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 flame from the angel’s sword in the garden of Eden has been catalysed into the atom bomb; God’s thunderbolt became blunted, so man’s dunderbolt has become the steel star of destruction.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell’s major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)