Could this be the reason why it got so popular?
Do these symbols REALLY have spiritual power thats why they get used by alot of religions?


6-6-6? (Revelation 13:16-18)


Hexagram






Swastika (I'm not ignorant and claim right off the bat that Naruto is a Nazi Satanis conspiracy. I know this symbol is also used in Hinduism)


Cho-Ku-Rei (Reiki Symbol. Reiki is a Japanese form of energy healing. Havent really found evidence that Reiki in itself is evil. Unless we wanna say "because the whirl is 3 times, that means "six hundred threescore six" aka "6-6-6".)


Also similar to the Reiki Symbol "Dai Ko Myo"


Cross (aside from the Christians, the wiccans and Satanists use the cross as well.)

kyupol
Could this be the reason why it got so popular?
Do these symbols REALLY have spiritual power thats why they get used by alot of religions?


6-6-6? (Revelation 13:16-18)


Hexagram

These have nothing to do with Hexagrams or that 666 rubish. They're both symbols extremely common in Japanese/Korean culture.
I remember seeing variations upon variations of these sorts of symbols that were from the equivilent of heraldic symbols of Japanese families.- They'd be on flags and things and items of personal property etc I think. The little "6" type things are related to the Ying Yang, but symbols will often have 3 or 4 in them, not just two, always inside a circle. The origin is probably Buddhist.- Could be Taoist though, I don't know that much about the religious origins of Japanese symbolism.

Your so called "Hexagram" is much the same. Japanese have hundreds of flower type symbol variations.

The Green Hindu image of a flower below is totally different but you're making a spurious connection based on a superficial similarity- Hexagons are one of the most simple shapes in the world and nature and so aren't really related across cultures- They're in every flower, stone cracks, beehives, even on the poles of the planet Saturn. ;)

The Satanist star is 6x6x6 piles of purest poop. It was invented long after any "pagan" rituals it pretends to reference were long dead and done with. They likely stole their symbolism straight from the Jewish Star Of David since in Medieval times right until modern history Jews were regarded as dangerous heathens so therefore the latter-day "Satanists" chose that as a symbol of "occult" power. The goat is used because it's sometimes referred to negatively in the bible.

Same with your theosophical thing, once again you have people just cherry-picking other people's symbols so they can also appropriate the meaning and history along with them. ;)

Your merkaba is just the original Star of David- Very ancient symbol of the Jews.

Your Celtic cross is just the Christian cross with the Celtic decoration that symbolised the transformation of the Irish Celtic culture to the new religion.

Your Gnostic Abraxas incorporates a number of common symbols unique to the area of origin of that belief system- the cross of course being long used in different variations, as was the crescent moon.

----------------------------------
They have NO innate spiritual power unless you happen to believe that they do. There are two main reasons that they are used:
1. They look good.
2. They're very simple designs handed down through the generations. They're a large part of our cultural history. As symbols they're also often shorthand for a lot more meaning. ie..The Christian cross isn't just a cross, it's also symbolic of the Christ sacrifice, suffering and the redemption of the human race... according to Christians.

They have NO innate spiritual power unless you happen to belive that they do. The reason they are used is two reasons:
1. They look good.
2. They're very simple designs handed down through the generations. They're a large part of our cultural history. As symbols they're also often shorthand for a lot more meaning. ie..The Christian cross isn't just a cross, it's also symbolic of the Christ sacrifice, suffering and the redemption of the human race... according to Christians.

I cannot really say anything on the origins part because it always changes depending on the source.

However I can attest that SPIRITUAL POWER IS REAL.
- I had a devil worshipper tell me things that not even those closest to me would know.

- I taught an atheist friend how to meditate and circulate chi into his hand. He was just blown away with what he experienced. He was still kinda skeptical though but I can tell by the look on his face that he is questioning the validity of atheism. Same thing with a Christian (mainline Christian churches arent spiritual).

I can attest that yes there are variants of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism that are more spiritual.
- I had a Muslim coworker (who practices a more esoteric version of Islam) tell me that he saw my aura and could tell that I meditate.

- I had a Hindu teacher catch me meditate even when my position was reading a book. Meditation isnt all about sitting in a lotus form. You can meditate while standing or regardless where your body's position is. He has an open third eye and was able to see my aura.

- I had a Jewish friend (who practices a more esoteric version of Judaism) tell me a few things that back then I considered to be "ooga booga". Like spells to close up certain chakra centers to increase physical strength and details about the existence of other dimensions.

