Is the Swastika poisoned?
-
Most of you know that the swastika is a very ancient symbol, used long before the Nazis, with very different meanings. I have read that it originated from basket weaving, that the swastika pattern forms naturally from weaving. It is found all over the world: Native American, ancient Greek, Hindu, Buddhist, and more.
Yet because of the horror of the Nazis it is difficult to look at any swastika today without thinking of them.
I have a T-shirt from India with a Hindu swastika, and other Hindu symbols on it; to me it is obviously not a Nazi symbol, as it is in a HIndu context. Yet people comment to me when I wear it sometimes; including my guy. He said, I know that the swastika on your T-shirt doesn't mean fascism, but I just can't bear to look at it.
I feel differently, I want to be able to look at a swastika from another tradition and understand it for it's original meaning. Yet I do feel sensitive to how it affects others.
Truely, when I look at any swastika, at first glance, I can't help myself, I immediately think Nazi, then I look more closely, realize it's not Nazi. It gives the symbol a strange edge. I look at it with a first reaction of fear, then calm down.
I thought this would spark an interesting discussion here. Your thoughts and feelings?
-
The symbol has a very important use in private sanctuaries of initiation.
I mention that because I've long felt two different ways about it - depending on whether it is public or private.
I pretty much avoid it altogether in public situations - presuming that it will have a "lowest common denominator" mass-mind button-pushing effect that I don't wish to have. (This is just being responsible for the impact of my communications.)
OTOH (like numerous other things), I use it freely (in its proper place) in private ceremonial settings of initiates. These are settings where people either have a certain immunity to mass-mind impact, or are training for it. It is also a setting where reactivity is significantly reduced to begin with.
On the border between these two, I use it freely in my published writings as a symbol for Kether; for example, see the Tree of Life diagram in Visions & Voices. '
Bottom line, I think there isn't any reason to be apologetic about its use, nor any reason to shove something in a person's face unnecessarily when you know that it is likely to trigger reactivity. This symbol was degenerated only for a few decades, in comparison to other perfectly good symbols that have been attached to malignant thoughts for centuries of millennia; therefore, the svastika should be easier to reclaim.
-
My thoughts:
I guess many similar reservations can be expressed about almost any religious symbol identified with historically significant groups and movements. Not the symbols fault, but still suffering from the association. Many people cannot look at a simple cross without making the assumption that it was somehow invented by the Christians.
The symbols suffering from bad associations sometimes get rehabilitated.
I would tend to avoid wearing an Indian derived swastika in public, unless I wanted to confront and challenge popular misconceptions—hoping people would ask me about it.
Doing my own research I can easily get past the obvious assumptions I was saddled with my by the culture at large I was born into. Changing the culture itself is another matter—the work of the artist perhaps. Artists hope to affect the culture—someone with the right message, the technical chops, and good karmic placement could change how we view almost any symbol, even the swastika. At least that is my belief.
Love and Will
-
No worries, I am taking the swastika back!
-
Surely most of the Symbols used in Thelema are great examples of symbols being rehabilitated.
If you can get to the positive of "666" "To Mega Therion" and "Babalon", then surely a poor little swastica must be easy.
93 93/93
-
I was thinking about it because my T-shirt troubled my boyfriend. I also was considering using swastikas in some of my artwork. I would have to be careful who I showed those paintings to.
-
In which case I'd be inclined to agree with Jim, and say that although there is no problem using the sort of symbols with people who are not prone to making knee-jerk assumptions.
-
@AliceNui said
"I was thinking about it because my T-shirt troubled my boyfriend. I also was considering using swastikas in some of my artwork. I would have to be careful who I showed those paintings to."
Fun art fact: Cubism used the swastika as a hidden structural device that broke the visual plane, unified the resulting chaos, and contributed a characteristic dynamism to the composition.
Love and Will
-
@AliceNui said
"I also was considering using swastikas in some of my artwork. I would have to be careful who I showed those paintings to."
Why not incorporate it into a scheme where it is placed alongside symbols of positive import, like the Pentagram, Hexagram, Unicursal Hexagram, Octagon--whatever. This might alleviate certain negative connotations, and spark a spirit of inquiry where there would otherwise be antagonism.
I like to convert the Either/Or equation into Both.
