I’m sure there are many images that go through your mind when I say I have uncovered an evil within the Victorian Police Force. Brutality, corruption, speeding fines… But what if I told you I had uncovered a real evil within the force. One that’s been sitting there in plain sight for all to see since 1947. They say the best place to hide something is right in front of your face. Well that’s exactly what the police force have done with their logo. The five pointed star, sitting on the wreath wearing the crown, with a cross in the middle. Can you see it yet?
Let’s take a look at the star for a moment. The more common name for a five pointed star is a pentagram, which comes from the Greek word pentagrammon, which, roughly translated, means “five-lined” or “five lines”. The pentagram has a long history with symbology that can be traced back as far as 3000BC to Mesopotamian writings where it was used as pictograms meaning corner or angle or nook among other similar things.
To the Babylonian’s, the edges of the pentagram possibly related to the directions forward, back, left, right, and above, which had an astrological meaning, representing the five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, and Venus as Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven above.
Later The Pythagoreans believed there was a mathematical perfection to the pentagram and used the five vertices to represent the five old world elements, earth, water, air, fire and the divine.
It wasn’t, however, until the Europeans got hold of the pentagram that it became a magical symbol. They kept the attributes of the five elements that the Pythagoreans had used, but also developed a belief around the orientation of the star. With a single point upwards it depicted spirit presiding over the four elements of matter, and was essentially good. However, whenever the symbol appeared the other way up, it became evil.
Alphonse Louis, who, literally wrote the book on magic in the 1800’s, claimed a reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, “is a symbol of evil and attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things and demonstrates the triumph of matter over spirit.”
The pentagram has since gone on to be incorporated into a great many other cultures and religions including Taoism, Mormonism, Judaism, Christianity, Neopaganism and Satanism. If you believe that symbols can have power, then the pentagram is a very powerful one indeed. Today, many people commonly recognise it as an occult symbol with both positive and negative connotations.
I can’t believe that such a prolific symbol would be used as a logo, without knowledge of its history or representation. Does this then mean that the Victorian Police are well aware that their symbol is that of evil? Or are they blissfully oblivious of the image they are portraying. If symbolism really does have power, then this could explain a lot about the negative perception we have of our police today. Maybe all they need to do to gain a better image is to turn the pentagram upwards and we would respect them a little more.
However, I can’t help but ponder the comment “overturns the proper order of things” and think of how that relates to the police in todays society… But that’s a thought for another day…
