{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "swastika-sign",
 "type": "motif",
 "names": {
  "name": "The swastika",
  "native": "स्वस्तिक",
  "script": "Devanagari",
  "lang": "sa",
  "said": "SWOS-tih-kuh",
  "aliases": [
   "svastika",
   "sauvastika",
   "manji",
   "卍",
   "卐",
   "wanzi",
   "yungdrung",
   "arevakhach",
   "nkontim",
   "whirling log",
   "tsin náálwołí",
   "Naa Ukuryaa",
   "Hakenkreuz",
   "hooked cross",
   "fylfot",
   "gammadion"
  ]
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "Sanskrit svastika, from svasti — su 'good, well' + asti 'it is' — plus the suffix -ka; svasti occurs frequently in the Vedas meaning health, luck, success, prosperity, and was used as a greeting",
  "first_attested": "Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, explaining a Sanskrit grammar rule about a mark on a cow's ear; Pāṇini lived in or before the 4th century BCE, possibly the 6th or 5th",
  "note": "The English word replaced the earlier gammadion in the 19th century. Charles Graves used swastika as the common English name in 1878, defining it as the equivalent of the French croix gammée.",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-swastika"
 },
 "region": [
  "south-asia",
  "himalaya-tibet",
  "china",
  "japan",
  "korea",
  "mainland-sea",
  "island-sea",
  "east-africa",
  "west-africa",
  "north-america",
  "western-europe",
  "caucasus",
  "iran-persia"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "IN",
  "NP",
  "LK",
  "BT",
  "TH",
  "MM",
  "KH",
  "ID",
  "CN",
  "JP",
  "KR",
  "VN",
  "MN",
  "ET",
  "GH",
  "PA",
  "US",
  "AM",
  "IR",
  "BG",
  "UA",
  "ES",
  "DE",
  "AT",
  "AU"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "era": "ancient",
  "family": "celestial",
  "hemisphere": [
   "N",
   "S",
   "E",
   "W"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "An equilateral cross with each arm bent at a right angle, so the figure has four-fold rotational symmetry and no mirror symmetry. It comes in two mirror forms: right-facing 卐 and left-facing 卍. Drawn in coloured sand on a doorstep, made in rice in front of a Jain altar, imprinted on the palms of a Buddha image, cast into Chinese lattice, worn as a Japanese family crest, woven into Navajo textiles — and, rotated 45 degrees onto a white disc on a red ground, flown as the flag of Nazi Germany from 1935.",
  "story": "Take the living practice first, because it is older, larger and still going.\n\nIn Hinduism the sign goes before entrances and on doorways of homes and temples, marks the starting page of financial statements, and is built into mandalas for weddings and for welcoming a newborn. It has a particular tie to Diwali, drawn in rangoli — coloured sand — or laid out in deepak lights on the floor outside a house. Both turns are used and they are read differently: the clockwise form is solar, for Surya; the counter-clockwise, sometimes called sauvastika, connotes night and in tantric traditions stands for Kali.\n\nIn Buddhism it stands for the auspicious footprints of the Buddha, and a left-facing swastika is often imprinted on the chest, feet or palms of Buddha images. It is homologous with the dharma wheel, and the shape is read as eternal cycling, the theme of samsara. In the Bon tradition of Tibet it is the left-facing yungdrung.\n\nIn Jainism it is the emblem of Suparśvanātha, the seventh tīrthaṅkara, and in the Śvētāmbara tradition one of the eight auspicious aṣṭamaṅgala. All Jain temples and holy books must contain it. Ceremonies begin and end by making the mark several times in rice around the altar, and an offering is set on it — a fruit, a sweet, a coin or a note. The four arms are read as the four places a soul may be reborn before it attains moksha.\n\nEast Asia took it with Buddhism from India. In 693, under the Tang, it was declared the source of all good fortune and named wan by Wu Zetian. The character is a homonym for ten thousand and for infinity, so it also reads as immortality and longevity, and adding it to another auspicious pattern multiplies the wish by ten thousand. It has been part of the Chinese writing system since at least the Liao dynasty, 907–1125, as a variant of 萬. In Japan it entered with the writing system in the eighth century as the manji, became the crest of families including the Tsugaru and the Hachisuka, flies as the official flag of Hirosaki, and is the map symbol for a Buddhist temple under Japan's Survey Act.\n\nIt is far from only Asian. Armenians call it arevakhach and it appears on Copper Age petroglyphs. Islamic use runs from the Umayyad palaces of Walid, 705–715, and Hisham, 724–743, through Abbasid Raqqa and Cordoba to the Persianate world from the Seljuk period onward; on the Gonbad-e-Sorkh of 1147 it seems to have stood for the soul and resurrection. In Ethiopia one is carved in a window of the twelfth-century Biete Maryam at Lalibela. In Ghana the Akan adinkra symbol nkontim takes this form and stands for loyalty. Hopi, Navajo and Tlingit peoples have used it; the Navajo symbol tsin náálwołí, whirling log, represents humanity and life and is used in healing rituals. The Guna people of Panama adopted a flag carrying the sign in 1925 and call it Naa Ukuryaa. The earliest known swastikas are older still: a meander pattern of joined-up swastikas on a late Palaeolithic mammoth-ivory bird figurine from Mezine in Ukraine, dated 10,000 to 17,000 BCE, and mirror-image swastikas on pottery in the Devetashka cave in Bulgaria dated to 6000 BCE. In South Asia the sign first appears in the archaeological record around 3000 BCE in the Indus Valley Civilisation.