Pentagram Pinnacles

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Beware you beholders in possession of narrow mind. Numb yourself and follow your hand in drawing five congruent lines. Nudge them with the tip of your pen to position a display of crossed lines forming five pinnacles in perfect geometry. Begin tracing your pen along a continuous path in a star-crossed pattern from pinnacle to pinnacle, entranced. What have you done? What construct are you following as your blind hand presses pen-cuts into paper?
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The figure is cut before you. Its history is long, defining a path splintering into branches of translation across millennia. There is only room for a single true meaning behind the projection. Only you can realize a profound depth presented to your perspective by its visual effects. I am left as a mere bystander, as you calculate exactness to its geometric ratios and meaningful gains at each fork in translation.

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The image invokes an intimidating intensity in your expression. Attempting to consul my own discomfort and disconnection, I mimic. If sight of a single drawing projects such a powerful message, perhaps, Scott McCloud correctly points out “pictures predate the written word” (698). A certain effectiveness lies within the ability to convey a collaboration of ideas by visual presentation. The simplicity of using an image to deliver messages can be impressive where written and spoken words easily lack similar appeal and efficiency. In precisely the manner an icon can be transformed and called upon by a single word, an entire realm of thought can be transported through a familiar iconic representation.

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Your admirable acceptance of the sketch’s conception speaks to me about translations from void to Lucifer. I am beginning to believe I understand stepping stones touching on symbolic representations for subjects of five. I feel the five elements of Nature pushed onto me as water, earth, idea, fire and air. You pierce me with five wounds of Christ and then pamper me with annunciation, nativity, resurrection, ascension and assumption, Mary’s five joys of Jesus. Now I hear you mouthing, “Frankness, fellowship, purity, courtesy and compassion, five virtues of knighthood.” Your knowledge flows with passion, creating a flood about my feet. Will you dampen your pace for me to catch up, or gain momentum as you dive deeper?

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Christianity, Pythagoreanism, Neo-pagans, Knights Templar, Satanism!? Did you say, “Chaos” and “Devil”?

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“a(a) + b(b) = c(c),” I remember Pythagorean’s Theorem and I see the relations between 1, 1.618..., and 0.618….

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“Endless Knot,” you mention. I am wondering where the branches of translation end. For that matter, where did they begin?

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Sumerians saw nooks and holes where I see sticks and stars.

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Christian Crusaders are protected from witches and demons and I try to understand how.

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I recall the zigzag penciling I drew, as a child, offset by the harsh outline of a white half-crescent moon.

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Your insight has faded to a muffle, as I recall, “When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings,” John Berger’s words seem truer than ever (686).

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Disgust in my incomprehension points toward my ignorance, realizing I have much to learn. I am overcome by anxiety in my attempt to grasp the full meaning revealed from behind the image. In twists and turns, subject to interpretations, it is difficult to clearly discern its esoteric definitions. Altering vantage points seem to obscure the bridges from one understanding to the next. Leaping from an experience in the particular moment I exist to a place in history baffles me with additional connections to a world and time I can not possibly explain without misunderstanding. I find myself jumping back and forth between the now and the past. The star’s meaning broadens and thickens with each and every jump.

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Your hasty disclosures build my appreciation for recordings. Having you on copy eases my frustration where I lack instant understanding of every delivered explanation. I know I can study in review at my leisure. I possess the power in my remote control to pause time when I require details to digest. Rewind and play afford me the repetitions I seek, and some parts are simply passed over in a glimpse of fast forward. I attain confidence through my own editing and ponder the idea of establishing my own fork in the branched path of translation.
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Pause. Did you just show me the sine of six hundred sixty-six degrees [666º]? Briefly, I am curious about the sine of such a large angle, almost two full circles. Play… A sharp jolt to my senses, I see and think the Devil. I acknowledge 666 to be the Mark and Number of the Beast, but the Devil stands out in focus. I feel a recession in the warmth of what light is present, as it rapidly fades from my eyes. I struggle to reapply my attention to the larger, growing evaluation at hand. It is amazing how the guttural response to the Father of Evil simply sticks, repeatedly forcing its ugly face to the forefront of my mind, against my will.
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At this time, I realize my collection of new knowledge, an impossibly expanding family tree of meanings supporting your drawing, is aloof. I imagine myself peering between two horns. In the distance, I see my own thoughts and ideas whirling about like a loose-paper novel, trapped in a dust devil. Your fun-poking laughter trails into the word “chaos.” Thinking “exactly,” I remember your previous mentioning of the word. Ah, yes, my head nods in revelation and smiling pride finds my face. Difficult, it has been to handle the reins of thought. My own mental process diverts as “the inattentive and jaded eye, passing through a world without interest, helplessly perceives that something in the bland panorama is not as it should be” (121). Why do I have the suspicion Steven Millhauser foreshadowed my current predicament? I should not have been led astray by a simple three-digit number.
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An evolution survives the test to my capacity for truth. You pose an endless challenge to expand my understanding. In acceptance, I integrate separate threads of perspective into a woven braid, strengthening the connecting lines between vertices of the forks. My mind becomes increasingly proficient in tracing my pen-point comprehension from point to point, passing through the intersections more gracefully with every crisscrossing circumnavigation.

Methodically, “Pentagram, around 1830AD, the Greeks began referring to it as the pentagram.” Having missed the full blunt of your words, I replay them to myself. I savor every word like finding a hidden treasure. In a single word, I seem to find a form of grounding. Again, I repeat, “Pentagram.” A burst of energy excites me with an eagerness for more information. Now, I have something tangible to tie to the drawing, anchoring it in my mind as the keystone to a new world of knowledge and understanding.

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Something has changed. Looking at the pentagram again, the initial simplicity as a construct on paper is not so simple. The overlapping stick-figure held in a plane of two-dimensions involves a third dimensional quality. The deep crevasses defining the continuity of its five pinnacles suggest more than heavy ink on paper. Its thick definition must drive into the wooden surface beneath the paper. I am convinced the depth and weight of your pentagram penetrates through the Earth’s crust and deep into the molten-iron core.

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In my transcendence, I remember Sally Stein’s study on Dorothy Lange’s Migrant Mother photograph. She points out, “by the time Lange died in 1965, she had come to think of her model as having only the generic name Migrant Mother” (534 – 535). Through continuous exposure to an iconic image like Migrant Mother or the pentagram, the icon’s likenesses are archived and tabbed by elementary, but significant words. A once limited string of words, now attain status as keys, unlocking doors to a time and place unfamiliar to today.

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Beware. Pace your haste and be careful to not be fooled. Our perspective may not shed light enough to encompass the truth in its entirety. I know my perception lacks the power of an all seeing eye.

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Pentagram

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Works Cited

McCloud, Scott. “Show and Tell.” Seeing & Writing 3. McQuade, Donald and McQuade, Christine. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 694-718.

Berger, John. “Ways of Seeing.” Seeing & Writing 3. McQuade, Donald and McQuade, Christine. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 680-93.

Millhauser, Steven. “The Fascination of the Miniature.” Seeing & Writing 3. McQuade, Donald and McQuade, Christine. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 120-1.

Stein, Sally. “Passing Likeness.” Seeing & Writing 3. McQuade, Donald and McQuade, Christine. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. 532-43.

“Pentagram.” Wikipedia. 04 Mar. 2007. Wikipedia Foundation, Inc. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagram>