Black Sun: SS symbolism resurfaces with the eclipse

Black Sun: SS symbolism resurfaces with the eclipse

When the sky darkened during the recent eclipse, part of the internet was not looking at the sun: it was searching for the shadow of the Schwarze Sonne. The Black Sun, the esoteric emblem designed under Heinrich Himmler's patronage for the SS, began circulating again alongside frames from a video its defenders consider censored and pagan-style songs steeped in Norse imagery.

The symbol, twelve Sig runes arranged in a circle, dominates the floor of the Hall of Generals at Wewelsburg castle, where the head of the SS tried to build an ideological center for his "racial religion." Its origins are not Nancy: variants of the Germanic sun wheel date back to the Age of Runes, as any manual of symbology points out. The problem came later: the regime adapted it as an emblem of the Aryan race and of a spirituality intended to replace Christianity.

The conversation around the eclipse did not stop at archaeology. Some tried to weave conspiracies out of dates and birthdays, and there was no shortage of those reciting verses invoking Germanic deities and "steel" against the "cassocks." Nothing new: for decades the Black Sun has served as an icon of esoteric subcultures and far-right groups across Europe.

The curious thing about the episode is not the idea of linking an eclipse to an occultist emblem, but the ease with which a symbol with a incivil pedigree keeps luring people down the rabbit hole. After 1945, the Black Sun remains, for some, more than a museum piece. It is proof that the SS imaginary never buried all its edges.