Onychophilia: Notes on Two Types of Nail Fetish

I. 

Ninkondi (one of the variant plural forms of nkondi, meaning 'hunter') are fetish objects made by the Kongo people of Central Africa's Congo region. They are intended not merely to offer protection, but to house a powerful spirit that can be enlisted to track down one's enemies, inflicting misfortune or illness upon them.

As can be seen in the above image, a nkondi is usually a carved human figure - though it can sometimes be an animal - with a cavity in the abdomen, into which a medicine man stuffs ingredients thought to have supernatural properties. The figures range in size from small to life-size and are sometimes adorned with feathers.

Nails (or blades) were driven into the figure in order to affirm an oath or curse - or perhaps to activate the spirit within. Controversially, some scholars believe that the native peoples were influenced in this practice by images that Portuguese missionaries carried with them from Europe of Christ nailed to the cross and Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows. 

Fascinating as all this is, I have to confess that when it comes to nail fetishes, I'm more interested in the long, sharp fingernails of beautiful young women, than rusty bits of iron banged into a wooden figure for the purposes of witchcraft ...

II.

Whilst fingernail fetish is often framed and discussed within the wider category of hand partialism, I think that it deserves critical attention in its own right. For the nails are not like any other part of the hand in that they are not composed of living material; they are made, rather, of a tough protective protein called alpha-keratin.

D. H. Lawrence describes his fingernails as "ten little weapons between me and an inanimate universe, they cross the mysterious Rubicon between me alive and things [...] which are not alive, in my own sense".

Thus, I think there's something in the claim that what nail (and hair) fetishists are ultimately aroused by is death; that they are, essentially, soft-core necrophiles.* Having said that, the human nail as a keratin structure (known as an unguis) is closely related to the claws and hooves of other animals, so I suppose one could just as legitimately suggest a zoosexual origin to the love of fingernails.

Whilst some readers will best like fingernails in their natural state - i.e., unvarnished and unadorned - I have to express a preference for added colour; preferably red or black. I know there's a wide variety of other colours and shades available, but they don't excite my interest so much. Nor do I care for overly decorative designs and fancy finishes.

Finally, whilst clearly having something in common, I think that amychophilia is quite disinct from onychophilia; the latter is a love of fingernails as things in themselves; the former a love of the pain they can inflict, when grown long and sharp.

In other words, the amorous subject who desires to be violently scratched is a kind of masochist; whilst an onychophile, in the purest sense, would be more aroused by simply observing the following scene, described in fetishistic detail by Daphne du Maurier:

"The Marquise lay on her chaise-longue on the balcony of the hotel. She wore only a wrapper, and her sleek gold hair, newly set in pins, was bound close to her head in a turquoise bandeau that matched her eyes. Beside her chair stood a little table, and on it were three bottles of nail varnish all of a different shade.
      She had dabbed a touch of colour on to three separate finger-nails, and now she held her hand in front of her to see the effect. No, the varnish on the thumb was too red, too vivid, giving a heated look to her slim olive hand, almost as if a spot of blood had fallen there from a fresh-cut wound.
      In contrast, her fore-finger was a striking pink, and this too seemed to her false, not true to her present mood. It was the elegant rich pink of drawing-rooms, of ball-gowns, of herself standing at some reception, slowly moving to and fro her ostrich feather fan, and in the distance the sound of violins.
      The middle finger was touched with a sheen of silk neither crimson nor vermilion, but somehow softer, subtler; the sheen of a peony in bud, not yet opened to the heat of the day but with the dew of the morning upon it still. [...]
      Yes, that was the colour. She reached for cotton-wool and wiped away the offending varnish from her other finger-nails, and then slowly, carefully, she dipped the little brush into the chosen varnish and, like an artist, worked with swift, deft strokes.
      When she had finished she leant back in her chaise-longue, exhausted, waving her hands before her in the air to let the varnish harden - a strange gesture, like that of a priestess." 


Notes

* There has been at least one recorded case in which an illicit lover derived pleasure from eating the nail trimmings of corpses (necro-onychophagia), thereby lending support to the theory that nail fetishism has a far darker and more ghoulish undercurrent. See R. E. L. Masters and Eduard Lea, Perverse Crimes in History: Evolving concepts of sadism, lust-murder, and necrophilia - from ancient to modern times (Julian Press, 1963). 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Why the Novel Matters', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 193.

Daphne du Maurier, 'The Little Photographer', in The Birds and Other Stories, (Virago Press, 2004), p. 160.

The photo on the left at the top of the post is of a 19th-century nkondi figure belonging to the Arts of Africa Collection of the Brooklyn Museum, NY. The photo on the right, is an advertising poster for a nail bar, available to buy on eBay: click here.

