The swastika ( / ˈ s w ɒ s t ɪ k ə / SWOST -ik-ə , Sanskrit: [ ˈsʋɐstikɐ ] ; 卐 or 卍 ) is a symbol that has been used in many cultures and religions in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas for thousands of years. It has been used in several religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, to represent divinity and spirituality. In the Western world, the swastika is most often linked to the Nazi Party, which used it on Germany’s flag and in other official places. This connection is still seen today, as some groups, like neo-Nazis, use the symbol.

The word "swastika" comes from Sanskrit, which means "conducive to well-being." In Hinduism, the right-facing symbol ( 卐 ) is called swastika and represents the sun, prosperity, and good luck. The left-facing symbol ( 卍 ) is sometimes called sauvastika and is linked to night or aspects of the goddess Kali. In Jainism, the swastika is part of the Jain flag and represents Suparshvanatha, one of 24 spiritual leaders. In Buddhism, the swastika symbolizes the Buddha’s footprints. In some ancient traditions, the swastika stood for fire, lightning, or the sun. The symbol has been found in the remains of the Indus Valley Civilization, the Samarra culture in Mesopotamia, and in early artwork from Byzantine and Christian times.

Until the 1930s, the swastika was mostly seen as a symbol of good luck in the Western world. Before World War I, a far-right Romanian leader named A. C. Cuza used it to represent antisemitism, but this did not change how people viewed the symbol until the Nazi Party adopted it as a sign of the so-called Aryan race. Because of World War II and the Holocaust, the swastika is now strongly connected to Nazism, antisemitism, white supremacism, or evil in Western societies. In some countries, showing the swastika is against the law. However, in places like Nepal, India, Thailand, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan, the swastika is still used to represent good luck and prosperity in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain communities. It also has different meanings for groups such as the Akan, Hopi, Navajo, and Tlingit peoples. The swastika is often used in Hindu marriage ceremonies and during Diwali celebrations.

Etymology and nomenclature

With well-being (swasti), we would follow our path, like the Sun and the Moon. May we meet someone who gives in return, who does not harm, and who has knowledge.

The word swastika comes from the Sanskrit root swasti, which combines su (meaning "good" or "well") and asti (meaning "is" or "there is"). The word swasti appears often in ancient Indian texts called the Vedas and in classical literature. It means "health, luck, success, or prosperity" and was used as a greeting. The ending -ka is a common suffix that can have different meanings.

According to 19th-century Sanskrit scholar Monier Monier-Williams, most scholars believe the swastika was originally a symbol of the Sun. The sign represents well-being, something fortunate, lucky, or good. It is sometimes spelled svastika in modern texts. Other spellings, like suastika, were used in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The word comes from the Sanskrit term (Devanagari: स्वस्तिक), which is written as svastika in the IAST system but pronounced closer to swastika.

The earliest known use of the word swastika is in a grammar text called Aṣṭādhyāyī by Pāṇini, who lived in or before the 4th century BCE, possibly in the 6th or 5th century BCE. He used the word to explain a rule about identifying marks on a cow’s ear.

In 1871, a European scholar named Heinrich Schliemann discovered over 1,800 ancient swastikas and similar symbols while digging near the Aegean Sea for evidence of the ancient city of Troy. He connected these findings to the Sanskrit word swastika.

By the 19th century, the term swastika was used in English, replacing an earlier Greek term, gammadion. In 1878, an Irish scholar named Charles Graves used swastika as the common English name for the symbol, comparing it to the French term croix gammée (a cross with arms shaped like the Greek letter gamma, Γ). Soon after, British scholars Edward Thomas and Robert Sewell also used swastika as the standard English term for the symbol.

The "reversed" swastika was first proposed by a European scholar named Eugène Burnouf in 1852. Later, Heinrich Schliemann used this idea in his book Ilios (1880), based on a letter from another scholar, Max Müller. In 1894, a scholar named Eugène Goblet d'Alviella used the term sauwastika to describe a swastika with arms bent to the left, contrasting it with the standard swastika (arms bent to the right).

Other names for the symbol include:

• In European languages: fylfot, gammadion, tetraskelion, or cross cramponnée (a term from Anglo-Norman heraldry).
• In German: Hakenkreuz.
• In French: croix gammée.
• In Italian: croce uncinata.
• In Latvian: ugunskrusts.
• In Mongolian: khas (used mainly in seals).
• In Chinese: wànzì (Mandarin), manji (Cantonese, Japanese, Korean), or vạn tự/chữ vạn (Vietnamese).
• In Balti/Tibetan: yung drung.

