, it's just good. That's why everybody's grabbing it. Like we said,

Satan gets all the good stuff. Yeah, what the heck? And there's a couple more year numbers and yet another takeaway here. We got a lot of takeaways and takeaway number three. Yet another takeaway here. We got a lot of takeaways. And takeaway number three. Pentagrams took on a lot of their modern occult meaning thanks to two artwork changes done within the last 200 years. What, did we just add some shading onto it that looks really nice. It's two situations where people took pentagrams and put them into a situation that has occult vibes where they had not been before. It's a 1909 decision to add them

to tarot cards and an 1856 decision to add them to a figure called Baphomet. I've also heard it pronounced Baphomet. I think I'm looking at this Baphomet picture. Yeah. Am I wrong in thinking that it's a goat with boobs? You are not wrong. And we can talk about Baphomet first, because here's the thing. 1856, that is the publication year for an image you might know as a listener. This is a figure called Baphomet that I think I always just assumed was Satan, and it is sort of Satan. But this is a figure that's a combination of goat elements and human

elements, also combines sexuality of male people and female people. And this was drawn in 1856 by a French occultist named Elipha Levi, who wanted to illustrate this older concept of a demonic figure who is like attractive to regular people. Okay. I mean, the goat face is not super attractive. I'm not going to lie. But yes, face is not super attractive i'm not gonna lie but yes it does it does have a rockin a rockin set of of boobs um it has wings and that's cool uh it's got like uh what is that called it's the um kodakus or something that the two snakes uh rotating around a sort of scepter yeah uh yeah i mean it's honestly yeah it's cool i i if this if this thing rocked up next to me i'd be like yeah you know what let's party when we'll uh i was about to say we'll have a picture linked event i guess i'm encouraging people to party with baphomet wow cool uh so. So is Baphomet supposed to be evil?

Yeah, and the origin of this Baphomet figure, and I'm going to use the pronunciation Baphomet because it feels more French, and this artist is French. Baphoma? Right. Getting some croissant with Baphoma? Somehow

I can picture it. I don't know, I like it. Plus, they want to eat outside at the cafe because the horns don't go through doors super good, you know? Order for me. And they just grab a spot, you know? Bring me my croissants. Can't get in. Yeah. And it turns out this, this drawing is 1856, and that is when a pentagram really gets added. Levy drew a very large pentagram, no circle, just the geometric shape on the forehead of Baphomet. But the origin of the concept is basically a medieval political attack. And I'm going to link an amazing episode of the BBC radio show In Our Time because they do a whole show on the Knights Templar.

And the Knights Templar, literally a whole nother podcast and a thing that people have a lot of occult beliefs about, mainly because the king of France successfully destroyed them with a bunch of rumors about them being creepy occult people. But maybe they were just maybe they're just nerds, you know? That's, that's almost probably it. Like they were, this was a group of people who were a Catholic military order that also operated a powerful banking and financial network. So they were in 1100s and 1200s, basically very devout accountants, right? And they also did crusades, which stinks, but they did a lot of bean counting with quills and old parchment and stuff.

It's very nerdy. Yeah. Battle accountants. Yeah, battle accountants. And then what happened is in the early 1300s, the king of France is deeply in debt to the Templars. And he says, what if I just don't pay that debt by ruining their reputation and destroying their entire order? Hey, hey, you know

what? I wish I could do that with like Bank of America. Like, did you know those guys smell? We have a podcast. We can do it. Bank of America worships Baphomet. Ah, freaky. Don't pay them now. Doesn't sound like I should pay my debit card now, does it? And that's basically what happened because the King of France didn't have leverage on the Templars, but he did have leverage on the Pope. And so in the early 1300s, he claims that the Templars are creepy Satan worshipers. He exploits a real thing where there was a secret initiation to join the Templars. He just claims that that was all Satan stuff, you know? Nerds! Right. It was probably geeky. They're just nerds.

