Swastika

In 1878, Irish scholar Charles Graves used swastika as the common English name for the symbol, after defining it as equivalent to the French term croix gammée – a cross with arms shaped like the Greek letter gamma (Γ).

"[49] Other names for the symbol include: In various European languages, it is known as the fylfot, gammadion, tetraskelion, or cross cramponnée (a term in Anglo-Norman heraldry); German: Hakenkreuz; French: croix gammée; Italian: croce uncinata; Latvian: ugunskrusts.

[66] Bob Kobres, in a 1992 paper, contends that the swastika-like comet on the Han-dynasty manuscript was labelled a "long tailed pheasant star" (dixing) because of its resemblance to a bird's foot or footprint.

[101] The pagan Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England, contained numerous items bearing swastikas, now housed in the collection of the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

[105] A number of swastikas have been found embossed in Galician metal pieces and carved in stones, mostly from the Castro culture period, although there also are contemporary examples (imitating old patterns for decorative purposes).

[1][8] The swastika symbol is commonly used before entrances or on doorways of homes or temples, to mark the starting page of financial statements[citation needed], and mandalas constructed for rituals such as weddings or welcoming a newborn.

[1] The clockwise swastika is a solar symbol (Surya), suggesting the motion of the Sun in India (the northern hemisphere), where it appears to enter from the east, then ascend to the south at midday, exiting to the west.

[122] The Tantra-based new religious movement Ananda Marga (Devanagari: आनन्द मार्ग, meaning 'Path of Bliss') uses a motif similar to the Raëlians, but in their case the apparent star of David is defined as intersecting triangles with no specific reference to Jewish culture.

[127]: 175 The paired swastika symbols (卐 and 卍) are included, at least since the Liao Dynasty (907–1125 CE), as part of the Chinese writing system and are variant characters for 《萬》 or 《万》 (wàn in Mandarin, 《만》(man) in Korean, Cantonese, and Japanese, vạn in Vietnamese) meaning "myriad".

[152] … I am now able to prove that … the 卍, which I find in Émile Burnouf's Sanscrit lexicon, under the name of "suastika," and with the meaning εὖ ἐστι, or as the sign of good wishes, were already regarded, thousands of years before Christ, as religious symbols of the very greatest importance among the early progenitors of the Aryan races in Bactria and in the villages of the Oxus, at a time when Germans, Indians, Pelasgians, Celts, Persians, Slavonians and Iranians still formed one nation and spoke one language.Schliemann established a link between the swastika and Germany.

[151]: 91 The house Schliemann had had built in Panepistimiou Street in Athens by 1880, Iliou Melathron, is decorated with swastika symbols and motifs in numerous places, including the ironwork railing and gates, the window bars, the ceiling fresco of the entrance hall, and the entire floor of one room.

[151]: 117–123 Following Schliemann, academic studies on the swastika were published by Ludvig Müller [da], Michał Żmigrodzki, Eugène Goblet d'Alviella, Thomas Wilson, Oscar Montelius and Joseph Déchelette.

[153] On 24 June 1875, Guido von List commemorated the 1500th anniversary of the German victory over the Roman Empire at the Battle of Carnuntum by burying a swastika of eight wine bottles beneath the Heidentor (lit.

[155]: 71  He claimed that the medieval German Vehmgericht was a survival of the pre-Christian Armanist priest-kings and that the cryptic letters "SSGG" inscribed on vehmic knives represented a double sig rune followed by two swastikas.

[155]: 76 In 1897, Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth published Wanidis and Sexualreligion, which according to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in The Occult Roots of Nazism, "described the sexual-religion of the Aryans, a sacred practice of eugenics designed to maintain the purity of the race".

[155]: 51  Influenced by Sebaldt, List published in Der Scherer – erstes illustriertes Tiroler Witzblatt [de] an article ("Germanischer Lichtdienst") which claimed the swastika was a sacred symbol of the Aryans representing the "fire-whisk" (Feuerquirl) with which the creator deity Mundelföri had begun the world.

[155]: 52  In September 1903, List published an article discussing the creation of the universe, the "old-Aryan sexual religion", reincarnation, karma, "Wotanism", and "Armanism" from his theosophical viewpoint, which was illustrated by triskelions and various swastikas in the Viennese occult journal Die Gnosis.

[155]: 52 Between 1905 and 1907, List published articles in the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung arguing that the swastika, the triskelion, and the sun-wheel were all "Armanist" occult symbols (Armanen runes) concealed in German heraldry, and in 1908 his Das Geheimnis der Runen (lit.

'The Proto-Language of the Ario-Germans') adopted the geological ideas of theosophist William Scott-Elliot and claimed that fragments of Atlantis remained part of Europe, pointing to rocking stones in Lower Austria and European megaliths as evidence.

[23] The Benedictine choir school at Lambach Abbey, Upper Austria, which Hitler attended for several months as a boy, had a swastika chiseled into the monastery portal and also the wall above the spring grotto in the courtyard by 1868.

She wore a talisman in the form of a swastika, put it everywhere for happiness, including on her suicide letters from Tobolsk,[170] later drew with a pencil on the wall and in the window opening of the room in the Ipatiev House, which served as the place of the last imprisonment of the royal family and on the wallpaper above the bed.

[173] During the Russian Civil War, swastikas were present in the symbolism of the uniform of some units of the White Army Asiatic Cavalry Division of Baron Ungern in Siberia and Bogd Khanate of Mongolia, which is explained by the significant number of Buddhists within it.

[183] In his 1925 work Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler writes: "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black hooked cross in the middle.

When Hitler created a flag for the Nazi Party, he sought to incorporate both the swastika and "those revered colours expressive of our homage to the glorious past and which once brought so much honour to the German nation".

[186][187] High-ranking Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg noted that the Indo-Aryan peoples 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 proximity of races.

[210] According to the historian and religious scholar Roman Shizhensky, Dobrovolsky took the idea of the swastika from the work "The Chronicle of Oera Linda"[211] by the Nazi ideologist Herman Wirth, the first head of the Ahnenerbe.

In some countries, such as the United States (in the 2003 case Virginia v. Black), the highest courts have ruled that the local governments can prohibit the use of swastika along with other symbols such as cross burning, if the intent of the use is to intimidate others.

[247] In the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular in Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida, the swastikas on German trucks, aircraft and actor uniforms in the reenactment of a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark were removed in 2004.

Nintendo of America announced that the cards would be discontinued, explaining that what was acceptable in one culture was not necessarily so in another; their action was welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League who recognised that there was no intention to offend, but said that international commerce meant that "Isolating [the swastika] in Asia would just create more problems.

[263][264] Groups that oppose this media terminology do not wish to censor such usage, but rather to shift coverage of antisemitic and hateful events to describe the symbol in this context as a "Hakenkreuz" or "hooked cross".