horseshoes as luck

horseshoes as links to the vulva

{and the Island kills pregnancys}


The Horseshoe


"THE HORSESHOE


Without a doubt, the most commonly encountered lucky charm in modern North America is the horseshoe and its representative models in the form of jewelry, wall hangings, and printed images.

This little horseshoe, shown here life-size, is actually a hand-forged pony shoe that my daughter Althaea and i discovered and dug out of the ground one day in 1976 while we were walking an old logging trail through the woods in the Missouri Ozarks. It probably dates from the 1910s to 1930s.

The use of worn-out horseshoes as magically protective amulets -- especially hung above or next to doorways -- originated in Europe, where one can still find them nailed onto houses, barns, and stables from Italy through Germany and up into Britain and Scandinavia. Additionally, wall hangins made in the form of horseshoes are common. In the Middle-East, one finds the terra cotta blue-glazed horseshoe plaque. In Turkey small metal or blue glass horseshoes are blended with the protective all-seeing eye to form a unique apotropaic charm i call the horseshoe-and-eyes that is believed to ward off the evil eye.

There is good reason to suppose that the crescent form of the horseshoe links the symbol to pagan Moon goddesses of ancient Europe such as Artemis and Diana, and that the protection invoked is that of the goddess herself, or, more particularly, of her sacred vulva. As such, the horseshoe is related to other magically protective doorway-goddesses, such as the Irish sheela-na-gig, and to lunar protectresses such as the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is often shown standing on a crescent moon and placed within a vulval mandorla or vesica pisces.

In most of Europe, the Middle-East, and Spanish-colonial Latin America protective horseshoes are placed in a downward facing or vulval position, as shown here, but in some parts of Ireland and Britain people believe that the shoes must be turned upward or "the luck will run out." Americans of English and Irish descent prefer to display horseshoes upward; those of German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, and Balkan descent generally hang them downward. "