But, you know, what do you do? Yeah. Yeah. And so this rumor the King of France creates centers on they're all worshiping Baphomet, this false god who's satanic. And then the King of France pressures the Pope into arresting Templars, torturing Templars and forcing confessions from them of doing all this Baphomet stuff. And from there, they get wound down as an organization and the King of france doesn't have to pay yeah but i wonder if any of the knights temple over like but have you seen baphomet's boobies because they are nice that's the thing is they basically definitely didn't because then oddly our main mental picture baphomet is from 1856 like this gets invented more than 500 years beforehand, but there's not a lot of like art, especially because if you're living in the 1300s and you go, hey, I drew Baphomet, they probably execute you or something. That's not cool. You know?

Man, getting executed for drawing a goat with boobies is quite a way to go. Right. It's like, just tell them I liked Satan. Don't bring up this different version. I was into regular. I would have gotten executed so many times in high school. And yeah, so this huge period of history happens and then this Baphomet drawing gets a lot of cachet because it's from an older thing. And so people put value on it, especially late 1800s intellectuals in France and Britain getting very into Satanism, even though they say they don't like it. But the symbol really takes off there. It becomes a popular symbol that's believed to be ancient and antique. And because it has a pentagram on it, people then start to think pentagrams have always been evil. pentagrams have always been evil. I mean, it's a really rad image. This is the thing about like, you know, not wanting people to do Satanism or Baphometism. It's like,

why did you make them look so cool, though? Right. He or she or they are looking awesome. Yeah. And the pentagram is not even the biggest part, but a lot of subsequent Baphomet art put Baphomet on a throne with a pentagram on it and did other things to really up the pentagram part. Yeah. Now Baphomet's riding a motorcycle. With pentagram wheels? Sick. Sick. The spokes are pentagrams. Baphomet's wearing Gucci. Yeah. Just make Baphomet with pentagram wheels sick uh sick folks are pentagrams wearing gucci yeah just make baphomet look really really cool yeah and and then the other artwork change here is 1909 1909 is the publication year of the rider weight deck of tarot cards

tarot it's come up a few times on SIF because especially the playing cards episode, tarot is a big influence on that 52 card deck of playing cards we have today. Of course, it's also used for a lot of fortune telling, which at some times in some eras has been interpreted to be anti-Christian or a cult or not great. But it's not inherently anti-Christian, right? It's,

yeah. Cause I thought that throughout the history of Christianity, there are a lot of sort of spiritual beliefs or kind of like things outside of Christianity that people still practiced because even like witchcraft was for a while, like not really considered necessarily to be anti-Christian. It's just like, Hey, I buried an onion in my yard to ward off bad spirits or something. I don't, that's not, that's probably not a real thing, but, uh, you know, so, so it's like, I don't think it was. I don't know. It sounds like a good spell. Are you holding out? Is that a good spell? You have to tell us. Bury an onion in your backyard keeps, uh, I mean, because like then it smells bad and demons famously like good smelling yards.

Oh, demons even got their hands on good smells. They have all the good things, ma'am. Yeah, but that's exactly right. Like even across the development of Christianity, there's been situations where, say, Catholics are way into saints and then some Protestants say, no, saints are idol worship and that's magic stuff. That's not OK. Like there's always been all these kind of debates about what is validly Christian and what's evil magic. Yeah. Yeah.

Like magical thinking is fun. And so it makes sense that there's going to be a lot of these kinds of symbols imbued with sort of power that we give them because that's just, that's very human to do. And so, yeah, I mean, it is interesting to see this transformation of like, this is just a normal thing we do to, hey, that's satanic and satanic, and you're gonna summon a lot of demons. And, you know, that's a problem. Yeah. And, and the tarot, it is sort of like this Baphomet story where there are old roots of at least vaguely satanic stuff in tarot, there is a card that's the devil, there's a card that's death, there's a card that's a hanged man who doesn't seem to have a problem with it. Like there's spooky stuff. And then a modern art change brings pentagrams into it. Because in 1909, there's a British American artist named Pamela Coleman Smith. She collaborates with poet Arthur Waite on a new rendering of what tarot cards could look like. And if you have a mental picture of tarot, it's almost definitely their drawings. This becomes the dominant tarot

cards to this day. Yeah, I kind of know those drawings, like they're sort of old school looking. They're nice, though. They're aesthetically pleasing. Here in New York, the Whitney Museum, which is an art museum, they had just a set of the old cards and showed them as art. And it makes sense. They look awesome. They're really good. Yeah. Again, if you don't want people doing occult stuff, stop making it look really cool. Christians are like, what about the same picture of a dove over and over again? That's cool, right? It's like, no. Cherubs? Can we interest you in some cherubs? That's cool, right? It's like, no.

