Swastika: Encyclopedia - Swastika

Swastika

The swastika (from Sanskrit svastika) is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles either left-facing (卍) or right-facing (卐). It is traditionally oriented so that a main line is horizontal, though it is occasionally rotated at forty-five degrees, and the Hindu version is often decorated with a dot in each quadrant.

Swastika - Overview

The swastika is a holy symbol in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. In the West, it is more widely known as symbol of Nazism.

The motif seems to have first been used by early inhabitants of Eurasia. However, it was also adopted in Native American cultures, seemingly independently. The swastika is now used universally in religious and civil ceremonies in India. Most Indian temples, wedding, festivals and celebrations are decorated with swastikas. The symbol was introduced to Southeast Asia by Hindu kings and remains an integral part of Balinese Hinduism to this day, and a common sight in Indonesia. By the early 20th century it was widely used worldwide, and was regarded as a symbol of good luck and auspiciousness.

Since its adoption by the National Socialist German Workers Party and Adolf Hitler, the swastika has been associated with fascism, racism (white supremacy), World War II, and the Holocaust in much of the Western world. Before this, it was particularly well-recognized in Europe from the archaeological work of Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the symbol in the site of ancient Troy and who associated it with the ancient migrations of Indo-European ("Aryan") peoples.^[1] Nazi use derived from earlier German völkisch movements, for which the swastika was a symbol of "Aryan" identity, a concept that came to be equated by theorists like Alfred Rosenberg with a Nordic master race originating in northern Europe. The swastika remains a core symbol of Neo-Nazi groups, and is also regularly used by activist groups to signify the supposed Nazi-like behaviour of organizations and individuals they oppose.

Swastika - Etymology and alternative names

The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit svastika (in Devanagari, स्वस्तिक), meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck. It is composed of su- (cognate with Greek ευ-), meaning "good, well" and asti a verbal abstract to the root as "to be"; svasti thus means "well-being". The suffix -ka forms a diminutive, and svastika might thus be translated literally as "little thing associated with well-being", corresponding roughly to "lucky charm", or "thing that is auspicious".^[2] The suffix -tika also literally means mark; therefore a sometimes alternate name for swastika in India is shubhtika (literally good mark). The word first appears in the Classical Sanskrit (in the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics).

Alternative historical English spellings of the Sanskrit word include suastika and svastica. Alternative names for the shape are:

• Black Spider, to various peoples in middle and western Europe.
• crooked cross
• cross cramponned, ~nnée, or ~nny (in heraldry), as each arm resembles a crampon or angle-iron. (Compare Winkelmaßkreuz in German.)
• cross gammadion, tetragammadion or just gammadion, as each arm resembles the Greek letter Γ (gamma). (Compare croiz gammée in Old French and croix gammée in French; cruz gamada in Spanish.)
• fylfot (meaning "four feet", chiefly in heraldry and architecture). (See Fylfot for a discussion of the etymology.)
• hooked cross, (Dutch: hakenkruis,Serbian: kukasti krst, Icelandic: Hakakross German: Hakenkreuz, Finnish: hakaristi, Norwegian: Hakekors Italian: croce uncinata Romanian: Cruce încârligată and Swedish: Hakkors, Danish: Hagekors, Hungarian: horogkereszt)
• sun wheel (German Sonnenrad), a name also used as a synonym for the sun cross.
• tetraskelion, Greek "four legged", especially when composed of four conjoined legs (compare triskelion).
• Thor's hammer, from its supposed association with Thor, the Norse god of thunder, but this may be a misappropriation of a name that properly belongs to a Y-shaped or T-shaped symbol. (See Thomas Wilson, below.) - The Swastika shape appears in Icelandic grimoires where in it is named Þórshamar
• thunder cross (Latvian: perkonkrusts)
• twisted cross
• cross surprise or highlander cross (Polish : krzyzyk niespodziany lub/oraz goralski krzyz)

Swastika - History

The earliest swastika-like symbols preserved appear on pottery dating to the 5th millennium BC, as part of the "Vinca script". Pottery dating to ca. 2000 BC found at Sintashta is also decorated with the swastika symbol [3]. Swastika-like symbols also appear in Bronze and Iron Age designs of the northern Caucasus (Koban culture), and Azerbayjan, as well as of Scythians and Sarmatians [4]. In all these cultures, the swastika symbol does not appear to occupy any marked position or significance, but appears as just one form of a series of similar symbols of varying complexity.

