Devil Horns.
It is a gesture that is intrinsically linked with heavy metal music.
Let’s do a test: try imagining a metalhead at a gig.
We’re they a long-haired white guy in a Slayer T-shirt? Probably.
Did you automatically imagine them throwing horns? Almost definitely.
Done by making a fist and then lifting up the little and and index fingers, Devil Horns have been a staple icon of metal music for decades.
Like the peace symbol to the hippy movement and the Monster energy drink symbol to 2010s Emo’s, Devil Horns are now just a part of the Heavy Metal culture.
But where did it come from?
In this blog post we will go through the complicated history of the Horns, as well as some examples of similar-but-different hand gestures.
The Famous Story
Ronnie James Dio is famously known as the creator of the Devil Horns, after he joined Black Sabbath in 1979.
Ozzy Osbourne was well-known for using the peace symbol at Black Sabbath shows (which seems odd, considering the content of some of their songs…)
So after Dio took Ozzy’s place as lead singer of the band, he wanted his own thing.
Dio didn’t want to be a copycat and steal the Peace symbol however. He wanted to have a gesture that could be just his.
So Dio started using the Devil Horns gesture (though it obviously wasn’t called that originally).
This gesture then connected with fans as they could do it back at him. And, as this didn’t have the well-known existing connotations that the Peace symbol did, the phenomenon gained popularity and spread.
As I said, the symbol has been linked with Dio for much longer than the gesture has been referred to as ‘Devil Horns’.
This article on the BBC from 2010 referred to it as “Dio’s two-finger gesture” which definitely isn’t as cool a name…
Inventor
So, Dio was known for throwing the horns, but did he invent it?
Not exactly.
Although, to be fair, Dio never claimed to be the inventor. When asked about it, he said:
“I doubt very much if I would be the first one who ever did that. That’s like saying I invented the wheel, I’m sure someone did that at some other point. I think you’d have to say that I made it fashionable.
It was a symbol that I thought was reflective of what that band was supposed to be all about. It’s NOT the devil’s sign like we’re here with the devil. It’s an Italian thing I got from my Grandmother called the “Malocchio”. It’s to ward off the Evil Eye or to give the Evil Eye, depending on which way you do it. It’s just a symbol but it had magical incantations and attitudes to it and I felt it worked very well with Sabbath.
So I became very noted for it and then everybody else started to pick up on it and away it went. But I would never say I take credit for being the first to do it. I say because I did it so much that it became the symbol of rock and roll of some kind.”
It’s clear that Dio was never saying he was the inventor of the symbol, but simply that he took it from his grandmother and it and popularised it within the world of heavy metal.
History
So if even Dio accepts that he didn’t invent the gesture in 1979 when starting with Black Sabbath, then who did invent it?
Well starting as close to Dio as possible, the symbol had been used within Black Sabbath before Dio even joined.
Below is a photo of Geezer Butler, bassist in Black Sabbath, throwing the horns back in February 1969, a full decade before Dio joined Black Sabbath.
Though usage of the gesture at this time was sporadic and it never became “a thing” as it did with Dio.
In March 2020, Geezer started to try and take credit for the horns in an interview, but then later backtracked on Twitter.
But even if Geezer continued to make the claim that he invented it, it wouldn’t have mattered, because now we are going back slightly earlier to January of 1969.
The Beatles Yellow Submarine album was just released, and the John Lennon character on the back cover is also doing the same gesture.
So… did The Beatles invent Devil Horns?
Well, no. As great a story as that would be, John Lennon was just using an already-existing hand-gesture.
So where did it come from?
As Dio mentioned, the symbol went back at least as far as his grandmother.
It goes back further though, with the symbol having different meanings in several different religions and cultures.
Here are a few examples of the gesture in different cultures.
Hinduism
In Hinduism, pressing the ring and middle finger to the thumb (in an open way, rather than as a closed fist), is known as Apāna Mudrā, which is a gesture thought to rejuvenate the body.
Evil Spirits
As Dio’s grandmother mentioned, the gesture, Mano Cornuta, can also be used to ward off Evil Spirits, or the Evil Eye. This is popular in Italy and other Mediterranean countries.
American Sign Language
Doing the Devil Horns gesture but also having your thumb out in American Sign Language means “I love you”.
Texan longhorns
The University of Texas has the mascot, The Longhorn. The gesture is used to show school spirit and show support for the University. That is why there exist photos of former President, G W Bush throwing the horns.
Turns out that in these photos he was just at the University of Texas, not a Slipknot gig.
Spiderman
This is similar to the ASL gesture for “I love you”, except that a web of synthetic fluid also shoots out of your wrist.
Jinx Dawson
Before we finish here, I want to make sure that we cover Jinx Dawson and her band, Coven.
This band also used the Devil Horns hand gesture, and also started it a full decade before Dio joined Black Sabbath.
The band would begin and end their live shows by using the gesture, and the back cover of their 1969 album Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls shows two band members throwing Horns too.
So why isn’t Jinx Dawson remembered as the invent of the Devil Horns?
I think it is just because the band never reached the same level of fame that Black Sabbath achieved, and so the symbol never reached that many people or became that well-known.
Wrap Up
The Devil Horns is not a symbol unique to the heavy metal world, it was just adopted by it.
The symbol has meant different things in different times to different people.
But in 1979, Ronnie James Dio joined Black Sabbath and started using the symbol as a way of connecting with an audience. The audience started doing it back, and from that point on, the symbol became known world-wide for being linked with heavy metal.
Dio wasn’t the first person to do the horns, but he never claimed to be. He was just someone with enough reach and influence that when he started doing it, enough people took notice and it started a trend.
