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Comment by tome | Hacker News Reader

Why's there a Star of David in the middle?

The symbol of note is not "The Star of David", but instead Ouroboros, the eternal snake... symbolized by a snake eating his own tail.

I believe he chose the symbol Ouroboros to represent the "immortality through change" of the code. In one story... Ouroboros was an immortal snake who constantly shed his skin, and took on many forms.

Similarly, this code constantly changes form, yet is immortal. While it changes form, it manages to keep its identity.

The Star of David is incidental. As far as I know... it was added to the Ouroboros symbol in the anime/manga Full Metal Alchemist, but that rendition is perhaps the most famous artistic rendition of Ouroboros in recent culture.

Ouroboros had some connotations in the classical psudo-science of Alchemy as well. So perhaps there is an earlier version of Ouroboros + Star of David.

> The Star of David is incidental. As far as I know... it was added to the Ouroboros symbol in the anime/manga Full Metal Alchemist, but that rendition is perhaps the most famous artistic rendition of Ouroboros in recent culture.

Wheel of Time series begs to differ.

The Great Serpent Ring does seem to be Ouroboros indeed... but it does not have the Star of David on it. :-p

The author, Yusuke Endoh, is Japanese though, so it stands to reason that he might be more exposed to a Japanese representation.

The "Star of David", like many Jewish symbols, has long been associated with alchemy and magic arts (and other less savoury enterprises) in classic European cultures. See for example [1] from a basic google search. This is likely why it was used in the anime, probably just to avoid the usual boring pentagram.

[1] http://www.truthperfected.com/2012/12/seal-of-solomon.html

Which means it gets shown in anime for pure Rule of Cool reasons, and then Japanese people have not the slightest idea that it's actually the flag-symbol of Jews.

It's not like I would know the standard symbol for Shintoism unless I googled it.

I think it's much simpler than that: Ruby code goes through all those languages, just to generate itself again, hence completing the cycle.

It's actually a transmutation circle symbol from the manga/anime Fullmetal Alchemist

Actually, the Ouroboros Tattoo on the villians Lust / Gluttony / Greed / etc. etc. from Full Metal Alchemist, of whom were created using the human transmutation circle (getting into the details of which would be spoilers...).

Ex: Wrath's tattoo is in his eye:

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130406001619/fma/ima...

a) The author is Jewish

b) It's semantically relevant

(Probably the latter. Same goes for the typo in the copyright notice in the end.)

Both semantically and semitically relevant, in other words.

I did consider a) but I'm pretty sure "Yusuke Endoh" is not Jewish.

He's Japanese, and one of the authors of the Ruby programming language

Being Japanese doesn't actually preclude you from being Jewish. It makes it highly unlikely... but not impossible.

True.. but you're more likely to find a Japanese Mormon than a Japanese Jew.

Why do people always ask this? Last time it was in the Visual Website Optimizer thread.

Why people shouldn't ask? Especially when it is not obvious how something is relevant.

A fan of Chinese Checkers?

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