Cherubs? Can we interest you in some cherubs? Right. And then this deck becomes hugely influential, and Smith made a few changes. And possibly the biggest change is adding a suit of pentacles. The tarot deck has four suits, kind of like playing cards have four suits. And most previous decks had a suit called the suit of coins and would just do various art of coins. But Smith changed it to a suit called pentacles, which is a yellow circle with a pentagram

in the middle. And basically the satanic symbol you'd think of, but it's very bright. And most readings of the cards, they treat it like coins and wealth and a positive thing. But that art change that happened to dominate tarot, it connected the spooky tarot cards and the fortune telling part of tarot to a pentagram and helped foment this idea. Right. And specifically the pentacle with the circle that kind of, I think people associate with the pentagram the most. circle that kind of, I think people associate with the pentagram the most. Exactly. Yeah. The circle really makes it take off somehow. Like, I guess it feels like you're bringing that, I think of one on a floor in a lot of media, like then somehow that brings the energy

inside of the circle and it's easy for the camera crew to film one location, I think. Yeah. People love a circle, you know, like Pokemon, they go in a circle, the sun, that's a circle. you know, like Pokemon, they go in a circle. The sun, that's a circle. People like the sun. There we go. Now we're talking about a positive star, not this evil pentagram. That's a negative star.

We decided. But, and yeah, and so those art changes, 1856 drawing of Baphomet, 1909 change to tarot cards. That's, that's kind of where we get a lot of the satanic pentagram stuff. I'm thinking of the episode we did about see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, where all the answers about that were also a little vague because culture is that way. This is that way too. Like those are two landmark things that made it evil seeming. And also there's just other stuff going on that's hard for us to track. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is interesting because yeah, definitely it has the whole, like you draw it. The way I know of it is like you draw it on your floor in chalk and you put a bunch of candles out and you summon a demon or you curse someone. But I don't know if that's an actual practice that's ever been seriously performed throughout history or just kind of a more modern invention sort of in popular media. It's basically 1900s stuff, Yeah. And then books and movies and just horror. But yeah, it doesn't really tie into the past. Like Ouija board era stuff.

Yeah, really. Like even these tarot cards, there's a specific toy company that also helped popularize the specific Rider Waite drawings. Like commerce is kind of the main reason we think pentagrams are satanic. They really sold and spread this stuff. It's just a marketing thing. Well, and that's a bunch of takeaways. We also have some more numbers and another takeaway to come after we take a short break. Folks, as you know, this podcast is brought to you by listeners, and specifically listeners who support this show at MaximumFun.org slash join, become Maximum Fun members, and make everything that we do possible.

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I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year.

Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we are back with even more numbers about this interesting shape here, the pentagram.

Next number is 2007, because 2007 is the year when the U.S. government approved the use of pentacles as a religious symbol on the graves of U.S. military veterans. Oh, interesting. So is this like, is it for Satanists or is it for a different religion? Because I thought, you know, even just any kind of religion. But just really, it's more of a civil liberties thing of like, well, look, if you have freedom of religion, you should allow any religion, even a religion that is like satanic. It turns out it took a lawsuit to allow pentacles on these graves and the lawsuit did not come from the Satanists. It came from wiccans oh okay which is a a group that i hope is not upset they haven't come up till now but it turns out pentacles are a huge symbol for wiccans yeah i was gonna make a joke about like if you upset wiccans then they do some kind of like magic, but I think that's probably pretty ignorant. Uh, I don't

think that's probably in the Wiccan religion. I don't, I don't know why I keep thinking of incredibly niche merch, but my mind thought of, if you upset a Wiccan, you get a Lickin, right? Like a threatening, don't mess with Texas style shirt. That's great. We're selling it tomorrow. We're, we have to do that now that now. You've talked yourself into an obligation. When you ask, like, is this actual Satanism or religious liberty? It's Wiccanism and religious liberty. They apparently really easily won their lawsuit against the government. The government settled basically immediately because Wiccans brought a case on behalf of 11 families requesting a Wicca pentacle on their grave marker for their deceased veteran. And the government settled, paid the

