hair

147:5.3On this par­tic­u­lar oc­ca­sion at Si­mon’s house, among those who came in off the street was a woman of un­sa­vory rep­u­ta­tion who had re­cently be­come a be­liever in the good news of the gospel of the king­dom. This woman was well known through­out all Je­ru­sa­lem as the for­mer keeper of one of the so-called high-class broth­els lo­cated hard by the tem­ple court of the gen­tiles. She had, on ac­cept­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus, closed up her ne­far­i­ous place of busi­ness and had in­duced the ma­jor­ity of the women as­so­ci­ated with her to ac­cept the gospel and change their mode of liv­ing; not­with­stand­ing this, she was still held in great dis­dain by the Phar­isees and was com­pelled to wear her hair down—the badge of har­lotry. This un­named woman had brought with her a large flask of per­fumed anoint­ing lo­tion and, stand­ing be­hind Je­sus as he re­clined at meat, be­gan to anoint his feet while she also wet his feet with her tears of grat­i­tude, wip­ing them with the hair of her head. And when she had fin­ished this anoint­ing, she con­tin­ued weep­ing and kiss­ing his feet.

147:5.4When Si­mon saw all this, he said to him­self: “This man, if he were a prophet, would have per­ceived who and what man­ner of woman this is who thus touches him; that she is a no­to­ri­ous sin­ner.” And Je­sus, know­ing what was go­ing on in Si­mon’s mind, spoke up, say­ing: “Si­mon, I have some­thing which I would like to say to you.” Si­mon an­swered, “Teacher, say on.” Then said Je­sus: “A cer­tain wealthy mon­eylen­der had two debtors. The one owed him five hun­dred denarii and the other fifty. Now, when nei­ther of them had where­with to pay, he for­gave them both. Which of them do you think, Si­mon, would love him most?” Si­mon an­swered, “He, I sup­pose, whom he for­gave the most.” And Je­sus said, “You have rightly judged,” and point­ing to the woman, he con­tin­ued: “Si­mon, take a good look at this woman. I en­tered your house as an in­vited guest, yet you gave me no wa­ter for my feet. This grate­ful woman has washed my feet with tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave me no kiss of friendly greet­ing, but this woman, ever since she came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil you ne­glected to anoint, but she has anointed my feet with pre­cious lo­tions. And what is the mean­ing of all this? Sim­ply that her many sins have been for­given, and this has led her to love much. But those who have re­ceived but lit­tle for­give­ness some­times love but lit­tle.” And turn­ing around to­ward the woman, he took her by the hand and, lift­ing her up, said: “You have in­deed re­pented of your sins, and they are for­given. Be not dis­cour­aged by the thought­less and un­kind at­ti­tude of your fel­lows; go on in the joy and lib­erty of the king­dom of heaven.”

88:1.8Saliva was a po­tent fe­tish; dev­ils could be driven out by spit­ting on a per­son. For an el­der or su­pe­rior to spit on one was the high­est com­pli­ment. Parts of the hu­man body were looked upon as po­ten­tial fe­tishes, par­tic­u­larly the hair and nails. The long-grow­ing fin­ger­nails of the chiefs were highly prized, and the trim­mings thereof were a pow­er­ful fe­tish. Be­lief in skull fe­tishes ac­counts for much of later-day head-hunt­ing. The um­bil­i­cal cord was a highly prized fe­tish; even to­day it is so re­garded in Africa. Man­kind’s first toy was a pre­served um­bil­i­cal cord. Set with pearls, as was of­ten done, it was man’s first neck­lace.

88:5.2Mag­i­cal charms were con­cocted from a great va­ri­ety of things: hu­man flesh, tiger claws, croc­o­dile teeth, poi­son plant seeds, snake venom, and hu­man hair. The bones of the dead were very mag­i­cal. Even the dust from foot­prints could be used in magic. The an­cients were great be­liev­ers in love charms. Blood and other forms of bod­ily se­cre­tions were able to in­sure the magic in­flu­ence of love.

61:1.10The mam­mals of the early Ceno­zoic lived on land, un­der the wa­ter, in the air, and among the tree­tops. They had from one to eleven pairs of mam­mary glands, and all were cov­ered with con­sid­er­able hair. In com­mon with the later ap­pear­ing or­ders, they de­vel­oped two suc­ces­sive sets of teeth and pos­sessed large brains in com­par­i­son to body size. But among them all no mod­ern forms ex­isted.

