hair and magic

7/29/2019 hair and magic

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/hair-and-magic 1/5

Hair in Magick and OccultismBy Leigh Blackmore

© 2009

“Potion of witches with beautiful hair, Adorn my head beyond compare.Rich and thick the potion goes, Absorb the sunshine and the glow.Maidens weave the gorgeous threads,That creates the hair upon my head.Combine the egg, magick, and grain, And rise me beautiful with iris rain.So mote it be.”

So runs a modern magick spell for beautiful hair written by witchDawn Gribble. To utilise this spell, the practitioner or witch mustemploy certain ingredients and methodologies. The ingredientsneeded include maidenhair, a brown egg and goddess oil, which allrepresent Venusian principles (on the grounds of magical‘correspondences’, which much traditional magick uses). Venus, asthe goddess and the planet of beauty, represents all thingsconnected with a healthy and sensual body, therefore thingssymbolically associated with this goddess are used in the spell.

To use the spell, the practitioner bends over at the waist andbrushes the hair upside down for one hundred strokes, making surethe scalp is stimulated and all residues of styling aids are gone. Acandle is then anointed with the oil. The candle and the incense arelighted. The practitioner must then place lemon juice, flaxseed oil,egg, maidenhair and ginseng in a mortar, and grind with a pestleuntil the potion is gooey. In the Venus hour, or, if it's easier, on aFriday, which is the day dedicated to Venus), the witch must recitethe incantation over the potion, which is worked into the hair until itis saturated. Plastic wrap is placed over the hair. The practitioner

must then go outside to soak up the sun as the potion tingles andrevitalizes the hair. After an hour in the sun, the hair can beshampooed and conditioned, but before the final rinse of theconditioner the witch must thoroughly rinse her head in the rainwater and allow the hair to air dry naturally.

The occult significance of hair can be manifold. There are stories of witches who "tied the winds" in a knot, usually made of their hair, asa form of weatherworking magick. Then when they released theirhair, the wind they tied would be free to blow. In previous eras, in

times when it was thought bad luck to have a woman on board a



ship, sailors would buy cords of human hair with knots in them torelease on their ships, in the belief that this would bring fair winds.

Magician Aleister Crowley drew on ancient religio-occult legendry inclaiming in his autobiography The Confessions that at birth he had

four curling hairs which formed the shape of a Swastika on hisbreast – supposedly a sign that he was of divine significance. TheSwastika was said to have originated as a representation of thechest hair of the Hindu god Vishnu – a symbol of Sri, or good luck. The Buddha is also often depicted with a swastika on his chest inthe area where hair grows.

The Swastika (or fylfot), a symbol of the whirling motion of theuniverse, also derived from ancient tools used for braiding, spinningand twisting hair and cloth.

Crowley also often wore his hair in later life with a phallic forelock,concreting in his own person his own solar-phallic magicalphilosophy of “Do what thou wilt”. This was perhaps a variation onthe ancient Egyptian practice of wearing a “sidelock” of hair on askull otherwise shaven all over. Crowley also had his early threevolume set of poetry The Collected Works (1905-07) bound in“camel-hair” wrappers.

The absence of hair can also be significant in a magical context, abald skull suggesting both formidable intelligence and menacing

evil. The famous shaven-headed portrait of Crowley beloved of hackauthors who like to portray him as the “wickedest man in the world”uses his lack of hair to subtly suggest that he has divested himself,along with the hair, of decency and respectability. Ironically, mostother photos of Crowley show him with flowing locks.

In ancient times, early tribes believed that both good and badspirits, which entered the body through the hairs on the head,inhabited every individual. Bad spirits could only be driven out of the individual by cutting the hair, thus different fashions of haircutting were practiced by various tribes. The barber was seen as the

most important person in the community. Barbers in these tribaldays arranged all marriages and baptized all children, and were thechief figures in the religious ceremonies. During these ceremonies,the hair was allowed to hang loosely on the shoulders so that theevil spirits could emerge. After the dancing, the long hair was cut bythe barbers and tightly combed back tightly so that the evil spiritswould be locked out, and the good ones held in.

The Greek Goddess Medusa, one of the gorgons, famously had hairof snakes. These serpentine locks formed part of her magical

means of subduing her victims. The image of her malevolentwrithing snake-like hair epitomises for all time the notion of female



rage, and has been utilised extensively by modern feminist for thisreason.[Hair in general links with our sexuality, and with our primal sense of self. The flow of long hair may be said to be connected to the

collective unconscious, symbolised in psycho-magical terms by theelement Water, which itself is linked to the creational source, thematrix, the Womb of all life. Many goddesses such as Aquarius aredepicted with long flowing hair which symbolises the flow of creativity and life-force. Long hair is subconsciously held to be partof our natural state of being.