Appearance

Swastikas are crosses that follow a chiral symmetry, meaning they have mirror-image forms. These forms appear in different shapes: some have short legs, others have long arms, and some are part of continuous line patterns. Chirality means a shape lacks mirror symmetry and has two versions that are reflections of each other. These versions are called left-facing (卍) and right-facing (卐).

A compact swastika can be seen as a chiral irregular 20-sided polygon (icosagon) with fourfold (90°) rotational symmetry. If designed on a 5 × 5 square grid and with its legs shortened by one unit, this swastika can cover a flat surface by repeating the same pattern. The main swastika used on the Nazi flag was based on a 5 × 5 diagonal grid, but its legs were not shortened.

The swastika became a standard character in Chinese, written as "卍" (pinyin: wàn), and was later included in other East Asian languages, such as Japanese, where it is called "卍" (Hepburn: manji) or "卍字" (manji).

The swastika appears in Unicode character sets for two languages. In the Chinese block, it is represented as U+534D 卍 (left-facing) and U+5350 卐 (right-facing). The right-facing symbol exists in the Big5 character set, but the left-facing symbol does not, though it is included in Big5+. In Unicode 5.2, two swastika symbols and two variations were added to the Tibetan block: U+0FD5 ࿕ (RIGHT-FACING SVASTI SIGN), U+0FD7 ࿗ (RIGHT-FACING SVASTI SIGN WITH DOTS), U+0FD6 ࿖ (LEFT-FACING SVASTI SIGN), and U+0FD8 ࿘ (LEFT-FACING SVASTI SIGN WITH DOTS).

Origin

The swastika has been studied in connection with other cross-shaped symbols, such as the sun cross from the Bronze Age. It is known to appear in early writing systems, like the Vinča script from the Neolithic period, but its exact origin remains unclear.

René Guénon believed the swastika symbolized the North Pole and the movement around a central, unchanging axis (called the axis mundi). He also thought it represented the Sun indirectly, as a reflection of the North Pole. Guénon saw the swastika as a sign of life and the creative power of the universe’s supreme force, which he called the absolute God. This force, he argued, is shown in symbols like the Greek Logos, the Hindu Om, and the Chinese Taiyi. Guénon compared the swastika’s meaning to the yin and yang symbol in Chinese tradition and to other symbols, such as the Greek letter Γ (gamma) and the letter G, which in Masonic tradition represents the Great Architect of the Universe.

Scholar Reza Assasi suggested the swastika represented the North Pole centered on a star called ζ Draconis, with the constellation Draco as one of its arms. He believed this symbol later appeared in ancient Iranian culture as the four-horse chariot of Mithra, a god associated with the cosmos. Iranians thought the universe was pulled by four horses that moved clockwise around a fixed center. This idea, Assasi argued, influenced Roman Mithraism, where the swastika appeared in religious art and astronomical drawings.

Russian archaeologist Gennady Zdanovich studied the swastika in the Sintashta culture and believed it represented the universe, showing the movement of constellations around the North Pole, centered on a star in the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor). He also noted that the swastika could be drawn by imagining the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) moving in four phases around the pole star. Guénon similarly described the swastika as a visual representation of the Big Dipper’s movement.

In their 1985 book Comet, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan proposed that a rotating comet with a four-part tail, seen around 2,000 years BCE, might explain the swastika’s presence in both Old World and pre-Columbian American cultures. A Chinese book from the 2nd century BCE, the Book of Silk, shows a comet with a swastika-like shape.

In 1992, Bob Kobres wrote that a swastika-like symbol on a Han dynasty manuscript was called a "long-tailed pheasant star" (dixing) because it resembled a bird’s foot or a footprint. Similar comparisons were made earlier by J. F. Hewitt in 1907 and in a 1908 article in Good Housekeeping. Kobres also noted that myths linking birds and comets existed outside of China.

Among the Pima people of Arizona, the swastika is a symbol of the four winds. Anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing observed that the Pima used a cross with curved arms (like a broken sun cross) to represent the four wind gods. He wrote that the right-angle swastika shows the circle of the four wind gods standing at the head of their paths or directions.