In antiquity, the swastika was used extensively by Hittites,^[5] Celts and Greeks, among others. It occurs in other Asian, European, African and Native American cultures – sometimes as a geometrical motif, sometimes as a religious symbol. The swastika is the sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

The ubiquity of the swastika symbol is easily explained by it being a very simple symbol that will arise independently when people incise patterns on pottery or stone. Other theories attempt to establish a connection via cultural diffusion or an explanation along the lines of Carl Jung's collective unconscious.

Yet another explanation is suggested by Carl Sagan in his book Comet. Sagan reproduces an ancient Chinese manuscript that shows comet tail varieties: most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, recalling a swastika. Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world.

The swastika symbol is sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, both dating from about the sixth century BC. In Hinduism, the swastika symbolizes, in various contexts: luck, the sun, Brahma, or the concept of samsara. Buddhism in particular enjoyed great success, spreading eastward and taking hold in southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan by the end of the first millennium. The use of the swastika by the indigenous Bön faith of Tibet, as well as syncretic religions, such as Cao Dai of Vietnam and Falun Gong of China, is thought to be borrowed from Buddhism as well. Similarly, the existence of the swastika as a solar symbol among the Akan civilization of southwest Africa may have been the result of cultural transfer along the African slave routes around AD 1500.

The existence of the swastika symbol in the Americas is a clear challenge to the diffusion theory. While some have proposed that the swastika was secretly transferred to North America by an early seafaring civilization on Eurasia, a separate but parallel development of religious symbolism is considered the most likely explanation.

Swastika - Adoption of the swastika in the West

The discovery of the Indo-European language group in the 1790s led to a great effort by archaeologists to link the pre-history of European peoples to the ancient Aryans (Indo-Iranians). Following his discovery of objects bearing the swastika in the ruins of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann consulted two leading Sanskrit scholars of the day, Emile Burnouf and Max Müller. Schliemann concluded that the Swastika was a specifically Indo-European symbol. Later discoveries of the motif among the remains of the Hittites and of ancient Iran seemed to confirm this theory. This idea was taken up by many other writers, and the swastika quickly became popular in the West, appearing in many designs from the 1880s to the 1920s.

The religious meanings of the symbol were subverted in the early twentieth century when it was adopted as the emblem of the National Socialist German Workers Party. This association occurred because Nazism stated that the historical Aryans were the forefathers of modern Germans and then proposed that, because of this, the subjugation of the world by Germany was desirable, and even predestined. The swastika was used as a convenient symbol to emphasize this mythical Aryan-German correspondence. Since World War II, some Westerners see the swastika as solely a Nazi symbol, leading to incorrect assumptions about its pre-Nazi use and confusion about its sacred religious status in Hinduism.

Swastika - Geometry and symbolism

Geometrically, the swastika can be regarded as an irregular icosagon or 20-sided polygon. The arms are of varying width and are often rectilinear (but need not be). However, the proportions of the Nazi swastika were fixed: they were based on a 5x5 grid.^[6]

Characteristic is the 90° rotational symmetry (that is, the symmetry of the cyclic group C_4h) and chirality, hence the absence of reflectional symmetry, and the existence of two versions which are each other's mirror image.

The mirror-image forms are often described as:

• left-facing and (as depicted above) right-facing;
• left-hand and right-hand;
• clockwise and counterclockwise.

"Left-facing" and "right-facing" are used mostly consistently. Looking at an upright swastika, the upper arm clearly faces towards the viewer's left (卍) or right (卐). The other two descriptions are ambiguous as it is unclear if they refer to the direction of the bend in each arm or to the implied rotation of the symbol. If the latter, whether the arms lead or trail remains unclear. The terms are used inconsistently (sometimes even by the same writer) which is confusing and may obfuscate an important point, that the rotation of the swastika may have symbolic relevance.

