We have recently analyzed the gesture of dervish, which performs its ritual by whirling with the arms open to outside, the palm of the right hand facing up, the palm of the left below. By performing this gesture, the dervish works in such a way as to receive the energy of the Cosmos with the right hand and make it available to the human through the left hand.

On this premise, years ago I proposed a gestural interpretation of the svastica, a symbol that has its roots in prehistory, whose mystery to date has not yet been completely unvealed. The svastica is a cross formed by two perpendicular lines of equal length, ending in a right-angled line. If we analyze this symbol starting from its graphic structure, it is possible to recognize in it a gestural mechanism that – obviously in my interpretation – has the function of drawing energy from the whole universe and making it available to man. In fact, the horizontal element of the svastica corresponds to the position of the arms that the dervish holds while dancing.

If we duplicate this horizontal element and rotate it 90 degrees on the center, we have drawn the svastica and obtained two results: first, the same power to catalyze the cosmic energy used by the dervish is addressed to the four regions of space, in order to produce a universal cosmic result; secondly, by virtue of the sacred value that archaic man attributes to the support (see our “The sacred nature of support” published in this blog), which is considered an axis mundi, the gesture transformed into a sacred image will produce its effects forever.

In this way, one of the four most recurrent gestures in archaic iconography, thanks to a graphic procedure of duplication, is transformed into a sort of engine capable of accumulating energy from the cosmos and making it available to the human community.