Brewers’ Stars and the Star of David in:
Jacob
Linckh, Landauer Band I (1659), Seite 118v
Matthias
Trum claims in his thesis [1] that the oldest depiction of a brewer is in a
1425 painting from Nuremberg, Germany. Later on Matthias Trum tries to answer
(without arriving to any clear conclusion) the question: “How could one symbol
in the course of history get two so different meanings? Might there even be a
connection between both forms, e.g. do they have the same origin, or is the
similarity merely coincidental”?
There are two
facts about the connection between the hexagram and the alcohol industry, which
might help answer Matthias Trum’s question: the first is that James Bennett
Pritchard found a few hexagrams engraved on some wine jar handles from the 8th
century B.C.E. at Gibeon, Israel [2]. The second is that hexagrams were found
as Greek emblems for the marking of wines in Thasos and Carthago.
Another point that seems relevant here is
that in alchemy the hexagram is composed from a triangle that points up
representing fire while the triangle that points down represents water. Fire
and water (needless to say) are opposites. In the hexagram they interpenetrate,
and together they represent the unity of the opposites or (in alchemy)- the
fiery water, the alcohol, the brandy etc.
Folklore has it that like the SIX points of
the hexagram the brewers’ star represented the SIX aspects of brewing: water,
hops, grain, malt, yeast, and brewer.
Notes:
[1] For Technical University in Munich
titled: Historical depictions, guild signs and symbols of the brewing and
malting handcraft) http://www.schlenkerla.de/biergeschichte/brauerstern/html/brauerdarstellungene.html
[2] The Water System of Gibeon, 1961, Page
47, 48 ISBN 0-934718-14-8
[3] Kadmoniot, 1973, Israel pp. 2-17
