Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Star of David


The star of David, as you can see from the picture, is composed of two equilateral triangles, one pointing up and one pointing down. Today I would like to talk about the four alchemical symbols that can be derived, and some implications for us.

The symbols of the four alchemical elements, fire (an upward-pointing triangle), water (a downward-pointing triangle), air (an upward-pointing triangle with a horizontal line through it) and earth (a downward-pointing triangle with a horizontal line), are contained within the star of David. The word "elements" in this context does not mean elements like hydrogen and oxygen. Instead, they are more like qualities or states of being. Or if you like, you can think of them as the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas and plasma (not as in blood, but matter so hot that the atoms can't hold their electrons anymore).

Now let us consider the obvious combination of the fire and water triangles. Fire is active and water passive. From the Gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the (Father's) domain]
This is talking about making a union of opposites. For us, one example would be integrating the conscious and subconscious minds.

Now for the combination of earth and air. If air is read as heaven, this calls to mind an old saying: "Bring earth to heaven and heaven to earth." This is really what we are about as recovering materialists. So how do we do this? Stay tuned.

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