I asked about this: no one could answer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeHExWBxzso
Why does it look like cow dung?

Dibella
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYdXIx6gzq8
It looks like a flower

Julianos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfk5mSRoqxM
Why is it a pyramid?

Stendarr
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-67UfkIKII
Why the horn?

Akatosh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9Czc4sTlzE
the most famous, but no idea what that is

Those have been the symbols of the Divines since Daggerfall.

Kynareth's hawk (no idea why the Skyrim shrine looks like that), Dibella's flower, Julianos' pyramid, Stendarr's goblet/drinking horn and Aka's hourglass (now with Aka curled around it).

Obviously flower=beauty=Dibella, hawk=sky=Kynareth and hourglass=time=Akatosh but I have no idea what the others are supposed to symbolize.

Julianos' pyramid could represent his relation to mathematics and logic.

Following this line of thinking, I feel that:

Dibella=flower=beauty/female naughty bits
Akatosh=hourglass=time
Julianos=pyramid= mathematics/magic (i.e.: numerology)
Kynereth=hawk=sky
Stendarr=horn=cornucopia=gifts
Zenithar=anvil=work/crafting
Mara=knot=ties (as in familiar and friendship bonds)
Arkay=loop=life to death to rebirth (i.e.: dreamsleeve)

Talos=sword=war
or
Talos=red diamond=empire/dragonborn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYdXIx6gzq8

You see female naughty bits in there? Where?

pre-Skyrim, Stendarr's symbol was a chalice spilling-over. Now it's a drinking horn.

'Cause, you know, Vikings.

many cultures refer to female naughty-bits as a flower. that kama sutra book refers to her bits as a 'lotus'. it's not that it REALLY resembles a flower, it's just symbolic.

it's symbolism, not literal interpretation. keep that in mind for things like this; kyne's shrine looks like a wave of air, to me, and while initially a little strange it doesn't look so out of place.

Flowers are naughty bits. A bouquet is literally a bunch of genitals wrapped together in tissue paper.

Ahem. I mean it's symbolic.

And who doesn't remember their middle school science classes when they learned the parts of a flower? "This bit releases pollen that goes into that bit..."

Wait, you said that already, Jara. Damn. Anyway, even before scientific dissection, flowers and female bits have been equated for millennia. Considering that Dibella is both the goddess of six and the goddess of (more generic) beauty and art, a flower is probably the best symbol that straddles both lines without compromise.

Edit: As for Kynareth, I always viewed that as a representation of the wind, but now that I know to look for a hawk or some sort of bird, I can see it as a bird's head as well, if I look more closely. Same idea, really; she's a goddess of the open air, regardless of whether she lives in it or she IS it. Again, straddling a line.

Flowers, in art, are often referring to a woman's......hoohaa

(EXAMPLE: Georgia O' Keefe)
http://www.writedesignonline.com/history-culture/O http://thefreegeorge.com/thefreegeorge/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/vdayflower.jpg

Julianos' symbol looks like a Sith holocron.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

"Deflower" isn't the word most people use for picking daisies, just sayin'.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and bring up some pop-symbolism I picked up watching The DaVinci Code. The flower, and the shrine we're all pondering about, looks like the "chalice" that get's brought up in the story, representing fertility, sacred feminine, yadda yadda yadda.