Severed Heads And Those Who Want Them

The words "Bring me his head!" have a certain Biblical ring to them as they may get us to think of the beautiful Salomé revenging the insults of John the Baptist when he called her mother a "whore". The still quite famous Hebrew king Herod didn't want to execute the holy man, but watching the sexy dance of his Salomé made him forget his wish to protect John and instead give in to her when she demanded the head of the prophet as her reward for tickling his senses with her dance skills (Mark 6: 21-29 and Matthew 14: 6-11). 

The decapitaded head of the French king Louis XVI

Several royal individuals have lost their head when they lost the power that made them one of the "heads" of the state. That goes for e.g. two of the six queens of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. Sad stories of the trials of these two women depict them as innocent according to modern standards so maybe that's the reason why the ghost of Anne Boleyn, carrying her decapitated head, has been seen ever since her untimely death?   

Presumably the ghostly finger of Anne Boleyn as captured on camera

OK, the idea of Anne as a victim who may have got a new life after her death is at least funny or even thought-provoking, but what about her experience of the decapitation? I remember that the heinous French serial killer Henri Désiré Landru was very concerned to get to know for how LONG his severed head might experience the situation and whether it might be able to perceive his dead body. Well, that's not as far out as it may sound as scientists from New Zealand in 2013 took on an experiment of decapitating some rats, and they observed neural activities for 10-15 seconds after the decapitation .... 

Major General Horatio Gordon Robley

This fine (!!!) collection of what is severed heads of dead people are to be found in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, but i t stems from an European obsessions with this kind of "memoralia" from what was considered "primitive societies". Many of the heads of unfortunate people who met head hunters of various observations and nationality lost their life because of this uncanny obsession. Heads like these had been holy objects or just some kind of souvenirs of defeated enemies, but with the Christian invasions they turned into merchandise. Sadly enough that meant that many of them were "made to order": Some were hunted down, got killed and beheaded so that their head might bring in some money ....  

Shrunken heads which are known to the Indians who made them as "tsantsas" stem from an age old belief that shrinking the head of an enemy would make it impossible for his spirit to take revenge. Those who bought them most likely didn't believe in this ideology which in my opinion makes their obsession to get these heads even more uncanny. To them the heads were nothing but a macabre kind of souvenirs whereas they actually were vital parts of murdered peoples' corpses.

We still know the expression "Headhunting", but not in such an uncanny way as in former societies. To be hunted  down by a skillful head hunter may even be the dream of many modern people who want a career ....

 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/mokomokai

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3184015/Anne-Boleyn-s-ghost-captured-camera.html 

 

https://www.profilpartners.dk/en/companies/headhunting-search-and-selection-denmark/ 

 

Wikipedia