Nazi ensigns had a through and through image, so each version was present on one side, but the Nazi flag on land was right-facing on both sides ([7], at the bottom).

The swastika is, after the simple equilateral cross (the "Greek cross"), the next most commonly found version of the cross.

Seen as a cross, the four lines emanating from the center point to the four cardinal directions. The most common association is with the Sun. Other proposed correspondences are to the visible rotation of the night sky in the Northern Hemisphere around Polaris.

Swastika - Sauwastika

See main article: Sauwastika

The name sauwastika is sometimes given for the supposedly "evil", left-facing, form of the swastika (卍). A common myth is that the left-facing swastika is generally regarded as evil in Hindu tradition. This is because the much more common form in India is the right-facing swastika. Indians of all faiths sometimes use the symbol in both orientations - mostly for symmetry. Buddhists (outside India) generally use the left-facing swastika over the right-facing swastika although, again, both can be used. Despite this, the misconception that the left-facing swastika is evil is widespread, even among some contemorary Indian communities.

Some contemporary writers — Servando González, for example — confuse matters even further by asserting that the right-facing swastika, used by the Nazis is in fact the "evil" sauwastika.^[8] (González "proves" that the left-facing swastika is the sunwise one with reference to a 1930's box of Standard fireworks from Sivakasi, India.) This inversion – whether intentional or not – might derive from a desire to prove that the Nazi's use of the right-handed swastika was expressive of their "evil" intent. (See also Taboo in Western countries.) But the notion that Adolf Hitler deliberately inverted the "good left-facing" swastika is wholly unsupported by any historical evidence.^[9]

Swastika - Art and architecture

The swastika is common as a design motif in current Hindu architecture and Indian artwork as well as in ancient Western architecture, frequently appearing in mosaics, friezes, and other works across the ancient world. Ancient Greek architectural designs are replete with interlinking swastika motifs. Related symbols in classical Western architecture include the cross, the three-legged triskele or triskelion and the rounded lauburu. The swastika symbol is also known in these contexts by a number of names, especially gammadion. Pictish rock carvings, adorning ancient Greek pottery, and on Norse weapons and implements. It was scratched on cave walls in France seven thousand years ago.

In Chinese, Korean, and Japanese art, the swastika is often found as part of a repeating pattern. One common pattern, called sayagata in Japanese, comprises left and right facing swastikas joined by lines.^[10] As the negative space between the lines has a distinctive shape, the sayagata pattern is sometimes called the "key fret" motif in English.

The swastika symbol was found extensively in the ruins of the ancient city of Troy.

In Greco-Roman art and architecture, and in Romanesque and Gothic art in the West, isolated swastikas are relatively rare, and the swastika is more commonly found as a repeated element in a border or tessellation. A design of interlocking swastikas is one of several tessellations on the floor of the cathedral of Amiens, France.^[11] A border of linked swastikas was a common Roman architectural motif,^[12] and can be seen in more recent buildings as a neoclassical element. A swastika border is one form of meander, and the individual swastikas in such border are sometimes called Greek keys.

The Laguna Bridge in Yuma, Arizona was built in 1905 by the U.S. Reclamation Department and is decorated with a row of swastikas.

The Canadian artist ManWoman has attempted to rehabilitate the "gentle swastika".

Swastika - Religion and mythology

Swastika - Hinduism

The swastika is found all over Hindu temples, signs, altars, pictures and iconography where it is sacred. It is used in all Hindu weddings, festivals, ceromonies, houses and doorways, clothing and jewelry, motor transport and even decorations on food items like cakes and pastries.

It is interesting to note that along with the swastika, the Aum symbol is also sacred in Hinduism. However, whereas Aum is representative of a single primordial tone of creation, the swastika is a pure geometrical mark and has no syllabic tone associated with it.