Certain astrological signs are partly symbolised by hair, particularlyLeo. Leos typically have manes of long, wavy hair. The figure of theStar, one of the Tarot trumps, is characteristically shown with longflowing or spiralling hair, again making the correspondence to theuniverse’s flowing and spiralling energy and emphasising theHermetic maxim of “as above, so below”.

Hair that is styled into swirls or snail shell patterns moving to theright is linked magically, through theories of the subtle body, toenergy moving upward through the crown chakra, and with thespiralling movement of consciousness symbolised by the GoldenRatio or Fibonacci Sequence.

We find the use of hair in magick often coupled with the use of nails

– both growing parts of the human body which are held to containthe soul essence of a person. In ancient Persia originated themagical custom of using small figures of wax fashioned withincantations in the likeness of one’s enemy and then pierced withnails or pins, or melted in the fire, in order to wreak revenge via‘sympathetic magick’ on the enemy. Most effective as part of thispractice was to obtain some portion of the victim's nails or hair, tobring the wax effigy into closer connection with the living victim.

Enemies of the Persian Prophet Zarathustra accused him of sorceryby secretly placing hair, nails and such other impurities in his room,

which led to his imprisonment through these magical means.

Hair is often thought to contain ‘mana’ or magical power. InPolynesia, the first time a boy’s hair was cut marked his coming of age but the ceremony was considered to be risky.

It is not only human, but sometimes animal hair that is used inmagick. In Voodoo, the hair of a black cat is said to be lucky forgamblers, and is used in a bottle spell to make lovers break up.

The hair reflects the health of the body in general. In Chinesemedicine it is considered that the hair grows along the same energy



lines or ‘meridians’ which occupy the rest of the body. By combingor brushing long hair, it is thought possible to stimulate subtleenergies inaccessible to the grosser sense organs, especially due tothe static electricity generated by continuous brushing.

Women’s hair has often been perceived as particularly powerful inthis regard. In various cultural traditions hair has been held tocontain the soul, to protect children from evil, or that hair can healillnesses and deflect curses. The fairy tale of Rapunzel is a classicexample of the belief that long hair held magical power, and a studyof the tale as to where and why Rapunzel’s hair is grown long or cutshort repays attention from a magical point of view. In modern popculture this motif is perpetuated, for instance in Naoko Takeuchi’sSailor Moon stories where the young princess has unusually longhair which only keeps growing once her hidden powers of the Moonand lineage are reawakened.

The magical and energetic power of long hair was long regarded asanti-Christian. Hence, witches in medieval times were often depictedwith their hair flying, and Satan was considered to be able to takehold of such women easily, whereas modest Christian women weretold to keep their hair cut short by the patriarchal powers that were.Long hair was seen as a sign of evil, disorder and demonic power,primarily because sexuality and the freedom represented by thesensuality of free-flowing tresses threatened the patriarchal statusquo. Hence the first thing done to witches when captured and

tortured was to shave their heads – a cultural humiliation but also amagical one. The Nazis, who shaved the heads of women prisonersin the concentration camps, performed a similar psycho-magical actin which women were deprived of the symbolic life-affirming powerof their hair.

An old magick spell calls for a woman to brush her hair one hundredtimes at sunset before a mirror. At the one hundredth stroke shewould peer through her veil of hair and see her future husband’simage in the mirror.

Another magical technique involves braiding the hair, which is saidto “bind power" to the practitioner. Creating a slow tight braid whilevisualizing a lover is supposed to ensure that he will be faithful. Thebraid is then bound with a coloured ribbon. Red usually representspassion while blue stands for fidelity.

Ceremonial magicians often use cut off hair (their own or others’) astalismans or protective amulets. Hair is often also burnt in magickrituals in order that the stored energy in it might be released for aparticular purpose desired by the magical practitioner.



Jack Parsons, a disciple of Aleister Crowley’s who performed afamous magical operation known as The Babalon Working in the1940’s believed he would meet his Holy Guardian Angel, or magicalpartner, as a beautiful woman with flaming red hair. It wasn’t longbefore Marjorie Cameron, a flaming redhead, came into his life. (She

and her red hair later starred in the magical movie made byunderground auteur Kenneth Anger, Inauguration of the PleasureDome).

Long hair may be seen as a sign of age and therefore of the wisdomwhich may accompany magical powers or insight.

Hair contains our genetic code, the essence of our being, and it isnatural that magicians throughout the ages have seen it as cruciallylinked to our spiritual as well as our bodily being.

hair and magic

Documents