Revival of the Runes: The Modern Rediscovery and Reinvention of the Germanic Runes - Stephen E. Flowers Ph.D. 2021

Runic Origins of the “Peace Sign”
Appendix

(Originally published in Runes IV:5 [1986])

In the early 1960s a curious sign, which until then had been unknown to most people, became prevalent. It could be seen on buttons, on the sides of microvans, and often painted or drawn on neighborhood buildings. Perhaps it was first noticed as a sign carried in various left-wing demonstrations for peace and/or nuclear disarmament. It came to be known popularly as the “peace sign.”

Among rune occultists it is popular to assume that anything that is runelike is in fact, on some level, actually runic; that is to say, mysterious or magical in character. While such forms of ascriptive magical thinking when kept under control can be made meaningful, it might be interesting first to find out whether a given runelike sign has factually runic roots. In the case of the “peace sign,” this can be shown.

Some years ago, I read an account of this sign that was highly unsatisfactory. It stated that the sign was made up of a combination of two letters, N + D, from some obscure alphabet or another, and that these letters stood for “Nuclear Disarmament.” Furthermore, it was reported that the sign was first developed and used by British anti-nuclear activists in the early 1960s. Later I was to discover that the “alphabet” in question was the semaphore signal system in which stood for N and ^| stood for D. The resulting sign, , was in fact seen in protest groups, but it is distinctly different from the more familiar “peace sign.” It seems beyond doubt that the latter sign was also used by such groups at that time, but was it their invention or did they borrow it from some previous source?

As it turns out, the use of this sign was not new to the Left in the 1960s. It had been used, for example, by the anti-Nazi Left in Germany itself and also by clever Russian propagandists on the eastern front. Actually, it is an example of the use of a group’s internal symbolism against itself. In the esoteric runology of the early twentieth century, chiefly originated by Guido von List and his followers, the sign ᛣ indicated “death.” This is in contrast to the sign ᛉ, which meant “life.” This symbolism quickly spread to popular use in early twentieth-century Germany, so that even certain newspapers began to print the dates of a person’s birth and death prefixed by the signs ᛉ and ᛣ, respectively—for example: Guido von List ᛉ 1848 —ᛣ 1919. Some papers continued the practice long after the war. It was well established that these symbols essentially stood for “life” and “death.” (Perhaps it should be noted that far-right-wing organizations have also taken up the “life rune” as a symbol, for example, on the masthead of the National Vanguard.)

The Russians, as the Red Army advanced toward Berlin, distributed leaflets urging the Germans to give up the fight, telling them that the war was lost and that only death awaited them. These leaflets were decorated with the “peace sign”—in this case a sign of death. In the example below, we see a propaganda poster alerting the German Leftists that Heinrich Himmler (that is, the SS) was to assume responsibility for internal security in Germany as he had done in various lands the Germans had conquered—wherein massive genocide had been practiced. “Now it’s OUR turn!!” the poster declares. Note the use of the “death rune.”

It would seem that the sign was later taken up by Leftists. Doubtless, this was due as much to its mysterious allure (common to runic symbols in general) as to its associations with previous causes.

This can be taken as an example of the power of attraction possessed by certain signs, a kind of “command to look” (esoteric geometry),^*16 and also as an example of the use of cultural associations with signs being used in a mode of psychological warfare. It may be a fact that if such signs have their roots in the deep psyche of the group being targeted, they will be far more effective than if they are arbitrary and wholly artificial. In this form of black magic, of course, Madison Avenue has far outstripped both Moscow and Berlin.

[R.I.P.]