Symbols, signs, emblems

Nails was used in the most different types of fortune-telling.

As almost all things, made from iron, nails were earlier used in very different types of fortune-telling - both protective and therapeutic. They are said to be driven into walls of houses by Romans as the antidote from the plague. Pliniy asserts that the epileptic can be cured, if we drive the nail into the earth, on which he laid in the fit. He also reports that the nail, pulled out from the tomb and placed on the threshold of bedroom, protects the sleeping person from nightmares, visions and spectres. The latter is, of course, mixed with the authority of dead, but there is also no doubt, that it was strengthened with the help of iron.

In Great Britain it is considered as a success to find the nail , especially rusty, on the road. It is necessary to raise it immediately and take it home. If we carry nails in the pocket or hide in the house, they protect from the witchcraft . It was believed early that if someone was suspected of witchcraft, this suspicion could be verified by imperceptible driving the penny-size nail into his track. If this were an actual sorcerer, some strength will force him to return and to take out the nail, but if he is innocent, then he will go by his road, without suspecting about the experiment carried out behind him.

In Suffolk the malaria was treated by leaving ,at midnight, in the crossroads, were turned around themselves three times and drove the penny-size nail into the earth on the nail-head. This should have been made in the time when clock beat, moreover it was necessary to return home backwards , until the last note would not become silent. If everything were done correctly, then the disease will remain there, on the crossroad, and it will be picked up by first person who will step on the nail.

Obri in “Miscellanies” (9) reports that the toothache can be conquered, after picking open to the gum by new nail, which then must be driven in into the oak. “This cured the son of William Nile- he writes,- the courageous gentleman to the highest degree, when he almost went crazy with pain and wanted to be shot down”. On Ayliy island in the past century nails were driven into the large boulder by the name “Ksach Diyd” in order to avoid toothache to the future. Another method, which was being practiced there, is to board up the nail into the upper straight arch of kitchen door. Thus far it remains there, the person, for which it was driven into, will not suffer from the toothache. In Berner in the same times it was taken out approximately the first nail recently driven into the coffin in order to rub sick tooth by it, -this was considered as the most correct means.

In Cheshire, when several men wanted to connect themselves and each other with an oath to make something or not , they all together went to the forest at a certain removal from the house and there they drove the nail into the tree, bringing the oath, that they will carry out the promise, while the nail I remains on the spot.

It was not take out without the universal agreement, but if it occurred, all were freed from the oath. Although this custom no longer exists, in the cheshirsk dialect was preserved the expression “to take out the nail”, which indicates to destroy the oath or promise.

Nails - “nailing down the evil”

Someone who is sick with fever should leave at midnight to the crossroads, and, when the clock begins to beat midnight, three times he must turn in one place and drive into the earth a penny-size nail. Then he must leave from this place backwards before the clock strike twelve times. Fever will leave him. (Suffolk).

Here we deal with the “nailing down the evil” - one of the most common superstitions in the entire world . You will not likely find, even one country, civilized or not civilized, where usages, superstitions, rites, fortune-telling and cure have not been practiced in one or another form with the use of nail.

Evil (in this case - disease) could be nailed to the earth, the tree, the door and to any other place, where it is possible to drive a nail and, thus, to save from the misfortune the patient, who then departed from this place.

In Blide (Algeria) women drive nails into a certain sacred tree, in order to be freed from their illnesses. Persians scratched to the blood gum under the sick tooth and drove into the blood-stained nail into the tree - together with the toothache. If someone inadvertently pulled out the nail, he took away the toothache to himself.

Inhabitants of Port -Sharlot, Brunsvik, North Africa, Mogadora, Tunis and Egipt made the same.

In Cairo even in the recent times it was accepted to drive nails into the wooden folds of southern gates in order to get rid of headache.

Here is one more case, when similar customs exist , between which there was never connection whatever.

If a pig or a swinishness is mentioned in the sea, the fisherman must touch the nails of his boat and say “cauld airn”, otherwise he will have misfortune.

“The nails of cross”

The nail is the assertion of a symbol in space axis in the small section, which wins back this vertical line.

In the Christian tradition this is the nails of cross. The emblems of Saints of Sebastian, Ursula, Christina, Edmund designate the torture and suffering.

Didro , French encyclopaedist, compared deep thoughts with the iron nails, which were driven in into the mind so that then nothing can pull them out.

At the archetypal level, the nail, as a rule, is not the symbol of fault. If you accidentally step on the nail, then this is the sign of your inattention, that also confirms the Russian saying “It is an innocent nail, which climbs into the wall – it is being knocked on by the butt”.

At the psychoanalitic level the nail ,without doubt, carry the phallic loading . In the famous novel of Eric Maria Remark “Black obelisk” some frau Pitker takes out the nail with anal sphincter. The nail of enormous sizes ,driven in into the beam, is said to have been existed on Stalin's dacha. In the mythical plan it achieved a magic- symbolic function, helping the authority of dictator. One of proletarian poets used a metaphor about the iron people, from which it is possible to make nails ,what, undoubtedly, is the element of social magic.

Nails participate in the sign of extremity. To nail into the cover of coffin means to put an end to somebody or to some situation. Among football players there is an expression “to hang football boots on the nail”, which indicates the end of sport career.

Nail - symbol of protection

The symbol of protection. For example, on the Chinese tradition,the multitude of excess nails are being driven in into the building often in order to protect it from evil perfumes; in ancient Rome in the temple of Jupiter there was the yearly ceremony of driving a nail.

The fastening or connecting - function of nails, which, as it is supposed, influenced directly on their value in some African magic rites - to hold the caused perfumes alongside, until they accomplish those tasks, for which shaman sends them for. In the works of art , three nails symbolize Christ's crucifix. Nails also can be the attributes of personalities, connected with Christ, for example, St. Helen, the mother of emperor Constantine the Great,who was said to be possessed . thus cross and nails, which were used with the crucifix of Christ, what was, however, disputed by other “possessors” of these relics.