Austin Toaf Rica

Archive for April, 2010

The bathroom is the most enigmatic of rooms, riddled with ancient and contemporary ritual. It is connected with cultural superstitions as well. According to the Celts, for whom water represented a reunion with the womb, a few silver coins in the bath ensured good luck. Adding the first snow of winter to the bath brought good health. Sage wisdom has it that roses in the bath bring love; lavender, happiness; rosemary; creativity; peppermint, revivification; and eucalyptus, freedom from pain. A recipe for romance calls for oranges and fresh mint leaves added to the bath and rubbed on the body—then allowed to air-dry Do you want beauty? Would you be willing to go to the extremes Cleopatra did? She is said to have bathed regularly in asses’ milk.
Bathing involves a religious significance in many cultures. For Muslims and Jews it is associated with purification and holiness. The complex bathing rituals of the Japanese are meant to facilitate mental clarity. Instead of seeing bathing as just a way to get clean like we do in the West, Eastern cultures get clean in separate quarters so that they can bathe. For Native Americans sweat lodges are used to facilitate healing of illness (everything from influenza to pleurisy) as well as to revitalize racial identity In Finland the sauna is a national institution. It is said that prior to the 1990s there were more saunas than cars in that country.