88:5.1Since any­thing con­nected with the body could be­come a fe­tish, the ear­li­est magic had to do with hair and nails. Se­crecy at­ten­dant upon body elim­i­na­tion grew up out of fear that an en­emy might get pos­ses­sion of some­thing de­rived from the body and em­ploy it in detri­men­tal magic; all exc­reta of the body were there­fore care­fully buried. Pub­lic spit­ting was re­frained from be­cause of the fear that saliva would be used in dele­te­ri­ous magic; spit­tle was al­ways cov­ered. Even food rem­nants, cloth­ing, and or­na­ments could be­come in­stru­ments of magic. The sav­age never left any rem­nants of his meal on the ta­ble. And all this was done through fear that one’s en­e­mies might use these things in mag­i­cal rites, not from any ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the hy­gienic value of such prac­tices.

3:3.1“God knows all things.” The di­vine mind is con­scious of, and con­ver­sant with, the thought of all cre­ation. His knowl­edge of events is uni­ver­sal and per­fect. The di­vine en­ti­ties go­ing out from him are a part of him; he who “bal­ances the clouds” is also “per­fect in knowl­edge.” “The eyes of the Lord are in ev­ery place.” Said your great teacher of the in­signif­i­cant spar­row, “One of them shall not fall to the ground with­out my Fa­ther’s knowl­edge,” and also, “The very hairs of your head are num­bered.” “He tells the num­ber of the stars; he calls them all by their names.”

38:2.3The ser­a­phim are so cre­ated as to func­tion on both spir­i­tual and lit­eral lev­els. There are few phases of mor­ontia or spirit ac­tiv­ity which are not open to their min­is­tra­tions. While in per­sonal sta­tus an­gels are not so far re­moved from hu­man be­ings, in cer­tain func­tional per­for­mances ser­a­phim far tran­scend them. They pos­sess many pow­ers far be­yond hu­man com­pre­hen­sion. For ex­am­ple: You have been told that the “very hairs of your head are num­bered,” and it is true they are, but a ser­a­phim does not spend her time count­ing them and keep­ing the num­ber cor­rected up to date. An­gels pos­sess in­her­ent and au­to­matic (that is, au­to­matic as far as you could per­ceive) pow­ers of know­ing such things; you would truly re­gard a ser­a­phim as a math­e­mat­i­cal prodigy. There­fore, nu­mer­ous du­ties which would be tremen­dous tasks for mor­tals are per­formed with ex­ceed­ing ease by ser­a­phim.

150:4.3“Are not two spar­rows sold for a penny? And yet I de­clare that not one of them is for­got­ten in God’s sight. Know you not that the very hairs of your head are all num­bered? Fear not, there­fore; you are of more value than a great many spar­rows. Be not ashamed of my teach­ing; go forth pro­claim­ing peace and good will, but be not de­ceived—peace will not al­ways at­tend your preach­ing. I came to bring peace on earth, but when men re­ject my gift, di­vi­sion and tur­moil re­sult. When all of a fam­ily re­ceive the gospel of the king­dom, truly peace abides in that house; but when some of the fam­ily en­ter the king­dom and oth­ers re­ject the gospel, such di­vi­sion can pro­duce only sor­row and sad­ness. La­bor earnestly to save the whole fam­ily lest a man’s foes be­come those of his own house­hold. But, when you have done your ut­most for all of ev­ery fam­ily, I de­clare to you that he who loves fa­ther or mother more than this gospel is not wor­thy of the king­dom.”

165:3.4“Are not five spar­rows sold for two pen­nies? And yet, when these birds flit about in quest of their sus­te­nance, not one of them ex­ists with­out the knowl­edge of the Fa­ther, the source of all life. To the se­raphic guard­i­ans the very hairs of your head are num­bered. And if all of this is true, why should you live in fear of the many tri­fles which come up in your daily lives? I say to you: Fear not; you are of much more value than many spar­rows.

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

89:8.3Sub­se­quently it be­came the cus­tom to bind fin­gers to­gether in­stead of cut­ting them off. Shav­ing the head and cut­ting the hair were like­wise forms of re­li­gious de­vo­tion. The mak­ing of eu­nuchs was at first a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the idea of hu­man sac­ri­fice. Nose and lip pierc­ing is still prac­ticed in Africa, and tat­too­ing is an artis­tic evo­lu­tion of the ear­lier crude scar­ring of the body.

86:5.15The soul was gen­er­ally thought of as be­ing iden­ti­fied with the breath, but it was also lo­cated by var­i­ous peo­ples in the head, hair, heart, liver, blood, and fat. The “cry­ing out of Abel’s blood from the ground” is ex­pres­sive of the one­time be­lief in the pres­ence of the ghost in the blood. The Semites taught that the soul resided in the bod­ily fat, and among many the eat­ing of an­i­mal fat was taboo. Head hunt­ing was a method of cap­tur­ing an en­emy’s soul, as was scalp­ing. In re­cent times the eyes have been re­garded as the win­dows of the soul.