Nine-pointed star

A nine-pointed star is a star-shaped polygon with nine points. Though not an official symbol of the Bahá’í Faith, it is nevertheless commonly used in Bahá’í contexts. This is because of the significance of the number nine, which is the numerological value of the word Bahá’ according to the system commonly used in 19th century Persia. The number nine could therefore be substituted for Bahá’, and vice-versa. Shoghi Effendi explained that the nine-pointed star is "only used as an emblem representing ‘9’."

Nine-pointed stars can be typed using word processors; at least one commonly available font, Microsoft's Wingdings, contains a symbol resembling a nine-pointed star. The Unicode standard has included a nine-pointed star symbol in its official character set since version 15 (codepoint U+1F7D9; 🟙). This character can be displayed on a variety of computer systems as long as the system supports Unicode version 15 or later and supports fonts which include glyphs for it, such as Google's Noto Sans Symbols 2.

Symbolism

Despite its common use in Bahá’í contexts, the nine-pointed star is not an official symbol of the Bahá’í Faith; rather, Shoghi Effendi stated that the Haykal, or five-pointed star, is the symbol of the Faith, "as used by the Báb and explained by Him." The nine-pointed star, he explained, "is not a part of the teachings of our Faith, but only used as an emblem representing ‘9’." The Universal House of Justice has confirmed that neither the Greatest Name nor the nine-pointed star are symbols of the Faith "in the sense that the cross is the symbol of Christianity or the crescent the symbol of Islam." Nevertheless, Shoghi Effendi approved the use of the nine-pointed star as a symbol in certain contexts.

Mary Hanford Ford described the nine-pointed star as "the symbol of divine manifestation belonging to the new day".

Design and variants

Bahai.media has a related category: Nine-pointed stars

The design of the nine-pointed star was developed by Louis Bourgeois, architect of the House of Worship in Wilmette, USA, along with other Bahá’ís.

In Star of the West

One of the earliest uses of the design was on the frontispieces of collections of the magazine Star of the West. An initial design featuring a star with an inscribed circle displaying the number 9 inside it was used for collections of Volume 2 through 10 of the magazine (1911–1920). A second design similar to a sunburst, again displaying the number nine inside, was used for Volumes 11 and 12 (1920–1922). A design containing a star with a second star inscribed inside, all surrounded by an ornate nine-sided illumination was used for Volumes 13 and 14 (1922–1924). Volumes 15 and onwards did not feature a nine-pointed star design.

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  Nine-pointed star from Star of the West magazine (Vol. 2)
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  Nine-pointed star from Star of the West magazine (Vol. 11)
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  Nine-pointed star from Star of the West magazine (Vol. 13)

Other variants

The nine-pointed star is generally depicted as a {9/3} enneagram, i.e., a nine-sided compound polygon which can be traced from three equilateral triangles. It is sometimes depicted with an inscribed circle or a complementary design in its interior. The star should be oriented with a single point facing upwards.

Many variants of the nine-pointed star design can be found, some of which are shown below.

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  Plain design
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  Black star with inscribed white circle
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  Three overlapping triangles ({9/3} enneagram)
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  Interlaced {9/2} enneagram
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  {9/4} enneagram
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  Star with inscribed circle and the ringstone symbol
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  Star with inscribed circle and the Greatest Name
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  Rounded design with inner star

Uses of the nine-pointed star

Architecture

Bahai.media has a related category: Nine-pointed stars in architecture

‘Abdu’l-Bahá specified that Bahá’í Houses of Worship must be built with nine sides:

“ As to the design of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár: it should resemble the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of ‘Ishqábád. That is, it must be a nine-sided edifice... ”

Shoghi Effendi explains that this nine-fold symmetry is "because of the association of 9 with perfection, unity and Bahá’". As a result, when viewed from above, the nine sides of Houses of Worship often appear to form the shape of a nine-pointed star.

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  The Bahá’í House of Worship in Tanna, Vanuatu.
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  Architectural drawing of the Lotus Temple.
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  Architectural drawing of the Bahá’í House of Worship in Ishqábád.