In Hinduism, the two symbols represent the two forms of the creator god Brahma: facing right it represents the evolution of the universe (Pravritti), facing left it represents the involution of the universe (Nivritti). It is also seen as pointing in all four directions (North, East, South and West) and thus signifies stability and groundedness. Its use as a sun symbol can first be seen in its representation of Surya, the Hindu lord of the Sun. The swastika is considered extremely holy and auspicious by all Hindus, and is regularly used to decorate all sorts of items to do with Hindu culture. It is used in all Hindu yantras and religious designs. Throughout the subcontinent of India it can be seen on the sides of temples, written on religious scriptures, on gift items, and on letterhead. The Hindu God Ganesh is often shown as sitting on a lotus flower on a bed of swastikas.

Amongst the Hindus of Bengal, it is common to see the name "swastika" applied to a slightly different symbol, which has the same significance as the common swastika, and both symbols are used as auspicious signs. This symbol looks something like a stick figure of a human being.^[13] "Swastika" is a common given name amongst Bengalis and a prominent literary magazine in Calcutta is called the Swastika. The stick figure, however, is not mainstream usage in India.

Swastika - Buddhism

Buddhism was founded by a Hindu Prince and has thus inherited the swastika. These two symbols are included, at least since the Liao Dynasty, as part of the Chinese language, the symbolic sign for the character 萬 (wàn) meaning "all", and "eternality" (lit. myriad) and as 卐 which is seldom used. A swastika marks the beginning of many Buddhist scriptures. The swastikas (in either orientation) appear on the chest of some statues of Gautama Buddha and is often incised on the soles of the feet of the Buddha in statuary. Because of the association with the right facing swastika with Nazism, Buddhist swastikas (outside India only) after the mid-20th century are almost universally left-facing: 卍. This form of the swastika is often found on Chinese food packaging to signify that the product is vegetarian and can be consumed by strict Buddhists. It is often sewn into the collars of Chinese children's clothing to protect them from evil spirits.

In 1922, the chinese syncretist movement Daoyuan founded the philanthropic association Red Swastika Society in imitation of the Red Cross. The association was very active in China the 1920's and the 1930's.

Left facing swastikas are seldom, if ever, found in Buddhism's home country of India. They are considered evil in Indian Buddhism, as in Hinduism or Jainism.

The swastika used in Buddhist art and scripture is known in Japanese as a manji, and represents Dharma, universal harmony, and the balance of opposites. When facing left, it is the omote (front) manji, representing love and mercy. Facing right, it represents strength and intelligence, and is called the ura (rear) manji. Balanced manji are often found at the beginning and end of Buddhist scriptures (outside India).

Swastika - Jainism

Jainism gives even more prominence to the swastika than Hinduism. It is a symbol of the seventh Jina (Saint), the Tirthankara Suparsva. It is considered to be one of the 24 auspicious marks and the emblem of the seventh arhat of the present age. All Jain temples and holy books must contain the swastika and ceremonies typically begin and end with creating a swastika mark several times with rice around the altar. Jains use rice to make a swastika (also known as "Sathiyo" in the state of Gujarat, India) in front of idols in temple. Jains then put an offering on top of this swastika - this offering is usually a fruit, a sweet (mithai), a dry-fruit or sometimes coin/currency note.

Swastika - The Abrahamic religions

The swastika was not widely utilized by followers of the Abrahamic religions. Where it does exist, it is not portrayed as an explicitly religious symbol and is often purely decorative or, at most, a symbol of good luck. Examples of scattered use includes the floor of the synagogue at Ein Gedi, built during the Roman occupation of Judea, was decorated with a swastika.^[14]

Some Christian churches built in the Romanesque and Gothic eras are decorated with swastikas, carrying over earlier Roman designs. Swastikas are prominently displayed in a mosaic in the St. Sophia church of Kiev, Ukraine dating to the 12th century. They also appear as a repeating ornamental motif on a tomb in the Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan. However, a proposed direct link between it and a swastika floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens, which was built on top of a pagan site at Amiens, France in the 1200s, is considered unlikely.

The Muslim "Friday" mosque of Isfahan, Iran and the Taynal Mosque in Tripoli, Lebanon both have swastika motifs.