\n\nNow the other history, which is specific, recent and European.\n\nHeinrich Schliemann excavated more than 1,800 ancient swastikas and variants at Hisarlik from 1871 to 1875 and linked them to the Sanskrit word. In 1872 Émile-Louis Burnouf, director of the French School at Athens, wrote to him that the swastika should be regarded as a sign of the Aryan race, adding that the Jews had completely rejected it. Schliemann accepted that reading and tied his Trojan finds to objects found in Germany. Before the Nazis, the sign tilted 45 degrees was already in use by the German nationalist Völkisch movement. The Nazi Party formally adopted it in 1920: a black swastika rotated 45 degrees on a white circle on a red ground, used on the party flag, badge and armband. Hitler described designing it in Mein Kampf in 1925 and said the hooked cross carried the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man. Racial hygiene and scientific racism were central to Nazism, and the party co-opted the sign as an emblem of an Aryan master race. On 14 March 1933 the NSDAP flag was hoisted beside Germany's national colours; as part of the Nuremberg Laws, on 15 September 1935 it became the sole national flag of Germany. Since the 1930s, in the West, the sign has been read as a symbol of hate and, in many Western countries, of white supremacy. Neo-Nazi organisations still use it; the Anti-Defamation League records it among hate symbols used as graffiti in United States schools, and in 2010 said it had for some become a more generalised symbol of hate while remaining predominant among American white supremacists, particularly as a tattoo.\n\nThe two histories now collide in law and in shop aisles. German and Austrian criminal law forbids public display of the swastika, with the swastikas on Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples exempt, because religious symbols cannot be banned in Germany. Poland's ban likewise exempts religious use; a Latvian court held in 2007 that it may be used as an ethnographic symbol. In 2022 Victoria became the first Australian state to ban display of the Nazi swastika. Goods carrying the Jain, Buddhist or Hindu sign, exported to North America and Europe, have been read by buyers as Nazi emblems and withdrawn: Pokémon cards in 1999, Christmas crackers in Canada in 2002, a Shein necklace in 2020.\n\nHindu, Buddhist and Jain organisations have asked publicly that the two not be conflated, and they have names. When Berlin proposed an EU-wide ban in early 2007, Hindu groups across Europe campaigned against it, pointing out that the sign had been a symbol of peace for 5,000 years; the proposal was dropped on 29 January 2007. The Hindu American Foundation opposed New York bills A8545 and S6648 in July 2020, objecting that the bills defined the swastika as a symbol of Nazi Germany without explaining its origins and its continuing use in Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism, and warning that teaching that definition could expose Hindu American students to prejudice. In May 2022 the Coalition of Hindus of North America, with the Heiwa Peace and Reconciliation Foundation of New York and the Buddhist Council of New York, objected to California's AB2282 for keeping the phrase Nazi Swastika; its president Nikunj Trivedi said the wording perpetuates the false idea that there is a good swastika and a bad one. Their proposal is a vocabulary one: reserve swastika for the sacred sign and use Hakenkreuz, or Nazi hooked cross, for Hitler's emblem. The Rev. T.K. Nakagaki, a Buddhist priest in New York and author of The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler's Cross, 2018, argues the same distinction.\n\nThe objection to that distinction also has names. Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism has acknowledged the sign's sanctity in several faiths while holding that Hitler's association with it cannot be entirely removed. Shelley Rood Wernick, managing director of the Jewish Federations of North America's Center on Holocaust Survivor Care, has said the symbol stands for the annihilation of an entire people and can re-traumatise survivors. Hitler himself, speaking in Munich on 13 August 1920, said the Nazi sign was the same one found carved in temple pillars as far as India and Japan.\n\nThis atlas reports that argument and does not settle it. It records the two histories separately because they are separate: one runs from prehistory to this morning's rangoli, the other begins in 1920 and ends in a genocide.",
  "how": "Drawn rather than made, more often than not. Rangoli sand or deepak lights outside a Hindu house at Diwali; rice laid in the shape before a Jain altar and an offering set on it; painted or carved on a temple; woven into cloth; cast into lattice; imprinted on a Buddha image's palms.",
  "today": "Living and daily across South, Southeast and East Asia as of 2026, and prohibited or criminalised in its Nazi use in Germany, Austria, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Brazil, Geneva and the Australian state of Victoria, with religious exemptions written into several of those laws."
