Don't Lose Your Head

After a couple of days of mixed rain/snow in the air, today was a bit more spring-like, even if still chilly. Wearing a knitted hat on your head is still a good idea... But when my eye spotted this market stall display, I could not quite decide whether to see it as funny or creepy! (...so I took a photo...)

When I got back home, I posted the photo on Facebook - and was asked to 'tag' eight of the heads as friends! Still borderline between funny and creepy! (Why only those eight, they did not explain...)

Going on to read some other FB posts, I had one from a language program on Swedish Radio which I follow. They were asking for suggestions and questions for a future program about expressions including body parts. For some reason (have a guess!) ... what came up first in my mind was (the Swedish equivalent of) "lose your head"... So now I'm wondering why we say that, and how long we've been saying it (if perhaps it goes back to the days when people were literally beheaded?), and if it's a common expression in other languages as well. I do think I've heard "den Kopf verlieren" in German too. As for the other languages I've been digging into, I haven't really dug deep enough yet to find any lost heads... 

And writing that, it suddenly also strikes me that in the book I'm (re-)reading at the moment, there are a lot of heads and skulls as well - and not all of them attached to their bodies. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths (2nd in the Ruth Galloway series - cf my recent book review of The Stone Circle, 11th in the same series). (Janus was a Roman god,  usually depicted as having two faces, looking to the future and to the past, and the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways etc.)

Now this is getting creepy... I'd better stop while I'm ahead... ;)

ABC Wednesday - H for Headology

Mannequin heads at the Textile Museum

… … …

“I believe the ability to think is blessed.
If you can think  about a situation, you can deal with it.
The big struggle is to keep your head clear enough to think.”
~ Richard Pryor ~

… … …

“Headology” is a word used in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.
It is similar to psychology, but sort of more… practical….

“The power of Headology is not to be underestimated. Clearly, the way a person sees himself and the surrounding world forms the person's reality. If this view is changed effectively through the use of Headology then this person's reality changes. This allows witches to make people think they are frogs, for example. Witches generally think that Headology is a more powerful style of magic than any of the fancy stuff wizards use. Headology is what witching is all about. A witch needs a very powerful, focused, and trained mind to use Headology. Granny Weatherwax is the foremost practitioner of Headology on Discworld.”

Discworld & Pratchett Wiki http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Headology