Is the Seal of Solomon the same as the Star of David?

They are the same shape with different histories. As the Seal of Solomon it is a magical sign used across Islamic and Jewish magic since late antiquity. As the Magen David it is a communal emblem, first granted to the Jews of Prague as a community flag by Charles IV in the fourteenth century, spread through central and eastern Europe, adopted at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and placed on the flag of Israel in 1948.

Is it five-pointed or six-pointed?

Both, depending on the source. The legend of Solomon's ring attaches to a pentagram in some texts and a hexagram in others, and both figures are called the Seal of Solomon in the magical literature. The six-pointed version is the more common in Islamic and Jewish amulets.

Protection, chiefly against jinn, demons, illness and the evil eye. In practice the figure most often works as a frame: names, letters and verses are written into its six points and central hexagon, and the writing carries the authority.

Can a non-Jewish or non-Muslim person use it?

As a historical magical sign it has never been restricted and was used across communities and languages. As a modern Jewish emblem it carries identity weight, and wearing it as jewellery will usually be read that way regardless of intent. Gershom Scholem's point is relevant here: the shape became a communal marker only in the last six or seven centuries, and its magical career is far older and far more widely shared.

What are the seven seals of Solomon?

A fixed sequence of seven signs, including a star, a pentagram-like figure and several letter-like marks, used as a unit in Islamic magic. They appear together on amulets, bowls and manuscripts across the Islamic world and are treated as a single formula rather than as seven separate charms.

Talismans · Signs and seals

The Seal of Solomon

Also called: Hexagram, khatam Sulayman, magen David

Two triangles locked together, named for the ring by which a king was said to command spirits.

At a glance

Shape: Two interlocking equilateral triangles
Arabic name: Khatam Sulayman
Hebrew name: Magen David
In magic since: Late antiquity; Testament of Solomon, 1st c. CE
Communal emblem since: Prague, 14th century, onward
Also drawn as: A five-pointed star under the same name

The sign and the legend

Two equilateral triangles overlaid at sixty degrees, producing a six-pointed star with a hexagon at the centre. Sometimes drawn in one line, sometimes as two distinct triangles, and often with letters or names written into the six points and the middle.

The legend behind it is not biblical. The apocryphal Testament of Solomon, whose core is usually dated to the first centuries CE, describes a signet ring given to Solomon and engraved with the ineffable name of God, by which he compelled demons, the demon king Ashmedai among them, to labour on the Temple. Islamic tradition tells the same story with the jinn, and Solomon's authority over them is a Quranic premise rather than a folk one. The engraved figure on that ring is the seal. Confusingly, the legend attaches to a five-pointed star in some sources and a six-pointed one in others, and both are called the Seal of Solomon in the magical literature.

In Islamic and Jewish magic

In Islamic magic the khatam Sulayman is one of the most heavily used signs there is. It appears on amulets, bowls, coins, banners, mosque decoration and manuscript diagrams from Morocco to Indonesia, frequently with the seven signs known as the seven seals.

Jewish magical use runs alongside it. The hexagram appears on amulets, in Sefer Raziel and related literature, on protective bowls and parchments, and throughout the magical material recovered from the Cairo Genizah, generally as a container for divine names rather than as a power in itself. Rabbinic attitudes to amulets varied widely, and the sign's magical career sat somewhat uneasily beside the mainstream tradition.

Early appearances of the shape are not evidence of Jewish communal meaning. A hexagram occurs on a seventh-century BCE seal from Sidon and in the third-century CE synagogue at Capernaum, but at Capernaum it sits alongside swastikas and other geometric ornament, which is decorative or broadly apotropaic rather than emblematic.

How it became a communal emblem

The hexagram's identification with Jewish identity is much later than most people assume, and the fifty years Gershom Scholem spent on the question are the reason we can say so with confidence.

The turn comes in the fourteenth century, when Emperor Charles IV granted the Jews of Prague the right to bear their own community flag and the hexagram went on it. From Prague it spread through the printing presses and cemeteries of central and eastern Europe, was widely adopted in the nineteenth century as a counterpart to the cross, was taken up by the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, and reached the flag of Israel in 1948.

Scholem's argument about why it was chosen is worth keeping: the hexagram won precisely because it carried no deep theological freight of its own. Unlike the menorah it was close to a blank sign, and a blank sign could unify a modern movement.

That trajectory matters for how the shape is read now. A hexagram on an eighteenth-century Moroccan amulet is a magical figure with no national meaning. The same shape on a chain today is almost always an identity statement. The library keeps the two apart rather than folding one into the other.

Why triangles

The commonest interpretation, and it is a late one, reads the upward triangle as fire and the downward as water, or spirit and matter, locked in balance. The scheme is Renaissance European and was applied to the hexagram after the fact.

Earlier magical use is less interested in what the triangles mean and more interested in what the figure does: it produces seven distinct compartments, six points and a centre, and those compartments hold names. A great many surviving amulets use the star purely as a grid for writing in, which tells you how the makers were thinking about it.

How the seal is made and used

In both traditions the figure is a frame for text more often than an image in its own right.

Draw the two triangles, either as one continuous line or as two separate strokes; sources differ and both are used.
Write divine names, letters or Quranic text into the six points and the central hexagon.
Engrave it on silver for a pendant or a ring, or write it on parchment or paper to be folded and cased.
In Islamic practice it is often combined with the seven seals, a fixed sequence of signs used as a unit.
Set it over a doorway, in a manuscript's opening page, or on a bowl whose inside is written in a spiral.

If you want the magical sign rather than the modern emblem, the historical models to look at are Islamic amulets and Jewish parchment kame'ot, not contemporary jewellery.

What the Seal of Solomon belongs with

The signs and materials it shares a tradition with.

Questions for reflection

The same shape is a magical sign in one century and a national flag in another. Does the older meaning survive that?
Most surviving examples use the star as a grid to write names in. What does that suggest about where the power was thought to sit?
Two traditions used this sign heavily and neither is entirely comfortable about amulets. How do practices survive their own theologians?

Frequently asked questions

: They are the same shape with different histories. As the Seal of Solomon it is a magical sign used across Islamic and Jewish magic since late antiquity. As the Magen David it is a communal emblem, first granted to the Jews of Prague as a community flag by Charles IV in the fourteenth century, spread through central and eastern Europe, adopted at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and placed on the flag of Israel in 1948.
: Both, depending on the source. The legend of Solomon's ring attaches to a pentagram in some texts and a hexagram in others, and both figures are called the Seal of Solomon in the magical literature. The six-pointed version is the more common in Islamic and Jewish amulets.
: Protection, chiefly against jinn, demons, illness and the evil eye. In practice the figure most often works as a frame: names, letters and verses are written into its six points and central hexagon, and the writing carries the authority.
: As a historical magical sign it has never been restricted and was used across communities and languages. As a modern Jewish emblem it carries identity weight, and wearing it as jewellery will usually be read that way regardless of intent. Gershom Scholem's point is relevant here: the shape became a communal marker only in the last six or seven centuries, and its magical career is far older and far more widely shared.
: A fixed sequence of seven signs, including a star, a pentagram-like figure and several letter-like marks, used as a unit in Islamic magic. They appear together on amulets, bowls and manuscripts across the Islamic world and are treated as a single formula rather than as seven separate charms.

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