❂ | Guanche sun

Google Guanche+sun, sol+guanche, sol+canario+simbolo etc. etc. and you’re bound to see this symbol. Come to any souvenir shop in Canaries and you’ll see it there.

I am not sure that it is even a solar symbol, maybe it is a star. It is known though that Guanches worshipped a solar deity named Magec.

I couldn’t find much information about this symbol on the web; it looks like most common “Guanche” design is based on the pintadera no. 3080 in El Museo Canario [M.ª del Carmen Cruz de Mercadal, Teresa Delgado Darias, Javier Velasco Vázquez, Pintaderas de El Museo Canario; El Museo Canario, 2013].

This symbol is based on a regular octagram (Schläfli symbol {8/3}) and not on the Star of Lakshmi (Schläfli symbol {8/2}) and its variants, Rub el Hizb and al-Quds star. However, you can clearly see that the eight intersecting lines of the octagram form the Star of Lakshmi which is completely covered by a circle in the “Guanche sun”.

More photos related to Guanches, sun, stars, octagrams and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

🟐 | al-Quds star

The al-Quds star (Arabic نجمة القدس, najmat al-Quds, “star of Jerusalem”) is an eight-pointed star associated, as its name suggests, with Jerusalem. It is said to be inspired by the octagonal ground-plan of the Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem as well as by the Rub el Hizb symbol ۞.

Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in his illuminating article on Humayun’s mausoleum that

the eight-pointed star has also been observed to have existed in various renditions with civilizations and cultures. <...> The Islamic Najmat-al-Quds and its predecessor the Rub-el-Hizb, however, are two unique variations of the eight-pointed star that inherits at its core a set of overlapping squares and a symbol that can be more strongly and clearly traced to similar Roman-Byzantine designs that existed in the east <than to the star of Ishtar>, especially during Christianity’s early phase. Attested by findings in Akhmim, upper Egypt, by archaeologist Albert Kendrick in 1920, which revealed their existence in Christian graves, dating back to between the 2^nd and 4^th century A.D. — approximately two hundred years before the advent of Islam.

More photos of stars, octagrams and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

Star of Lakshmi

If we remove the little circle from Rub el Hizb ۞, we’ll get the Star of Lakshmi, a symbol representing Ashta Lakshmi (Sanskrit अष्टलक्ष्मी, Aṣṭalakṣmi), the eight manifestations of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth.

Is the Star of Lakshmi the ancestor of Rub el Hizb? After all, what we call now “Arabic numerals” were invented in India. The Arabs could well have adopted Star of Lakshmi for their purposes too.

Or these two symbols may have emerged independently. To me, the Star of Lakshmi looks the only elegant way to put one square on top of another.

More photos of stars, octagrams and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

۞ | Rub el Hizb

The Rub el Hizb (Arabic ربع الحزب‎, rubʿ al-ḥizb) is an Islamic symbol consisting of two overlapping squares with a circle in its centre. The symbol is used in the Qur’an to indicate the end of a chapter.

Rub el Hizb and its variation, the al-Quds star, are featured on a number of flags, coats of arms and emblems. Curiously, or maybe not, the modern coat of arms of Uzbekistan looks very much like the old coat of arms of Uzbek SSR, except the place of hammer and sickle ☭ is now taken by much larger Huma bird while the Rub El Hizb replaced the red star ★. Yet the five-pointed star is not gone: the star and crescent ☪ now live within the Rub El Hizb.

More photos of stars, octagrams and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

✴ | star of Ishtar

The eight-pointed Star of Inanna or Star of Ishtar (Arabic: نجمة عشتار , najmat eshtar) is a most common symbol of the Sumerian goddess (of sex, war, justice, and political power, in that order) Inanna and her Semitic equivalent Ishtar/Astarte. Because of the association with the planet Venus, the symbol is also known as the Star of Venus.

More photos of stars and sea glass @ Shutterstock.