The Swastika

[Fifty]

I'm hoping someone can shed some light on the true nature of the swastika.

It seems like everyone likes to point out where it came from, but what they say is often contradictory. I've heard that it was Hindu, Japanese, Native American, and Celtic.

Which is the correct answer, and if they are all correct (which I do suspect), then which version did Hitler specifically adopt?

 

[CruddyLeper]

Earliest recorded = India.

Why did Hitler adopt it? I have no idea.

 

[RoboPig]

it's actually an aryan sign, it was used by the indo aryans( the ones who settled in india), when hitler came to power he used the swastika, but his germo-aryan swastika is a mirror image of the indo aryan swastika. btw: you can still see swastikas on buildings in India

 

[YNCS]

The swastika was also used as a good luck symbol by the Navaho Indians. The American 45th Infantry Division, a National Guard unit based in Arizona and New Mexico, used the swastika on their unit patch from 1923 to 1939:

In 1939, because the swastika had become so strongly identified with Germany in general and the Nazi party in particular, patch was changed to show another Navaho symbol, the Thunderbird:

 

[CruddyLeper]

Gee, those Aryans sure get around .

I was assuming you knew what historical meant. The earliest WRITTEN RECORDS positively put them in India, OK?

 

[blackheart]

Buddhist temples also have swatstikas on them, although they face the opposite direction (I can't recall the name for these).

 

[Verbose]

It's usually a sun symbol, and a nice symmetrical design that has independantly cropped up just about everywhere in the world, both the Old and the New. The ancient Greek used it. It was around in India way before that. It's found in the Americas. In China and Japan it's a buddhist symbol. It's the cartographic sign for 'buddhist shrine' of Japanese street maps I've seen.

There's nothing particularily 'Aryan' about it except that the Nazis wanted it to be, and prior to them the German 'Völkisch' movement in the years around 1900. 'Völkisch' itself is next to unstranslatable, but it was a kind of chauvinistic, concervative and antisemitical popular movement. The Nazis picked up a lot of stuff from them, not least the anti-semitism, the cult of blond 'Aryans' as the creators of all of human civilisation and the swastika as an 'Aryan' symbol.

 

[Scythian_Jatt]

Aryan:

#1 Indo-Iranian. No longer in technical use.
#2 A member of the people who spoke the parent language of the Indo-European languages. No longer in technical use.
#3 A member of any people speaking an Indo-European language. No longer in technical use.

Meow.

 

[Johann MacLeod]

when i was rewsearching it the reson they belive the native american have it too is because its is soo acient that it exsited at the time when humans croosed into north america.
Also you'll still find it on churches in europe. and in flags, such as Sicily's and the Isle of Man, use a three pointed one.

 

[Kafka2]

The Isle of Man symbol is not a swastika.

 

[~Corsair#01~]

I believe Hitler saw the swastika in a church and adopted the symbol from there.

But I can't find any sources for this...

 

[Verbose]

The Isle of Man symbol is not a swastika.

It's a 'triqskelion' [edited after reading Kafka2], three legs in a circle. It's also a sun symbol and of a design similar to the four-legged swastika.

There are all kinds of sun-crosses. That's the connection between them.

 

[Verbose]

I believe Hitler saw the swastika in a church and adopted the symbol from there.

But I can't find any sources for this...

I think he saw it in the weird magazine 'Ostara: Bücherie der Blonde', published by the 'Aryan' and anti-semitical racial mystic Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, when Hitler was a starving artist down on his luck in Vienna prior to WWI.

Here's what I found googling 'Lanz von Liebenfels' and 'swastika':
http://www.intelinet.org/swastika/swasti14.htm

 

[Nobody]

in the movie about hitler, after he sees a comunist poster he decideds he needs a cool symbol of his own and just makes it up

 

[Johann MacLeod]

The Isle of Man symbol is not a swastika.

yes, it is, it is a thre pronged swastika.

 

[Kafka2]

Is a cross still a cross if it has three points instead of the usual four?

Is a circle still a circle if it contains four right angles? No of course it isn't. The legs of Man are not a Swastika. If you pursue that logic you end up concluding that any mandala-esque design is a swastika.

 

[Kafka2]

Check out the history of the images.

Swastika- earliest known use is on the site of Troy, circa 1000BC.

Triskelion- a damned sight older, found on prehistoric rock carvings in Northern Italy.

So you're trying to tell me that two very different shapes, from differing cultures and times, are actually the same?

 

[Kafka2]

Here's another point to consider-

The representation of the triskell must be dextrogyrous (turning to the right). A senstrogyrous (turning to the left) triskell would have a maleficent, or at least hostile meaning. Traditional Breton dances and processions always turn to the right. The war dances of the ancient Celts started by turning to the left to show hostility, and ended by turning to the right, as a sign of victory.

The Manx triskelion turns right. The German swastika turns left.

 

[Verbose]

in the movie about hitler, after he sees a comunist poster he decideds he needs a cool symbol of his own and just makes it up

What Hitler wrote in 'Mein Kampf' was that he struggled personally with the design (size of circle and the swastika in relationship to each other etc.), not that he invented the symbol.

It was already a favourite symbol of antisemitical Germanc/'Aryan' racial suprematists in Germany, Austria, Scandinavia etc.

In one thread got into a bit of a shouting-match with some Finns over the fact that the planes of the early Finnish air-force were decorated with blue swastikas on a white background. The first plane was a gift from the Swedish count Eric von Rosen and this was his personal symbol.

So the Finns are very quick to point out that his swastikas have nothing to do with Nazism.
Which is correct, since they predate Nazism.

On the other hand Eric von Rosen was a racial suprematist fishing in the same murky waters as the young Hitler (the German 'Völkisch movement'). The reason he chose the swastika was the same as the ones Nazism later had for chosing this symbol.

There's even more of a Nazi connection:
Eric von Rosen was a relative (cousin or somesuch) Karin von Kantzow who married Hermann Göring. Göring spent most of the early 1920's in Sweden (being treated for his morphine addiction and at least once committed to a psychiatric hospital), where he met and married Karin. They spent quite a bit of time at Rokelstad, her relative Eric's estate, where the swastika was an integral part of his style of interior decoration.

 

[Johann MacLeod]

Is a cross still a cross if it has three points instead of the usual four?

Is a circle still a circle if it contains four right angles? No of course it isn't. The legs of Man are not a Swastika. If you pursue that logic you end up concluding that any mandala-esque design is a swastika.

is it still a cross if it has 3 beams? Is it a cross if its two diagonal lines? is it a cross if it has a circle in it? yes!! its a reletivly simple varition considering how widely dispersed the symbol was.