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "the-swastika-problem",
   "as": "the long read this record hands off to: two histories, one shape, and what a catalogue owes each",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "cross",
   "as": "the unbent figure, which this atlas files separately because the twentieth century is not shared",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "footprint",
   "as": "in Buddhism this sign IS the footprint's mark — the two records are one object seen twice",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "brigids-cross",
   "as": "the National Museum of Ireland sorts one whole class of these woven crosses as the bent-armed type",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "charm-coin",
   "as": "Chinese charms that carry the wan character, multiplying the wish by ten thousand",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "omamori",
   "as": "sold at Japanese temples whose map symbol is this sign",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "lungta-flag",
   "as": "Tibetan and Bon material carries the left-facing yungdrung",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "spiral",
   "as": "the other rotating figure, and the one it is often grouped with in prehistoric assemblages",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "who-owns-a-charm",
   "as": "the long read on who gets to say what a sign means, which this record is the hardest case for",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "dating": {
  "period": "Late Palaeolithic to the present",
  "from_year": -9999,
  "to_year": null,
  "living": true,
  "label": "from at least 10,000 BCE; a living religious sign now",
  "method": "excavated",
  "circa": true,
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-swastika",
  "note": "from_year takes the later end of the 10,000–17,000 BCE range given for the Mezine figurine in Ukraine, where the sign appears inside a meander pattern and may be a stylised stork. The religious uses are much later and separately dated in the prose: Indus Valley c. 3000 BCE, Pāṇini by the 4th century BCE, China 693 CE, Japan 8th century CE. The Nazi adoption is 1920."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "door-piece",
  "materials": [
   "earth",
   "paper",
   "wood",
   "cloth",
   "copper",
   "seed"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "door",
   "lintel",
   "wall",
   "roof",
   "skin",
   "neck"
  ],
  "made_by": "householders, temple staff and worshippers in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Bon practice; Japanese families as a crest; smiths and weavers elsewhere",
  "colour": [
   "red",
   "white",
   "black",
   "gold"
  ],
  "source": "s:wp-swastika",
  "note": "Rice, sand and lamp-light are among the commonest materials and none of them survives; what a museum holds is the durable minority."
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "bad-luck",
   "who": "Hindu, Buddhist and Jain practice, in which the sign is auspicious; the Sanskrit root svasti means health, luck, success, prosperity",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "attraction",
   "who": "Chinese use: declared the source of all good fortune in 693 under Wu Zetian, and read as longevity and infinity through the homophone for ten thousand",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "illness",
   "who": "Navajo practice, in which the whirling log, tsin náálwołí, is used in healing rituals",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "house",
   "who": "Hindu householders, who put it at entrances and on doorways of homes and temples",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 ],
 "restricted": {
  "note": "Public display of this sign is a criminal offence in several countries when it is the Nazi emblem, and the religious exemptions are written narrowly. This atlas prints the sign's name and history and does not reproduce the Nazi flag.",
  "who_says": "German and Austrian criminal law, with exemptions for Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temple use; comparable statutes in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Brazil, Geneva and the Australian state of Victoria",
  "source": "s:wp-swastika",
  "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika"
 },
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Swastika — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika"
  },
  {
   "label": "Hindu American Foundation on the New York hate symbols bill",
   "url": "https://www.hinduamerican.org/press/new-york-state-legislatures-flawed-hate-symbols-bill-stalls"
  },
  {
   "label": "Coalition of Hindus of North America on California AB2282",
   "url": "https://cohna.org/cohna-pressrelease-on-ab2282-passage/"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-swastika",
  "s:wp-swastika-germanic-iron-age",
  "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
  "s:web-voa-swastika-2022",
  "s:web-cohna-ab2282",
  "s:web-haf-ny-hate-symbols",
  "s:wp-cultural-appropriation"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-swastika",
    "note": "the organisations, their office-holders and their positions are cited to the VOA report of 4 December 2022 and to the two organisations' own press releases; the closing paragraph states this project's editorial choice to keep the two histories apart"
   },
   "restricted": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-swastika",
    "note": "the legal position summarised from the article's section on modern controversy; laws change and this was read on 2026-09-16"
   },
   "text.today": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-swastika",
