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Norse Paganism and Buddhism share no connection through any god, ritual or history. The one sign that reaches both is a shape drawn on temple walls, coffin lids and rune stones alike, long before it was taken for anything else.

One Shape, Six Religions

The swastika appears in the atlas as a sacred or auspicious motif in six religions across three unrelated families: Ancient Greek religion, where it shows up as the meander pattern on pottery; Norse Paganism, in Germanic solar motifs; and Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Bon, where it marks the Buddha's chest, stands among Jainism's auspicious signs, or simply names well being in Sanskrit. No other single symbol in the atlas spans that many unconnected traditions.

The Shortest Path Between Two Strangers

Norse Paganism and Buddhism otherwise have nothing in common in the record. The swastika is the one substantive thing that connects them, a Bronze and Iron Age solar sign that two traditions with no contact between them each adopted on their own terms, long before a twentieth century regime made the same shape unusable across much of the West.

Where To Read More

• SwastikaCrossThe sign that reaches Norse Paganism, Buddhism and four other religions
• Norse PaganismPolytheistic (Historical/Revived)Holds the swastika as a Germanic solar motif
• BuddhismDharmic (Nontheistic)Marks it on the Buddha's chest as the Chinese wan
• BonPolytheistic (Animist)One of the six religions that holds the sign as auspicious