Witches Versus Trump

News that a coven of American witches, assembled via Facebook and including the singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey among their number, met up outside Trump Tower in New York a couple of nights ago for the purpose of casting a powerful binding spell on the President and his supporters, doesn't really surprise me; for I am well acquainted with the delusional vanity of those who believe they possess magical powers.

Conservative Christian groups have reacted with predictable moral outrage and called for action to be taken against those who have, they say, committed an act of spiritual warfare against not just the current administration, but the United States as One Nation Under God. 

But, really, they needn't worry or get too het up; these ludicrous women don't possess diabolical or supernatural powers; just some old candles, a pack of tarot cards, and a disturbing inability to accept the fact that Hilary lost the election. 

Ultimately, this is more about political denialism than pagan occultism ...

                

Re-Dreaming the Dark (Notes from a Witch's Manifesto)

Witchcraft has traditionally been concerned with the Mysteries and sex has traditionally been regarded as the essence of those Mysteries. But today we know that sex is neither mysterious nor essential. In fact, sex is simply nostalgia. Or, as the poet Dawn Garland once wrote, "sex is crap".

For many older witches, however, sex remains crucial to theory and practice and they insist on ritual nudity and sacred fucking within the Circle (actual and symbolic). They think it brings them closer to the Goddess, but it only betrays their sentimentality and helps reinforce a deeply conservative ideology based upon an untenable dualism.

Witches who believe in the so-called "two principles" and twitter on about sexual polarity and the complimentary opposition between male and female energies deserve to be burned at the stake. They bring shame upon the pagan community. For it isn’t magic that’s founded on such binary thinking, but phallocentric and heterosexist stupidity.

We should be wary therefore of those witches who speak of sex and sexual "difference" as something innate and natural. Such persons whilst often masquerading as radical are often reactionary morons, quick to condemn homosexuality, for example, on the spurious grounds that it negates difference and privileges the same. The belief that homosexuality promotes a narcissistic self-seeking due to a fear of otherness is bullshit.

All fucking is overrated. But fucking between men and women is the most overrated act of all. Even the epiphenomenal baby that might result doesn’t justify the senseless importance given to it (and besides, fucking has nothing to do with fertility). Witches who argue that erotic pleasure without the consummating act of coition is inauthentic or perverse should be beaten with their own broomsticks.

Witchcraft has been mistaken in its self-understanding as a fertility cult and magic has nothing to do with nature; it is both unnatural and supernatural. We need to get over our subservience to vindictive Nature just as we might get over any other impediment to our future evolution. Witchcraft needs to understand itself as an art concerned with creation, not procreation and as something rooted within culture, not nature.

Witchcraft is performative. It is a practice: likewise our sexuality and gender identities. We play at being men and women and to this extent we are all transvestites. There’s no reason why male bodies should exclusively give rise to masculinity; or why female bodies should exclusively give rise to femininity. Feminists have been saying this for years, but it has been ignored by those who like things fixed and to take themselves seriously; by those whose pride is in rigidity: patriarchal pricks.

If witches are to become free-thinkers and free-spirits, then we need to abandon essentialism and fundamentalism and interrogate those violent hierarchies that demean and disempower those who fail to belong to its dominant categories (such as white, male, and straight, for example). We need to desire differently and stop kissing the arse of those in power (the only truly obscene kiss).

This is not a call for a sexual revolution, however, and should not be mistaken for such. The despotic agency of sex has had its day and we look forward to a time when we can at last talk about, think about, and do something more enjoyable. The orgy is coming to an end and we await the masked ball and that different economy of bodies and their pleasures.

There are no male witches.

W.I.T.C.H.

In his reading of The Scarlet Letter Lawrence offers an interesting theory of how women like Hester Prynne become witches and fall into a state of moral and sexual corruption, or what religious people call sin.

According to Lawrence, when the female soul "recoils from its creative union with man", it becomes possessed by malevolent forces and starts to exert an invisible and insidious influence in the world. The woman herself may remain "as nice as milk" in her daily life and continue to speak only of her love for humanity, but she becomes subtly diabolic and sends out "waves of silent destruction" that undermine the spiritual authority of men and their social institutions. 

Thus it is, continues Lawrence, that our forefathers were not altogether fools in their fear of witchcraft and the burning of witches not altogether unjustified.   

 

What do I think of this curious contribution to sexual politics? Not much. It's obviously untenable and hateful in its misogyny. One is reminded of the televangelist Pat Robertson, who also claims that women who desire autonomy and independence are intent on practicing witchcraft, smashing capitalism and becoming lesbians. 

The only difference is that Lawrence recognises that evil is as necessary as goodness and that we ultimately need witchcraft as a power of malevolence in order to destroy "a rotten, false humanity" that wallows in its own idealism and phallocratic stupidity.   

Note: for quotes from DHL see Studies in Classic American Literature, CUP, 2003, pp. 89 and 93.