The Aryan Swastika

Despite having what many may regard as some inflammatory ideas, there's no doubt that Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905 - October 22, 1982) was a fascinating woman.

Savitri Devi (born Maximiani Portas)

Because of her love of animals and their welfare, she was a pioneering animal rights advocate and promoted a vegetarian lifestyle. She was a philosopher, a mystic, and a tireless activist on behalf of National Socialism and Aryan paganism.  It is no doubt due to these two latter interests of Savitri Devi that may concern those with modern sensibilities.

Her synthesis of Hinduism and Nazism, and proclaiming Adolf Hitler an Avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu would understandably put off some folks these days, even to the extent of questioning Savitri Devi's sanity¹. 

 

However, many forget (or are simply unaware) that Hitler, as an enemy of imperial Britain, was seen as a potential liberator to many educated Indians in the lead-up to World War 2. His status as an Avatar was acknowledged not just by Savitri Devi alone but by many Hindus of the times.  His worship was merely a natural aspect of typical Hindu reverence for influential men.

But I don't really want to talk about Savitri Devi overly much right now. The purpose of this post is to expand a little, or at least give a little more information, on what I wrote in one of my recent posts on the swastika, when I mentioned that the swastika is an Aryan sign. 

The following excerpt is from Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's Hitler's Priestess (quite a balanced biography on Savitri Devi. I recommend giving it a look) where the origin to the idea of the svastika as an Aryan sign is given an explanation:

"Given her prolonged periods of study in Athens, it would be surprising if Portas [Savitri Devi] had not been influenced by the memory of the famous German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890), the discoverer of Troy and Mycenaean culture. In the course of his pioneering excavations at Hissarlik in 1871–1875, he had uncovered the greatest treasure trove of gold, silver, and bronze objects ever found. His discoveries confirming the site of Troy, the Trojan War, and the events of Homeric poetry made a deep and lasting impression on the European mind.

Sophia Schliemann

After his success Schliemann and his young beautiful Greek wife Sophia settled at Athens in a palatial mansion called the Ilíou Mélathron (Palace of Ilion) built by Ernst Ziller in 1878–1879 at 12 Panepstimíou Street. Here they became the center of Athenian society, hosting lavish banquets at which Sophia presided wearing Mycenaean gold and the diadem that had once belonged to Helen of Troy. In due course much of Schliemann’s Mycenaean treasure found a home in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, and he donated much of the Trojan hoard to the German National Museum in Berlin.

At the Hissarlik site of Troy, Schliemann had also found hundreds of objects ranging from pottery fragments and terracotta whorls to ornaments bearing the sign of the swastika. He immediately recognized this symbol from similar signs on pots found near Königswalde on the River Oder in Germany and speculated that the swastika was a ‘‘significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors,’’ which linked the ancient Teutons, the Homeric Greeks, and Vedic India.

The extraordinary publicity surrounding Schliemann’s finds at Troy guaranteed a wide European audience for his speculations about an ancient Aryan symbol bridging the mythological and religious traditions of East and West. His book Troja (1884) contained a dissertation identifying the Trojans as Thrakians, who were in turn regarded as Teutons².

Heinrich Schliemann

Thanks to Schliemann’s extensive scholarly contacts in Germany, England, and France the swastika was swiftly launched as the Aryan symbol in the European mind. Michael Zmigrodzki, a Polish librarian, addressed major international congresses of anthropologists and archaeologists on the subject of the Aryan swastika in 1889, attended by Schliemann, his antisemitic collaborator Emile Burnouf, and Professor Ludvig Müller of Copenhagen, who claimed that the swastika was the emblem of the supreme Aryan god.

So great was Schliemann’s fascination with this symbol that he adorned the external walls of his great house in Athens with a continuous border of decorative swastikas."

Schliemann's svastika fence, Athens

- from Chapter 1, Hitler's Priestess, Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth,and Neo-Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, New York University Press, 1998

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Notes

1 According to our current "politically correct" educational conditioning.  Apparently a reviewer did question Savitri Devi's sanity in the Times Literary Supplement.

2 'Teuton' used to be a common synonym for 'Germanic people' in general.