First time I'm in this thread, so hello lovely people! CaBil asked me to come by.

what is the symbology of the Star of David?

Here's the thing - unless you're talking kabbalah or Zionism, it doesn't really have one. Even though its Hebrew name translates word-for-word to English as "the shield of David", and from what I get the assumption is that it was somehow related to King David from the bible, it didn't have any protecting properties (like, say, the cross from vampires). I don't really know anything about kabbalah, but I've heard once that marking a star of David in the air is supposed to have spiritual protective properties - but I'm really a complete ignorant when it comes to that.

It appears in a lot of Jewish art, like, say, the menorah (which was once set in the Temple). Of course, it's also now heavily connected to Zionism, being on the flag of Israel.

If you ask anything more specific, maybe I can look in deeper in that direction?

CaBil, my question on the utility of the cross before this alleged covenant thing - there were people before Christ, and cultures before Christ, and the mythology of more than one had some version of undead; after all, it's a universal theme.

Is the Christian concept that before Christ, there was no way to repel vampires? Because that's, well, no.

edit: NILLY! Hi sweetie! Would there be symbols of kabbala to ward off evil?

Hi, deb! It's so good to see a post from you.

Would there be symbols of kabbala to ward off evil?

I honestly don't know. I'm completely ignorant in these subjects. It's just through a friend of my mom's that I've heard about the factiod connected to the Star of David in the first place.

I'm thinking not...that ms. G. is right, and not cause she laughs at my jokes. This is weird...my (not so little) story's got people talking and linking stuff...what a trip.ETA: It could be that physically fighting off evil is rather a Christian preoccupation, rather like Catholics seeing Mary in stuff, but I've read about people fending off the evil eye and stuff...why not the Yellow Eye?

That's why I think Hamilton had her Jewish vampire hunters using talismans representing Torah, because the Star of David was (I believe) cultural, not spiritual.

Nilly, midway through The X-Files, there was an episode in which an Aryan Nation-style group (yes, they're exactly what they sound like: Neo-Nazis) murdered a young Jewish man, and his about to be bride, insane with grief, created a golem. She'd used some symbols that looked familiar (keeping in mind that my memory of kabbala is nearly forty years old now) and then erased them when she realised the full magnitude of what she'd done.

I'm really wondering about that. Because a golem is an ancient, ancient concept, and surely there would have been symbology as weaponry against them?

The (again, extremely little) I know about the golem is that the thing that animated it was the actual name of G*d written on its forehead, and that the way its creator stopped it was by erasing that name - it was only that power that gave the inanimate matter a spirit, so to speak.

Also, there are very few stories (again, that *I* know of) about this sort of thing - you have to be an extremely special person, both in knowledge and in personality, on order to be able to learn these things without losing your mind completely (you know how many of the real genius mathematicians also had mental ilnesses? I'm guessing it's something similar - touching the rims of the current capacity of the human ability). There are several stories about people who tried to walk in those secret paths and lost either their sanity or their lives.

YES! That's what I'm remembering; she had that symbol and erased it. I'm trying to remember if she took it off his forehead; I think she did. Need to see that episode again; it had some very well-written moments.

CaBil, my question on the utility of the cross before this alleged covenant thing - there were people before Christ, and cultures before Christ, and the mythology of more than one had some version of undead; after all, it's a universal theme.

Is the Christian concept that before Christ, there was no way to repel vampires? Because that's, well, no.

IMO, the novel that did the best job of having vampires--and the repelling of same--make the most sense is The Stress of Her Regard, by Tim Powers. Wonderful, scary-ass book that desperately needs to be back in print. (Lord Byron as vampire hunter--sexy stuff indeed.)

Oh, and just for the record, and again from very sketchy and lacking knowledge, it seems like Judaism doesn't exclude the possibility of the existence of demons and spirits, good and bad. It does forbid un-prepared people to get any hold of the knowledge required to deal with them in any way, however. There are very strict rules as to who is allowed to study kabbalah - it should be a grown-up (somewhere it's said that it should be over 40), with a wife and children and a solid family he built for himself, he should have learned all his life up until then (or, in the word-for-word translation, to fill his stomach with talmud and halakha), and to learn with somebody, never alone. Most of the movies representations of kabbalah are, therefore, quite different than most of what actually gets to take place.