Abstract

This paper focuses on the visual symbols of religions. I would like to analyze three religious symbols from the viewpoint of how they can be used to express religious-philosophical and theological theories. The first example is a tribal symbol of a shaman drum from Central-Asia, the second is a Medieval Christian motif with the main animal symbols of Christianity in a concentric circle-structure, and the third is the Chinese Taoist symbol of Bagua with the eight octagonal trigrams and the Yin and Yang motif in its center. All of them have a central geometrical structure and complex visual content. Naturally, they have different cultural-religious background, subject matter, and themes, as we can understand their precise meanings during their semantic examination. However, when they are submitted to a syntactic analysis, the similar visual logic in their compositions is clearly visible. According to the syntactic analyses, with the help of the theory and method of visual semiotics and iconography, we can analyze the common cognitive schemes in different religious symbols.