Henna in North Africa, though beautiful, is not typically applied for cosmetic purposes, as in India and Arabia. Instead, it offers a special protection to the wearer from bad luck, sickness, or any inexplicable behavior. In North Africa, henna is believed to transmit all the positive energy of saintly spirits to the wearer. The Berbers, a rural Muslim community, call this energy baraka, and henna, which is full of baraka, helps fend off evil.
A temporary and soothing dye, henna protects the wearer during transitional and very vulnerable stages in life: puberty, marriage, pregnancy and childbirth, for instance, are all times when a woman needs increased protection from hostile forces. Berbers use clothing, henna and other, permanent tattoos to protect themselves from misfortune. Henna is applied to the hands and the soles of the feet, protecting the wearer from malevolent spirits were clothing cannot.
Henna also has a deeply fertile purpose in these communities; it is most often applied to young girls entering puberty, to symbolize the children they will have in the future.
North African henna parties are often very lively and entertaining; musicians and dancers are hired, and plenty of food and gossip are available all night long. Like Indian and Middle Eastern parties, those in North Africa often last several days.
North African patterns are usually very geometric. Lines are very thin and delicate, and are traditionally dense and repetitious. The evil eye is reflected in a symbol of a diamond with a dot in its center.
Symbols are often grouped in special numbers, because numbers are magical. For instance, the number five represents the khamsa, the protective hand of Fatima, the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter. (i.e, “Poking one’s fingers into the evil eye”) The number four, represented in a square, is used to heal and protect the sick. The square is “composed of numbers whose sum is the same whether added up horizontally, vertically or diagonally.”
Animal protector symbols are abstracted to straight lines and dots. Triangles, dots, diamonds, crosses, etc. are all typical henna motifs.
