What is a merkaba?

The geometry

Two tetrahedra, one cube

Take a cube and pick every other corner: you get 4 corners that are all the same distance apart. Joined up they make a tetrahedron. The other 4 corners make a second one, pointing the opposite way. Together they are the star tetrahedron, so its 8 points are exactly the 8 corners of a cube. Press Show cube to check.

Every edge is a diagonal across one face of the cube. A cube has 6 faces with 2 diagonals each, 12 in all: 6 for each tetrahedron. The two sets of edges cross at the middle of every cube face, and the space both tetrahedra share is an octahedron. Press Show core.

Look straight down from one point and it becomes a flat six-pointed star. The near tetrahedron shows as one triangle, the far one as a triangle turned upside down. Press Look down the axis.

Its real name is the stella octangula. MathWorld: “The name ‘stella octangula’ is due to Kepler (1611).” Luca Pacioli had already drawn it in 1509, and MathWorld adds: “A wireframe version of the stella octangula is sometimes known as the merkaba and imbued with mystic properties.”

The older meaning

The chariot in Ezekiel

Merkavah is the Hebrew word for a chariot. Strong’s concordance lists it as “a chariot,” and the King James Version translates it “chariot” 44 times.

It became the name for Ezekiel’s vision. In the first chapter of Ezekiel the prophet sees four living creatures, each with “four faces” and “four wings,” wheels “full of eyes round about,” and “a wheel in the middle of a wheel.” Above them: “the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone.” The word merkavah is not in that chapter; later tradition gave the throne-chariot its name. Britannica: Merkava is “the throne, or ‘chariot,’ of God as described by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1).”

It was secret teaching. The Mishnah forbids teaching it in a group: not “[the work of] the chariot in the presence of one, unless he is a sage and understands of his own knowledge.”

A whole school of mysticism grew around it. Britannica: “Merkava mysticism began to flourish in Palestine during the 1st century ad.” Its mystics, the yorde merkava, described a perilous ascent “through seven spheres, or ‘heavenly dwellings,’ manned by hostile angels,” to see the divine throne. The Talmud warns that of four sages who tried it, “one died, one went mad, one apostatized, and only Rabbi Akiba” came back with a true vision.

None of these texts describe a star or a solid. The ancient Merkabah is a chariot-throne seen in a vision, not a geometric shape.

What the tradition holds

Mer-Ka-Ba: the modern meaning

The star tetrahedron and the word were joined by Drunvalo Melchizedek in The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life (1999). He splits the word into three: “The word Mer-Ka-Ba is made up of three smaller words, Mer, Ka and Ba, which, as we are using them, came from ancient Egyptian.” Mer “refers to a specific kind of light,” Ka “refers to the individual spirit,” and Ba “is usually defined as the body or physical reality.” His conclusion: “So the Mer-Ka-Ba is a counterrotating field of light that affects spirit and body simultaneously.” His publisher describes it as “the 55-foot-diameter energy field of the human lightbody.”

What Egyptologists say about ka and ba. Britannica describes both as parts of the soul. The ka “seemed originally to have designated the protecting divine spirit of a person,” and the usual translation “double” “is incorrect.” The ba “appears in bird form, thus expressing the mobility of the soul after death.” Neither one means the body.

Is it the Star of David? Seen end on, yes, the outline is the same six-pointed star. But the Star of David is a flat sign with a separate history. Britannica: the Jewish community of Prague was the first to use it as an official symbol, and “from the 17th century on” it became “a general sign of Judaism, though it has no biblical or Talmudic authority.”