Mandau with some unusual motifs

[David]

Originally Posted by VVV

David, I don't have my reference books around me now but somewhere I read that the double square star is a variation within the family of supposed seals of Solomon (the other ones are the pentacle and the hexagram, aka Star or Shield of David). As you probably know, no one really knows what the mythic seal of Solomon really looked like.
Cato calls it the ring of Solomon but I haven't seen that anywhere else.
Anyway it's not to be mixed up with the chaos star, which is also an eight-pointed star that is sometimes used as a "pentacle" in "modern ritual magic".

I think you might be confusing the "Seal of Solomon" (which as you correctly noted, no one truly knows which symbol was used) with the "Keys of Solomon", which are sigils meant for the calling and controlling of demons. These sigil keys actually have nothing to do with the historic Solomon, first turning up sometime in the 14th century and followed up later in the 17th century with the "Lesser Key of Solomon". I have never seen any that look exactly like your Moro symbols in amongst the Keys. And when summoning demons it is best to be exact about such things so i doubt that this symbol relates to any of these "Solomomic" symbols. I am not sure why Cato makes the connection to Solomon at all. The "Ring of Solomon" in the traditional sense refers to the legendary signet ring on which the seal was held. As you have mentioned there is a bit of a split camp on whether this seal held the symbol of a Hexagram (most popular) or a Pentagram, but i have never seen or heard of an eight-pointed star being used as Solomon's Seal.
Even though these rings on the Moro swords do not hold to a fixed number i would not count out the significance of the number in each example. It is all together possible that each one of these groupings hold an individual talismanic meaning based on the number of rings.

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by David

I think you might be confusing the "Seal of Solomon" (which as you correctly noted, no one truly knows which symbol was used) with the "Keys of Solomon", which are sigils meant for the calling and controlling of demons. These sigil keys actually have nothing to do with the historic Solomon, first turning up sometime in the 14th century and followed up later in the 17th century with the "Lesser Key of Solomon". I have never seen any that look exactly like your Moro symbols in amongst the Keys. And when summoning demons it is best to be exact about such things so i doubt that this symbol relates to any of these "Solomomic" symbols. I am not sure why Cato makes the connection to Solomon at all. The "Ring of Solomon" in the traditional sense refers to the legendary signet ring on which the seal was held. As you have mentioned there is a bit of a split camp on whether this seal held the symbol of a Hexagram (most popular) or a Pentagram, but i have never seen or heard of an eight-pointed star being used as Solomon's Seal.
Even though these rings on the Moro swords do not hold to a fixed number i would not count out the significance of the number in each example. It is all together possible that each one of these groupings hold an individual talismanic meaning based on the number of rings.

David, thank you so much for this excellent clarification! I had mentioned in my earlier post I thought I had seen this squared device among either magical sigils or perhaps among some material including Mamluk artwork and Islamic arms. In the carnage here after digging out tons of notes, I found and undated reference with this figure (from the Moro keris post #7) and it notes from 'Cato' as 'Solomons Ring'. Clearly his reference is miscaptioned, but it does note this device does appear on Moro weapons.
As you well note there is a great deal of misinterpretation and confusion concerning magical devices; cabbalistic sigils; alchemical symbols and various religiously based symbols and allegories. I think is largely why attention to these kinds of markings is typically avoided in arms literature, unfortunately inadvertantly often adding to the dilemma.

All best regards,
Jim

[VVV]

Thanks Jim and David for your input.
In this case I doubt that we can use European demonological sources, like the Keys of Solomon or the later Goetia, as David referred to. Instead I think we should focus on either universal Islamic sources (like Jim suggested with the Mamluks) or maybe Indian or Malay sources if we can't find it in Moro sources. I don't have the reference book around at the moment where I once found it as related to the talismanic signs attributed to Solomon (probably it was in one of Westermarck's books).
However, when googling I found this page that maybe gives some explanations why Cato thought it was the "Ring of Solomon" (compare "Sisinga Solaiman" in Cato with Sibniyyah Sulayman)?

http://islamic-arts.org/2011/the-eight-point-star/

Michael