20 October 2021
Mysterious marks found on the walls of historic buildings have long fascinated visitors and much has been spoken or written about them. Yet, there is still bewilderment about the meaning behind many signs and symbols. In this blog article, I intend to have a look at interpretations of one mark in particular – the pentagram.
Perceptions of the Pentagram
A recent post on the online forum Mediaeval and Tudor Period Buildings Group typifies the confusion around how to interpret the pentagram. A user of the group uploaded a photograph of a five-pointed star, carved onto a piece of stone at St Mary & St John Lamyatt (Somerset), and asked the deceptively simple question: “Would anyone know what this symbol might mean? Spotted on our local church”. The Internet came alight with suggestions.
At the time of writing, I totted up 155 individual responses. I was heartened to see that a third of respondents (32.25%) identified the symbol as a mason’s mark. We shall return to that subject in a separate blog. However, if we discard the facetious suggestions by amateur comedians (18.7%), the remaining 49.05% of people had a wide-ranging number of explanations which included: apotropaic mark (7.74%), pagan symbol (5.16%), holy star (4.51%), Star of David (4.51%) and Ordnance Survey benchmark (3.87%); alongside a plethora of outlying submissions incorporating: Satanic symbol, graffiti associated with boredom, builder’s sign to show structural problems, Seal of Solomon, mechanism to express proportional geometry, rune, hobo mark, Knights Templar, Freemasonry or Illuminati symbol.
Given the subject matter, some of the more outlandish identifications – including signs left by the Knights Templar, Freemasons or Illuminati – can perhaps be laid at the door of Dan Brown’s infamous novel The Da Vinci Code. The principal character, Robert Langdon, is a Harvard professor in the fictional discipline of “symbology” who has an unerring trait of identifying the esoteric meaning behind symbols. When Langdon finds the body of a murdered man inscribed with a five-pointed star he intones: “The pentacle is a pre-Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two halves— masculine and feminine… This pentacle is representative of the female half of all things— a concept religious historians call the ‘sacred feminine’ or the ‘divine goddess’ ” (Brown 2003, 56).
The pentagram is a pre-Christian symbol, but in that period it was not associated with the attributes assigned by the fictional Langdon. Instead, his explanation seems to be more closely aligned with the thinking of magical practitioners from the late nineteenth century onwards. This went on to influence later neo-pagan and Satanic beliefs (Guiley 1991, 265-66). Prior to the introduction of Christianity the pentagram was a symbol variously associated with the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar or Greek notions of health, wellbeing or geometrical purity. However, these explanations do not bear much relevance to how the symbol came to be carved on the walls of a parish church in Somerset. So, what is going on here?
Mediaeval Holy Signs
In the theology of mediaeval western Christianity, the pentagram was an important symbol. It is stated that God gave King Solomon a seal ring which had the power to repel demons. This story was originally told by the Jews and, in their iteration, the brass and iron ring had ciphers on it capable of exorcising devils. As the story of the ring passed down through the Abrahamic faiths, the ciphers were subsequently re-interpreted by Arabic Muslims as a six-pointed star and latterly by European Christians as a five-pointed star (Jacobs & Seligsohn 1906, 448).
The mediaeval Christian belief that the pentagram was a powerful repellent of evil was apparently widespread. In the late fourteenth century, the anonymous, Middle English, author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight explained that the eponymous hero wore pentagrams on his tunic and shield when riding out to meet the sinister and supernatural Green Knight. The poet noted that the symbol of Solomon was effective due to the structural strength of an endless line “which never failed”. It was also thought to be powerful because of repetitive numerology on the number five: five flawless senses, five faultless fingers, five wounds of Christ, five joys of Mary and five knightly virtues (Armitage 2007, 34-35). A reliance on such iconography can also be seen, physically, in fourteenth century ecclesiastical architecture – including pentagrams set out in the great west window of Exeter Cathedral (Devon, England) and on the tower of the Marktkirche at Hannover (Lower Saxony, Germany).
Elsewhere, the pentagram has been noted as a motif found during historic graffiti surveys of mediaeval buildings (Champion 2015, 47). These include the informal addition of pentagrams at Holy Trinity Tattershall (Lincolnshire), St James’ Aslackby (Lincolnshire) and St Mary’s Troston (Suffolk). At the latter, a pentagram has been carved directly over a graffito of a demon – perhaps explicitly linking the symbol to its perceived function of warding off evil (Champion 2015, 50). In such contexts, there is a potential to see pentagram graffiti influenced by mainstream, literary and architectural, representations of a holy symbol which was thought to be capable of driving away demons.
