Witch's foot

From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project

The Witch's Foot is another name for the pentagram or pentalpha, which was often placed above the doorways & windows of houses to repel evil & witchcraft; this belief is found in Goethe's 'Faust', wherein the pentagram prevents Mephistopheles from leaving a room:

Mephistopheles: I must confess, my stepping o'er Thy threshold a slight hindrance doth impede; The wizard-foot doth me retain.

Faust: The pentagram thy peace doth mar? To me, thou son of hell, explain, How earnest thou in, if this thine exit bar? Could such a spirit aught ensnare?

Rudolf Koch, in his 'Book of Signs', records that the "Witch's Foot" was the name given to the pentagram by "the Celtic priests", and that it was known as the Goblin Cross in the Medieval period.

Some later writers have idiosyncratically come to identify the word with a six-pointed symbol which looks like a snowflake. This symbol is believed by some to represent the power and the charge of the World tree; in this they claim that the cross represents the airts (four winds) Airts-east, Deas-south, Iar-west and Tuath-south, with the line crossing through it being the bridge joining the upper, middle & lower worlds.