Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/131

 'pentacle' of mediaeval magic lore. In Greece it is now known as [Greek: to pentalpha], but of its properties, beyond the fact that it serves as a charm, the people have nothing to say. In the mediaeval and probably in the yet earlier magic of Europe and the East it is one of the commonest figures, appearing sometimes as Solomon's seal, sometimes as the star which led the wise men to Bethlehem, sometimes, in black colouring, as a symbol of the principle of evil, and correspondingly, in white, as the symbol of the principle of good. But though the figure has been known to the magicians of many nations and many epochs, there is no reason to suppose that it is in recent times or from other races that the Greeks have learnt it: for it was known too by the ancient Greeks, who noted among its more intelligible properties the fact that the five lines composing it can be drawn without removing pencil from paper. The Pythagoreans, who called it the [Greek: pentagrammon], are known to have attached to it some mystic value. There is a reasonable likelihood therefore that the symbol has been handed down in Greece as a magical charm—for we have seen how many other methods of magic have survived—from the time of Pythagoras. Further back we cannot penetrate; yet—vixere fortes ante Agamemnona, and there were professors of occult sciences before Pythagoras. Was it then he who first discovered the figure's mystic value? Or did he merely adopt and interpret in his own way a symbol which for long ages before him had been endowed with magical powers? Was it perhaps this figure, graven on some broken potsherd, which long before coinage supplied a more ready charm protected the corpse from possession by evil spirits, or rather, in those days, from reanimation by the soul? Who shall say? The belief, which has found its modern expression in the engraving of Christian or Mohammedan texts on prophylactic coins or pottery and in barring with them the door of the lips which gives access to the corpse, is certainly primitive enough in character to date from the dimmest prehistoric age.

If my suggestion as to the origin of the custom is correct, it was only the accident of a coin being commonly used as the, 573, where it is said that in Myconos the symbol is sometimes carved on house doors to keep vrykolakes (on which see below, cap. ) from troubling the inmates at night.], 5.]