Stone Workshop Ein Yael

Star of David stone at a Workshop in Ein Yael, Jerusalem.

Alchemy

Carl G Liungman wrote on his book Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms (2004, Page 256) that The Star of David serves as a general symbol of the art of alchemy and that it stands for a combination of water and fire. Sometimes it replaces the words "drink!" Or "swallow!" It is also a symbol for quintessence, the fifth element after air and earth and fire and water; which was believed to be the purest and essence of something.

On the New Alchemy Website I found a drawing from 1625 of Nature (Half naked Woman with four breasts, indicating wholeness) bearing the shinning Star of David - symbol of the lumen naturae (Light Of the Darkness, which illuminates it's own darkness, like exploring a dark cave with a candle, not with a torch).

Remo F. Roth wrote an online book titled The Archetype of the Holy Wedding in Alchemy and in the Unconscious of Modern Man where he says that the Star of David is used

In the mysticism of all five-world religions: in the Kabbalah, in Christian mysticism… in the heart chakra of Buddhist and Hindu Tantrism and in Muslim Sufism. It is always connected to the heart, the symbol of the Eros principle in the original and broadest sense of the word

Remo Roth's online book is an excellent introduction to Alchemy. I was taught there a lot of new and surprising things e.g. that the unity of the opposites, about which I heard a lot in Jewish sources, is in fact the main issue Alchemy deals with…

On the lamp - hexagram

Source: Musaeum Hermeticum  

alchemy book, Frankfurt, 1625

Source: Wikipedia Entry: Musaeum Hermeticum.

Ein Yael

Archaeologist Gershon Edelstein found a Christian Star of David in a mosaic floor in Ein Yael (En Yalu), in south Jerusalem’s Rephaim Valley, in a farm with a Roman villa from mid-third-century A.D. He wrote about it a long report from which I quote:
In the last week of the 1988 season, we uncovered the mosaic floor of the circular room of the bathhouse, a floor encircled by a triple-twisted rope pattern, familiar to us from the mosaics in the living area of the villa. However, to our surprise a double-twisted rope in the center forms a hexagram, the familiar six-pointed star, or Shield of David (in Hebrew, Magen David).
Yehudah Rapuano, who participated in the excavations, discusses in his article the possibility that this place commemorated Philip’s baptism of the eunuch, related in Acts 8.
I went to see this Star of David in the mosaic floor in Ein Yael and to take a photo of it, but it was taken for reconstruction and I don't know when they will put it back.

German Pentateuch

There's a Star of David on the c. 1300 illumination for the Duke of Sussex Pentateuch and in it there's an elephant. The book is located nowadays in the British Library in London.

On page 61 in his book Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature (1997) Marc Michael Epstein claims that in the beginning of the 14th century for medieval German Jews the Star of David represented the Torah.

The Duke of Sussex's German Pentateuch was written and illuminated by a scribe-artist known as Hayyim, working in southern Germany around 1300

Messianic Seal

In 1990 Tech Otecus, an old monk who lived as a hermit in the Old City of Jerusalem, showed Ludwig Schneider, editor of "Israel today" magazine, a collection of artifacts he found in a cave on Mount Zion. On some of these artifacts there was engraved a Star of David between a Menorah at the top and a fish at the bottom. Otecus said that in the 1960s he had personally excavated about 40 artifacts bearing the Messianic Seal from an ancient grotto located in Mount Zion. The Israeli Museum never published these findings. Maybe they suspected they are faked.
Faked or not the Messianic Jews use this symbol as their logo, and explain that the Star of David stands for Judaism while the fish stands for Jesus.

The Essence of a Symbol

In Temple Beth El on June 2001 the Rabbi gave a sermon about the Star of David. I liked his
Introduction about the essence of a symbol:
"A symbol," according to Mircea Eliade, "speaks to the whole human being and not only to the intelligence." Symbols are powerful, often eliciting strong emotional reactions, both positive and negative”.
Like most of the general reviews on this subject the Rabbi from Temple Beth El doesn't mention Uri Ofir's theory that the origin of the Star of David is from the Tabernacle about a year after the exodus. For any future sermon - I sent him the link...

Driving Blessing

I found a very nicely designed Star of David on a Driving Blessing wrote by Rabbi Janet Marder of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos, California. The Hebrew words for "choose life" form two of the six triangles and the rest is made by the conventional lines of the emblem.
The Driving Blessing includes a presentation that Jewish parents may give to their child upon receiving his driver's license. Getting this license is a life cycle event, which signifies independence and taking responsibilities.
The same design of a Star of David is on Choose-Life Key Ring that is offered on the same website.
This is a modern and updated ritual and I guess the more people will hear about it the more they will use it.