Solar symbol


A solar symbol is a symbol representing the Sun.
Common solar symbols include circles, crosses, and spirals.
In religious iconography, personifications of the Sun or solar attributes are indicated by means of a halo or a radiate crown.
When the systematic study of comparative mythology first became popular in the 19th century, scholarly opinion tended to over-interpret historical myths and iconography in terms of "solar symbolism".
This was especially the case with Max Müller and his followers beginning in the 1860s in the context of Indo-European studies. Many "solar symbols" claimed in the 19th century, such as the swastika, triskele, Sun cross, etc. have tended to be interpreted more conservatively in scholarship since the later 20th century.

Solar disk

The basic element of most solar symbols is the circular solar disk.
The disk can be modified in various ways, notably by adding rays or a cross. In the ancient Near East, the solar disk could also be modified by addition of the Uraeus, and in ancient Mesopotamia it was shown with wings.

Bronze Age writing

have a large inventory of solar symbolism because of the central position of solar deities in ancient Egyptian religion.
The main ideogram for "Sun" was a representation of the solar disk, N5, with a variant including the Uraeus, N6.

The "Sun" ideogram in early Chinese writing, beginning with the oracle bone script also shows the solar disk with a central dot ; this character later evolved to have a different shape.

Astronomical symbol

The modern astronomical symbol for the Sun was first used in the Renaissance. A diagram in Johannes Kamateros' 12th century Compendium of Astrology shows the Sun represented by a circle with a ray. Bianchini's planisphere, produced in the 2nd century,
has a circlet with rays radiating from it.

Rayed depictions

A circular disk with alternating triangular and wavy rays emanating from it is a frequent symbol or artistic depiction of the sun.

Antiquity

The ancient Mesopotamian "star of Shamash" could be represented with either eight wavy rays, or with four wavy and four triangular rays.
The Vergina Sun is a rayed solar symbol appearing in ancient Greek art from the 6th to 2nd centuries BC. The Vergina Sun appears in art variously with sixteen, twelve, or eight triangular rays.

Sun with face

The iconographic tradition of depicting the Sun with rays and with a human face developed in Western tradition in the high medieval period and became widespread in the Renaissance, harking back to the Sun god wearing a radiate crown in classical antiquity.

Sunburst

The sunburst was the badge of king Edward III of England, and has thus become the badge of office of Windsor Herald.

Modern emblems

Official insignia which incorporate rayed solar symbols include the Jesuit emblem, the flag of Uruguay, the flag of Kiribati, some versions of the flag of Argentina, the Irish Defence Forces cap badge, and the :File:Iraq state emblem CoA 1959-1965 Qassem.svg|1959–1965 coat of arms of Iraq.
The depictions of the sun on the flags of the Republic of China, Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, and Nepal have only straight rays; that of Kyrgyzstan has only curvy rays; while that of the Philippines has short diverging rays grouped into threes.
Another rayed form of the sun has simple radial lines dividing the background into two colors, as in the military flags of Japan and the current flag of the Republic of Macedonia, and in the top parts of the flags of Tibet and Arizona.
The flag of New Mexico is based on the Zia sun symbol which has four groups of four parallel rays emanating symmetrically from a central circle.

Modern pictogram

The modern pictogram representing the Sun as a circle with rays, often eight in number indicates "clear weather" in weather forecasts, originally in television forecasts in the 1970s.
The Unicode 6.0 Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block introduced another set of weather pictograms, including "white sun" without rays 1F323, as well as "sun with face" U+1F31E.
The "sun with rays" pictogram is also used to represent the "high brightness" setting in display devices, encoded separately by Unicode 6.0 U+1F506 .

Crosses

The "sun cross" or "solar wheel" is often considered to represent the four seasons and the tropical year, and therefore the Sun.
In the prehistoric religion of Bronze Age Europe, crosses in circles appear frequently on artifacts identified as cult items. An example from the Nordic Bronze Age is the "miniature standard" with amber inlay revealing a cross shape when held against the light. The Bronze Age symbol has also been connected with the spoked chariot wheel, which at the time was four-spoked. In the context of a culture that celebrated the Sun chariot, the wheel may thus have had a solar connotation.
The Arevakhach symbol often found in Armenian memorial stelae is claimed as an ancient Armenian solar symbol of eternity and light.
Some Sami shaman drums have the Beaivi Sami sun symbol that resembles a sun cross.
The swastika can be derived from the sun cross, and is another solar symbol in some contexts.
It is used among Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus; and many other cultures, though not necessarily as a solar symbol. Also see Malkh-Festival.
Some forms of the triple spiral or triskelion signs have also been claimed as solar symbols.
The "Black Sun" is a symbol of esoteric and occult significance based on a sun wheel mosaic with twelve-fold rotational symmetry incorporated into a floor of Wewelsburg Castle during the Nazi era, which was itself loosely based on swastika-like designs in Migration-period Zierscheiben. The Kolovrat, or in Polish "Kołowrót", represents the Sun in Slavic neopaganism.