- And here is the website of the Christian Exorcist Russ Dizdar. The POLICE even consult with this guy. If Satan isnt real, why do the law enforcement take Satan seriously and consult with Russ Dizdar?
http://www.shatterthedarkness.net/page32.html [shatterthedarkness.net]

He has studied at Emerge counseling center, Ohio Peace Officers Training Academy (OPOTA), UAPD police training, DEFTEC law enforcement training in advanced occult and cult crimes, Youth for Christ USA training in leadership, evangelism and youth ministry, International Police Chaplin's courses, Navigators discipleship, MasterLife and MasterBuilders discipleship/leadership training. He has been to many training conferences and seminars including those on Satanic Ritual Abuse, SRA-MPD-DID, Mind Control, Spiritual Warfare, Abduction Research, Evangelism, Counseling, and other various fields.

kyupol
Swastika (I'm not ignorant and claim right off the bat that Naruto is a Nazi Satanis conspiracy. I know this symbol is also used in Hinduism)

From what I understand, the Nazis took the symbols of mysticism and basically perverted them, not unlike how Satanists supposedly took the cross and displayed it upside down. The Nazi-swastika is an inverted version of the real thing.

I saw a documentary once about the Nazis' interest in mysticism. Those guys were crazy. They were part of some cult that got their ideas from a science fiction novel. Hitler was like the most normal person in the group, he was only after political power. A lot of the other officials were seriously into weird satanic shit.

But I'm digressing. On the subject of Naruto:

kyupol
Could this be the reason why it got so popular?
Do these symbols REALLY have spiritual power thats why they get used by alot of religions?

Not really into Naruto mself. I guess its like the Harry Potter of anime in terms of popularity, but the way that you put it the analogy seems to be more apt than I realized (if you know what I mean). Regarding the question of is it popular because it invokes mystical symbolism, I would think no. There are multitudes of anime, comics, movies and what have you that incorporate such imagery and not all of them are wildly popular. I would think its fans are into it for the simple reason that they find something appealing and relatable about it. Not everything has to be part of some sinister conspiracy. It's not like Naruto's teaching kids to worship the Devil or anything (or do they? Never really watched it for a long stretch, so what would I know?).

I'm pretty sure that Ameterasu belief is an old belief in a sun goddess who the Japanese believe they descended from. In the manga, didn't it have something to do with fire or some flaming sort.

So sun goddess=flames.

What bugs me the most is that every fricking time some piece of entertainment is hugely successful, there is always someone who is very quick to attribute that success to the Devil or some other supernatural source, thus invalidating all human merit. It also happened to Harry Potter, Spider-Man and even the Beatles.

Naruto is a manga that deals with superpowered ninjas. In an effort to come up with cool and somewhat believable superpowers for them, the author relies on mystic symbols and names whose true meaning most people don't understand, but it really is just a matter of window dressing for the comic. It's kinda the same thing that happens in Evangelion, there is a mish mash of religious references thrown around, but in the end it is just about big robots beating the crap out of monsters (until they ran out of money and decided to kill all Humanity)
By the same token, you can analyze the religious symbols in Naruto all you want, in the end it is just a comic about a boy who learns martial arts until he becomes the best at them.

And yes, I know they are not "superpowers" per se, but very advanced ninja techniques that, in theory, anyone can learn if they put enough effort into it. They are every bit as impossible as superpowers, so in my book they get dumped into the same chapter.

kyupol
I cannot really say anything on the origins part because it always changes depending on the source.

However I can attest that SPIRITUAL POWER IS REAL.

Be that as it may, I'll go out on a limb and say that Ozone was making the point is that symbols are used for reasons other than spiritual power. Not to digress the topic too much but Christians liked to appropriate symbols from Celtic cultures they were trying to convert because the people they were converting would find them familiar.
As to whether these symbols have much bearing on the shows popularity, in my opinion unlikely. At best I would say that any real power the symbols have would be over people who are already fans and can use them to try to weave a certain depth of meaning where there isn't one.

And I thought Sasuke's new eyes were the atomic symbol signs. LOL

Radiation eye laser beams GO!

I must say that I really could care less...
I'm convinced that there are indeed people all over the world that truly do good things, I am also convinced that there's a bigger amount of people that cling to evil or at least wrong beliefs.
I have seen quite a few posts from you, kyupol, and even though I believe that most of it isn't true I do believe that some of them, or even most of them, have parts of the truth. It might be so that satanists, evil buddhists, or idiotic hindu's tried putting in some of their marks and symbols into Naruto (And many other anime, I'll try to make a list when I get the time) but I doubt that these symbols have actual power by themselves.

