Today, every time someone sees a swastika, he or she automatically thinks “Nazism” and whenever someone sees a pentagram or an upside-down cross, he or she immediately thinks “Satanism.” All three of these symbols, however, originally possessed very different meanings with far less sinister connotations.
The Swastika
We will begin with the most hated symbol of all: the swastika. For the past eighty years, this symbol has been inextricably associated with the genocidal regime of Adolf Hitler, which arose in Germany during the 1930s. Before that, however, the swastika was originally a symbol used in Hinduism to represent peace, prosperity, and good fortune. In other words, it was essentially the Hindu version of the modern “peace” sign.
ABOVE: The original Hindu swastika, used as a symbol of peace and prosperity
Now, before I explain how this Hindu peace symbol came to be used by the Nazis, I need to give some brief background information: Virtually all European and southwest Asian languages, including English, German, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and countless others, are ultimately derived from one ancient mother language known as Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken by a group of Bronze Age peoples living in the steppes of what is now southwest Russia, just north of the Black Sea. These people seem to have held a single culture and, more importantly for our purposes here, a single religion.
The word “Aryan” comes from the Sanskrit word आर्य (arya), meaning “good,” “noble,” or “righteous.” In modern usage, the word properly only refers to the relatively fair-skinned inhabitants of northern India and Iran. (The name Iran itself is the Persian form of the word Aryan.) In the late 1800s, however, the word was falsely interpreted by some linguists as the self-referential name for the Proto-Indo-Europeans. This notion has now been largely discarded by modern philologists.
The Hindu caste system, which pervaded throughout most of India until the middle of the twentieth century, divided society into a hierarchy of “castes” based on each person’s heritage. It was impossible for a member of one caste to move into a different one. Once someone was born into a caste, he or she was trapped in it for the rest of his or her life. It is believed that the caste system was established over four thousand years ago when Aryan, Indo-European-speaking invaders from the North invaded India and proclaimed themselves superior to the native, dark-skinned Dravidian inhabitants.
In the late 1800s, seeking to identify themselves with the highest Hindu caste and thereby demonstrate that they were racially superior to the native inhabitants of India, British imperialists identified the “Aryans” (aka Proto-Indo-Europeans) as a racial group, rather than merely a linguistic group. These racist authors further asserted that the so-called “Aryan race” was genetically superior to all other races and that it alone was the so-called “master race.”
All of this was, of course, complete hogwash intentionally devised to support British imperialism in the Indian subcontinent. In the early twentieth century, however, the term “Aryan” was adopted by the Nazi Party to refer to their own imaginary “master race,” which bore striking resemblances to the one once postulated by the earlier British imperialists.
The swastika’s prominent usage in Hinduism, coupled with its frequent appearances as an ordinary decorative motif in Greek, Roman, Germanic, Celtic, and Armenian art, led some scholars to falsely speculate that it was originally an important symbol in Proto-Indo-European religion.
ABOVE: Ancient Roman mosaic adorned with decorative swastikas
The Nazis, seeking to identify with those ancient “Aryans,” adopted the swastika as their official symbol, even putting it on their infamous red-and-black flag.
Even long after the fall of Nazi Germany, the swastika’s associations with Nazism were forever perpetuated through its usage by Neo-Nazi groups, who, rather predictably, sought to emulate the atrocious genocidal efforts put forward by the original Nazi Party itself.
Even today, however, the swastika is still an important religious symbol in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Sadly, the symbol is often misinterpreted by westerners who are unfamiliar with Hindu and Buddhist customs.
ABOVE: Photograph of a Hindu shrine in Jabalpur, India, covered in sacred swastikas
The Pentagram
The pentagram today is almost universally associated with the Church of Satan, but it was not always this way. In fact, in the early days of Christianity, the pentagram was an important Christian symbol. The five points of the star were said to represent the five wounds that Christ suffered on the cross. The shape of the star was said to represent the star of Bethlehem, followed by the Magi according to the Gospel of Matthew. Finally, the top point of the star was directed upwards, towards heaven, serving as an ever-present reminder to the early Christian of God’s authority.
Eventually, Christians began to stop using the pentagram in favor of other symbols, many of which are far more familiar today, such as the cross, the ichthys, and the chi rho emblem.
During the Early Modern Period, the pentagram became associated with magical and occult practices. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s book On Occult Philosophy, published in three volumes between 1531 and 1533, contains a lengthy section on pentagrams in which he asserts that the five points of the star represent the five Platonic elements.
ABOVE: Illustration of a man inscribed within a pentagram from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s On Occult Philosophy
Some writers interpreted the pentagram as a ward against demons. In a scene from the play Faust by the German poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the demon Mephistopheles is unable to leave a room because a pentagram has been drawn on the door. Mephistopheles remarks that the only reason he was able to enter the room to begin with was because the pentagram had been drawn incorrectly with one leg shorter than the other one, thereby allowing him to enter, but not to leave.
As time went on, the symbol began to take on opposite meanings depending on which direction it was pointing. The French writer and occultist Eliphas Levi claimed that if the single point of the star was directed upwards, then the symbol was said to be “good,” but if it was inverted with the single point directed downwards, then the symbol was said to be “evil.”
It was not until the 1969 when Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible that the pentagram first became associated specifically with Satanism. Even then, this association only became fully cemented through the symbol’s gratuitous exploitation in Hollywood horror films, where it is often shown being used as a part of evil Satanic rituals.
The Upside-Down Cross
The upside-down cross is often shown in Hollywood horror films as the definitive symbol of Satanism. The idea, apparently, is that the symbol represents an inversion and therefore rejection of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. The problem is that the upside-down cross has actually been a Christian symbol for nearly the past two thousand years.
