Hairstyle
Hair cutting One of the key issues of understanding ritual is that even if the actors in every society cannot provide an open explanation of the meaning of symbols used, there exists a vast pool of symbols and symbolic acts shared by a broad range of cultures. Although any given symbol can contain a plurality of meanings across societies, we observe that these meanings repeatedly reappear.
Turner has indicated, red, white, and black are the most commonly employed in ritual, where black is often a symbol of rainclouds or dirt, white of milk or semen, and red of blood and hair cutting. Since, therefore, there are several symbols, with a common meaning in different cultures, I shall attempt to describe the ground of this resemblance. Two quite distinct hypotheses commend themselves.
The first is that the symbols meanings attributed are connected to the processes of the hair cutting subconscious, which are presumed to be the same in members of each culture and more specifically to the processes of the repression and sublimation of the sexual urges. The second is that, since survival is the universal concern of all societies, the nature of the physical world, reproduction, the sex role in society, youth and age, order and disorder, and other such fundamental concepts, there are some symbols and symbolic acts which are intrinsically well-suited to expressing these concepts, and that is why these symbols are so widespread and frequently have the same meaning in different cultures baby hairs cutting.
TYPES/EXAMPLES
Leach considers the correlation between the importance of symbolism within the individual subconscious, as viewed by a psycho-analyst, Charles Berg, and the importance of symbolism in social ritual, as seen by graphs. The specific symbol that he uses as a basis for discussion is Bergs hypothesis that there is a fundamental symbolic equivalence between crosshairs James Patterson and the male genitals in the subconscious such that hair cutting is equal to castration.
His task is to account for the fact that the findings of psycho-analysis regarding the symbolic significance of curly hairs in personal fantasies, as a matter of fact, although not with much logical or empirical warrant, happen to be closely in agreement with what ethnographers have to report on the meaning of hair in ritual. He concludes that the psychologists and the ethnographers are talking about very different kinds of phenomena, but that the psychologists can be of use to our knowledge of ritual because much of its content is intended to be a means of expression.
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
The entire relationship between private and social symbolism is too subtle to be addressed here on this occasion, hair cutting my sole concern is to examine a certain symbolic theme, in the light of Leach’s theory of psychology, growing hairs bleed and to attempt to decide whether it is actually so that head crosshairs are demonstrated to be linked with sexuality in a broad selection of societies and, more specifically if it is the case that
head= phallus
curly baby hairs, root hairs, ingrown hairs, fluffy hair, grey hairs = castration
and that
Long hair= unrestrained sexuality
short hair= restricted sexuality
close shaven hair= celibacy.
Let us now examine the special features of hair. As with the nails it continues to grow. It can be shaved painlessly, once more as with the nails. It grows in vast numbers so that single hairs are almost countless. Head hair is visible on infants of both genders at birth hair cutting.
THEME
Now the human body is the target of a great deal of ritual, and it should come as no surprise that a physical characteristic with so much manipulative power as crosshairs Jam Patterson is employed so commonly in ritual hair cutting. Further, considering its multiple qualities, which I have just delineated, it would be surprising if I felt its ritual and symbolic forms could be explained by one origin.
Among the most common ritual applications of grey hairs is mourning. Here Leach states, That hair rituals have sexual connotations has been obvious to anthropologists from the outset, but primarily they have not considered this as a matter of utmost importance. Tylor, for instance, categorized ritual haircutting as one of a very long list of practices, on account of diverse and oftentimes cryptic motives, that fall under the general category of ceremonial mutilations.
CONCLUSION
At first, it will be recalled, Leach was anxious to demonstrate that Berg’s equation of hair dryer brush = genitals was pertinent in accounting for some ethnographical realities, but now we have moved a great deal beyond this and are being asked to accept that all things cut or trimmed from the body possess a sexual meaning in particular, castration hair cutting.
But if blood and body dirt, as used in ritual and magic, represent castration, then do personal names, clothes, footprints hair cutting, and shadows, very much in evidence in magic, represent castration too? Indeed, there is a far more straightforward explanation of the reason why hair, nails and blood, hair dryer machines, etc. are used in magic on a pars pro basis to symbolize the individual from whence they came.
First and foremost, hair and nails are constantly being grown and this is certainly an extremely good reason why they should be trusted to be endowed especially with life force; blood and semen, also on other grounds, are assumed in primitive thinking to be reservoirs of life force. But such factors cannot be pertinent in the case of body filth or nasal discharge, and far less to shadows, footprints, names, and clothes.
In primitive thought, we often find that the individual is conceived as having extensions, of which personal names, personal property, shadows, and footprints are instances. It appears to be, thus, that there are two grounds on which hair is selected as a symbol of the entire person in magic. It is imbued par excellence with life and can have connections with the soul if it has been taken from the head and it also comes under the hairstyle broader category of extensions of the person and hair cutting.