Swastika - Other Asian traditions

Some sources indicate that the Chinese Empress Wu (684-704) of the Tang Dynasty decreed that the swastika would be used as an alternative symbol of the sun. The Chinese character 卐 has developed into the modern one 方, pronounced fāng in Standard Mandarin, and has the main meaning of "square". As part of the Chinese script, the swastika has Unicode encodings U+534D 卍 (pronounciation following the Chinese character "萬": Cantonese: "man"; Mandarin: wan); (left-facing) and U+5350 卐 (right-facing).^[15]

In Japan, the swastika is called manji (卍). On Japanese maps, a swastika (left-facing and horizontal) is used to mark the location of a Buddhist temple. The right-facing manji is often referred as the gyaku manji (逆卍, lit. "reverse manji"), and can also be called kagi jūji, literally "hook cross."

The left-facing Buddhist swastika also appears on the emblem of Falun Gong. This has generated considerable controversy, particularly in Germany, where the police have reportedly confiscated several banners featuring the emblem. A court ruling subsequently allowed Falun Gong followers in Germany to continue the use of the emblem.

Swastika - Native American traditions

The swastika shape was used by some Native Americans. It has been found in excavations of Mississippian-era sites in the Ohio valley. It was widely used by many southwestern tribes, most notably the Navajo. Among different tribes the swastika carried various meanings. To the Hopi it represented the wandering Hopi clans; to the Navajo it was one symbol for a whirling log (tsil no'oli'), a sacred image representing a legend that was used in healing rituals.^[16]

Swastika - Pre-Christian European traditions

The swastika (also called a fylfot, a term coined in the 19th century from a 1500 reference to a figure used to fill empty space at the foot of stained-glass windows in medieval churches) appears as an ornament on many pre-Christian artefacts, drawn both clockwise and counterclockwise, within a circle or in a swirling form. The Greek goddess Athena was sometimes portrayed as wearing robes covered with swastikas. The "Ogham stone" found in County Kerry, Ireland is inscribed with several swastikas dating to the fifth century AD, and is believed to have been an altar stone of the Druids. The pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England, contains gold cups and shields bearing swastikas.

The swastika was also present in pre-Christian Slavic mythology. It was dedicated to the sun god named Svarog and called kolovrat. In the Polish first Republic the symbol of Swastika was also popular with the nobility. According to chronicles, Varangians prince Oleg who in the 9th century with his Rus Vikings had captured Constantinople, had nailed his shield to the cities gates, which had a large red Swastika painted on it. The several polish noble houses f.e. Boreyko, Borzym, Radziechowski from Ruthenia also had Swastikas as their coat of arms. The family had reached its greatness in the 14-15th centuries and their crest can be seen in many heraldry books produced at that time.

Swastika - Asatru

The left-turning swastika (the upper branch is shaped like the greek letter gamma) is used by Odinic Rite as a symbol for their religion. It is seen by some^{[citation needed]} as a cross made of two Sowilo runes.

Swastika - Early 20th century

Swastika - Europe

The British author Rudyard Kipling, who was strongly influenced by Indian culture, had a swastika on the dust jackets of all his books until the rise of Nazism made this inappropriate. One of Kipling's Just So Stories, "The Crab That Played With The Sea", had an elaborate full-page illustration by Kipling including a stone bearing what was called "a magic mark" (a swastika); some later editions of the stories blotted out the mark, but not its captioned reference, making the readers wonder what the "mark" was.

The swastika was also used as a symbol by the Boy Scouts in Britain, and worldwide. According to "Johnny" Walker,^[17] the earliest Scouting use was on the first Thanks Badge introduced in 1911. Robert Baden-Powell's 1922 Medal of Merit design adds a swastika to the Scout fleur-de-lis as good luck to the person receiving the medal. Like Kipling, he would have come across this symbol in India. During 1934 many Scouters requested a change of design because of the use of the swastika by the Nazis. A new British Medal of Merit was issued in 1935.

During World War I, the swastika was used as the emblem of the British National War Savings Committee.^[18]

The Russian Provisional Government of 1917 printed a number of new bank notes with right-facing, diagonally rotated swastikas in their centres. Some have suggested that this may have been the inspiration behind the Nazis adoption of this symbol as Alfred Rosenberg was in Russia at this time.

