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Star of David

Also called Magen David, shield of David, hexagram

Geometry is ancient; the Jewish emblem is medieval and later

Jewish symbols

Star of David meaning

The Star of David is two interlocking triangles used as a Jewish emblem. The hexagram is older and not originally Jewish. As a mark of the Jewish people it becomes common in the medieval and modern periods, not in the Bible.

✡U+2721

Two triangles locked, asked to stand for a people.

The name. Hebrew Magen David, shield of David. The biblical David has no such shield in the text.

Where it comes from

Hexagrams are common geometry. The binding to Jewish identity grows in medieval Kabbalistic amulets, becomes a communal mark (the seventeenth-century flag of the Prague community is a landmark), and turns national with Zionism. The flag of Israel bears it. The Nazi badge forced the same drawing onto clothing. A theft that public does not get to keep the sign, which is why it is flown openly.

Jewish

A shield that is not in the Bible

Do not go looking for this star in Exodus. The menorah is the Temple object. The star is a later emblem that a people agreed to be seen by. Six points are sometimes read as the directions with a center, or as heaven-pointing and earth-pointing triangles. Those are glosses. The historical weight is communal recognition, then persecution, then a state.

Hermetic

Not every hexagram is this one

The Seal of Solomon in magical texts, and the unicursal hexagram of later occultism, are related drawings with different jobs. A hexagram on a talisman is not automatically a Magen David, and a Magen David is not a magical seal because the shapes rhyme.

Near this

Sources

  • Medieval Jewish use of the Magen David, later a community and national emblem
  • The hexagram in other medieval magic and ornament is a different history

Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.

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symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.