Nine-pointed stars can also be found as decorative elements of Houses of Worship; for example, Louis Bourgeois, architect of the Wilmette House of Worship, incorporated nine-pointed stars in many parts of its design.

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  Original architectural drawing of the Wilmette House of Worship by Louis Bourgeois.
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  Star with an inscribed circle, as seen on a model for the House of Worship.
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  Detail of the House of Worship, with several nine-pointed stars and nine-petalled floral designs visible.
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  Nine-pointed stars on an entrance at the Sydney House of Worship.
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  Participants enter the House of Worship in Kinshasa for a devotional program.

Headstones

Shoghi Effendi approved the use of nine-pointed stars on headstones at the graves of deceased Bahá’ís; he considered the Greatest Name "too sacred for use on tombstones."

Signage

The nine-pointed star is used on signage related to the Bahá’í Faith, including at Bahá’í centres.

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  National Bahá’í Centre of the Philippines.
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  National Bahá’í Centre of Romania.
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  National Bahá’í Centre of Thailand.
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  Former National Bahá’í Centre of Vietnam, 1973.
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  Bahá’í Centre of Huahine, Tahiti.
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  Bahá’í Centre of Ottawa, Canada.
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  Bahá’í Centre of Portland, Oregon.

Using the star on computers

A glyph depicting a nine-pointed star was added to version 15 of the Unicode standard after it was proposed in 2020. Prior to this, and so far the mostly used option to add stars to documents, Microsoft's Wingdings font is used for the character that looks like a nine-pointed star with an inscribed circle, corresponding to ASCII code 0x52, or the uppercase letter R. This symbol, known as "sunshine", corresponds to the Unicode character U+263C (☼, WHITE SUN WITH RAYS), which has eight rather than nine rays.

Installing supporting fonts

The following publicly available fonts have support for the nine-pointed star already:

• Noto Sans Symbols 2
• Nishiki-teki
• Catrinity
• Katica, a SerenityOS font
• JuliaMono - a monospaced font for scientific and technical computing
• Courier Badi, a monospace font, adapted from Courier Prime
• DejaVu Sans Bahai, an adaptation of DejaVu Sans made by me for the Bahá'í Esperanto League

ChromeOS fully supports the star since version 135.

Support on Android has been asked for through the update of Noto Sans Symbols 2, but has not yet been picked up. Requests for adding the star to Segoe UI has been submitted. Apple uses Noto fallback fonts but those might not yet be updated and might not include Noto Sans Symbols 2 yet, when it does the star should be supported on Apple platforms as well. Unofficially adapted fonts exist too.

On Linux, installing any of these fonts should be enough to have full system support. Noto Fonts are offered in most distributions to provide proper fallback, which means it might already be working for you.

On MacOS, download Noto Sans Symbols 2 or any other font from the list above, open the zip, open the font file and select Install. It should start working shortly after. If you are not seeing it in the Chrome browser, clear cache and restart the browser and it should start showing.

On Windows you can add system-wide support by installing the unofficially adapted Segoe UI Symbols or wait until Microsoft adds the star officially to one of their fonts.

On mobile we will have to wait until the system fonts add support.

SerenityOS supports the star through the Katica font, which seems to port the characters from the Noto project.

Inserting the star

When any of these fonts are installed, you can insert the star by any of the following ways or through the character picker screen of your system.

• In LibreOffice and Word and some similar programs you can enter it by typing 1f7d9 followed by Alt-X.
• On Linux and ChromeOS you can insert it almost anywhere by typing Ctrl-Shift-U 1f7d9 Enter.
• On Mac, other than using the character picker, you can activate Unicode Hex Input in your keyboard options and type D83DDFD9 while holding Option.
• The Google Docs character picker also supports the star, however until the server side is updated, PDF export only works on your own system provided you have local support.

See also

Reddit has related posts about the nine-pointed star:

• Questions about symbols.

• Ringstone Symbol
• Greatest Name
• Haykal

External links

• Nine, bahai9.com