Trizzi di donna tra etnopatia e virtù

Abstract

In Sicily, the public manifestation of the trizzi di donna, dreadlocks with an esoteric meaning and a supernatural origin, express relations between the individual body and the social body, revelation of imaginative and ancestral traditions, concrete expression of beliefs. With the trizzi di donna, the subject communicates his preternatural status, a protection above the real that must be respected and feared, a condition of mystical superiority determined by favorable entities that have chosen him and endowed with transcendental powers and immunities. They are also documents of the ancient link that donni di fora, transubstantial women often identified as witches, have with the divinities of nature and with the demons they encounter during their ceremonial operations.