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Anna Goeldi
The Last Witch Who Wasn't a Witch

Switzerland, 1782.

Europe was living in the Age of Enlightenment. Scientists were studying electricity, philosophers were questioning old beliefs, Mozart was composing operas — and in the small Swiss canton of Glarus, a woman was executed for witchcraft.

Her name was Anna Goeldi.

She was a servant in the household of Johann Jakob Tschudi, a wealthy and influential physician and magistrate. After a dispute, Goeldi was dismissed from his service.

Then something strange happened. One of Tschudi's daughters allegedly began finding needles in her food. Later, the child suffered seizures and was said to produce needles from her mouth.

Anna was accused.

She fled, but a reward was offered for her capture. Eventually she was arrested, interrogated and tortured. Under torture, she confessed to having dealings with the Devil. When the torture stopped, she withdrew the confession.

So they tortured her again.

There was one problem with prosecuting Anna Goeldi as a witch: witch trials had become an embarrassment.

By 1782, educated Europe increasingly regarded belief in witchcraft as superstition. The authorities in Glarus therefore avoided openly calling the proceedings a witch trial.

Instead, Anna was convicted of poisoning.

No poison was ever demonstrated.

On June 13, 1782, Anna Goeldi was taken to the place of execution in Glarus and beheaded with a sword.

She became known as one of the last people executed for witchcraft in Europe.

But Anna Goeldi was not a witch.

She was a poor woman facing powerful men in a system in which reputation, social position and influence mattered enormously — and in which a confession could be extracted through torture.

More than two centuries later, Switzerland returned to her case. In 2008, the authorities of the canton of Glarus officially rehabilitated Anna Goeldi and acknowledged that she had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

It took 226 years.

Today her story is remembered not because she possessed supernatural powers.

It is remembered because people believed — or found it convenient to claim — that she did.

And perhaps that is the most frightening part of all.

They did not execute a witch.They executed a woman they could afford to destroy.

— Witchykitten

Mention a pentagram and watch what happens.
Some people think of witches.
Some think of protection, magic or the elements.
Others immediately think of Satan, demons and something sinister happening in a candlelit basement at three in the morning.
Hollywood certainly hasn't helped.
But is the pentagram actually evil?
The short answer is:
No.
The longer answer is much more interesting.
An Ancient Symbol
The pentagram is far older than modern witchcraft, Satanism or most of the associations people give it today.
The five-pointed star has appeared in different cultures and traditions for thousands of years, and its meaning has changed repeatedly depending on who was using it and when.
It has represented concepts such as harmony, proportion, protection and the human being.
The Pythagorean tradition associated the five-pointed figure with mathematical harmony and perfection. Much later it also appeared within Christian culture.
Which tends to surprise people who have been taught that seeing a pentagram automatically means someone has invited Satan over for tea.
Apparently nobody sent medieval Christians that memo.
Yes, Christians Used It Too
One of my favourite examples comes from the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Gawain carries a pentagram — called a pentangle in the poem — on his shield.
And he isn't secretly the villain.
It represents interconnected virtues and Christian ideals associated with his character.
So a symbol many people today instinctively associate with something anti-Christian could, in another historical context, represent the virtues of a Christian knight.
Symbols are funny that way.
They travel.
They change.
And humans keep giving them new meanings.
But What About the Upside-Down Pentagram?
This is where things become more complicated.
You may have heard the simple rule:
One point up = good.
Two points up = evil.
History is rarely that cooperative.
The strong Western occult association between the inverted pentagram and evil was significantly shaped in the nineteenth century by French occultist Éliphas Lévi.
Lévi distinguished between the upright pentagram, which he associated with the human microcosm, and the inverted form, which he connected with the image of a goat and negative or demonic symbolism.
Those ideas influenced later occult imagery, and the inverted pentagram eventually became strongly associated with Satanic symbolism in popular culture and in some later religious traditions.
But that does not mean that every pentagram throughout history carried that meaning.
It didn't.
Context matters.
It always has.
Pentagram or Pentacle?
These words are also frequently used as though they mean exactly the same thing.
A pentagram is the five-pointed star itself.
A pentacle, in modern witchcraft and Pagan usage, commonly refers to a pentagram enclosed within a circle, although historically the word pentacle has been used more broadly for magical or talismanic symbols.
The familiar circled pentagram used by many modern witches and Pagans is generally not a symbol of evil.
For many practitioners it can represent protection, balance and the relationship between the elements.
Earth.
Air.
Fire.
Water.
And Spirit.
Different traditions may interpret those associations differently, because there has never been one universal authority handing out an instruction manual titled:
Official Pentagram Rules — Please Do Not Improvise.
We humans have been improvising for thousands of years.
So Is the Pentagram Good or Evil?
Neither.
It's a symbol.
And perhaps this is where the pentagram has something in common with magic itself.
I don't believe magic has a morality of its own.
Magic is neither good nor evil.
It is intention that gives it direction.
A knife can prepare a meal or take a life.
Fire can warm a home or burn it down.
Neither the knife nor the flame makes the choice.
The person does.
Symbols are much the same.
We give them meaning.
We give them purpose.
And sometimes, over centuries, we give them meanings they never had to begin with.
The pentagram has been mathematics.
It has been philosophy.
It has been protection.
It has been Christian symbolism.
It has been occult symbolism.
It has been Pagan symbolism.
And yes, in particular forms and contexts, it has also become associated with Satanism.
None of those facts magically erases the others.
A symbol carries history.
But the person wearing it carries intention.
And those two things are not always the same.
So the next time someone sees a pentagram around your neck and asks whether you're worshipping Satan, you have options.
You could explain several thousand years of changing symbolism.
You could explain mathematics, medieval literature, occult philosophy and modern Pagan traditions.
You could patiently explain that symbols don't come neatly labelled GOOD and EVIL.
Or...
You could stare at them silently for a few seconds.
Lean a little closer.
And whisper:

Personally, I recommend the second option.

My reflection smiled at me last night.

Normally, this wouldn't be worth mentioning.

Except I wasn't smiling.

I stared at her.

She stared back.

I tilted my head.

She didn't.

That was new.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then she smiled a little wider.

And winked.

I probably should have been scared.

Instead, I winked back.

Her smile disappeared.

Apparently, she wasn't expecting that.

Neither was I.

I went to bed.

This morning, everything was normal again.

Almost.

There's a handprint on the inside of the glass.

I haven't cleaned it.

I'm curious what she'll do tonight.

— Witchykitten