French peasants bury hair Turks and Chileans stuff hair clippings into walls. In Ozark lore, hair combings are buried, never thrown out. Aleister Crowley secretly disposed of his hair and nail clippings throughout his life. The practice of burying cut hair and nails persists among many cultures. There upon thou shalt draw three furrows with a knife of metal around the hole, or six, or nine, and thou shalt chant the Ahuna Vairya three times, or six, or nine.įor the nails, thou shalt dig a hole, out of the house, as deep as the top joint of the little finger thou shalt take the nails down there and thou shalt say aloud these fiend-smiting words: The words are heard from the pious in holiness and good thought.
Then thou shalt dig a hole, ten fingers deep if the earth is hard, twelve fingers deep if it is soft thou shalt take thy hair down there and thou shalt say aloud these fiend-smiting words: Out of his pity Mazda made plants grow. thou shalt take them away ten paces from the faithful, twenty paces from the fire, thirty paces from the water, fifty paces from the bundles of baresma. Ahura Mazda gave Zarathustra specific rituals for the safe disposing of hair clippings and nail parings: According to the Vendidad, hair and nails are instruments of evil because they grow with a life of their own and can be separated from the body, to be used by witches and Wizards for conjuring the dead, bewitching and casting spells. Much Western magical lore about hair and nails can be traced to the Vendidad, a Zoroastrian liturgy written in the mid-5th century b.C.e. Nails have been associated with Demons and evil some Jews keep their fingernails as short as possible, and tribes in Madagascar believe the Devil lives under unpared fingernails. In the witch-hunts, witches were shaved in the belief that it rendered them powerless and more likely to confess also, they were shaved to be searched for body marks that could be construed as Devil ’s mArks. The Bhils of Central India tortured suspected witches, then cut off a lock of their hair and buried it, thus severing the link between the witches and their magical power. Samson lost his strength when Delilah cut his hair. The shearing off of another’s hair is considered an act of degradation, humiliation or punishment.
By shaking her hair, the power of a spell is doubled. In folklore, a witch’s magical power is bound in her hair.
The ancient Egyptians believed that a potion made of hair, nail clippings and human blood would give a person absolute power over another. Abundant hair was considered an asset for many monarchs. Hair is associated with strength and virility, and with psychic protection.