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The left hand, the sinister hand (Latin, sinister = left), has long been the hand associated with sorcery and evil; it is the hand of treachery and fraud; the weaker, inferior, impure hand; the hand that women of the tribes of the lower Niger are forbidden to use for cooking if they wish to avoid accusations of poisoning and sorcery; the hand with which devout Muslims clean those polluting orifices of the body below the navel while the right hand is reserved for eating.

Robert Hertz, in 1909, was the first person to conduct a serious study of the predominance of the right hand. He found that arguments for an innate physiological predisposition towards use of the right hand (governed as it is by the left cerebral hemisphere) were insufficient to explain its extraordinary dominance. Instead, he thought that the organic asymmetry and polarisation resulted from a human need to differentiate between the sacred and the profane, and that any contact or confusion between the categories would be detrimental to both. Prohibitions and taboos were necessary to protect the sacred from pollution by the profane. In this way Hertz explained the taboos against the left hand in religious ceremonies:

In religious ceremonies man seeks above all to communicate with sacred powers, in order to maintain and increase them, and to draw to himself the benefits of their action. Only the right hand is fit for these beneficial relations, since it participates in the nature of the things and beings on which the rites are to act. The gods are on our right, so we turn towards the right to pray. A holy place must be entered right foot first. Sacred offerings are presented to the gods with the right hand. It is the right hand that receives favours from heaven and which transmits them in the benediction (Hertz, p. 104).

Hertz was a great inspiration to other scholars, who tested the veracity of his theories. In 1934 Ira S. Wile collected an overwhelming amount of evidence, from every part of the world, on the preference for the right. This preference could be found, as Rodney Needham recalls:

in such varied fields as the Homeric poems, alchemy, and thirteenth century religious art, in Hindu iconography, classical Chinese state ceremonies, emblem books and bestiaries, as well as in M aori ritual, Bornean divination and the myths of the most disparate cultures (Needham, p. 110).

E. E. Evans-Pritchard, researching Nuer spear symbolism, confirmed the association of the right with strength, masculinity and goodness while the left signified weakness, femininity and evil (Evans-Pritchard, p. 92–108). He observed that only the right half of an animal or fruit offered in sacrifice could be eaten, that a young man was warned not to enter the hut of his bride on the left side, and that the Nuer youths would immobilise their left arms for months, or even years, by pressing metal rings into the arms so tightly that sores appeared and the arm was useless. If a man was left-handed, this hand was referred to as his right hand, proving that the symbolic significance of the left was of more importance than the actual physiognomy.

for the dead they must use the left hand. For the same reason, when the first new rice is cooked, care must be taken only to use the right hand. Omens are similarly determined: if a bird of good fortune flies across the path from left to right, it augurs well because adversity, in being transferred from the bad side to the good, is transformed into prosperity (Kruyt, p. 74–91).

Greek philosophers of the 6th and 5th centuries bce, including Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Aristotle and Pythagoras, similarly favoured the right side. Aristotle argues, somewhat disingenuously, that the curious anomaly of such an important organ as the heart residing on the left side of the body is due to the necessity of heating this cold side (Lloyd, p. 167–186).

While Hertz has drawn attention to an important phenomenon, there are, of course exceptions. The left hand or side is not always inauspicious: in China it is the left hand that represents Yang, the male, the sky and summer while the female, the earth, winter and the right hand are Yin (although China favours a system of alternations in which each side is of equal importance) (Granet, p. 43–58). And Rodney Needham is puzzled by the taboos surrounding the left hand of the Mugwe, a religious person among the Meru of Kenya with a left hand so sacred that it must always be covered as the sight of it would cause instant death (Needham, p. 109–127). One must bear in mind, however, that when dealing with such elementary and apparently universal symbolism researchers may unwittingly misinterpret, simplify or modify the ethnological data.

References

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. [1973] 1978. “Nuer Spear Symbolism”. In Right and Left: Essays in Dual Symbolic Classification. ed. Rodney Needham, p. 92–108. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Granet, Marcel. [1973] 1978. “Right and Left in China”. In Right and Left: Essays in Dual Symbolic Classification. ed. Rodney Needham, p. 43–58. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Hertz, Robert. [1909] 1960. “Death and the Right Hand”. In The Pre-Eminence of the Right Hand: A Study in Religious Polarity. trans. Rodney and Claudia Needham, p. 89–160. London: Cohen and West.

Kruyt, Alb. C. [1973] 1978. “Right and Left in Central Celebes”. In Right and Left: Essays in Dual Symbolic Classification. ed. Rodney Needham, p. 74–91. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Lloyd, Geoffrey. [1973] 1978. “Right and Left in Greek Philosophy”. In Right and Left: Essays in Dual Symbolic Classification. ed. Rodney Needham, p. 167–186. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Needham, Rodney. [1973] 1978. “The Left Hand of the Mugwe”. In Right and Left: Essays in Dual Symbolic Classification. ed. Rodney Needham, p. 109–127. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Wile, Ira S. 1934. Handedness: Right and Left. Boston, Massachusetts: Lothrop, Lee, Shepard Co.

Liminality

The liminal (from the Latin limen, threshold), or transitional, phase of a “right of passage” that an individual traverses in the course of his life, whether birth, initiation, marriage or death, is often a time when normal social roles and restrictions are in abeyance and taboos are violated. In his classic study of the rites, Arnold van Gennep identifies three distinct stages: the first stage is that of separation, when a person symbolically “dies” to his old social role and the final stage is integration into the new role. During the transitional, or liminal, phase there is a suspension of ordinary secular life. Initiation ceremonies are often marked by the neophyte being separated from secular society, bound to a rule of silence, fasting, and wearing distinctive clothing, often fur, feathers and masks, that represent feral ferocity. Victor Turner, an anthropologist who has examined liminality in detail, explains:

Year, solstice, equinox, Hallowe’en and Mayday Eve – are all auspicious, haunted by demons and deities. This is the time for divination, the time when the souls of the dead return to haunt the living, and when the living commonly abandon themselves to wild revelry. Thresholds exist on a spatial plane too. Rivers and lakes divide the lands of the living and the dead, as do caves, gateways, bridges and dark forests, while cross-roads are dangerous in European, and more distant, traditions: these are places to bury the suicides and summon the spirits, often not to be traversed before the residing deity is appeased.

See also

Carnivals; Cross-roads; Douglas, Mary; Transvestism

References

Pentikäinen, Juha Y. 1986. “Transition Rites”. In Transition Rites. ed. Ugo Bianchi. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider. Turner, Victor W. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Turner, Victor W. 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors. Ithaca, New York; London: Cornell University Press.

Turner, Victor W. 1977. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.