Why read Medusa's Hair?

Book cover of Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience

Book description

The great pilgrimage center of southeastern Sri Lanka, Kataragama, has become in recent years the spiritual home of a new class of Hindu-Buddhist religious devotees. These ecstatic priests and priestesses invariably display long locks of matted hair, and they express their devotion to the gods through fire walking, tongue-piercing, hanging…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Medusa's Hair as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Gillian Gillison

Author

Given the general skepticism about Freud, it is hard to find a brilliant application of his theory of psychoanalysis in anthropology that also focuses on women.

This book about Hindu-Buddhist religious devotees at Kataragama in southeastern Sri Lanka includes detailed case studies of female ascetic-ecstatics that explore the symbolism of long locks of matted hair. Obeyesekere demonstrates that the conventional distinction between personal and cultural symbols is inadequate and naive.

From Gillian's list on anthropology to understand women's myths and rites.