    "note": "the list of jurisdictions is the article's; the statement that the religious use is daily across Asia is the article's too"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Hindu swastika.svg",
  "File:Jain Prateek Chihna.svg",
  "File:Manji.svg"
 ],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "An equilateral cross with each arm bent at a right angle, so the figure has four-fold rotational symmetry and no mirror symmetry. It comes in two mirror forms: right-facing 卐 and left-facing 卍.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "south-asia",
   "name": "South Asia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "himalaya-tibet",
   "name": "The Himalaya and Tibet",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "china",
   "name": "China",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "japan",
   "name": "Japan",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "korea",
   "name": "Korea",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "mainland-sea",
   "name": "Mainland Southeast Asia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "island-sea",
   "name": "Island Southeast Asia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "S",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "east-africa",
   "name": "East Africa and the Horn",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "S",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "west-africa",
   "name": "West Africa",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "north-america",
   "name": "North America",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "western-europe",
   "name": "Western Europe",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "caucasus",
   "name": "The Caucasus",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "iran-persia",
   "name": "Iran",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "S",
  "W"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "the-swastika-problem",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The swastika problem",
   "as": "the long read this record hands off to: two histories, one shape, and what a catalogue owes each",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "cross",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The cross",
   "as": "the unbent figure, which this atlas files separately because the twentieth century is not shared",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "footprint",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The footprint",
   "as": "in Buddhism this sign IS the footprint's mark — the two records are one object seen twice",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "brigids-cross",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Brigid's cross",
   "as": "the National Museum of Ireland sorts one whole class of these woven crosses as the bent-armed type",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "charm-coin",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Chinese charm coin",
   "as": "Chinese charms that carry the wan character, multiplying the wish by ten thousand",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "omamori",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Omamori",
   "as": "sold at Japanese temples whose map symbol is this sign",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "to": "lungta-flag",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Lung ta prayer flag",
   "as": "Tibetan and Bon material carries the left-facing yungdrung",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "spiral",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The spiral",
   "as": "the other rotating figure, and the one it is often grouped with in prehistoric assemblages",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "who-owns-a-charm",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Who owns a charm",
   "as": "the long read on who gets to say what a sign means, which this record is the hardest case for",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-swastika",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Swastika",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-swastika-germanic-iron-age",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Swastika (Germanic Iron Age)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika_(Germanic_Iron_Age)",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-brigid-s-cross",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Brigid's cross",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid%27s_cross",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-voa-swastika-2022",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Asian Faiths Try to Save Sacred Swastika Corrupted by Hitler",
   "publisher": "Voice of America (VOA News)",
   "url": "https://www.voanews.com/a/asian-faiths-try-to-save-sacred-swastika-corrupted-by-hitler/6853228.html",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "Published 4 December 2022."
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-cohna-ab2282",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Hindu and Buddhist Groups Express Strong Disappointment Regarding California Assembly's Passage of Bill AB2282 on Swastika",
   "publisher": "Coalition of Hindus of North America",
   "url": "https://cohna.org/cohna-pressrelease-on-ab2282-passage/",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "Published 27 May 2022."
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-haf-ny-hate-symbols",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "New York State legislature's flawed hate symbols bill on the swastika stalls",
   "publisher": "Hindu American Foundation",
   "url": "https://www.hinduamerican.org/press/new-york-state-legislatures-flawed-hate-symbols-bill-stalls",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "note": "Published 28 July 2020."