People have quite a lot of power over their own mind and body, if I'd believe I was burning up I could actually generate burnmarks on my body, it has been done before and it has been documented. There are people convinced of being vampires that actually developed allergies to sunlight (And I believe garlic too), and that got burn marks when touching a cross. So maybe if you believe that these symbols are sacred you might want to watch naruto because of these symbols.

But little kids don't believe these symbols are sacred. they only watch naruto because of a simple formula that ALWAYS works:

Make a show about a kid (Animal, girl, boy, etc.) that believes he can do anything. And make the kid live up to it.

Done.

Kroatz
Make a show about a kid (Animal, girl, boy, etc.) that believes he can do anything. And make the kid live up to it.

Done.

Or for c-c-combo breaker purposes, make it fail at the goal he believes it can do. Then a downward spiral into the bottoms of self esteem. Then suicide.

Then bestseller, and then a pulitzer.

alwinbot

Kroatz
Make a show about a kid (Animal, girl, boy, etc.) that believes he can do anything. And make the kid live up to it.

Done.

Or for c-c-combo breaker purposes, make it fail at the goal he believes it can do. Then a downward spiral into the bottoms of self esteem. Then suicide.

Then bestseller, and then a pulitzer.

But a Pulitzer doesn't give you a videogame franchise and cool toys...

Have to say that I still like Naruto... maybe not as much as other more "serious" Anime/Manga, but is still entertaining to me...

Now, seriously, while most of those symbols have different meanings and connotations in different cultures (The manji symbol, crosses, stars, flowers, etc...) and the study of said symbols is a really interesting subject, when those appear in comics and manga is mostly because the look really, really cool (I mean, the Mangekyo Sharingan looks awesome).

There is a chance that the authors are aware about the different meanings of said symbols, but really don't put much of attention into it.

There was a similar controversy around the Catholic-Gnostic mythos in Evangelion, but the creators admitted that they used the Christian symbols because those look strange and mysterious to the Japanese audience.

Dark Pascual
There was a similar controversy around the Catholic-Gnostic mythos in Evangelion, but the creators admitted that they used the Christian symbols because those look strange and mysterious to the Japanese audience.

heh, I like the reversal there. :)
Usually it's the other way around.

But yeah, Evangelion was hugely saturated with Christian symbolism and themes that made hardly any sense because the creators didn't really know much about it. But it still worked anyway.

-------------

To address Kyu and the way he believes this sort of stuff has some basis in reality: that's fine. I respect your beliefs but don't share them.

3 quick facts

1. Crosses are older than Christianity, hence why they even appear in Christian doctrine and belief.

2. I'm pretty sure that despite the similarities the pentagram is not based on 'The Star of David', the pentagram is a mathematical construct popularized by Pythagoras and his followers. It represents mathematical perfection in form. Pythagoreans were known to tattoo that symbol onto their bodies so they could discuss math in secret. Learn about Pythagoras in a good old-fashioned book, if you aren't down with this just wiki it. Pythagoras [en.wikipedia.org]

3. The things in Sasuke's eyes are called Magatama. Again try an encyclopedia or just go to that heck hole known as wiki Magatama [en.wikipedia.org]


I don't think this is the forum (ha-ha I said forum in a forum) to start raising any sort of religious debate. Not that religion isn't a valid topic but you know it can be touchy for some people. Now if we were talking about how different comics in different countries USE mystical symbolism in comics, such as 60's Dr. Strange and fake Buddhism that might work a bit better. Like for starters has anyone else ever noticed in Japanese occult manga except for rare exceptions when they try to depict a Pentagram they usually depict The Star of David? Is it because The Star of David looks a little bit more "mysterious and foreign" or is it cause they can't really find a lot of depictions of pentagrams?
Or how in the 70's and 80's tons of Asian characters ended up sporting Yin/Yang symbols that often didn't correlate with the characters background?

Discuss perhaps?

Mitaukano
1. Crosses are older than Christianity, hence why they even appear in Christian doctrine and belief.

We acknowledge that, but in most examples Christianity IS the reference.

Mitaukano
2. I'm pretty sure that despite the similarities the pentagram is not based on 'The Star of David',

Nice, but there's no pentagram here. Those are HEXAgrams. ;)
-There's a massive mathematical, practical and historical difference between the two.
I've managed to spot a teeny pentagram on the goat's head in the middle of the David star.

