Forever In Search Of my Muse

~~~~ i have seen this on everything from books to TV shows to reality TV and it has really struck a nerve with me. i am just absolutely sick of it. Christians use the cross as a sign of Christ and religion when it was a device used to torture people. Do you know what happens to a person when they are crucified? Their ribcage collapses in on itself after the body becomes too exhausted to hold it up any longer and the person suffocates to death and as they do so the ribcage continues to fall and crushes the internal organs causing the bowel to split open and release everything from the body. It is excruciatingly painful and disgusting and the person is usually still conscious as this happens. Yet they use it as a religious symbol and condemn the pentacle which is the symbol of the five elements earth, air, fire, water, and spirit.

~~~~ i am tired of being looked down upon because i wear my pentacle around my neck. i have taken to wearing it on a longer chain and keeping it tucked inside my shirt so that i do not get the rude comments and evil stares that seem to come my way when others see it. i have actually had people walk up to me while i was working in a major store and ask me if i knew what my necklace meant and if i was a Satanist. When i told them that i did know what it meant and that i am not a Satanist. That my necklace simply represented the five elements i was told i was wrong and that they did not want me helping them and went to another register or to another person for help. my manager actually tried to tell me not to wear it to work any more. i very politely told him if he was going to ask that of me then he needed to ask that of everyone who worked there and wore a cross around their neck including himself. Now i no longer work for that store, not because of this but for other reasons, but i was very offended when this happened.

**** Copied from Wikipedia:

Christianity

The pentagram is used as a Christian symbol for the five senses, and if the letters S, A, L, V, and S are inscribed in the points, it can be taken as a symbol of health (from Latin salus).

Medieval Christians believed it to symbolize the five wounds of Christ. The pentagram was believed to protect against witches and demons.

The pentagram figured in a heavily symbolic Arthurian romance: it appears on the shield of Sir Gawain in the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. As the poet explains, the five points of the star each have five meanings: they represent the five senses, the five fingers, the five wounds of Christ, the five joys that Mary had of Jesus (the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Assumption), and the five virtues of knighthood which Gawain hopes to embody: noble generosity, fellowship, purity, courtesy, and compassion.

Most Christians, probably due to their misinterpretation of symbols used by ceremonial magicians, came to associate it with Satanism and subsequently rejected the symbol sometime in the twentieth century.

Mormonism

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has used pentagrams and five-pointed stars in Temple architecture, specifically the Nauvoo Illinois Temple and the Salt Lake Temple. These symbols derived from traditional morning star pentagrams that are no longer commonly used in mainstream Christianity.

Judaism

The pentagram was the official seal of the city of Jerusalem for a time. Due to the similarity of the star shapes, it is occasionally confused with the Star of David by those unfamiliar with the symbols.

Neopaganism

Many Neopagans, especially Wiccans, use the pentagram as a symbol of faith similar to the Christian cross or the Jewish Star of David. It is not, however, a universal symbol for Neopaganism, and is rarely used by Reconstructionists. Its religious symbolism is commonly explained by reference to the neo-Pythagorean understanding that the five vertices of the pentagram represent the four elements with the addition of Spirit as the uppermost point. As a representation of the elements, the pentagram is involved in the Wiccan practice of summoning the elemental spirits of the four directions at the beginning of a ritual.

The outer circle of the circumscribed pentagram is sometimes interpreted as binding the elements together or bringing them into harmony with each other. The Neopagan pentagram is generally displayed with one point up, partly because of the "inverted" goat's head pentagram's association with Satanism; however, within traditional forms of Wicca a pentagram with two points up is associated with the Second Degree Initiation and in this context has no relation to Satanism.

Because of a perceived association with Satanism and also because of negative societal attitudes towards Neopagan religions and the "occult", many United States schools have sought to prevent students from displaying the pentagram on clothing or jewelry. In public schools, such actions by administrators have been determined to be in violation of students' First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.