Black Sun (symbol)

The term "Black Sun" is a modern coinage, largely associated with the German "Schwarze Sonne." Its visual representation often draws from ancient Germanic solar motifs, particularly the sun wheel (Sonnenrad), a symbol found on artifacts dating back to the Bronze Age.

The Black Sun (German: Schwarze Sonne) is a type of sun wheel (Sonnenrad) symbol originating in Nazi Germany and later employed by neo-Nazis and other far-right individuals and groups. It first appeared in Nazi Germany as a design element in a castle at Wewelsburg, remodeled and expanded by the head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Heinrich Himmler, which he intended to serve as the SS's center. The symbol appeared nowhere else in Nazi Germany. The symbol's design consists of twelve radial sig runes similar...

The symbol of the Black Sun, though tragically co-opted by the darkest ideologies of the 20th century, carries an older, more primal resonance. It speaks to an archetype of the sun not merely as a source of outward, life-giving light, but as a hidden, internal fire, a generative darkness from which all forms emerge. This concept echoes through various esoteric traditions. In Hermeticism, it can be understood as the prima materia, the primordial, undifferentiated substance that is the raw material of all existence, often depicted as a dark, chaotic void pregnant with potential. Mircea Eliade, in his studies of archaic religions, explored the cyclical nature of cosmic creation and destruction, where the "darkness" is not an absence of being but a potent state of unmanifest energy.

Carl Jung, in his exploration of the collective unconscious, might have seen the Black Sun as a manifestation of the shadow archetype, the repressed or unacknowledged aspects of the psyche that, when integrated, can lead to wholeness. It is the solar principle turned inward, the intensity of divine energy not yet revealed or refined. The symbol’s association with the sun wheel, a motif found across ancient European cultures, suggests a deep-seated human intuition about the dual nature of celestial power. It is the force that both births and consumes, the fiery heart of existence that can both illuminate and incinerate. For the modern seeker, engaging with the Black Sun symbol requires a conscious discernment, moving beyond its superficial and horrific associations to grasp its profound, albeit challenging, representation of primordial creative force. It invites contemplation on the necessary dissolution that precedes every new beginning, the fertile darkness that holds the promise of all light. This is not a symbol for passive contemplation but for an active, often arduous, process of inner transformation.