Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: burns@das.harvard.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Peace Sign Message-ID: Date: 5 Mar 91 02:50:08 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Aiken Computation Lab, Harvard University Lines: 38 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Reproduced from "More of the Straight Dope" by Cecil Adams (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), pp. 149-151: "The design for the familiar crow's-foot-in-a-circle we know as the peace symbol was completed February 21, 1958, by British commercial artist Gerald Holtom. Holtom had been commisioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, headed by philosopher Bertrand Russell, which was planning an Easter march to Canterbury Cathedral to protest the Atomic Weapons Research Center at Aldermaston. After doodling around with several versions of the Christian cross set in a circle, Holtom hit upon the crow's-foot idea, which had a couple things going for it. First, it was a combination of the semaphore signals for N and D, standing for Nuclear Disarmament. N is two flags held in an upside-down V and D is one flag pointed straight up and the other pointed straight down. Second, the crow's-foot has an ancient history as a symbol of death and despair--it looks like somebody spreading his hands in a gesture of defeat. The symbol is shown in a 1955 tome called "The Book of Signs" by Rudolf Koch, a German calligrapher, although it's unclear whether Holtom saw it there. The circle, finally, can mean "eternity", "the unborn child", and so on. From this you can no doubt cook up a suitably apocalyptic interpretation of the symbol as a whole. During the heyday of the peace movement, other interpretations of the symbol were also offered. A national Republican newsletter noted that it looked a lot like an emblem used by the Nazis during World War II--an apparent coincidence. Another interpretation, widely promoted by the John Birch Society and other right-wing groups, was that the symbol was really the "broken cross", sign of the Antichrist. One Bircher wrote that the broken cross had originally been devised by the Roman emperor Nero, who had Saint Peter crucified upon it upside down. In the Middle Ages the symbol allegedly was used to signify the devil. I have been unable to discover any good evidence for either of these contentions. The Birchers, you may remember, also distributed bumper stickers featuring the peace symbol with the slogan, "Footprint of the American Chicken". Birchers are noted for their spry sense of humor." Copyright (C) 1988 by Chicago Reader, Incorporated John A. Burns (burns@das.harvard.edu, burns@huche1.bitnet)