being cyclic. In 1991, the symbol was changed in order to remove the swastika, out of respect to the victims of the Holocaust, but as of 2007 it has been restored to its original form. Ananda Marga The Tantra-based new religious movement Ananda Marga (Devanagari: आनन्द मार्ग, meaning Path of Bliss) uses a motif similar to the Raëlians, but in their case the apparent star of David is defined as intersecting triangles with no specific reference to Jewish culture. Falun Gong The Falun Gong qigong movement uses a symbol that features a large swastika surrounded by four smaller (and rounded) ones, interspersed with yin-and-yang symbols. Heathenry The swastika is a holy symbol in neopagan Germanic Heathenry, along with the hammer of Thor and runes. This traditionwhich is found in Scandinavia, Germany, and elsewhereconsiders the swastika to be derived from a Norse symbol for the sun. Their use of the symbol has led people to accuse them of being a neo-Nazi group. Baltic neopaganism A "fire cross" ("ugunskrusts") is used by the Baltic neopaganism movements Dievturība in Latvia and Romuva in Lithuania. Slavic Native Faith A variant of the swastika, the non-traditional eight-armed kolovrat (, literally "spinning wheel"), is the most commonly used religious symbol within neopagan Slavic Native Faith (a.k.a. Rodnovery). In the early 1990s, the former dissident and one of the founders of Russian neo-paganism Alexey Dobrovolsky first gave the name "Kolovrat" to a four-beam swastika, identical to the Nazi symbol, and later transferred this name to an eight-beam rectangular swastika. According to the historian and religious scholar Roman Shizhensky, Dobrovolsky took the idea of the swastika from the work "The Chronicle of Oera Linda" by the Nazi ideologist Herman Wirth, the first head of the Ahnenerbe. Aleksey Dobrovolsky introduced the eight-beam "kolovrat" as a symbol of "resurgent paganism." He considered this version of the Kolovrat a pagan sign of the sun and, in 1996, declared it a symbol of the uncompromising "national liberation struggle" against the "Zhyd yoke". According to Dobrovolsky, the meaning of the "kolovrat" completely coincides with the meaning of the Nazi swastika. See also Z (military symbol) – sometimes called a zwastika Notes References Sources Further reading History of the Swastika (US Holocaust Memorial Museum) The Origins of the Swastika BBC News Buddhist symbols Cross symbols Crosses in heraldry Hindu symbols Jain symbols Magic symbols Nazi symbolism Religious symbols Rotational symmetry Symbols of Indian religions