Wiccans legal fees, put them up within 14 days, just did it immediately. I mean, absolutely. If we're to have freedom of religion in this country, that means any religion. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to link the like U.S. Veterans Affairs catalog page for the various symbols of belief that you can put on a grave and the Wiccan one is still available. It's option number 37. And then also this lawsuit is one sign of what pentacles mean in the Wiccan faith, because they had to explicitly state why it was a symbol. And they said that its five points represent earth, air, water, fire, and spirit. Okay. So this is similar to sort of the historical Chinese use of the pentagram. Yeah.

It's a classical elements thing. And they're basically pulling the four Greek classical elements and adding spirit, which is only a slight expansion. Some Greek people did that too. But yeah, and Wicca was created in the 1900s. So it's newer than the pentagram and the pentacle that the people who started it apparently tried to really intentionally draw on just any ancient pagan things that were appealing. And this is one of the first symbols that jumped out. Cool. Cool. Yeah. And then also if there are like Christians who are mega suspicious of Wiccans, that helps explain the satanic suspicion of the symbol. Like if they think Wiccans are all witches and creepy, then that's part of this cultural thing too.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny because like so many of those pagan rituals were incorporated into Christianity and now you have more. I mean, this is I apologize because, you know, I don't know that much about Wiccanism. some pagan traditions right in a more modern spiritual religion but then when you sort of say like hey we're rebranding it as the the more classic form of these rituals then uh people get upset yeah katie i would encourage you to be more respectful to wiccans like me the guy who's about to sell t-shirts that say upset a wiccan take a licking i'm respectful to them you i don't know i feel like i mean i could be wrong but i feel like our wiccan listeners would actually love that t-shirt let us know like if that's something you would like i i always bring up fake plans for merch but i keep liking this one more and more i don't know yeah it feels good

right to us. We're trying. That should just be our email signature. Write to us. We're trying. We're trying. Len, we just have one more takeaway for the main show here. And this is also very numerical because it's math. But takeaway number four. Allegedly, pentagrams caused the Pythagoreans to execute a member. What? Yeah, the Pythagoreans, they've come up on Sif a few times because it turns out Pythagoras may or may not have been a person. There was actually a Pythagorean school of people who were also sort of a religion. They were Greek enthusiasts of math and music and other religious beliefs. But one of them did a bunch of interesting mathematical stuff with pentagrams. And either because of that or for other reasons, he was executed, is what the lore says.

But wait, so Pythagoreans were present in what era in Greece? And many thousands of years ago. The guy here is Hephasis of Metapontum, who lived about 2,500 years ago. So ancient times, kind of before Alexander the Great. This was pre-Christianity then, right? And that too, yeah. This is a story about just the pentagram, like the mathematical thing, no circle around it, where people got really worked up about the meaning of it and thought a guy was being

transgressive and messing with their totally pre-Christian beliefs. That's so interesting. So they were upset at the pentagram for what, mathematical reasons or because of Greek religion? Yeah, it was a mathematical reason that violated a specifically Pythagorean spiritual belief. Nerds! Because this is far enough back in time that science is sort of also magic and math is numbers. Like numbers are important because they can represent everything. But also they specifically only believed in whole numbers. The world's nerdiest religion.

Yes. And it led them to, like, people know the Pythagorean theorem for triangles, but their main really big innovations were all with musical intervals. Because they did string lengths based on numbers and found cool music stuff. It just gets worse and worse for them. My urge to give them a wedgie keeps rising. And they're like, joke's on you, I only have a weird tunic or whatever. Clothes aren't good yet.

