I-87 The “Star of David,” or “Mogen (Magen) David”

Rosicrucian and Modern Initiation, Lect. 5

As shown in “Three Bodies,” the Bible extensively and pervasively demonstrates the 3-fold body, revealed for our time by Rudolf Steiner. A small portion of that evidence is given in the patriarchal and monarchic accounts of Genesis and Kings. When the Jews referred to their bloodline, it was always to their fathers, “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Ex 3,6, et al.). It is noteworthy that the first identifying expression of this threesome was immediately before the declaration by their God, “I AM the I AM” (Ex 3,14). The Book of Kings tells us that there were three, and only three, kings of the undivided Israel, namely, Saul, David and Solomon. In these we see a line of progressively greater spiritual (one might even say occult) insight, or “wisdom.”

Our purpose in this chart is to look at the symbol known as the (six-pointed) “Star of David,” or “Mogen (Magen) David,” meaning “Shield of David.” We are told, 3 Brit 911, “David, Star of”:

The symbol—which historically was not limited to use by Jews— originated in antiquity, when, side by side with the five-pointed star, it served as a magical sign. . . . In the Middle Ages [it] appeared with greater frequency among Jews but did not assume any special religious significance. . . . The term Magen David . . . gained currency among medieval Jewish mystics, who attached magical powers to King David’s shield just as earlier (non-Jewish) magical traditions had referred to the five-pointed star as the “seal of Solomon.” Kabbalists popularized [its use] against evil spirits. . . from the 17th century on [it] became . . . a general sign of Judaism, though it has no biblical or Talmudic authority.

In the Commentary we will look at the “Key of David” (Rev 3,7), but here we note that Steiner refers to this symbol as “Solomon’s Key,” and to explain it he sketches the following portrayal: (click here for diagram)

He tells us that there was a small and lonely school somewhere in Central Europe, apparently “in the early decades of the nineteenth century,” led by a “Master.” What this Master taught was acknowledged by Steiner to have included matters later “disclosed” to him through spiritual science (anthroposophy). In his teaching, the Master used the above symbols, which came to him from ancient times, with the words (at the points of the triangles) in Hebrew. As a mode of meditative training, he would

get the pupils to assume a certain attitude with their physical bodies. The body itself had to “draw” this symbol. He made them stand with their feet far apart, and their arms stretched out above. Then, by lengthening the lines of the arms downwards and the lines of the legs upwards, these four lines (darker in the diagram) came to view in the human organism itself. A line was then drawn to unite the feet, and another to unite the hands above; and these two joining lines had to be felt as lines of force. The pupil became conscious that they do really exist; it became clear to him that currents pass, not unlike electro-magnetic currents, from the left finger-tips to the right finger-tips, and again from the left foot to the right. So that in actual fact the human organism itself writes into space these two intersecting triangles.

The pupil had then to learn to feel what lies in the words: “Light streams upwards, Weight bears downwards.”

According to Steiner, the pupil was gradually thus brought to experience something “practiced over and over again in the ancient Mysteries, . . . namely, that he could feel the very marrow within the bones of his limbs (see dark lines in diagram).” And then, we are told, the teacher put into the following words what the pupils were experiencing:

Behold the man of bone,
And thou beholdest Death.
Look within the bones,
And thou beholdest the Awakener—


Compare Heb 4,12 which speaks of the “word of God . . . piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow. . . .”

If one considers the above symbol in the light of these remarks, it is quite apparent that it portrays the Fall, salvation, and ascension of the human being, which is the theme of the Bible from Gen 1 to Rev 22, the ultimate application of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the story of two sons, the “prodigal” first Adam, who fell, and the second Adam, his sister soul, who, by serving the Christ, brought him to his senses and made his return possible. The first Adam was “the son of God” (Lk 3,38) and the second was “the Son of God.” The reality of the Fall, redemption and eventual ascension is central to the teaching of anthroposophy.
Schematic I-86
Schematic I-88