From Ancient Greece to Heavy Metal: The Origins of the Devil’s Horns Gesture

A 50 BC funerary stele successful Thessaloniki revives statement connected the “devil’s horns,” tracing the manus sign’s past Mediterranean, apotropaic roots to its modern heavy-metal fame. Credit: Left: Alfred Nitsch, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 at, Right: Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki

A funerary stele successful the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece, has reignited statement implicit the origins of the “devil’s horns” gesture. The relief, dated to astir 50 BC, depicts Gaius Popillius seated connected an ornate throne portion an attendant holds a scroll and forms the celebrated two-finger salute.

According to the depository label, the motion tin beryllium interpreted either arsenic an apotropaic awesome oregon arsenic a accepted “gesture of speech” successful dialog scenes. This ambiguity hints astatine a agelong prehistory for the motion present truthful acquainted astatine stone concerts.

The funerary discourse matters, arsenic sedate creation often compresses regular life, the spiritual beliefs of the deceased, and nationalist show into a azygous scene. What mightiness look similar a elemental manus motion tin convey aggregate layers of meaning—reflecting not lone the idiosyncratic but besides the broader society.

The communicative down the devil’s horns manus gesture

Beyond this lone stele, historians constituent to a wide Mediterranean tradition. In Italian people civilization the mano cornuta, the horned manus made by extending the scale and pinky fingers, has been utilized for centuries to ward disconnected the evil oculus (malocchio). Museum collections picture specified amulets arsenic protective charms alternatively than occult emblems, often crafted successful coral oregon metallic and worn to deflect misfortune.

A related charm, the mano fico—with the thumb thrust betwixt the scale and mediate finger—appears alongside this successful galore collections arsenic different “everyday” safeguard alternatively than a sinister emblem. Such vernacular objects suggest a long, applicable past for horn-like signs successful the people contented of galore Mediterranean nations.

Meanings besides displacement based connected context. In Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, pointing the horns upward astatine idiosyncratic tin beryllium insulting and connote cuckoldry. That treble meaning, protective successful definite settings and violative successful others, helps explicate however the motion could look connected funerary creation without immoderate nexus to modern subcultures.

A sculptor drafting connected acquainted ocular connection mightiness mean either to shield the deceased from misfortune oregon to simply people code successful a carved speech betwixt the surviving and the dead. The aforesaid configuration tin beryllium understood arsenic a ward, warning, oregon jab depending connected who makes it, to whom, and where.

The relation of manus gestures successful antiquity

Classical sources marque wide that gestural connection was integral to nationalist life. Ancient orators and theatre performers deployed a codified repertoire of gestures to awesome emotion, emphasis, and turn-taking. Rhetoricians specified arsenic Quintilian did not catalog the “horns” explicitly, but they did sermon however peculiar digit positions shaped meaning—from supplication to denunciation—and however audiences learned to work those cues.

Funerary reliefs, which often ideate the deceased successful dialog with the living, get this normal too. A raised brace of fingers beside a scroll could truthful bespeak speech, authority, oregon extortion without needfully pointing to a azygous fixed interpretation. Parallels beryllium extracurricular of Europe arsenic well. In Buddhist iconography, a akin configuration, the karana mudra, is explicitly apotropaic and is utilized to repel negativity and evil forces

Padmasambhava, the laminitis of Tibetan Buddhism, showing the Karana Mudrā. The statue is located successful Namchi, India. Credit: Subhrajyoti07, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Reference works and temple sculptures alike corroborate the mudra’s quality successful depictions of the Buddha and bodhisattvas, demonstrating that horn-like manus signs person agelong been linked to repelling, alternatively than inviting, malignant oregon evil forces. The recurrence crossed cultures suggests thing intuitive astir a pointed, two-pronged manus signifier arsenic a awesome of expulsion and boundary-setting.

The modern usage of the devil’s horn gesture

The leap from past times to a hard stone oregon dense metallic arena salute is simply a late-20th-century story. Heavy metallic vocalist Ronnie James Dio is wide credited with popularizing the horns connected signifier aft joining Black Sabbath successful 1979. Dio said helium adopted it from his Italian grandmother’s wont of utilizing the motion to ward disconnected the malocchio (evil eye), creating an accessible, nonverbal transportation with audiences that differed from the bid motion utilized by his predecessor, Ozzy Osbourne.

Music histories and interviews hint however the motion rapidly dispersed done metallic civilization arsenic bands, roadworthy crews, and fans mirrored 1 different astatine shows and successful photographs, transforming it into a badge of membership. Not everyone agrees connected firsts successful popular culture, however. Photographs and testimonies amusement earlier, scattered grounds of the usage of the devil’s horn gesture, from psychedelic stone to occult-themed acts successful the precocious 1960s.

The information is nary had the aforesaid transformative interaction arsenic Dio, who popularized the motion earlier arena-sized audiences. Regardless, the modern relation with dense metallic is little an invention than a repurposing, successful which a acquainted apotropaic oregon insulting motion sheds its ambiguity and becomes a awesome of amplified dependable and shared identity.

The gesture’s visibility adjacent spilled into law. In June 2017, KISS bassist Gene Simmons filed (but past swiftly withdrew) an exertion to trademark a thumb-out variant of the manus gesture, a determination wide questioned fixed its agelong people past and overlapping uses. Commentators besides noted that the thumb-out mentation coincides with the American Sign Language motion for “I emotion you,” making exclusive rights hard to sustain.