Ha ha. We don't wear underpants. And there's a pretty straightforward modern mathematical concept called irrational numbers. For example, pi is an irrational number. We don't know the end of the decimal points on it, and it's not a whole number. And so that was a violation of Pythagorean beliefs to work with irrational numbers. And what happened is this guy, Hephasis, discovered that you can do amazing stuff with pentagrams, because you can make a pentagram

by drawing lines between the points of a pentagon. And this is very visual, but the gist is that he figured out a consistent ratio of the length of the lines when you change the size of a pentagram or pentagon. Oh, cool. The formula for representing it, unfortunately, included one irrational number, which we call phi. It's not pi, it's phi is the Greek letter that we have called it. Yeah, well, that's not very pure. It's not pi, it's phi is the Greek letter that we have called it. Yeah, well, that's not very pure. That's not a pure good number. Exactly. Like the Pythagoreans loved math, but only loved it if you could do it with only round numbers. And this guy was like, I found something else. And they hated it. They just sound like me in the fourth grade. Like...

Right. they hated it. They just sound like me in the fourth grade. Like, right. Fractions. No, thank you. Execute. I did think of a new shirt, though. Oh, mess with a Pythagorean. You're gonna get a beaten. That's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. It's it's a slant rhyme. See, it's that's we make the money, because one graphic design for the two ideas, right? Like, this is optimal. This is efficient. Yeah. Yeah, there we go. We got to get all these sort of smaller religious groups their merch.

Just like later, I'm like on Wikipedia, like tiny religions search. And so this irrational number phi, the start of it is 1.6180339887. But then the decimals just go on and on infinitely like pi. And I'm going to link about the specific mathematics because, again, very visual. It's more fun for you to have something to look at to do it. But the thing is, the Pythagoreans allegedly executed Hephasis by drowning. And it was either because of this conflict over his discovery of Phi and its relationship to pentagrams, or because he revealed one of their secrets to outsiders. And the whole Phi thing was just something that made them mad

and kind of built up the execution charges. If you mess with a Pythagorean, you're going to have trouble breathing. Now we got it. Okay, we'll go around the story. The rest of the podcast, there's just a really loud T-shirt machine in the background. It's really hard to hear what we're saying. podcast there's just a really loud t-shirt machine in the background it's really hard to hear what we're saying but yeah that's something i love about pentagrams you don't have to reach for satanic stuff to find a wild story about people being shocked by other people's beliefs uh and

also it's a math thing so that's fun yeah i Yeah. I mean, math, I think is satanic. So I agree. We finally gave Satan a not cool thing. Great job, everybody. Great job. High fives all around. We did it. Got him. Yeah. I mean, if you brand Satan as the guy that makes you do fractions, then I think everyone would have converted to Christianity. Also, no one please have the epiphany you have as an adult where you're like, actually, math is pretty useful. I guess that's fair. Don't don't have that epiphany. Stop there. Stop it. Say that stupid. hey folks that is the main episode for this week welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways.

Takeaway number one, a pentagram is technically just a star shape. No circle, no nothing. Takeaway number two, pentagrams and pentacles have meant pretty much everything a symbol can mean across history and cultures. Takeaway number three, pentagrams took on a lot of their modern occult meaning thanks to two artwork changes done within the last 200 years. And takeaway number four, allegedly pentagrams caused the Pythagoreans to execute a member. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org.

Members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is surprising pentagram symbolism of Morocco and the Soviet Union. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 12 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's all special audio. It's all just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation.

Additional fun things. Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include an amazing piece for Vice.com's Motherboard section by journalist and engineer Michael Byrne, a fantastic episode of the BBC radio show In Our Time, and lots more digital resources from Lapham's Quarterly, Encyclopedia Britannica, National Geographic, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and

Lenape peoples. Katie taped this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Katie taped this on the traditional land of the Kumeyaay people. We want to acknowledge that in our locations and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here, and that feels worth doing on each episode. And hey, join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number

generator. This week's pick is episode 151, which is last week's episode. It's about teddy bears. It's fantastic. And also the random number genre is going to do that sometimes. It may not send you very far back. 151, teddy bears. I do recommend that recent show. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals

and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. MaximumFun.org