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

by Gananath Obeyesekere

Book Overview

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 on hooks, and trance-induced prophesying.

The increasing popularity of these ecstatics poses a challenge...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226616010
• ISBN13: 9780226616018
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Sacred or crazy - a matter of cultural knowledge

What is most rewarding with this book, is the cultural/cognitive analysis done by the author. Obeyesekere explains how the women with matted hair (in an Indian province) obtain their particular status in a society brimming with mythological images and tales very much pervading daily life. Very Freudian in his approach when recording the life stories of the women (allowances has to be made for this) and subsequently how these trajectories have formed the women, the author demonstrates how the women are able to explain what has happened to them by sharing the society's knowledge of the religious myths. By drawing on these myths, and their images, the women can manipulate and approriate these images when accounting for how they got their matted hair, and consequently the sacred character of their being. So long as their account is identifiable and compatible with commonly held knowledge of the religious myths and tales, they are plausible and deemed valid by the community. Should a tale prove unidentifiable with the body of myths and characteristica of spirits, one may very well be described as plain ol' crazy. I feel that the fundamental argument of the book is how intimate knowledge of the mythological content of the culture, and the successful manipulation of this, leads to an elevation of social status, whereas in western societies, the long since (by and large) eradication of these beliefs (in lack of a better word) will most certanily lead a person with similar symptoms destined for a diagnosis of mental ilness or -unstability. This is the strongest argument in the book, one that is firmly supported by the analysis, notwithstanding the reservations one might have towards traditional psychoanalisis. It's not a light read, but getting into the cultural analysis might be a sweet reward.

grossly interesting, an inspiring read

Having read Medusa'a Hair as part of my University coursework, I was very impressed, Most of the books we are asked to read are fairly dull but this book really captivated me. Obeyesekere's personal opinions on the subject of matted hair in Sri Lankan women attending the festival at Kataragama was facinating. He has a great way of putting across his own opinion and whilst he makes a great bridge between Weber's and Freud's philosphical standpoints, he very effectively shows his position acroos to the reader. This may seem like a difficult book to comprehend but once read will be greatly admired