Running Hare VIII

Image: Tracey Long.

Bel Homme

Subject: Rafael Branciforti.
Photographer: Unknown.

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.

Bath Time

Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

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.

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).

Hares in Winter

Image: One Pink Goose.

Morning Light XXXVII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Chinese Year of the Hare

It's the year of the hare! This year we will be licking our wounds and recovering from the fierceness of the year of the tiger. It will be a year of self-reflection and inward journeys.

-- Source

There's such a huge difference between the gentleness of this Hare or Rabbit year, after Tiger, who has been so powerful. And we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, because Dragon is next year 2012, which will be extremely transformational and positive. So this wonderful, gentle time of the Year of the Hare, we can heal, transform, [use] diplomacy, be kind and pure with each other.

Taste and refinement are valued. Comfort is desired. Money can be made easily but also spent easily because the hare or rabbit loves beauty, luxury or artifice. Remember, Dragon Year 2012 will be very powerful, shamanic, a wild, exhausting time. So appreciate the small pleasures of this Hare Year 2011 as superb and somewhat rare opportunities to heal, relax, entertain, mend fences.

If relationships have been difficult, now would be the time to build those bridges again. Reach out, connect, heal. Make time for family gatherings and comfortable travel. Expect political compromise and diplomatic peacemaking on a global level. Discretion and persuasion are effective in a Rabbit Year, whereas force will not work.

-- Susan Levitt
Quoted in "Astrologer Advises Rest, Recuperation in Year of the Hare"
by Kate Woodsome
Voice of America News
February 3, 2011

See also the previous posts:
Chinese Year of the Hare
Sign of the East

Tan Lines XXVIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Merman IV

See also:
Merman
Merman II
Merman III

Tan Lines XXVII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.