Star Polygons in Art and Culture
Star polygons feature prominently in art and culture. Such polygons may or may not be regular but they are always highly symmetrical. Examples include:
- The {5/2} star pentagon is also known as a pentagram, pentalpha or pentangle, and historically has been considered by many magical and religious cults to have occult significance.
- The simplest non-degenerate complex star polygon which is two {6/2} polygons (i.e., triangles), the hexagram (Star of David, Seal of Solomon).
- The {7/3} and {7/2} star polygons which are known as heptagrams and also have occult significance, particularly in the Kabbalah and in Wicca.
- The complex {8/2} star polygon (i.e. two squares), which is known as the Star of Lakshmi and figures in Hinduism;
- The {8/3} star polygon (octagram), and the complex star polygon of two {16/6} polygons, which are frequent geometrical motifs in Mughal Islamic art and architecture; the first is on the coat of arms of Azerbaijan.
- An eleven pointed star called the hendecagram, which apparently was used on the tomb of Shah Nemat Ollah Vali.
Some symbols based on a star polygon have interlacing, by small gaps, and/or, in the case of a star figure, using different colors.
Read more about this topic: Star Polygon
Famous quotes containing the words star, art and/or culture:
“The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“It’s important as a writer to do my art well and do it in a way that is powerful and beautiful and meaningful, so that my work regenerates the people, certainly Indian people, and the earth and the sun. And in that way we all continue forever.”
—Joy Harjo (b. 1951)
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)