How games imagine the past and future of solar energy

In the north tower of Castle Wewelsburg in Germany’s Alme Valley there’s a pillared chamber with a sinister design on the floor – a mottled, marble circle with two outer bands linked by 12 zig-zagging runic rays. This is the Black Sun, laid down in the 1930s at the orders of Nazi Schutzstaffel chief Heinrich Himmler. The Black Sun was part of Himmler’s efforts to, essentially, devise a grand RPG backstory for the Third Reich: it links Nazidom to the sun heraldry of the Merovingian and Frankish empires, presenting Hitler’s reign as the completion of a mythological narrative centuries in the dawning. It’s also an occult symbol that is still in vogue among alchemists – and far-right activists – today. Quite how much credit Himmler gave the occult is debated – according to some, he fancied himself the reincarnation of the 10th century Saxon King Heinrich I – but he certainly understood the sun’s power to dictate reality, treating its Nazified emblem as the gravitational centre of a new Aryan society and history.

Read More Here