Since early Middle Ages the sign of swastika was well-established among all Slavic lands. Known as swarzyca, it was primarily associated with one of Slavic gods named Swarog. With time the significance of the symbol faded, but it was preserved in numerous cases as a personal symbol of various personalities, as was the case of the Boreyko Coat of Arms. It was also preserved in the folk culture of the region of Podhale, where it was used as a talisman well into 20th century. As a solar symbol, it was painted or carved on various parts of houses in the Tatra Mountains and was thought to save the household from the evil.

The ancient symbol used by the Góral societies was adopted by the Polish mountain infantry units in the 1920's. It was adopted as a regimental insignia by the artillery units of the 21st and 22nd Infantry Divisions, as well as by the soldiers of the 4th Legions' Infantry, the 2nd and 4th Podhale Rifles. A distinctive blue swastika was a background emblem of The Airborne and Antigas Defence League (1928-1939, LOPP), which had circa 1,5 million members in 1937.

Outside of the military traditions, the mountaneer's swastika also influenced a number of other symbols and logos used on Polish soil. Among such was the logo of the IGNIS publishing company (est. 1822), and the personal symbol of Mieczysław Karłowicz, a notable composer an admirer of the Tatras. After his tragic death in the mountains in 1909, the place of his death was marked by a memorial stone and a swastika. Finally, it was also used as a personal logo and ex libris by Walery Eliasz-Radzikowski of Boreyko Coat of Arms, a Polish author who was also strongly influenced by the Polish mountaneers and had a swastika on the dust jackets of all his books and letters.

The Swedish company ASEA, now a part of Asea Brown Boveri, used the swastika in its logo from the 1800s to 1933, when it was removed from the logo.

In Latvia, too, the swastika (known as Thunder Cross and Fire Cross) was used as the marking of the Latvian Air Force between 1918 and 1934, as well as in insignias of some military units.^[19] It was also used by the Latvian fascist movement Perkonkrusts (Thunder Cross in Latvian), as well as by other non-political organizations.

The Icelandic Steamship Company, Eimskip (founded in 1914), used a swastika in its logo until recently.

In Dublin, Ireland, a laundry company known as the Swastika Laundry existed for many years in Ballsbridge on the south side of the city. The company's fleet of electric delivery vans were red, and featured a black swastika on a white background. The business started in the early 20th century and continued up until recent times. The name and logo eventually disappeared when the laundry was absorbed into the Spring Grove company.

Swastika - North America

The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, incorporated the Swastika into its seal because of the Hindu and Buddhist associations of the symbol.

The swastika's use by the Navajo and other tribes made it a popular symbol for the Southwestern United States. Until the 1930s blankets, metalwork, and other Southwestern souvenirs were often made with swastikas.

Arizona state highway markers up until 1940 featured a right-facing swastika superimposed on an arrowhead (Arizona Roads)

• Shortly after the beginning of World War II, several Native American tribes (the Navajo, Apache, Tohono O'odham, and Hopi) published a decree stating that they would no longer use the swastika in their artwork. This was because the swastika had come to symbolize evil to them. This decree was signed by representatives of these tribes. The decree states:

• in 1922, the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, featured a design that had a swastika on one of the towers.

• Swastika is the name of a small community in northern Ontario, Canada, approximately 580 kilometres north of Toronto, and 5 kilometres west of Kirkland Lake, the town of which it is now part. The town of Swastika was founded in 1906. Gold was discovered nearby and the Swastika Mining Company was formed in 1908. The government of Ontario attempted to change the town's name during World War II, but the town resisted.

• In Windsor, Nova Scotia, there was an ice hockey team from 1905 to 1916 named the Swastikas, and their uniforms featured swastika symbols. There were also hockey teams named the Swastikas in Edmonton, Alberta (circa 1916), and Fernie, British Columbia (circa 1922).

