Talk:Swastika

Direction of movement, Vinča & modern use

"The investigators put forth the hypothesis that the swastika moved westward from the Indian subcontinent to Finland, Scandinavia, the Scottish Highlands and other parts of Europe."

This is backwards to the apparent dates of the inscriptions found e.g. it appears in Ukraine ~10,000bce, then Hungary/Romania/Bulgaria/Serbia ~3,000 to 6,000bce, then Iran ~5,000bce, then the Indian subcontinent ~3,000bce, indicating it was moving Eastward. The introduction of the article also suggests appropriation of the symbol from the East, despite the archaeological evidence suggesting the opposite.

The article should probably discuss the Vinča archeological finds more in the prehistory section. It's worth noting that archaeological surveys unearthed Vinča symbols around the end of the 1800s and start of the last century. It was in use as a flag emblem by the National Christian Union party, led by Alexandru Cuza, in Romania, in 1922. 14 years prior, Vinča archaeological finds had been made in Serbia. Evidence suggesting that it was selected as an emblem as a result of its presence in the archeological finds can be found in the article pertaining to Cuza himself; e.g. Cuza mentions the Swastika and "signs were found on our soil", an apparent reference to the Vinča archaeological finds. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.0.56.5016:40, 1 May 2024 (talk)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 February 2025

I would like to attach an image of a swastika pattern on tile flooring. Hearty005 (talk) 03:17, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Not done for now: feel free to upload it to Wikimedia as long as you follow WP:Image Use Policy. Then link to it here and reopen the request then Cannolis (talk) 05:50, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

As this article is already heavily overloaded with images, the test set out in policy MOS:IMAGEREL is especially relevant. So your image would have to be more appropriate to illustrate content in the article than an image already in use, which it would replace. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:54, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect history

Wikipedia contingency give false history on the swastika a Sanskrit word and as a scholar in both Buddhism and German history let me tell you the Third Reich never used the word swastika 73.77.57.20 (talk) 20:06, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's what the article already says. It was the East India Company or the British Raj that took the word into English from Sanskrit, at least 150 years ago. There is no false history: the Nazis, speaking in German, called it a hakencreuz. The anglophone countries, speaking in English, called it a swastika. This is the English language wikipedia, so we use the English word (and not the German word). See the Frequently Asked Questions at the top of the page. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:57, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Froxmere's fylfot

@JMF Could you please outline why you have removed very obviously relevant material about Froxmere's swastika and its 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century interpretations? The design is clearly a swastika, and the fact that it is called a "fylfot" has, as you know, important historical ramifications, whatever was actually meant by the term in the 15th century. The idea that it represents interlocking set squares is not a 19th-century idea, but one put forward by a 20th-century historian. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 19:33, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Because, as the Fylfot article explains, it is not and never was, any kind of sign, sigil, or heraldic device. The whole theory was based on a misreading of fragment of manuscript that was just an instruction to the glazier to fill the foot of the pane of glass with the repeating Greek motif which, taken in isolation (which it never is), looks like a swastika. As Bradley (Clarendon Press) concludes "I am afraid this ludicrously simple explanation will not be altogether welcome to some archaeologists, who have been accustomed to regard the word as a venerable relic of Teutonic antiquity. But if my interpretation be correct, it only adds one more to the large number of instances in which technical terms of modern archaeology have been evolved out of misunderstanding". It is thus WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE in this over-length article. Froxmere is not a reliable source: WP:AGEMATTERS. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:44, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@JMF I am little confused about the nature and content of your reply and I think there must be a misunderstanding. I am not sure you understood what you removed. The facts are these:

1. In the late 15th century, Thomas Froxmere had a window made for himself and his wife Catharine. The window doesn't survive, but the plan for it does. The design clearly involves a single equilateral swastika with ermine spots beneath his feet, not any kind of repeating motif. Correspondingly, the wife's portrait has a Catharine wheel in the same position. Again, the wheel and swastika are both single items, not part of any pattern. The text accompanying the picture refers to the swastika as a fylfot.
2. In the early 19th century, this swastika was identified, correctly, as a "swastika" by an art historian, the earliest non-Indological uses of this word in English. Consequently, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the name "fylfot" was used interchangeably with the name "swastika". The swastika was a popular heraldic motif at the time, almost invariably referred to as a fylfot in English blazons. Various more or less bogus meanings and etymologies were ascribed to the swastika/fylfot by historians and archaeologists which reinforced the idea that the swastika had a particular significance in pre-Christian European religion.
3. In the late 19th century, Henry Bradley questioned the idea that the word "fylfot" used in the Froxmere manuscript was all that was claimed for it, pointing out that the only use of the word before the 19th century was in the Froxmere's diagram, and denounced the idea that this was an ancient or common mediaeval word.
4. In the late 20th century, the historian John Goodall suggested that the reason the Froxmeres were accompanied by a Catharine wheel and a swastika in their memorial window involved the iconography of their namesake saints: Catharine and Thomas. Goodall suggested that the swastika was representative of Thomas the way the wheel is representative of Catharine. The swastika would therefore be formed of interlocking set squares, or esquarres.
5. In the early 20th century, Clive Cheesman published "The heralds' swastika", which summarizes these points and analyses the use of the swastika (called a fylfot) in heraldry, including Froxmere's swastika.

