Ilkley Swastika Decoded

Nigel Pennick

Source:​ ​Ancient Mysteries​, No. 18, January 1981, p. 15.

The enigma of the pattern known as the Ilkley Swastika has puzzled
antiquaries since it first came to their attention in the eighteenth century.
Said to represent the solution to a schoolchildren’s riddle on how to
segregate rich and poor, it has never been adequately studied from a
comparative symbolism point of view. Its superficial resemblance to the
Aryan swastika has distracted people from its close resemblance to four
Asiatic ‘yang and yin’ symbols placed in a square. Now, if we draw four of
these signs so that their circles touch, colour in the appropriate ‘dots’ and
add a ‘navel’ or ‘omphalos’ dot for the centre, which is also coloured in, and
we have the diagram on the right. The coloured-in areas correspond exactly
with the pattern of the ‘Ilkley Swastika’. Such a ‘coincidence’ cannot be
fortuitous, for although no known ‘yang and yin’ signs exist in the West as
early as 1500 BC, the supposed date of the ‘swastika’, the cosmological
symbolism of the four directions is admirably borne out if interpreted as
four ‘yang and yin’ signs. In effect, it stands for the unity of opposites in the
four directions turning away from and coming in towards the central
omphalos, the Creator or origin of all things. The ‘segregation’ story of
schoolchildren emphasises this unity of opposites theme, for the central dot
is there supposed to represent a well, traditional symbol of the fountain at
the centre of the world, immortalized alike in Norse, Hindu and Jewish
mythologies.