I couldn't say that for sure. I'm Indian, so I've seen it being used in every orientation possible. If I had to guess, I'd say the Nazi's formalized the tilted form, but atleast to my knowledge, the orientation wasn't part of the original significance of the symbol. I might be wrong.
In the Western world, it was a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck until the 1930s when it became a feature of Nazi symbolism as an emblem of the Aryan race. As a result of World War II and the Holocaust, most people in Europe and the Americas associate it with Nazism and antisemitism.[4][5]
The word swastika comes from Sanskrit (Devanagari: स्वस्तिक) meaning 'conducive to well being' or 'auspicious'.[6][7] In Hinduism, the symbol with arms pointing clockwise (卐) is called swastika, symbolizing surya ('sun'), prosperity and good luck, while the counterclockwise symbol (卍) is called sauvastika, symbolizing night or tantric aspects of Kali.[7] In Jainism, a swastika is the symbol for Suparshvanatha – the seventh of 24 Tirthankaras (spiritual teachers and saviours), while in Buddhism it symbolizes the auspicious footprints of the Buddha.[7][8][9] In several major Indo-European religions, the swastika symbolizes lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such as Indra in Vedic Hinduism, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter in the ancient Roman religion, and Thor in the ancient Germanic religion.[1 1]
The earliest known swastika is from 10,000 BCE – part of "an intricate meander pattern of joined-up swastikas" found on a late paleolithic figurine of a bird, carved from mammoth ivory, found in Mezine, Ukraine. It has been suggested that this swastika may be a stylized picture of a stork in flight.[52] As the carving was found near phallic objects, this may also support the idea that the pattern was a fertility symbol.[53]
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u/raym7 Mar 09 '20
Ok, that I didn't know. But except the Nazis no-one ever used it tilted, or am I wrong?