You may see some people wearing the symbol Swastika around his or her neck. To those who are unfamiliar with this all powerful symbol, the below article gives a basic understanding of this charm or talisman.
In India, according to some, the Swastika was given its name from su = good, and asti = to be, with the suffix ka. Its arms were angled in a clockwise direction (from the center). The reversed Swastika, known as the Sauvastika ( anticlockwise), was associated with misfortune and bad luck.
The Swastika is a very old ideogram. The first examples are found in Sumeria and earlier cultures that existed in what is now Pakistan about 3000 B.C.E. Yet it was not until around the year 1000 B.C.E. that the swastika became a commonly used sign.
Most cultures in Eurasia, except Egypt and Assyrian-Babylonian, have used the swastika at some point in their history.
The Swastika was used before the birth of Christ in China, India, Japan, and Southern Europe. It appeared a couple hundred years ago among many of the Indian tribes and was probably brought over by the Spanish and Portuguese colonists.
The Swastika was often associated with Buddha in India, China, and Japan. In the earliest Chinese symbolism the swastika (shown on left-top) was known as wan and was a superlative of the highest degree. In Japan it was said to be a sign for the magnificent number 10,000. In Japan of the Middle Ages the Swastika was manji, a sign for enormous luck and protection against evil powers. The sign was common among the Hitties and in Greece around 1000 B.C.E. However, it did not appear in the Nordic countries until after the birth of Christ and then only on a few runic stones. The swastika was used in Northern Europe well before that, for instance in pre-Christian Ireland.
Until the nineteenth century, the Swastika seemed to have lost its popularity. Although it was not common in Europe during that time, it was not totally unknown. It had many names: Hakenkreuz un Germanic princedoms, fylfot in England, Crux gammata in Rome, and tetraskelion or gammadion in Greece.
The Swastika’s spectrum of meaning is centered around power, energy and migrations.
The Swastika form is associated with the sun and power. The Swastika moving in a clockwise direction is related to the form and also its meaning, reincarnation, return, etc. The Swastika symbolizes, therefore, national reincarnation.
An interesting part is that the Swastika was once considered, by Christians, to be the symbol of Christ. The Swastika was renounced as the symbol of Christ when it was discovered that the Buddhists were using the Swastika as a symbol of Buddha.
If we are not careful, we might confuse the normal sacred Swastika with those of the emblem used by the German Socialist (or “Nazi”) party which was led by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was in 1920 that this emblem was first used in the Nazi Party official banner. Quite sadly, in the twentieth century, this twisted type of Swastika is used as an anti-Semitic and uniting symbol in Germany and Austria.
