“With her slender-pointed foot, Some figure like a wizard’s pentagram, On garden gravel.”[534] [Illustration: FIG. 27.—THE PENTACLE.] I have said that little is generally known about the pentacle. Here is some evidence: Ruskin defines it to be “a five-pointed star, or a double-triangle ornament, the symbol of the trinity”[535]—a wrong definition, but not quite as bad as that given in Mollett’s handsome work, to wit: “A figure formed of two triangles, intersected so as to form a six-pointed star.”[536] The opinion is expressed by Bayard Taylor that the magical powers attributed to it could be explained by the fact that, being made up of three triangles, it was a “triple symbol of the trinity.”[537] This may be true, but it was regarded as possessing mysterious powers long before Christianity originated. A common mistake—the one evidently made by Mollett—of even learned writers (as, for example, Oliver[538] and Fairholt[539]) is to confound the pentacle with the seal of Solomon (called also the shield of David), which consists of two equilateral triangles so arranged as to form a six-pointed star. By the German writers on magic and kindred subjects, the pentacle is often called _Drudenfuss_,—that is, wizard’s foot,—a term which Mackey[540] takes to be a corruption of the word for Druid’s foot, by which people it was in use, being often worn, as a symbol of deity, on their sandals. As Bayard Taylor, however, says: “_Drud_, from the same root as Druid, was the old German word for wizard.” In Mr. Blake’s interesting book,[541] a representation of a very old coin is given, on which the mystic figure appears. The pentacle has been observed on a figure of Anubis, in Egypt. It is stated[542] that it was used on coins of Antiochus Epiphanes, and also[543] of Lysimachus. I have seen it stated somewhere that it is one of the old sect marks of the Hindus; but this is an error, I believe. By referring to Coleman’s[544] or Birdwood’s[545] work, it will be found that it is Solomon’s seal which has been so used. It was one of the totems of the American Indians. Dawson[546] gives a picture of it as seen sculptured on the Roches Percées, a remarkable solitary mass of sandstone on the plains west of Manitoba.