-
Swastika Rehabilitation Day Is July 20; Will It Cause Furor?
A UFO group is convinced it can rehabilitate the image of the swastika no matter what furor it causes.
The group, known as the Raelian International Movement, has declared July 20 as "Swastika Rehabilitation Day," with the goal being taking back the controversial symbol from the Nazis and returning it to its former glory as a symbol of good luck....
Last year, the group garnered controversy when tit hired a plane to fly over New York and New Jersey with a banner that equated the Nazi symbol with peace and love.
"It got the attention, so it was a success," Kaenzig told HuffPost after the event.
He promises that the swastika banners will once again be flown over New York and Miami. Although those cities have large Jewish populations, Kaenzig insists the Raelians aren't purposely trying to rile Jewish people.
"You want to educate people," he told HuffPost. "We picked those cities because they are major population areas, not because a lot of Jews live there."
Don Pripstein, president of the Jewish Community Center of Long Beach Island, isn't sure the group is going about things the right way.
"They may have good intentions, but the image is more powerful than good intentions at this point," he said to the AP. "The image is so horrendous that no matter what their ultimate purpose is, it's extremely negative."
Whatever Kaenzig says about the Raelians only wanting educate about the swastika has to be weighed
More here:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/swastika-rehabilitation-d_n_3605754.html
-
Wilhelm Reich (the orgone accumulator guy) wrote some interesting stuff about the swastika. Basically he argued that Christianity produced an emotional plague due to sexual repression. In Reich's view the swastika was a symbol of sexual union which triggered the unconscious. The xtian sexual repression blocked the normal feeling and so fanatical brutal fascism was expressed. So according to Reich the NAZI swastika was a symbol used to torment via the unconscious the sexually repressed population, and goad them towards fascism and brutality. This perhaps explains the incredible frenzy of the pre WWII Nuremberg rallies.
-
My conclusion is that swastikas should be used in personal and private rituals, and not publicly, where they are liable to be misinterpreted and be harmful.
I don't agree with the Raelian's tactics. I think the Nazis are too recent a painful memory, and there are still too many Neo-Nazis out there. I also think it's very important to REMEMBER the harm the Nazis caused.
-
@AliceKnewI said
"My conclusion is that swastikas should be used in personal and private rituals, and not publicly, where they are liable to be misinterpreted and be harmful.
I don't agree with the Raelian's tactics. I think the Nazis are too recent a painful memory, and there are still too many Neo-Nazis out there. I also think it's very important to REMEMBER the harm the Nazis caused."
With the Breivik thing around this time of year I wonder at the timing of this particular stunt. These Raelian's are into UFO's, lots of NAZI ufo stuff on the internet is there a link to the Raelian guys I wonder?
-
"Hitler is bad, m'kay? And the swastika is bad - because Hitler is bad, m'kay?"
Please don't misinterpret my irony.
-
Part of the problem with popularizing the swastika as a sacred symbol, is the sense that the holocaust is being forgotten. They say, "Never Forget" for a reason.
“As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”
― Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking -
The problem with 'banning' the swastika is that it is a genuine occult symbol that predates NAZIism by thousands of years.
If we ban it because of Adolf Hitler et al we have done for the NAZI's what they could not achieve themselves when NAZI Germany did the book burning pyres.
-
The swastika is banned in Germany, and perhaps other parts of Europe, I am not sure. It is not banned in the USA.
True, the swastika is more ancient than the Nazis. But the Nazis being a recent painful memory, I think it requires some sensitivity in public. There are still survivors of the holocaust, and their children alive. I just would be cautious about using it in public.
-
But considering all the genocides the Jews are guilty of (if we believe Deuteronomy 3), why don't we ban the Star of David (so-called)?
-
@Takamba said
"But considering all the genocides the Jews are guilty of (if we believe Deuteronomy 3), why don't we ban the Star of David (so-called)?"
Because it is too far away from living memory.
-
@AliceKnewI said
"
@Takamba said
"But considering all the genocides the Jews are guilty of (if we believe Deuteronomy 3), why don't we ban the Star of David (so-called)?"Because it is too far away from living memory."
So in actuality you can't suggest a "ban," but rather a cloistering in secrecy until such time as it is safe. So who are you to judge that now isn't the time it is safe (we are actually moving all things otherwise in an exponential pace).