Men and Hair and Strength and Sex and All That Jazz.... Part 2

Hola darlings!

I'm continuing this absolutely fascinating encyclopedia entry by Barbara G. Walker in her "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends" under Hair, picking up from the blog entry a few posts ago:

The same idea prevailed among prophetic priestesses or witches, who operated with unbound hair on the theory that their tresses could control the spirit world.  Mother Goddesses like Isis, Cybele, and many emanations of Kali were said to command the weather by braiding or releasing their hair.  Their corresponding mortal representatives could cause to be bound or loosed in heaven what they bound or loosed on earth -- hence the unflagging superstition belief in Christian Europe that witches' hair controlled the weather.  Churchmen said witches raised storms, summoned demons, and produced all sorts of destruction by unbinding their hair.  As late as the 17th century the Compendium Maleficarum said witches could control rain, hail, wind, and lightning in such a way.(7)   In the Tyrol, it was believed that every thunderstorm was caused by a woman combing her hair.  Scottish girls were forbidden to comb their hair at night while their brothers were at sea, lest they raise a storm and sink the boats.(8)   A Syrian exorcism for werewolves invoked "that Angel" who judged the woman that combed the hair of her head on the Eve of Holy Sunday," suggesting a connection between hair-combing women and the "werewolves" mythologized as dogs of doomsday.(9) [Note the supernatural connection between females and dogs -- a connection well expressed in ancient mythologies around the world -- I've posted about it elsewhere, check under "dogs" and "goddesses and dogs"]. 

St. Paul greatly feared The "angels" (spirits) that women could command by letting their hair flow loose.  He insisted that women's heads must be covered "because of the angels" (1 Corinthians 11:10.)  Thus it became a Christian rule that women's heads must be covered in church, lest they draw demons into the building.  Modern women wearing hats or head shawls to church unconsciously defer to the ancient superstition about their hair.  [Nothing unconscious about it, darlings!  I was born in 1951 and in the "mixed" marriage of my Luthern mother and Roman Catholic father, was pledged to be raised as a Roman Catholic in order for the two of them to receive permission to wed.  I was thus raised in the Roman Catholic Church until I finally rebelled at age 14 or so and refused to continue what was clear to me even at that age was sheer nonsense and very demeaning to females! We were taught - not unconsciously - that we must wear a head covering when we entered a church.  Period.  No exceptions. We weren't given any explanations or scriptural authority for such a law, and it seemed like baloney sausage even then.  So, in the early 1960's, before I quit, it was quite the thing to see just how far we (teens, some single women and even some married owmen) could go with wearng as little a head covering as possible.  We ended up wearing on our heads what were basically lace doilies -- the machine-made kind, not the hand-crocheted kind like my Grandma Jablonski used to make with thicker thread that may have provided a bit of more "substantial" coverage for our "shame."  We plopped the little lace circles on top of our head, added a few hair pins, and off we went.  We were not called out by the priest for being Jezebels or agents of Satan, as far as I can recall!]  Due to identification of bats with demons, the erroneous notion that bats tend to tangle themselves in women's hair arose from the same superstition.(10)


I will continue to post the rest of Barbara Walker's excellent encyclopedia entry on this fascinating subject of hair, but not tonight!  But before I say goodnight, I want to share with you the biblical text surrounding Paul's infamous injunction againt women appearing in "church" with their hair uncovered.  Pay close attention, please.  You will be tested on this later on :)  I believe it gives great insight into what Paul wanted the true role of woman in "his" vision of The True Church to be (sounds very Islamic, actually).

From the King James Version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians Chapter 11, verses as follows:

11.  Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. [Notice how Paul emphasizes HIS importance - BE followers of ME - and puts Christ second!] 
2.  Now I praise you, brethern, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you.
3.  But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of the Christ is God. [This, of course, totally ignores that women are eligible to become the "elect" 144,000 as spoken of in Revelation; but of course, Revelation was written by John, and everyone knows that John was a "wussy."  One must examine the historic record further, to reveal that there was a great deal of turmoil in the early church congregations at this time, because as many female as males were being blessed with the Holy Spirit and able to prophesy and "teach" and perform miracles as men -- but in the Jewish tradition, this was a NO GO!  And, where was the early church established -- in the heart of the Judaic system!  So you can imagine that as the "Word" of  christianity spread across the Roman empire, different peoples who did NOT have the tradition of treating their women as gutter vermin created some, er, problems... And so "St." Paul took it upon himself to treat the infidels a little bit about how the Jews of his day actually treated women.]
4.  Every man praying or propheysying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.
5.  But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head for that it even all one as if she were shaven.
6.  For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn; but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. [Why then, did practicing Jews shave the heads of women who married -- a shaved head was a mark of shame -- that is what I was raised to believe! And why did nuns have their hair cut off short or even sometimes, their heads shaved, upon entering the convent (coven????)
7.  For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. [WHAT BULLSHIT!]
8.  For the man is not out of the woman, but the woman is out of the man [the old myth about Eve being created out of one of Adam's ribs.]
9.  Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. [Totally ignores biology, of course, that shows all fetuses begin as females, har!  One would have thought that a man inspired with the TRUE word of God Almighty would have least have got that little fact right.  Geez!]
10.  For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. [Yes, this is what the King James Version says:  That the woman has power on her - uncovered? - head because of the angels.]
11.  Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. [Oh, a reprieve from the men killing off ALL the females because of those pesky angels giving them "power" IN OR ON THEIR HEADS.  Can you imagine?  Can't have uppity women running around teaching us about the real meaning of Christ's words.  Oh no!  But hey, if we kill them all off, all we've got left is each other -- and sheep...  Not a way to continue the species, ahem...] 
12.  For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman, but all things of God.