• The 45th Infantry Division of the United States Army used a yellow swastika on a red background as a unit symbol until the 1930s, when it was switched to a thunderbird.^[20]~[21]

• In 1925, Coca-Cola made a lucky watch fob in the shape of a swastika with the slogan, "Drink Coca Cola five cents in bottles".

• The Health, Physical Education and Recreation Building (HPER) at Indiana University contains decorative Native American-inspired reverse swastika tilework on the walls of the foyer and stairwells on the southeast side of the building. HPER was built as the university fieldhouse in the 1920s, before the Nazi party came to power in Germany. In recent years, the HPER swastika motif, along with the Thomas Hart Benton murals in nearby Woodburn Hall have been the cause of much controversy on campus.

• The third dungeon of the classic video game The Legend of Zelda is shaped very similarly to a left-facing swastika, causing some surprise among Western players; see The Legend Of Zelda controversy.

• In the original release of the video game Doom, a floor area in one level took on the shape of a swastika. It was removed in a later version.

• Crispian Mills, lead singer of Indian-influenced rock group Kula Shaker once said that the swastika was a beautiful symbol and that 'Hitler knew more than he was letting on'.

Swastika - Nazi Germany

The National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) formally adopted the swastika or Hakenkreuz (hooked cross) in 1920. This was used on the party's flag (right), badge, and armband. (It had been used unofficially by the NSDAP and its predecessor, the German Workers Party, Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), however.)

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler wrote:

(Red, white, and black were the colors of the flag of the old German Empire.)

The use of the swastika was associated by Nazi theorists with their conjecture of Aryan cultural descent of the German people. Following the Nordicist version of the Aryan invasion theory, the Nazis claimed that the early Aryans of India, from whose Vedic tradition the swastika sprang, were the prototypical white invaders. It was also widely believed that the Indian caste system had originated as as a means to avoid racial mixing. The concept of Racial purity was an ideology central to Nazism though it is now considered unscientific. For Rosenberg, the Aryans of India were both a model to be imitated and a warning of the dangers of the spiritual and racial "confusion" that, he believed, arose from the close proximity of races.

Thus, they saw fit to co-opt the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race. The use of swastika as a symbol of the Aryan race dates back to writings of Emile Burnouf. Following many other writers, the German nationalist poet Guido von List believed it to be a uniquely Aryan symbol. Hitler referred to the swastika as the symbol of "the fight for the victory of Aryan man" (Mein Kampf).

In fact, the swastika was already in use as a symbol of German volkisch nationalist movements. In Deutschland Erwache (ISBN 0912138696), Ulric of England (sic) says —

José Manuel Erbez says —

However, Liebenfels was drawing on an already established use of the symbol.

On 14 March 1933, shortly after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the NSDAP flag was hoisted alongside Germany's national colors. It was adopted as the sole national flag on 15 September 1935.

The swastika was used for badges and flags throughout Nazi Germany, particularly for government and military organizations, but also for "popular" organizations such as the Reichsbund Deutsche Jägerschaft.^[23]

Several variants are found:

• a 45° black swastika on a white disc as in the NSDAP and national flags;
• a 45° black swastika on a white lozenge (e.g., Hitler Youth^[25]);
• a 45° black swastika with a white outline was painted on the tail of aircraft of the Luftwaffe;
• a 45° black swastika outlined by thin white and black lines on a white disc (e.g., the German War Ensign^[26]);
• an upright black swastika outlined by thin white and black lines on a white disc (e.g., Hitler's personal flag, in which a gold wreath encircles the swastika; the Schutzstaffel; and the Reichsdienstflagge, in which a black circle encircles the swastika);
• small gold, silver, black, or white 45° swastikas, often lying on or being held by an eagle, on many badges and flags.^[27]
• a swastika with curved outer arms forming a broken circle, as worn by the SS Nordland Division. (See photo at "Nordland Reenactors".)

There were attempts to amalgamate Nazi and Hindu use of the swastika. Notably by Savitri Devi Mukherji who declared Hitler an avatar of Vishnu (see Nazi mysticism).

