 The beard is a largely ignored, sometimes maligned and little understood symbol of male benevolence. In times past, a healthy beard was a pre-requisite for any kind of position of male authority. No-one trusted a beardless king. The Merovingian culture during the middle ages felt that the cutting of facial and cranial hair was a depletion of psychic & spiritual power. This belief was common to many people world-wide. Look what happened to Samson when he let his guard down! Yes, folks, a bushy, hairy face and head was always a potent symbol of freedom & strength in a man. But times have changed. In these, the final days of patriarchal, Christian excess, the beard has fallen into grim disrepute. The New Age movement has lost itself in a mad rush to embrace mealy-mouthed, slack-jawed, clean-shaven nancy-boyism, and even the last tattered remnants of the hippy movement have enjoyed an on-again off-again relationship with mainstream, multi-national razor-blade companies. It's a sordid and ugly business, my friends. Remember, a guru is only as good as his beard! And on a more practical level, a beard is more than just a symbol of inscrutable enlightenment, it's a wonderful place to store food scraps & small quantities of marijuana. Still... throughout these
long & trying days of barbershop empiricism, a few brave and stalwart
individuals have had the guts to let it all hang out. To stand up &
be counted. To brave the tides of history & fashion, to burn their razors,
develop a fixed, hypnotic stare Great Beards Of Our Time! | |
Beard no.1 Rasputin.
Collect the whole series! |
 The father of the hypnotic stare and an inspiration to many an aspiring cult leader, Rasputin occupied a very definite place in the popular psyche for the first half of the 20th Century. Due largely to the media distortion of his legend, he came to represent an archetype of evil and charismatic mystical power. Truth to tell, history suggests that he was in fact a remarkable character with a large personal stash of genuine psychic and healing powers. His worst sins seem to have been a poor sense of politics and a shamanic love of music and sex. Once he was out of the way, the Russian monarchy seems to have degenerated into a confused morass of callous bureacratic excess and tea-leaf reading. The rest is history. |
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