Food for thought, indeed.  And one doesn't need any hair, bound or othewise, on one's head in order to appreciate it!

'night, darlings. 

Men and Hair and Strength and Sex and All That Jazz....

Hola darlings!

Since writing the post on Samson last Saturday, in which I copied out Barbara G. Walker's interesting observations on Samson from her The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, I couldn't get HAIR out of my mind. I wondered what on earth would possess the ancients to believe that a man's strength was somehow connected with his hair?  I wondered is this some kind of inborn genetic thing, and is that why men start to panic and use all kinds of chemicals and drugs and even resort to hair transplants when their hair starts falling out, leaving them looking like Prince William by the age of 28???  They feel the need for hair, but they don't understand WHY.

And what is the WHY, anyway?

But before I get into that, I can't help myself, darlings, I've just got to put up this You Tube video of the fab song Hair from the musical by the same name.  I saw a live performance of it in 1970 at the old Palace Theatre in Milwaukee, WI (my hometown) way back in 1970 I think it was.  The Palace has long since disappeared, but the memories live on.  We were in the nosebleed section of the balcony but the music was SO loud, and once again my affinity for the stage and performing was confirmed.  I SHOULD have followed my instincts as a child and turned myself into the next Debbie Reynolds.  Oh well. A road not followed.  Maybe in my next life...

So bear with me, and I do hope you enjoy this as much as I do!  This is the 1969 version by the Cowsills -- Yes, the COWSILLS?  Is anyone out there still alive who remembers THEM?  Talk about wholesome middle-America!  LOL!  And then they came out with Hair and of all the versions I've heard, even the stage versions, I love this one best of all!  The pronunciation of the words and how the music flows together, just fabulous!  I could understand every single word in this version of the song, and the lyrics are JUST.SO.AWESOME!  Even 40 plus years later, I still sing that damn song every now and then...




So, now, on to the serious stuff!!!!

Hair

As shown by its importance in witch-charms and in the mutual exchange of talismans between lovers, hair was usually viewed as a repository of at least a part of the soul.  At the ancient temple of Troezen, youths and maidens dedicated locks of their hair to the savior-god Hippolytus before marriage; this was "designed to strengthen his union with the Goddess." (1)

When the Goddess-mother became Queen of Shades for each god or man at the end of his life, his soul was likened to a child seeking safety in the mother's shadow.  The Great Mother's hair cast its shadow over the approaching soul.  An Egyptian found salvation by identifying himself with Osiris, for whom the Goddess made resurrection-magic with her hair: "He is found with her hair spread over him; it is shaken out over his brow."(2)  When Isis put on mourning garments for Osiris, she cut a lock of her hair to preserve his soul.  Egyptian widows similarly buried locks of their hair with deceased husbands, as a charm of protection in the after-world.

When Isis restored vitality to the dead Osiris, entitled the Still Heart, she created his new life with her hair, made his heart beat again and his penis move so she could conceive his reincarnation, Horus.  She "produced warmth from her hair, she caused air to come...She caused movement to take place in what was inert in the Still Heart, she drew essence (semen) from him, she made flesh and blood, she suckled her babe alone."(3)  She further protected her Divine Child by "shaking out her hair over him."(4)

Mortal women often claimed the same preservative magic for their own hair.  Ptolemy III was protected from harm on his Syrian campaign in 247 B.C. by his wife Berenice, who dedicated locks of her hair on Aphrodite's altar for this purpose.  When the hair vanished from the temple, it was discovered among the divine figures in heaven, where it appears to this day as the constellation Coma Berenices, "Berenice's Hair."(5)

Signs and wonders in the heavens were usually intepreted as significant omens of future catastrophes, particularly a comet, "spirit of hair."  A comet was supposed to be a tendril of the Great Mother's hair appearing in the sky as the world was slowly overshadowed by her twilight shadow of doomsday.  Most forms of the Death-goddess showed masses of hair standing out from her head, sometimes in the shape of serpents, as in the Gorgoneum of Medusa-Meta-Neith-Ananti-Athene.  On the magic principle of "as above, so below," women's hair partook of the same mystic powers as the Goddess's hair.  Tantric sages declared that the binding or unbinding of women's hair activated cosmic forces of creation and destruction.(6)

WOW!  That is totally awesome information.  I'm calling it a night now.  My energy level is not what it used to be.

I will continue with Barbara Walker's fascinating information on HAIR tomorrow night.