According to the late third-century Christian apologist and theologian Origen of Alexandria, Saint Peter, Christ’s most devoted disciple and the alleged founder of the Roman Catholic Church, was supposedly crucified upside down at his own request because he did not wish to dishonor Christ himself by dying in the same position as him. Whether Origen’s story is true or not remains to be seen; he wrote roughly at least two hundred years after the real Saint Peter died. In any case, however, the symbol of the inverted cross almost immediately became a symbol of Saint Peter and, in turn, the papacy itself.
ABOVE: The Crucifixion of Saint Peter by Caravaggio
In other words, in an ironic twist, the inverted cross was actually originally a symbol of deference and respect towards Christ, not the opposite. This is the same reason why Pope John Paul II had an upside-down cross on the back of his chair. (Sorry, internet conspiracy theorists, it was not because he was secretly in league with Satan. Besides, even if he had been in league with the Devil, putting Satanic symbols on the back of his chair would have been a really obvious give-away, would it not?)
The inverted cross remained a symbol of Saint Peter for over a millennium until, in the middle of the twentieth century, people unfamiliar with the symbol began mistaking it for Satanic.
Like the pentagram, the inverted cross’s connections to Satanism were finally cemented through the repeated exploitation of the symbol in Hollywood horror films, which often used the symbol as an emblem of prime evil.
IMAGE CREDITS
All images used in this article were retrieved from Wikimedia Commons and are either in the public domain in the United States or licensed under Creative Commons license agreements. The main image for this article is of an ancient Greek kanteros bearing two decorative swastikas on it.
Good one!! Thanks for sharing!
I am certainly glad you enjoyed it. Thanks a lot for commenting, by the way! I always love it when people give me feedback! If you have any more comments or criticisms, be sure to share them.
I had no clue that the pentagram and upside down cross used to be Christian symbols. Its really interesting how the meaning of symbols can change so dramatically over time. Also, I’m sure you’re probably aware, but Hitler also made people see the color pink as feminine when he marked gays with a pink triangle. Before that, it was seen as a masculine color. Its crazy that one person or group can change the way something is perceived that dramatically.
I am glad you enjoyed the article. Actually, though, Hitler was not the one who made the color pink become seen as feminine. Its history is actually much more complicated than that. The color pink was never seen as strictly a masculine color, although, until about seventy years ago, it was commonly seen as gender-neutral. In ancient times, the color pink was associated with the dawn. Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, was said to dress in saffron-colored robes as she ascended into the skies, riding in a golden chariot pulled by white winged horses. In Aristophanes’s comedy The Frogs, which was first produced in 405 B.C., the god Dionysos first appears wearing a pink dress. In Aristophanes’s usage, it is clear that the color pink is being associated with effeminacy, since, later in the scene, Herakles rallies Dionysos for his effeminacy and Dionysos responds by insisting that he is only wearing the dress to attract the attention of a well-known homosexual named Kleisthenes.
During the High Middle Ages, pink was more often worn by women than men because men generally preferred to wear brighter hues of red. In late medieval artwork, the Christ child is sometimes depicted wrapped in pink swaddling clothes as he is being held in the arms of his mother Mary. A painting by the great Italian Renaissance master Raphael shows the Christ child holding a pink flower. In French Rococo artwork of the eighteenth century, the color pink was sometimes used to symbolize seduction, but also sometimes purity and innocence.
In England during the nineteenth century, young children, including both boys and girls, dressed in pink clothes while adults, both men and women, commonly dressed in bright red clothes; the distinction was not between male and female, but rather between mature and immature. (Male children also wore dresses during this time period.)
It is true that Adolf Hitler did force homosexuals to wear a pink triangle, but this was not the reason why pink became associated with effeminacy. This is, however, the reason why many gay rights groups use the pink triangle as a symbol of pride. It is, in effect, a “reclaimed symbol,” much in the same way that words like “nerd,” “pagan,” and even the word “gay” itself were all originally derogatory slurs intended to insult and demean, but have now been embraced by the groups these terms were originally intended to insult and therefore have lost all of their original derogatory connotations.
The beginning of pink’s associations with women actually came from the Americas during the 1950s, over a decade after Hitler. In 1953, Mamie Eisenhower, the wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, wore a pink dress to her husband’s inauguration. She loved the color pink dearly and helped popularize its connotations of femininity. In 1957, the popular musical Funny Face cemented pink’s associations with women. By 1973, when Sheila Levrant de Bretteville published the broadside poster “Pink,” the color’s associations with women were already firmly established.
Hello, I really love the article and find it amazingly written. I was wondering if you could send some some of your sources- since I am writing an essay on Satanism in Popular Culture and how its been effected through the the years by Music, clothing and TV.
Anything would be a great help.
Thank you.
I am glad you enjoyed the article! I always appreciate receiving feedback from my readers and it always makes me happy to hear that they appreciate my work. Incidentally, I also wrote most of the Wikipedia article on Satan, which is probably about to become a Good Article. Here are some sources you may find helpful:
1. Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and Media (2000) by Bill Ellis (link to edition on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=vaAeBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Devil+in+media&hl=en#v=snippet&q=film&f=false),
2. Satan in America: The Devil We Know (2009) by W. Scott Poole (link to edition on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=pWYqgsRLXykC&pg=PA15&dq=Satan+and+Puritanism&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Satan%20and%20Puritanism&f=false),
Hello, thank you for making this. I hope people realise that the swastika does not represent the Nazis and the horrible genocide but a cultural symbol that had been misinterpreted and changed of meaning into the representation of power and murder. Once I had used the swastika in my poster but everyone interpreted it as Nazis and the Holocaust which greatly annoyed me because it was a representation of peace and who I am as a person, culturally and spiritually. Thank you!!!