Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna

Arani. The “female Arani” is a name of the Vedic Aditi (esoterically, the womb of the world). Arani is a Swastika, a disc‐like wooden vehicle, in which the Brahmins generated fire by friction with pramantha, a stick, the symbol of the male generator. A mystic ceremony with a world of secret meaning in it and very sacred, perverted into phallic significance by the materialism of the age.

Source: H. P. Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary, art. Arani