Beyond the mediaeval period the pentagram continued to exercise a limited interest – usually in connection with protective measures. It was included by the anonymous author of the seventeenth century tract Of Occult Philosophy or Magical Ceremonies: The Fourth Book, where it was defined as relating to: “certain holy signes preserving us from evil chances and events, and helping and assisting us to binde, exterminate, and drive away evil spirits, and alluring the good spirits, and reconciling them unto us” (Turner & Skinner 2005, 25). Such phrasing went on to impact on the emergence of late nineteenth century occult organisations such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, itself an influence on magical practitioners, neo-pagans and Satanists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Guiley 1991, 229, 255).
However, context is all. Not all pentagrams were connected to apotropaic practices intended to avert the Devil.
Proportion & Geometry
Mathematicians such as Euclid, Abu Kamil and Leonardo of Pisa understood the importance of the pentagram in creating pentagons, isosceles triangles and in expressing the Golden Section (Livio 2008, 78, 88-90). There is some evidence that elements of the cathedrals at Amiens (Somme, France) and Salisbury (Wiltshire, England) may have been designed on this principle (Bork 2011, 12 fn20). However, the importance of the pentagram in mediaeval gothic architectural design has been rather overstated by numerous writers. Studies of architectural drawings by researchers including Walter Thomae, Paul Frankl, Konrad Hecht and Robert Bork have demonstrated that Classical proportional theory was not in widespread usage by mediaeval stonemasons (Bork 2011, 11-20).
Instead, masons turned towards the “procedural conventions” of geometry which were developed using the compass, straight edge and square (Bork 1-7). For example, the design of the west front of Tattershall Castle (Lincolnshire) was probably set out as follows:
- Draw a six-petal rosette
- Draw an equilateral triangle by joining three of the intersections
- Bisect the triangle longitudinally
- Mirror one half of the triangle to create a rectangle
The rectangle itself conforms to the mathematical convention of the square root of 3 and has the proportion of 1:1.73 but, as Bork has argued, these were an unintended side-product of the geometrical “procedural conventions” (Wright 2021; Bork 2011, 2).
Graffiti of the six-petal rosette or pentagram have been observed in their thousands in both ecclesiastical and secular buildings. Some scholars have identified them as the drawings of stonemasons trying to wrestle with the mysteries of their craft or explaining geometry to apprentices. This phenomenon has been noted by Matthew Champion (2015 34-39) and Arnold Pacey (2007, 76). Yet. both writers acknowledged that, although verified examples of mediaeval architectural drawings do exist, the sheer numbers of small-sized graffiti inexpertly incised onto the walls means that other explanations are just as likely – including those connected with apotropaic practices. It is probable that much pentagram graffiti can be assigned to that purpose.
However, another explanation can be proposed for the more neatly inscribed examples – they may be marks made by masons as part of their stone-cutting routine. Please read our next blog on stonemason’s marks for further information.
Conclusions
Symbols can be carved for many different reasons across both time and space. The use of the pentagram in ancient Greece was not necessarily the same as in mediaeval England and the symbol was again reinterpreted in the modern era. Even within the mediaeval period the functions of the pentagram were varied. Context is very important to interpretation.
In the mediaeval period, references to pentagrams were made within both literature and Christian architecture. Deriving ultimately from Jewish tradition, the symbol was believed to offer protection from demonic beings. It is likely that this concept effected the use of the motif as a graffito.
Although the pentagram was an important shape in Classical theories of proportion, its use in mediaeval architectural design was rare – geometrical setting out was preferred. Consequently, when we encounter regular, chisel-cut examples of the pentagram the symbol is less likely to be part of an architectural drawing and will often be a stonemason’s mark.
References
Armitage, S. (trans.), 2007, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Faber & Faber. London.
Bork, R., 2011, The Geometry of Creation – Architectural Drawing and the Dynamics of Gothic Design. Routledge. London & New York.
Brown, D., 2003 (2013 ed.) The Da Vinci Code. Random House. New York.
Champion, M., 2015, Medieval Graffiti – The Lost Voices of England’s Churches. Ebury Press. London.
Guiley, R. E., 1991, The Encyclopaedia of Witches and Witchcraft. Facts on File. New York.
Jacobs, J. & Seligsohn, M., 1906, ‘Seal of Solomon’ in Singer, I. (ed.), The Jewish Encyclopaedia. Funk & Wagnalls. New York.
Livio, M., 2003 (2008 ed.), The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number. Crown. New York.
Pacey, A., 2007, Medieval Architectural Drawing. Tempus. Stroud.
Pevsner, N., 1958, The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset. Penguin. London.
Turner, R. (trans.) & Skinner, S. (ed.), 2005, Of Occult Philosophy or Magical Ceremonies: The Fourth Book. Ibis Press. Lake Worth.
Wright, J., 2021, Tattershall Castle: Building a History. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Nottingham.
About the author
James Wright trained as a conservation stonemason and is an award-winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
He welcomes contact through Twitter or email.
The Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog blog is the basis of a forthcoming book – Historic Building Mythbusting – Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology which will be released via The History Press on 6 June 2024. More information can be found here:
