The divergent histories of V. .in real life...

[Ian Livingston]

> Aleister Crowley claimed to have given the V-sign to Churchill, which
> he said he’d been using since at least 1913.  Crowley, who was also a
> British spy, said he used the V-sign in order to negate the magical
> potential of the Nazi’s use of the Swastika, itself a symbol of the
> Eastern religions.

I've often wondered how the American Indians knew about this symbol of
the "Eastern religions" so many years before any outlanders showed up
on this continent. Of course, there was the discovery a few years back
of an early 15th century Chinese ship in the Sacramento River delta,
but that still wouldn't really account for the Navajo use of the
symbol, even though it did help explain some of the Chinese linguistic
elements present among the tribes nearest the discovered ship
remnants. It seems likely the swastika is among those archetypal
images that pop up everywhere. I remain unclear on the reasoning that
led to the Nazi adoption of it.

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 5:37 AM, Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com> wrote:
> Fun stuff to know and tell...
>
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/tag/thomas-pynchon-v/
>>
> Posts Tagged ‘thomas pynchon V’
> V for Victory Campaign Says You Are The Resistance
>
> January 21st, 2011 by DJ Pangburn
>
> [.......]
>
> So where did the current V for Victory Campaign acquire the symbol?
>
> During World War II, Victor Auguste de Laveleye, former Belgian
> minister of Justice and director of the Belgian French-speaking
> broadcasts on the BBC, suggested that the Allies use the letter ‘V’ as
> a symbol in a psychological warfare campaign against the Nazis.
> Laveleye said in the broadcast:
>
>    “[T]he occupier, by seeing this sign, always the same, infinitely
> repeated, [would] understand that he is surrounded, encircled by an
> immense crowd of citizens eagerly awaiting his first moment of
> weakness, watching for his first failure.”
>
> The ‘V’ symbol starts popping up all over France, Belgium and the
> Netherlands, and was later adapted by Churchill in a campaign that
> involved using an audible ‘V’ with Morse Code, by using the first four
> notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.  It was used as the call sign by
> the BBC in their broadcasts across occupied Europe during the rest of
> WWII.  Recall that the first four notes of the 5th symphony were meant
> to represent fate knocking at one’s door.  Isn’t psychological warfare
> fantastic?
>
> Aleister Crowley claimed to have given the V-sign to Churchill, which
> he said he’d been using since at least 1913.  Crowley, who was also a
> British spy, said he used the V-sign in order to negate the magical
> potential of the Nazi’s use of the Swastika, itself a symbol of the
> Eastern religions.
>



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