These points were summarized in my latest addition to this article. I quoted Cheesman, Goodall, and Bradley, as well as the text of Froxmere's design for the glazier, the historical significance of which is discussed by all three.

There is nothing "fringe" whatsoever; these first two are reliable sources, and you yourself quote Bradley as an authority. Quoting a text published in 1897 as an justification for your removal of that same text seems to me bizarre, especially when citing "AGEMATTERS" and deleting text sourced to far more recent publications (1978 and 2017). Nowhere is Froxmere himself used as a source, so why you should declare "Froxmere is not a reliable source" is mystifying.

Equally, your claim that the diagram contains "instruction to the glazier to fill the foot of the pane of glass with the repeating Greek motif which, taken in isolation (which it never is), looks like a swastika is simply wrong. The use of the word fylfot by Froxmere may be understood as a reference to the space beneath Froxmere's portrait's feet, or the foot of the window, but there is no indication anywhere that the swastika is supposed to be repeated. The design clearly shows a single swastika only, exactly parallel to the single Catharine wheel beneath Catharine Froxmere's feet. Where you got the idea that the swastika is not to be "taken in isolation" is unknown to me.

In light of the great importance attached to the purportedly Germanic provenance of the swastika ("a venerable relic of Teutonic antiquity") and the supposedly Anglo-Saxon name of "fylfot", I cannot see how this is undue. It is in fact very important to the development of the swastika as a symbol of Germany or of Germanic peoples.

Likewise, the importance of the possible interpretation of the set square (esquarre or équerre) as a component of the swastika is, incidentally, corroborated by the quotation of it by 18th-century heralds. As a division of the field, a swastika arrangement is described as écartelé en équerre in French and in Winkelmaßschnitt geviert in German. The latter is the form quoted by Guido von List in his The Meaning of the Runes, which was itself very influential on how swastikas and other symbols were interpreted by pan-Germanists and the esoteric and occult far-right in the 20th century (and afterwards).

Discussion of the Froxmere "fylfot" (or rather, swastika) is therefore of the highest importance to any article on the history of the swastika. The wisest fool in Christendom (talk) 20:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I disagree strongly. First, Bradley describes how he examined the MS at the British Museum and records In the drawing, under the kneeling effigy, is a cross cramponnée composed of broad fillets, tricked apparently for "ermine. It seems to me very likely that fylfot in this passage (which it must be remembered is the sole authority for the word) is nothing more or less than "fill -foot," and means simply a pattern for filling up the foot of a compartment of a window." So we have an example of a swastika-like device being used in a memorial window [I acknowledge that I misinterpreted how it was used]. But what makes it so significant that it merits your huge addition? It is clear that the fylfot name is a Victorian fantasy (as I shall reply to Binksternet below next). Do we have a date for the window or the MS? How is it any more than an interesting anecdote? Which modern historian (aka RS) has given it any credence? If not, it is just another example of a fairly obvious graphic being used: the article is already stuffed with those. An example from England would need to be far better attested than this one is. It simply is not good enough. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:23, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

When I say that "it is simply not good enough", I mean that it is a very minor anecdote that has minimal significance on the worldwide stage. It is just another example of Victorian-era bad science that would fail the WP:NOTDB test if it were not for the fact of its use after 1939 to avoid saying swastika. That is the only basis in which it merits mention in the article. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:14, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it's appropriate to tell the reader about whatever confusion was created by the fylfot term. Note that Charles Graves and his contemporaries, in establishing "swastika" as the English language term for the symbol, used the French term la croix gammée as the primary alternate term. You would have to wait a couple of decades and jump across the Atlantic to the 1896 book The Swastika: The Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migrations to see historian Thomas Wilson discuss how the term "fylfot" had been equated with the swastika. Binksternet (talk) 21:48, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it is appropriate in the Fylfot article to do that, not here. This article already documents that the Sanskrit name had been imported into English. The name 'fylfot', as Bradley explained, was never a genuine alternative name in history – it is to people like Wilson that he refers when he writes In several books published shortly after 1840 it is stated that the name "fylfot " had recently been given to the cross cramponnee on the authority of a single passage in a MS. of the fifteenth century,. Yes, after 1939, there was a natural reluctance to use the word that the Nazis had commandeered and people looked for an alternative nomenclature. It is only that latter practice that makes it worth a mention and then only in very brief terms because it is a castle built on sand. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:23, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

References