Mitaukano
3. The things in Sasuke's eyes are called Magatama. Again try an encyclopedia or just go to that heck hole known as wiki Magatama [en.wikipedia.org]

They're no actually. They could VERY WELL have that as an original reference, but the obvious difference is that those are rocks and the things in the pic are 2D and arranged in a very specific, radially symmetrical pattern.
These are the Japanese family crest images I was talking about, note the similarities with the flower to the flower thing in the eye and the ying-yang things in the tripple pattern to the triple pater in the eye.
The rest are just there to show the the context in which those symbols belong:









Those are pretty easy to find :)

ozoneocean
HEXAgrams. ;)
-There's a massive mathematical, practical and historical difference between the two.
I've managed to spot a teeny pentagram on the goat's head in the middle of the David star.

I wasn't refering to the images so much as to the comments about the Star of David and the Pentagram being related somehow. I should have clarified ^.^***** (I sound like an ass)

ozoneocean
They're no actually. They could VERY WELL have that as an original reference, but the obvious difference is that those are rocks and the things in the pic are 2D and arranged in a very specific, radially symmetrical pattern.
These are the Japanese family crest images I was talking about, note the similarities with the flower to the flower thing in the eye and the ying-yang things in the tripple pattern to the triple pater in the eye.
The rest are just there to show the the context in which those symbols belong:
IMAGES WERE HERE
Those are pretty easy to find :)

I have learned knowledge things now :D. Wow I have not really looked at Japanese heraldry,(I read Usagi Yojimbo for all my Feudal Japan knowledge.) But I'm very familiar with Matagama (Blue See, Sailor Moon, my own comic) your right though I can see how the Matagama might have had some influence on the design but that Sasuke's eyes look more like the heraldry than the stonework.

Mitaukano
I sound like an ass

No, that would be me. I'm a total butt about things like this and I know it. -_-
We both leaned something :)

On a more positive note, anime like Naruto helps in visualization skill.

Read any "occult" (really means "hidden" ) book about meditation, astral travel, energy healing, etc.

ALL of them one way or the other involve a form of visualization. One way or the other, they say "visualize yourself being surrounded by light that has your favorite color".
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w286/jesterbear/Naruto-Chakra.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giSRAqicC8s

Btw, Christians would bash "the occult" as Satanic / evil right off the bat. I've listened to Christian radio shows talking about people who have been into reiki then they suddenly had demonic entities contacting them. Meanwhile... the bible in itself sometimes has this "God" who more like behaves like Satan. See (Leviticus 25:44-46) (Exodus 21:2-6) (Exodus 21:20-21)

The bible has been either altered by humans or was sometimes directly channelled from non-human entities masquerading as God.

Yes thats true. Because non-human entities are all over the place and they see you right away because your soul would start to look different. Then they would attempt communication with you. They communicate not like normal humans. They communicate via dreams or direct thought insertion.

I personally do not trust them because I'd rather have a mind of my own as I believe in FREEDOM and LIBERTY (they may attempt to possess you). I am highly skeptical of them. You can masquerade as an angel of light... but who knows if you really are from Lucifer?

The only way to know though is Matthew 7:15-20.

there is debate of whether the translation is 666 or just 660, and besides the number is not supposed to be found as physical data but rather to be taken in context to hebrew numerology in which 4 12 14 and such numbers a considered pure numbers, whereas 6 is considered the imperfect number, hence 666= three times imperfect.

How is 6 an imperfect number, but 4, 12, and 14 are okay?? Damn crazy hebrews. 6 is an awesome number.

mlai
How is 6 an imperfect number, but 4, 12, and 14 are okay?? Damn crazy hebrews. 6 is an awesome number.

i agree, since they were not as good in math as other cultures,they might have chosen their meaning to be totally random.

Okay, hundreds of cultures have come up with hundreds of different symbols. And with humanity's penchant for geometry, it's no wonder that there's a lot of overlap. Now sometimes there is an inter-cultural connection between symbols. The maddona image with Christ on her lap, for example, originally comes from an Egyptian motif of Isis and Horus. However, there's also considerable coincidence. If Naruto draws from any religion, it draws from Shinto. But it's a cartoon and makes up its own thing for the most part.

Nah, many creators use symbols from occult or religions, especially foregin ones, because they find them cool. It's nothing more, most of times at last. In manga like Naruto, it's obvious that creator was motivated by general "coolnes" of those symbols, and they hold no meaning.

*Looks around*

One Piece sells more books than Naruto in Japan.

*coughs and walks away again*

Those symbols in Naruto were just decorative stuff probably inspired by other symbols from somewhere else.

I think it got popular because the "original" Naruto for me had such endearing concepts. Such as genius vs diligence. I mean, it almost relates to a lot of real world things? Like take two cartoonists; one has great talent but updates only six times a year, while another can't draw and can't write but works his/her butt off to get better.

At least thats what I think.