Swastika - Taboo in Western countries

Because of its use by Hitler and the Nazis and, in modern times, by neo-Nazis and other hate groups, for many people in the West, the swastika is associated primarily with Nazism, fascism, and white supremacy in general. Hence, outside historical contexts, it has become taboo in Western countries. For example, the German postwar criminal code makes the public showing of the Hakenkreuz (the swastika) and other Nazi symbols illegal and punishable, except for scholarly reasons.

However, since it is a holy symbol for Hindus, Jains and Buddhists, it is not clear whether the German postwar code actually bans the construction of Hindu and Jain temples in Germany (Jain temples always have the swastika on their entrance and Jain ritual typically involves creating seven swastikas from grains of rice around the altar during prayer).

In Finland some military units still use swastika ([28],[29], [30]). In 1944 the Air Force changed its national emblem to a roundel but continued to use the swastika elsewhere. In 1963 the chain of the Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose was changed. More recently, in 25 October 2005 an official swastika emblem was adopted for use by the Air Force [31].

The powerful symbolism acquired by the swastika has often been used in graphic design and propaganda as a means of drawing Nazi comparisons; examples include the cover of Stuart Eizenstat's 2003 book Imperfect Justice,^[32] publicity materials for Costa-Gavras's 2002 film Amen,^[33] and a billboard that was erected opposite the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba, in 2004, which juxtaposed images of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse pictures with a swastika. It is even censored from the lithographs on boxes of model kits sold in Germany, and the decals that come in the box.

Founded in the 1970s, the Raëlian Movement, a religious sect believing in the possibility of immortality by scientific progress, used a symbol that was the source of considerable controversy: an interlaced Star of David and swastika. In 1991, the symbol was changed to remove the swastika and deflect public criticism. The Society for Creative Anachronism, which aims to study and recreate Medieval and Renaissance history, imposes restrictions on its members' use of the swastika on their arms,^[34] although some arms dating to the early days of the group have the symbol.

Punk rockers like Siouxsie Sioux, Sid Vicious and John Lydon used, and were photographed using, the Nazi version of the swastika for its shock value, notwithstanding that Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols' manager, was Jewish. But the punk rock enthusiasm for swastikas ended abruptly in 1981 with the release of the Dead Kennedys song Nazi Punks Fuck Off! After the song was released, not only did swastikas become verboten in punk rock culture, many punks had their swastika tattoos either removed or turned into less racist images (e.g., a window).

The previously successful career of the British band Kula Shaker virtually collapsed in the 1990s after the band's frontman, Crispian Mills, son of actress Hayley Mills, expressed his desire to use Swastikas as part of the imagery of their live show; because of this, and additional remarks he made, he was widely accused of holding Nazi sympathies. However, the band was musically influenced by Indian styles, and Mills asserted that his attraction to the swastika was part of an attempt to reclaim the Indian usage of the symbol in the West.

In January 2005 there was much criticism when Prince Harry of Wales, third in line of succession to the British throne, was photographed wearing what appeared to be intended as a German Afrika Korps uniform, plus a Nazi swastika armband, to a costume party.^[38]

Swastika - Apperance in Media

The swastika's lack of a negative connotation in the East has led to its appearances in various games, comics, and other media. While Western society is wary of such symbolism, it is seen more often in the East.

• A Pokémon playing card sold in Japan had a manji graphic. Because of its resemblance to the Nazi swastika, the card was altered for Western translations, and eventually withdrawn in Japan following Western complaints.

• A manji symbol was incorporated as a level design in both the Japanese and U.S. versions of the 1986 The Legend of Zelda video game.

• The manga and anime Naruto, one of the characters, Hyūga Neji, has a manji-shaped seal with hooked ends on his forehead, imprinted there when he was young.

• The manga and anime Bleach, the main character Ichigo Kurosaki wields a sword with a manji-shaped crossguard.

See also

• Brigid's cross
• Celtic cross
• Fylfot
• Lauburu or Basque cross
• Union of Poles in Germany
• Sauwastika
• Sun cross, a traditional symbol also co-opted by many modern neo-Nazis
• Triskelion, including the three-legged badge of the Isle of Man
• Wolfsangel

See also: Fascist symbolism, Karl Haushofer.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Swastika", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki