Pentagram of Initiation

The pentagram is the friend who travels with us, for its five lines symbolize the Wiccan journey of initiation. With the first degree we journey one line, with the second degree two lines and with the third degree the final three. The first degre is the entry point and there we stand at the East, the point of the youngest of the Watchtowers, the virgin youth, and we make a journey across the pentagram to the point of the first degree initiation, the element of Water.

With the second degree we leave the element of Water and journey into the realm of Earth, Dark Lord of Death, the Grim Reaper. With death comes burial and we descend beneath the earth and enter the underworld, the realm of the dead. This is the realm of the spirits, the element of Ether; for the death of the earthly body releases the spirit. This is the domain of the lord of the underworld and this is the realm from which spirit must be redeemed. Thus, the reversed pentagram of the second degree is also the symbol of the Horned God.

The work of the third degree is to bring spirit above ground, in other words to bring into consciousness the newly discovered power of the Self, and from the darkness into the element of Fire, the sunlight of the conscious mind. Having entered the realm of Fire, we must become integrated with it. This requires a return to the entry point, the point of Air; for Air is the element of the phallic nature God. Yet it was as fools we set off blithely at the first degree into the journey of the spirit, the journey to the unknown, and it is via the fool we return; for he is numbered zero, the completed circle, the end.

To integrate the Sun of the Self, we must perform the sacred marriage, the union of the phallus with the womb. Here the two are made one and we complete the sixth and sealing line of the pentagram which returns us once more to the Goddess. Here we find the cauldron of rebirth with which we entered the circle at the first degree, the spirit eternal. Now the six lines can reveal their hidden meaning and the rose-flower of the sealed pentagram can open to reveal the six-sided hexagram, the symbol of the Self, the joining of the two interlaced triangles.

This is the last part of our journey and what happens henceforth in an individual quest which each of us, uniquely reborn, must make. At the end we always turn once more to the future and we find ourselves at another beginning, another round of the spiral dance

Copied from Mark Sumpter