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-cultural-appropriation",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Cultural appropriation",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "note": "the organisations, their office-holders and their positions are cited to the VOA report of 4 December 2022 and to the two organisations' own press releases; the closing paragraph states this project's editorial choice to keep the two histories apart"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "note": "the list of jurisdictions is the article's; the statement that the religious use is daily across Asia is the article's too"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "bad-luck",
   "label": "Bad luck, unspecified",
   "who": "Hindu, Buddhist and Jain practice, in which the sign is auspicious; the Sanskrit root svasti means health, luck, success, prosperity",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "attraction",
   "label": "Attracting custom, luck or love",
   "gloss": "the charm that pulls rather than blocks",
   "who": "Chinese use: declared the source of all good fortune in 693 under Wu Zetian, and read as longevity and infinity through the homophone for ten thousand",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "illness",
   "label": "Illness",
   "gloss": "sickness in general, where no cause is named",
   "who": "Navajo practice, in which the whirling log, tsin náálwołí, is used in healing rituals",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "house",
   "label": "Harm to a house or a field",
   "who": "Hindu householders, who put it at entrances and on doorways of homes and temples",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-swastika",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "earth",
   "label": "Earth and ash",
   "kind": "mineral",
   "note": "grave earth, temple ash, volcanic sand"
  },
  {
   "key": "paper",
   "label": "Paper",
   "kind": "written"
  },
  {
   "key": "wood",
   "label": "Wood",
   "kind": "plant"
  },
  {
   "key": "cloth",
   "label": "Cloth",
   "kind": "textile"
  },
  {
   "key": "copper",
   "label": "Copper and bronze",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "seed",
   "label": "Seed and nut",
   "kind": "plant"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "door",
   "label": "At the door",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "lintel",
   "label": "Above the lintel",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "wall",
   "label": "On a wall",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "roof",
   "label": "On the roof",
   "group": "placed"
  },
  {
   "key": "skin",
   "label": "In the skin",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "tattooed"
  },
  {
   "key": "neck",
   "label": "At the neck",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "the world's default position"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "door-piece",
  "label": "Door or lintel piece"
 },
 "holding_facts": [],
 "span": "10000 BCE to now",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "IN",
   "name": "India"
  },
  {
   "iso": "NP",
   "name": "Nepal"
  },
  {
   "iso": "LK",
   "name": "Sri Lanka"
  },
  {
   "iso": "BT",
   "name": "Bhutan"
  },
  {
   "iso": "TH",
   "name": "Thailand"
  },
  {
   "iso": "MM",
   "name": "Myanmar"
  },
  {
   "iso": "KH",
   "name": "Cambodia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "ID",
   "name": "Indonesia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "CN",
   "name": "China"
  },
  {
   "iso": "JP",
   "name": "Japan"
  },
  {
   "iso": "KR",
   "name": "South Korea"
  },
  {
   "iso": "VN",
   "name": "Vietnam"
  },
  {
   "iso": "MN",
   "name": "Mongolia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "ET",
   "name": "Ethiopia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "GH",
   "name": "Ghana"
  },
  {
   "iso": "PA",
   "name": "Panama"
  },
  {
   "iso": "US",
   "name": "United States of America"
  },
  {
   "iso": "AM",
   "name": "Armenia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "IR",
   "name": "Iran"
  },
  {
   "iso": "BG",
   "name": "Bulgaria"
  },
  {
   "iso": "UA",
   "name": "Ukraine"
  },
  {
   "iso": "ES",
   "name": "Spain"
  },
  {
   "iso": "DE",
   "name": "Germany"
  },
  {
   "iso": "AT",
   "name": "Austria"
  },
  {
   "iso": "AU",
   "name": "Australia"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "brigids-cross",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Brigid's cross",
   "as": "the National Museum of Ireland's own name for one of its seven classes, and a reason this object needs the long read",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "from": "mjolnir-pendant",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Mjölnir pendant",
   "as": "the other Germanic Iron Age sign this atlas carries, and the one whose modern politics run closest to the hammer's",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "cross",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The cross",
   "as": "the bent-armed cross, filed separately here because its twentieth-century history is not the cross's",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "footprint",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The footprint",
   "as": "in Buddhism that sign stands for these footprints — the two records are one object seen twice",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "knot",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The knot",
   "as": "one of the seven shapes the National Museum of Ireland sorts Brigid's crosses into is the bent-armed cross",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "spiral",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The spiral",
   "as": "the neighbouring turning sign, and the one whose Avar banner version is recorded as a double spiral",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "the-drawn-signs",
   "type": "art",
   "name": "The drawn signs",
   "as": "the glyph that needs a page of explanation beside it, and has one",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "from": "dating-a-charm",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Dating a charm",
   "as": "one of the two bars that start at 10,000 BCE — a date for the shape, never for an amulet",
   "rel": "carries"
  },
  {
   "from": "the-swastika-problem",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The swastika problem",
   "as": "the sign record this essay stands behind — the shape, both turns, the living practice and the current law",
   "rel": "motif"
  }
 ]
}