Swastika symbol: archetypal meaning, history and present time

The article deals with the philosophic and historical-and-cultural analysis of such a complicated polycultural symbol and ancient image of people’s consciousness as swastika. The author turns to the problem of revealing the profound sense of the swastika symbol which has universal archetypal meaning, due to his dissent from a tradition in the scientific literature to view the problem of swastika nearly exclusively in ideological and political reference to fascism. Such an approach excludes from the attention of the researchers a huge historical and cultural layer in the development of the swastika symbol and discredits its genuine role in the traditional culture. The author makes an attempt to restore the meaning of the archetypal symbol in a more complete traditional volume of folk culture without any association with military aggression and genocide. The task of today’s researchers is to decipher the cultural code of swastika in the people’s consciousness of the past epochs - including the beginning of the 20th century - with a view to enrich contemporary Russian culture with the seemingly lost meanings thus bringing it back to its authentic folk origin.