Where do superstitions come from?
 

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of superstitions out there. Not walking under ladders makes sense but whats so special about the colour green or the number 13 or black cats?

The stork brings them. ;)

John

It's said that the thing about 13 comes from the Last Supper (12 Disciples plus Jesus).

The Celts had a deity that took the form of a black cat. The aversion to them may stem from Rome's suppression of the Celtic religion and culture in Western Europe and Britain.

Green? I don't really know. Might be Celtic again, with"the little people". That might be why some consider it good luck and others bad luck.

I think all superstitions come from folklore (duh) and, since folklore is so rich and diverse, there's no one source for superstitious beliefs and some superstitions go back so far, way back into pre-literate cultures, that finding the root is impossible in some cases.

John

Some superstitions come from vivid imagination, coincidence and ingnorance. Others are taught in the Madrassas, Temples and Sunday school.

Regards,
Dave

Friday the 13th came from the raids on the Knights Templar.

Pete

So, every Friday the 13th, millions of nippleheads are frightened 'cuz the Knights Templar are coming to get them? Must be NRA members.

Regards,
Dave

Yes, all those mystic loving far left hippies are lifetime NRA members :p

Hope we're all good, knock on wood :)

Pete

Stop that, you'll give yourself a headache! :D

Spilling salt is considered unlucky because Judas spilled the salt at the Last Supper. Throwing some of the spilled salt over your left shoulder is thought to be throwing it in the Devil's face, thereby warding the evil. You wouldn't throw it over your right shoulder because that's where your Guardian Angel stands.

But the idea of spilled salt being unlucky is even older. Salt was a valuable commodity because it kept food from spoiling. As such, in Roman times, it was often given to dinner guests as a gift symbolizing friendship. Spilling the salt was thought to put those friendships at risk.

As you can see, this earlier Roman belief is probably behind the Christian belief concerning the Last Supper. So often, the deeper you dig into a superstition, the more you have to dig. Who knows what earlier superstition (or event) lies behind the Roman one?

John

Illiteracy was a big part of it. Roman Catholic churches that were built in the 1500s had facades full of sculptures. They were put there to communicate with the illiterate. At least that's what my tour guide told me in Regensburg.

When people are left to their own devices they can come up with all kinds of models to represent the "truth". A friend and I were talking about relationships once and she came up with a spring model to describe ebbs and flows of struggles in life. If she lived a few thousand years ago and a rock carver wanted to get into her pants bad enough, she might have been the author of the Ten Commandments of the Church of Springs. :D

Fear of the unknown or the inability to understand the happenings in front of them. Causes the imagination to conjure up an explanation. Understandable considering that we are always looking for answers to the unexplainable.

But then there are superstitions based on facts. Like the one about three on a match being bad luck. But one if not worried about a sniper and not in a trench then no worries.

Barney

The Caribbean. :p

You and he are both right. Not only the statues on the exterior but the scenes depicted in stained glass, the "Stations of the Cross and the statuary inside were designed to tell the stories of of the lives of the saints and of Jesus in a way that the illiterate could understand and with a power that would cause them to remember.

John

I read that after the Germans kicked out the Catholic church and they switched to German for mass instead of Latin, the common folks were shocked with communion :)

Pete

I read that too. Here. But nowhere else.

When did the Germans "kick out" the Catholic Church?

John

Hey if I have to post links to scanned books every time I say something, you do too ;)

See Martin Luther. I read that in a biography, don't remember which one.

Pete

Luther never kicked anybody anywhere.

I thought he kicked the papists in the man fruit.

:D

Dang nab it you know what I mean! :p

Pete

No, I don't, or didn't. When you say that the Germans kicked the Catholics out of the country I tend to think you mean that the Germans kicked the Catholics out of the country.

Silly, I know, but that's the way my feeble mind works. I'm not really smart enough to know what you mean is that Martin Luther started a schismatic religious sect in Germany which eventually grew into an official Protestant denomination. This is especially hard for me to understand since Catholicism is still the largest single denomination in Germany.

John

By 'the Catholics' I mean the church establishment of said sect.

Here's a bit on majorities in 1610:

http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/germany_1610.htm

Pete

Oh, okay! And when were they kicked out exactly?

Pretty much confirms that, about a century after Luther broke with Rome, the Lutherans were a small component of the total picture in 1610 too, mostly in Saxony and dominant only there and in Wurtemberg.

John

Oh, and superstitions? The tooth fairy leaves them under your pillow.

John

At the time the Catholic church did not tolerate dissent. Anywhere they were not in the majority, or the only legal church, they had basically lost.

Luther was also agast at the desecration of churches that followed the Catholics getting das boot. He really wanted a kinda reformed Catholicism from what I can see. Which as a 'raised in the Lutheran church' person I can attest to, when I attended a Catholic mass I knew most of it already. It was remarkable.

Can I have a quarter now? :D

Pete

Religious dissenters flourished where they were permitted to do so by the monarchs who ruled them. In Luther's time and for centuries before and after, there was no such thing as a German state or a "King of Germany". There was a King of Bavaria, a King of Saxony, a King of Brandedburg, etc. That's why you see some of these petty states that are solidly one thing or the other as far as religion goes. The ruling monarch said "Only Catholicism will be permitted." or "Only Lutheranism will be permitted."

People moved around to find a place that was hospitable to their beliefs. It's why the Puritans, the Quakers, the Amish, the Huguenots came to North America, after all.

John