What Is the Significance of Blond Hair and Why Is It So Desirable All Over the World?
What is the Significance of Blond Hair and Why is it so Desirable All Over the World?
BLOND
Myth and History
By
Tala Bar
When talking about blond hair, a few questions rise in the mind. What is the reason for such wide admiration for blond hair? Why do “men prefer blonds”? Why do dark haired women from the Mediterranean area constantly bleach their hair, and why do people of African origin dye their black hair yellow?
The answer to these questions is in the remote past, but it is not unduly complicated; it lies in the overall veneration of gold. Gold is the symbol of the sun and marks the basic features granted to the sun as a deity: power, strength, and durability. But the symbolism of gold is not only physical but also spiritual. Like the sun, which it stands for, gold shines by itself with a continuous light, which does not darken and does not tarnish. This characteristic is considered to be not only physical but also spiritual, referring to it as having the qualities of purity, wisdom, nobility, respect, divinity, enlightenment, and eternity.
It is quite clear that there is no place on earth where the sun has not been worshipped in one way or the other. The Bible expresses the sun’s character and importance in a few places. The prophet Malachi says, “The sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings…” (ch. 4, 2); and in Psalms it is said that, “For the Lord God is a sun and a shield…” (ch. 84, 12). A common phrase in modern Hebrew says, “As clear as the sun”, expressing the fact that the sun acts in the light of day and has nothing to hide. The Scandinavian Sun god Balder is called “The Eye of the Sky”, and when he is killed by Hodder, god of darkness and hell, a long period of dark winter is created, when nothing grows until the sun is reborn. Father Christmas, whose dwelling place is the North Pole, represents the young sun in this festival, as may be seen by his red clothes (his white beard symbolizes snow, rather that old age). In ancient Egypt, sun worship was highly developed, and either the Phoenicians or the Viking may have been those who had brought it to America (s. below).
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But what has all this to do with golden hair? In many beliefs human hair is considered to hold a person’s physical and spiritual power. Biblical Samson (Shimshon in Hebrew, whose name is connected with the sun – Shemesh), called “the hero”, lost his great power when his head was shaven of his magnificent hair; only when it started to grow back, he was able to destroy a whole temple by felling its pillars with his bare hands. The combination of golden hair, then, represents divine superiority, power and control.
The tints of gold can change from the fairest blond hair to the darkest red, and in spite of the visible difference between them, they all symbolize the connection with the Sun as a supreme deity, and those spiritual features attached to it. That is why, even in cultures where black and brown hair are considered beautiful, the lighter colors are thought to express special qualities. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl – the initiator of the Kon Tiki and the Ra trips, from South America to Polynesia and from North Africa to America – has mentioned a myth, told among the black haired native Americans, saying that the most prominent American cultures (Maya, Inca and Aztec) were created by white-skinned, bearded people; these people, they say, came from an unknown place and disappeared in the Pacific ocean, where they reappeared in the shape of the giant red-haired sculptures of the Aku Aku culture of Polynesia.
It is quite possible that those white, bearded men were descendents of the Vikings, who arrived in America in the eighth to tenth centuries; but they might have been sea-faring Phoenicians, who arrived in America a long time earlier from North Africa, bringing with them parts of the ancient Egyptian culture – like the pyramids, for instance. Red haired people are fairly common among peoples of the Mediterranean basin, which are a highly mixed race; two of the most prominent Biblical mentions of it are King David, and Esau the Edomite – Adom means “red” in Hebrew.
Originally, all humans, having developed in Africa, must have had dark skin and hair, as can be seen in our nearest relatives, the chimpanzee, and as may be expected from the hot conditions of that area; the dark pigmentation works as a protection against the heat. Only when Homo sapiens people left Africa and arrived at Northern Europe, they could afford to forgo the protection against the heat, conserving the energy needed for creating dark pigmentation, and developed means of protection against the cold in the form of body hair, and tall and bony physique, under heavy fur clothing. Scandinavia is the only place on earth where fair skin and hair were ever developed.