The Corna Research Paper

It took some time for me to decide on a last symbol to write about. I debated writing about an apple and the Garden of Eden and I tried to come up with an angle for writing about how witches are portrayed as ugly. But then I was at a play my future stepdaughter was in. My future mother in law made a hand gesture toward my significant other’s ex-wife during the intermission and I figured, I’ll write about the Corna. The Corna is also known as the Sign of the Horns. In Italy, making the sign of the horns is done to ward off the evil eye or “malocchio” as they call it. In my interactions with my family of Italian ancestry and other Italian Americans a generation or more older than me, the evil eye is a very real concern. Displaying the Corna

As a teenager, I noticed the horns being put up by rock bands. It seemed to be the quintessential bad ass gesture made my heavy metal artists and fans. A few years ago, I took my oldest son to a Disturbed concert and people were throwing up the horns there, too. After researching this, I was able to find this gesture being used in this context dated back to Black Sabbath front man, Ronnie James Dio. While he wasn’t the first artist to use this in performance, he did popularize the gesture. When Dio was asked about the famous gesture he explained that it was the Corna that his Italian grandmother used to use to ward off the evil eye. He started to use the gesture because Ozzy Osborne used the peace sign when he was in Black Sabbath as a gesture to bond with the fans. Dio wanted to incorporate something similar yet unique. Over the years, it was misinterpreted and fans thought it was a satanic reference because they thought the fingers were in the shape of 6, representing 666, the devil’s number. Dio spoke out about that misinterpretation. In today’s heavy metal world, fans put up the horns as a hand symbol of respect for the artist and fortunately, the satanic misinterpretation has gone