Historical uses

The earliest swastikas known to humans date back to 10,000 to 17,000 BCE. These were part of a complex pattern made of connected swastikas found on a bird-shaped figurine carved from mammoth ivory in Mezine, Ukraine. Some experts believe the swastika might represent a stork in flight. Because the carving was found near objects shaped like male genitalia, it may also have been a symbol related to fertility.

In the mountains of Iran, swastikas or spinning wheel-like designs were carved into stone walls more than 7,000 years ago. One example is found in Khorashad, Birjand, on a sacred wall called Lakh Mazar.

Swastikas that appear as mirror images (one turning clockwise and the other counterclockwise) were found on pottery in the Devetashka cave in Bulgaria, dating to 6,000 BCE.

In South Asia, swastikas first appeared in the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 BCE. They also appeared in cultures near the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea during the Bronze and Iron Ages. In these cultures, swastikas were not special symbols but were used alongside other similar designs. In the Zoroastrian religion of Persia, the swastika represented the sun, endless creation, or infinity. It was also a common symbol on coins from Mesopotamia. In England, swastikas were carved into stones on Ilkley Moor, such as the Swastika Stone.

Swastikas have been found on pottery in Africa, near the Kush region and at Jebel Barkal temples, as well as in the Iron Age designs of the northern Caucasus (Koban culture) and in Neolithic China (Majiayao culture).

Swastikas also appeared in Egypt during the Coptic period. A textile in the V&A Museum in London, found near Asyut, has small swastikas in its design. This piece dates to between 300 and 600 CE.

The Tierwirbel, a motif with animals arranged in a circular pattern, was common in Bronze Age Central Asia, the Eurasian Steppe, and later in Iron Age Scythian and European cultures. This design spread to regions as far as the Pacific and North America, such as Moundville.

In Armenia, the swastika is called "arevakhach" or "kerkhach" and was a symbol of eternity and eternal light (representing God). Swastikas were found on petroglyphs from the Copper Age, before the Bronze Age. During the Bronze Age, they appeared on cauldrons, belts, and medallions.

Swastikas were also used in medieval churches and fortresses, such as the principal tower in Armenia’s historical capital, Ani. They appeared on Armenian carpets, cross-stones (khachkar), and in medieval manuscripts, as well as on modern monuments as a symbol of eternity.

Old petroglyphs with swastikas were found in Dagestan, among the Avars. The tribal banner of the Avar khans showed a wolf with a standard featuring a double-spiral swastika.

Swastikas were also found on medieval Vainakh tower architecture, as noted in sketches by scholar Bruno Plaetschke from the 1920s. A rectangular swastika was engraved on the entrance of a residential tower in Khimoy, Chechnya.

Swastikas from the Iron Age are linked to Indo-European cultures, including the Illyrians, Indo-Iranians, Celts, Greeks, Italics, Germanic peoples, and Slavs. In the Sintashta culture’s "Country of Towns" in southern Russia, many of the oldest swastika patterns were found.

Swastika shapes have been discovered on many artifacts from Iron Age Europe.

Swastikas appear on Germanic Migration Period and Viking Age items, such as the 3rd-century Værløse Fibula from Zealand, Denmark; the Gothic spearhead from Brest-Litovsk, Belarus; the 9th-century Snoldelev Stone from Ramsø, Denmark; and many Migration Period bracteates, which are small metal items.

The pagan Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England, contained items with swastikas, now in the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. A swastika is clearly marked on a hilt and sword belt found in a 6th-century grave in Kent.

Hilda Ellis Davidson suggested that the swastika was connected to Thor, the Norse god of thunder, and might have represented his hammer, Mjolnir. She noted many swastikas from Anglo-Saxon graves, especially on cremation urns in East Anglia. Some swastikas in the Cambridge Museum are highly detailed, showing they had special meaning as funerary symbols. The 8th-century Sæbø sword has a runic inscription that supports the swastika’s link to Thor in Norse paganism.

A bronze shield from around 350–50 BCE, found in the River Thames near Battersea Bridge (called the Battersea Shield), has 27 swastikas embossed in bronze and red enamel. An Ogham stone in Ireland was modified into a Christian gravestone and decorated with a cross and two swastikas. The Book of Kells, from around 800 CE, includes swastika-shaped designs. Swastikas were also found on Galician metal items and stones from the Castro culture period.

The ancient Baltic thunder cross symbol (pērkona krusts or perkūno kryžius) is a swastika used in decoration, clothing, and archaeological finds.

