Myths and Legends: Journeys Through Time
Superstitions
Remember when we discussed urban legends and getting caught up in one? The things to look for, the phrases to listen for and the ideas to be wary of? Good. Let’s go one step behind urban legends. Let’s go to what could possibly be considered the mother of urban legends. Let’s skip GO and head directly to superstitions. A superstition isn’t necessarily a myth, or a legend..but in examining them, they are often a journey through time. What is a superstition exactly? When you pare it down to the bare bones, a superstition is pretty much nothing more then a belief. A bizarre belief maybe, but a belief nonetheless. Superstitions are also known as: Old wives tales, folklore, omens, signs, taboos, and rules about lucky and unlucky things. Most often the word superstition is applied to beliefs and practicesthat concern luck, prophecies, spiritual beings, and that the future can be told by examinging and connecting a specific series of past unrelated events. For example: You’re notoriously bad at spelling tests and you know you’re bad at them no matter how much you practice. One day you find out you aced a particularly tricky spelling test. You don’t know what you did differently but upon examining that day more closely, you see that you were wearing a pair of bright pink with orange and purple polka dot socks that your favorite uncle had given to you for your birthday. Next time you take a spelling test you don’t wear the socks and you fail horribly. The third time you take a spelling test, you make sure you’re wearing the socks and you pass. It becomes stuck in your mind that those socks are lucky for you when it comes to spelling. Hence you wear them every test day so that you’ll pass. That’s a way of making sure that in the future…you’ll always pass your tests simply because the one test day out of three test days that you didn’t wear them, you failed.
Superstitions go back for ages. One favorite area of superstition concerns the number 13. The number 13 is so popular in superstition that it’s one of two numbers that has it’s own phobia. You’re reading this correctly. To be afraid of the number 13 is known as having triskaidekaphobia, or being triskaidekaphobic. Exactly why is 13 so bad though? Most hotels or tall buildings don’t have a 13th floor (Obviously they do have a 13th floor but it’s not numbered 13), rooms are rarely numbered 13 or number combinations that equal 13, 13 is the first true teenage year and considered by many to be their worse year in all their years of being a teenager etc, etc. Why? Superstition has it that 13 is so bad because 12 which is quite often the last number or only number for things is whole. It can be divided evenly, either into groups of 2, 3, 4, or 6 and it’s a nice rounded number. 13 however…you can’t divide that so easily. The funny thing is…when people talk about a baker’s dozen they’re talking about the number 13. A baker would bake 12 rolls but because he sold by weight…12 baked rolls isn’t quite the same weight as 12 unbaked rolls, so he’d throw in an extra 13th roll to make the weight even. At least that’s the superstition.
Black cats are also popular for superstition fodder because of two things. One people believed for the longest time that black was an unnatural color and two, cats are a witch’s familiar and for the longest time witch’s were considered to be tools of the devil. A black cat was said to be a witch in disguise and therefore bad luck. All in all though, superstitions are merely a collection of beliefs passed around in different cultures by word of mouth. Some people adhere verystrongly to their superstitions and others laugh them off as nothing. Whether or not a superstition holds any truth…that’s up to you. If you’re more interested in learning about different superstitions, a really good book to pick up is
“A Dictionary of Omens and Superstitions” by Phillipa Warring.
http://www.falkor.org/relax/superstitions.htm