This is the final draft of my first paper due 4/24 for writing class. Please feel free to tell me if you think there is something wrong with it!!! I will appreciate the feedback... thank you :)
Alone a star seems innocent enough; the Texaco has one, a welcoming sign to weary travelers. The Sheriff’s deputies wear them as a badge known to serve and protect. Even children’s schoolwork comes home, proudly sporting a star as token of a job well done. Yet, to mainstream America, the circled star of the pentagram has become the quintessential symbol of evil.
The pentagram may best be recognized in America by its horrifying association with grizzly murder scenes from the 1980’s. The killer was depraved, and often posed his victims bodies. One gory scene was of a woman’s mutilated body, eyes plucked out, laid ceremoniously in front of an inverted pentagram, crudely drawn in crimson on the wall behind her. In all there were fifteen terrifying murder scenes, all victims of the media dubbed, “Night Stalker,” Richard Ramirez. As if the gruesome scenes weren’t enough, Ramirez further cemented the pentagrams evil association, when at his trial, he drew an inverted pentagram on his palm, and as if in Nazi tradition, he proclaimed, “Hail Satan.”
For centuries, the pentagram has been inexorably tied with terrifying images of ritualistic murder, burning bodies, and the occult. This was however, not always the case. Initially the pentagram was the antithesis of evil, representing perfection to those that utilized it.
The first written symbol of the pentagram was found in the ancient city of Mesopotamia, dating some 3,500 years before Christ. Geographically, Mesopotamia was the land between two rivers. Interpreted today as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq. The Pentagram’s most primitive meaning at that time, was of power, and the ability of the kingdom to reach the four corners of the earth. In ancient Greece, the Pythagoreans, known for mathematical formulas, used the pentagram to represent perfection. To the Jews in “Old Testament” times, the pentagram was symbolic of the five books of Moses, or the Pentateuch. Later, to the earliest Christians, the Pentagram was symbolic of the five wounds of Christ. The meaning of the pentagram was so congruous with Christian values, that Roman emperor Constantine I adopted it, along with the initials of Jesus Christ, known as the Chi Rho symbol, for his seal. The Pentagram’s status as a symbol of power and perfection wasn’t vilified until the time of the Crusades.
The early Christian church found that by demonizing pagan symbols, they could more easily convert the pagan population to Christianity. From the fourteenth century to the eighteenth century, history witnessed the “Burning Times” whereby a conservative estimate of 50,000 to 100,000 people were executed or burned at the stake over accusation of witchcraft or heresy in Europe. Symbols such as the pentagram were “evidence” of alignment with Satan and cost many people their lives. Once demonized, the honored pentagram faded from the light of respect to the darkness of the wicked, rendered evil.
The frenzied fear of evil, or the supernatural crossed both time, and ocean to settle in seventeenth century America. The hysteria began with the proclamation that two girls were “bewitched” in Salem Massachusetts, in 1692. Nineteen executions later, the Salem Witch Trials set the stage for America’s tainted perception of the occult.
It’s original use long forgotten; the pentagram would continue to be seen as a dark icon for hundreds of years. The formation of the “Church of Satan” by Anton LaVey, in 1966, did little to dispel the demonic myth of the pentagram. LaVey, who played “The Devil” in the 1966 horror movie Rosemary’s Baby, chose the ancient pentagram, as the symbol of his newly formed church. LaVey’s church, in opposition to the traditional church, held in esteem the physical side of man, and rebelled against the accepted spiritual nature of God. Further perverting the true meaning of the pentagram, LaVey inverted it, signifying the physical over the spiritual, rendering the pentagram immoral.
Similar to the hysteria of the Witch Trials in Salem, or the “Burning Times” of Europe, rigid condemnation of anything having to do with the occult was advocated by many Christian churches in the 1970’s and 80’s. Churches prohibited their parishioners from viewing popular television shows like Bewitched and I dream of Jeanie, as well as prohibiting the listening of bands such as Black Sabbath, Slayer and Rush. These popular shows and bands were considered taboo, as they referenced the supernatural and were in opposition then, to the Christian value system. More recently, many churches have banned books such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. The church’s reasoning behind this banning is that the books are de-sensitizing children to the occult and thereby making them easy marks to fall victim to the dark side.
Unlike the media fed terror fueled by Ramirez, or the burning times taught by our own history, those that embrace the symbol today, see the five points of the star and circle of the pentagram as representative of the spirit intertwined with the elements of Earth, Air, Water and Fire. Regardless of the motivation, whether a timid curiosity, or a bold condemnation, the pentagram has advocated the contemplation of good and evil for centuries.
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Halloween is Right around the corner.. .
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And no, there's is nothing wrong. It's great
But other than that I must say this was very informative. 