In Lithuania, swastikas carved into antler, wood, metal, and clay were important cultural and religious symbols. Researchers at Klaipėda University found that swastikas could be drawn clockwise or counterclockwise, and some items showed both directions, suggesting the symbol had broad meaning. Swastikas were often linked to Perkūnas, the god of thunder, and Kalvelis, the blacksmith. This connection highlights the swastika’s role as a "fire cross," representing fire or thunder in Baltic traditions.

According to painter Stanisław Jakubowski, the "little sun" (słoneczko) was an Early Slavic symbol of the sun. He believed it was engraved on monuments near the graves of fallen Slavs to represent eternal life. His work, Prasłowiańskie motywy architektoniczne (Early Slavic Architectural Motifs), was published in 1923.

The Boreyko coat of arms with a red swastika was used by noble families in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

According to Boris Kuftin, Russians often used swastikas.

Modern controversy

Since the 1930s, the swastika has been mainly linked to Nazism because of its use by Nazi Germany. After World War II, the symbol became known as a sign of hate in Western countries and as a symbol of white supremacy in many places.

In some countries, like Germany, using the swastika as a Nazi or hate symbol is not allowed. In the United States, courts have ruled that local governments can ban the swastika if it is used to scare others, just like other symbols such as cross burning.

Germany and Austria have laws that make it illegal to publicly show the swastika, certain runes, the Celtic cross (used by white power groups), the wolfsangel, the Odal SS-rune, and the Totenkopf skull, except in specific cases. These symbols are also removed from old railway timetables from the 1930s. However, swastikas on Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain temples are allowed because religious symbols cannot be banned in Germany.

In 2005, police in some areas began investigating anti-fascist groups for using symbols that looked like the swastika. For example, police searched the offices of a music label and took items showing crossed-out swastikas. In 2006, police in Stade investigated anti-fascist youths for using a sign showing someone throwing a swastika into a trash can. This was part of a protest against right-wing political groups.

In 2006, a member of the German parliament, Claudia Roth, turned herself in for displaying a crossed-out swastika in demonstrations against neo-Nazis. She wanted to show that it was unfair to punish anti-fascist people for using symbols that opposed Nazism. In 2007, Germany’s top court ruled that crossed-out symbols were clearly against Nazi ideas, ending the debate.

In 2018, Germany changed its laws to allow swastikas and other Nazi symbols in video games if they are used to criticize or discuss current events. This change meant games could now receive age ratings from a government group called USK.

In 2001, the European Union tried to create a law to stop racism, but member countries disagreed about balancing anti-racism rules with freedom of speech. A plan to ban the swastika across the EU failed in 2005 because of British objections. In 2007, Germany suggested the EU follow its laws to punish people who deny the Holocaust or display Nazi symbols. This led to protests by Hindu groups, who pointed out the swastika is an ancient symbol of peace. The plan to ban the swastika was later dropped.

In Brazil, making, sharing, or broadcasting a swastika with the goal of promoting Nazism is a crime. The punishment is 2 to 5 years in prison and a fine.

In the United States, the First Amendment protects the right to free speech, so displaying Nazi-era flags is allowed. These flags have sometimes been seen at white supremacist events along with other symbols like the Confederate flag.

In 2010, an organization called the Anti-Defamation League said the swastika is no longer only a Jewish hate symbol, but it is still used by white supremacists and sometimes by young people as "shock graffiti."

In 2022, Victoria, Australia, became the first state to ban the swastika. People who break this law could face up to one year in jail or a fine.

In 2010, Microsoft said players in the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops could not use the swastika on their name tags. If someone reported the symbol, the player would be banned from an online service called Xbox Live.

In 2004, the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular at Disney Hollywood Studios removed swastikas from German vehicles and uniforms in a scene from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The American Nazi Party used the swastika on its flag before it was disbanded in 1967. Later groups reused the symbol in 1983.

The swastika is listed as a hate symbol in US schools, often found with other white supremacist symbols like those of the Ku Klux Klan. A 1999 US government guide for schools mentioned the swastika and a "three-bladed" version used by skinheads and other groups.

In Estonia, a neo-Nazi group called "Kolovrat" was linked to an extremist newspaper in 2001. A person was jailed for distributing it. The symbol later appeared on a Russian military group and on some Ukrainian soldiers.

Since the late 1990s, traditional swastikas from Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain cultures have sometimes been mistaken for Nazi symbols in Western countries. This has led to some products being banned or removed from stores.

In 2000, a 10-year-old boy in New York bought a set of Pokémon cards.