the white-shirted man on the left, facing the firing squad, has his arms positioned upward and outstretched, not downward.  The man is raising his hands upward and outward, making the Algiz rune with his body, physically representing the occult symbol of protection and defense.  Yet, in Holtom's peace sign interpretation, the stance is inverted, essentially reversing the symbology of the Algiz Rune, which changes its meaning to defenselessness, exposure, vulnerability and surrender.

 

Ken Kolsbun, a biographer of Gerald Holtom, says that Holtom  came to regret the symbolism of despair, as he felt that peace was something to be celebrated and wanted the symbol to be inverted.  We are told that Gerald Holtom-- the very man who designed the Peace Sign itself, based on his own inspiration during a time of great despair-- admitted that the symbol represented despair and voiced his desire to invert the symbol from a downward crow's foot to an upward crow's foot.

 

Ken Kolsbun also wrote in his "biography" of the Peace symbol that a national Republican newsletter was reported to have "noted an ominous similarity to a symbol used by the Nazis in World War II"

 

Eric Austen, the man who made the first Peace Sign badges for the Center of Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is said to have "discovered that the 'gesture of despair' motif had long been associated with 'the death of man', and the circle with 'the unborn child'".

 

Some time later, Peggy Duff, general secretary of CND between 1958 and 1967, repeated this interpretation in an interview with a US newspaper, saying that the inside of the symbol was a "RUNIC SYMBOL FOR DEATH OF MAN"* and the circle the "symbol for the unborn child".   (*all-caps emphasis mine)

 

This symbol--which we are told is to mean 'Peace', and is intended to represent the flagging symbols for the letters 'N' and 'D', which we are then told to understand as representing the words 'Nuclear' and 'Disarmament'-- is nearly identical to an image of an ancient runic symbol for defenselessness and surrender, understood by those who use such runic totems to represent death.

 

In its most basic sense, a totem is symbol that represents something, which serves as an emblem for a group of people.  People sharing the same totem regard one another as brothers and sisters having kinship obligations to each other.  David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist who coined the term "collective consciousness".  Thus, in the Durkheimian sense, the Peace Sign’s totemic value in the collective conciousness is one of spiritual defenselessness, surrender, vulnerablility, exposure and death.

 

Said by an occultist who uses runes as totemic symbols of power:  "Unfortunately, as the American War Machine moves us closer to planetary extinction, we might be better off carrying around placards of the Algiz rune, while chanting binding spells, even if Durkheim would likely consider it to be “negative cult” behavior."

 

This person, who gives us a first-hand glance into the very real, very alive-and-well world of the occult, likens the particular rune used for the Peace sign as one that binds us in a spiritual surrender which will lead us to death.   Even so, if we take the Peace sign for face value, we usually associate peace with inactivity -just DON'T do something.  Combining that kind of peace with the occult understanding of the symbol would still represent a person who is committing their self  to inactivity, even of goodwill.

 

Another statement made by someone of occult ilk:   "Algiz has the power to hide you from evil, if you reverse it, this is evil which is hidden from you. This is merely black magic and wearing such a thing on your chest (T-shirt, necklace, etc…) is kind of a suicide if you know a little about chakras.   But people aren’t aware of that and that’s really tragic."

 

In Hosea chapter 4, verse 6, God laments, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." With the advent of the internet in our lifetimes, we can't come to God with the excuse that we didn't have access to knowledge.  Besides, because He already knows our heart, He will know our real excuse is that we simply never took the time to seek the deeper things of God.

 

One of two things typically happen when our eyes are opened to the truth of a matter:

1)  We deny it and search for every other plausible explanation to defend our desire to remain ignorant

2)  The reality of the truth becomes so obvious, we wonder how we didn't see it before

 

The next time you are in Walmart or Target, or any other such place, take a look around in the children's clothing departments and ask yourself, "Why is there a Peace sign on everything from shirts to socks to backpacks and bows?"  "Why is this symbol plastered all over the choice of clothing we are given for our children?"  And if you look closer still, you will see another popular design for children's items from clothing to backpacks and everything in-between:  the skull and crossbones.  Granted, some of the skull and crossbones have cute little pink bows to distract from the toothy, grinning, bare skull, but cute pink bow or not, this other popular and internationally known symbol for death still carries the same meaning.

 

Why are retailers flooding the marketplace with these symbols?  More importantly, why are people completely okay with plastering their own children with these symbols of death and despair?  What a burden for a child to bear!  Our children should be vessels of salt and light, representing the God that they and their parents serve, not the gods that rebel against Him.

 

Of the three major sets of runic alphabets, two of which I discussed above, the third, known as the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (the Anglo-Saxon spelling of the Norse 'Futhark') are a set of runes which were used from about the 5th century onward.