Monday, March 28, 2011

The Hare-Witch


The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomsen.

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None of [the traditional understandings of the witch] can help us in our inquiry into the origin of the hare-witch concept. For this we must turn to a much more matter-of-fact image: the witch as a survivor of the priest, priestess, or leading participant in the ceremonies of a very ancient religion.

[Humanity] was bound to animals from the very beginning. Animals were an essential part of religion; and the core of the ritual of this religion was concerned to consecrate the animals and to ensure that they would survive and multiply in order to help humans sustain themselves on this earth. . . . Our thesis is that the hare was one of those consecrated animals; and in the periodic celebration of the rituals connected with this creature, certain members of the group (witches, if we are allowed to use the anachronism) assumed the shape of the hare as part of the ritual.

We know from the cave figures at Le Gabillou and Isturitz that early humans were involved with the hare; and we can infer that the people who were taking part in the ceremonies concerning the hare took its skin and head as part of their dress and simulated the actions of the animals as they had observed them in the wild state. . . . During these rituals the animal-humans worked themselves into a trance in which they believed they became, or were changed into, the group or totem animal. This was done, as already suggested, either for religious reasons – for cementing the identity of the group with the animal – or for magical reasons: for ensuring the success of the hunting of the animal that was to follow the ceremony. Probably, however, both purposes were implicit in each ritual.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomas
The Leaping Hare
Pp. 144-145


Image: Artist unknown.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Tan Lines XXX


Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Friday, March 18, 2011

Bel Homme


Subject: Rafael Branciforti.
Photographer: Unknown.


Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Love-Gifts


The use of the hare as a sexual symbol or emblem [is] not unique to Greece. But there are vase-paintings depicting a practice that was: the giving of hares as love-gifts.

Examples of those images include men offering hares to women, usually in a lightly eroticized scenario. And men offering the creatures to other men, usually an older man making a gift to a younger, depicted in such a way as to make the sexual meaning of the image explicit. In one such image the hare is stretched out horizontally to make physical connection between the standing figure who holds it by its back legs and ears, and the seated youth on whose shoulders the front legs of the hare rest. This stretching out of the hare, and the artist's skill in painting it, gives to its body a lithe or nubile character which enhances and further clarifies its homoeroticism.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
p. 61


Image: Erich Lessing Photo Archive.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Bath Time


Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Moon-Struck


Primitive man, who was the father of myth, tended with his keenness of observation of natural phenomena to link together things which appeared to him to have like attributes. The hare-moon parallel would not have escaped him. The moon is the emblem of inconstancy: it is always changing its place in the sky, and even over two consecutive nights its shape, point and time of appearance in the sky are different.

The hare has a similar attribute. It will appear suddenly in an unexpected place, stand up or leap precipitately out of its form or cover in the undergrowth. It will pause a moment, dart off at speed, only to reappear a few moments later running in an entirely different direction. In the popular imagination, too, the moon (luna) is equated with lunacy; and there is a traditional belief that if you sleep out in the moonlight you are inviting madness, which is presumably the danger which the Psalmist gave assurance against: "The sun shall not strike thee by day nor the moon by night."

The hare's apparent madness at the chief mating season is also well known. It throws all its natural caution to the winds and becomes the opposite of the timid creature that will leap precipitately and hurl itself away from danger. The irrational behaviour of the March hare is therefore another reason for labelling the hare as mad or moon-struck.


– George Ewart and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 113

Image 1: "Lunar Hare" by Mandy Walden.
Image 2: "As Gold Moon Rolled, the Quest Began" by Mandy Walden.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Tan Lines XXIX


Subject: Will Fennell.
Photographer: James Demitri.


Recommended Off-site Links:
Will Fennell: Beauty and Grooming Expert
Will Fennell's Lovely DNA Queerty (July 31, 2008).
Will Fennell, Aussie Queer Eye Guy, Strips Down for DNA Hunk de Jour (July 31, 2008).

Tuesday, March 1, 2011