Man is a living pentagram, like the starfish. Each has five extremities, which in man's case are the legs, the arms and the head. A single hand, too, has five fingers, as if the organism had a fractal structure.
Five is the number of man, signifying the integral personality and embracing every group of five, in the fingers, the senses and the elements. Five divides into unequal parts, as the sum of two and three. According to Pythagoras, numbers that can be divided into two equal parts are feminine in nature (two, for example), while those that cannot be so divided are masculine (three, for example). The sum of two and three is five, which points to the synthesis of the sexes in marriage. Five is thus natural fullness, and the symbol of the marital bond – how human is the life of a couple!
Man's five fingers can also be assigned five life tasks: the thumb is the embodiment of virtue, the index finger of abundance, the middle finger of happiness, the ring finger of freedom and the little finger of love. If we multiply the angles of the pentagon – 72° – by five, the number of man, the result is 360, that is, a full circle, a full cycle of the year, the path of the Sun. Apollo, too, is known for five attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternity and oneness.
According to the Bulgarian teacher Peter Deunov (1864–1944), too, the human body traces a pentagram.
Look closely at a man, and you will see the five virtues in him: the line running from the left foot towards the head is Truth, the one leading from the head to the right foot is Justice, the one running from the right foot to the left hand is Love, the one leading from the left hand to the right hand is Wisdom, and the one stretching from the right hand to the left foot is Virtue. Whatever a man may do, the pentagram is always with him, and it is what determines his movements.
The pentagram is also a mysterious symbol, known as the seal of Pythagoras or the goblin's foot. For Nostradamus it is the sign of the macrocosm, while dualist Manichaeism sees in it five elements (light, air, wind, fire, water) and five elements of the nether realm (darkness, smoke, evil wind, fire and water). In China the five elements are wood, earth, fire, metal and water.
The unicursal pentagram, point upwards, is a protective talisman and signals man's spiritual strivings, but in Faust it is also the occult seal that holds Mephisto captive. The pentagram, point downwards, is a witch's sign, denoting regression and fall.
In yoga, five is a fundamental, defining number. The elements of the outer world (earth, water, fire, air, ether) have sense objects that can be grasped (scent, flavour, form, tangibility, sound), which man experiences with the perceiving sense functions (smell, taste, sight, touch, hearing) through the sense organs (nose, tongue, eye, skin, ear).
Man is marked by five kinds of faulty knowledge – ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion and self-love – but the god of romantic love, too, takes aim at mortals with five flower arrows: the lotus blossom is the arrow of attraction, the red ashoka flower that of longing, the mango blossom that of yearning, the jasmine that of intoxication and the blue lotus that of enchantment. At the heart of the wild rose the yellowish stamens are like the Sun, its five heart-shaped petals recall the pentagonal course of Venus across the heavens, and so the rose is a flower of love and a microcosm. Perhaps that is why the quinta-essentia, the ultimate essence, is the five-petalled rose in alchemy? Krishna, the God of love, plays the fifth note, the note of love, on his flute, and with it invites his devotees.
Consciousness, too, is veiled by five layers, those of food, life force, mind, intellect and bliss. Man can draw closer to this blissful self through sacrifice, when he discharges his five debts to the heavenly orders, to the ancient sages, to the ancestors, to living beings in general, and to human beings. The five elements of the material world, conceived as fullness, man can offer back to God: fragrance, flowers, incense, lamp-fire and food.