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Home , Black cat, Spilling salt, Triskaidekaphobia

Superstitions

Copyright 2020 Shane Rogers Entertainment

Midnight Facts for Insomniacs

Podcast Transcript

(Note: transcript consists of episode outline) where they come from, and why we

Suggested by two listeners almost simultaneously, Aylan and lexchester on Instagram. you guys are on the same wavelength.

Let’s first talk about the psychology behind : how and why they developed, why certain people are more superstitious than others, etc. (The answer seems obvious: some people are dumb. JK) Let’s first talk about it from a scientific standpoint. arises when a reinforcer or punisher occurs in close proximity to an independent event. Sounds like something from comic books. I’ll explain. In layman‘s terms: something random happens, and then another random thing happens, and we associate those two events. So a runs across your path, two seconds later you trip and fall on your face. Couldn’t just be that you’re a clumsy ass. sooo...blame the cat. The next time a runs across your path, now you’re looking out for something negative. An hour later you get diagnosed with chlamydia, it’s that damn cat again.

Even though we consider ourselves a civilized, logical society, superstitious beliefs manifest in some very tangible ways. Specifically the number 13. Over 80% of don’t have a 13th floor. Many don’t have a room number 13. Ditto hospitals. Airlines often skip a 13th aisle. It’s good to know that professional institutions are governed by . Makes me feel pretty comfortable flying with Delta Airlines knowing that they make decisions based on irrational whims. “Sorry, the pilot isn’t ready to take off, he doesn’t have his lucky rabbits foot .”

Many people have a lucky number. A lucky rabbit’s foot, a lucky hat. And weirdly many of these people are human adults. Presumably they don’t believe in Santa Claus, but they’ll slaughter a rabbit to ward off the ghosts. This is how I know we haven’t advanced very far as a species.

Humans have a unique ability to hold two beliefs simultaneously. Knowing that superstition is silly on one hand, yet refusing to step on a crack or walk under a ladder. There’s a mental process called acquiescence in which a person recognizes there’s no real benefit to a certain activity, but performs it anyway.

But the most important element may be control. We all rationally understand that we can’t stop bad things from happening, but if you’re holding your lucky charm, or if your bed is facing the right way, or if you pinch your left nipple at midnight during a full moon, some part of you believes you’re making a difference. You’re somehow Influencing fate and asserting control. These superstitious beliefs and superstitious behaviors may help us relieve anxiety. And similar to a placebo effect, superstitions may actually kind of....work. they can have real life effects. We’ve talked about dumbo’s magic feather. If you believe that you can’t lose a football game as long as you’ve never washed your lucky jockstrap, you’re going to take the field with confidence. And stinky junk. That belief can actually translate into tangible results. You’re going to play with confidence, every action will be imbued with purpose because you are convinced that the outcome is in your favor. and if you lose, your brain will find excuses and rationalizations. Of course you didn’t win the game, there was a wind from the southeast. Your lucky jockstrap was overpowered by bad juju. You can become tangled up in a web of superstitions, and this is the real danger of this type of thinking, especially for people who have OCD tendencies, it can become really confining. You have to touch the wall next to the door five times before you leave the house or something terrible will happen, you can’t drive your car on Thursdays in a month that ends in the letter R.

An interesting psychological principle: Cheap superstitions are more compelling than costly ones. Typically that’s not referring to money. In other words, we are more susceptible to superstitions that don’t require a lot of effort. So for instance, chain letters are common manifestations of superstition. “Forward this letter and you’ll receive riches, don’t forward this letter and a terrible tragedy will befall you.“ You realize logically it’s probably nonsense, but it doesn’t take any real effort to hit the forward button. It’s a cheap superstition. And the downside seems much worse than the potential upside. Low cost, or in this case no cost, low effort, high potential reward.

And I was pretty excited about this idea, because I’ve always wondered where superstitions come from. Why is it bad to break a mirror, but only for seven years? And then I started doing some research, and let me tell you, the sheer volume of superstitions is overwhelming. and so many of them are contradictory. in , black are a symbol of good luck, in most of Western Europe, they’re considered evil shape shifters, or witches in disguise. Many Germans believe that if a black cat crosses your path from right to left, that’s bad luck, but left to right is good luck. In Scotland, if a black cat shows up on your doorstep, they bring success and fortune. It’s dizzying.

So this turned out to be a tougher subject for me, because I tend to like to find absolutes. The facts behind the myth or legend. But a lot of superstition is all really nebulous. So we’re going to do some digging and try to find the origins behind some really popular superstitions. And as much as possible, let’s ground this in fact. Let’s start with some positive superstitions. Good luck:

Four leaf clover: Only one in 10,000 clovers has four leaves, so If you find one, you have found something with absolutely no practical value. Like just because something is rare doesn’t mean it’s valuable. Many horrible diseases are rare. Congratulations, you’ve won the lupus lottery! incidentally, a clover is actually a type of pea. Midnight fact. Completely irrelevant, but there you go.

Horseshoes In Western Europe, iron was viewed as magical and able to ward off evil spirits. many people would hang a horseshoe above the door for this purpose. I have a feeling it resulted in more concussions then good luck, but whatever.

Have you ever heard, “find a , pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck”? This one seems kind of silly nowadays, but there was a time when actually had value. So why the hell wouldn’t you pick up a penny? It’s like...why wouldn’t you pick up money? Find A $50 bill, pick it up, all day long you’ll be able to buy cool shit.

Now on to the most common superstitions

Number 13 Judas, the shadiest of disciples, the man who would notoriously betrayed JC, was the 13th guest and the 13th to take his seat at the . People who are late to dinner are the worst. I’m not saying they will betray you to the point of murder, but they are betrayers of punctuality. Basically the same thing. As we mentioned in our apocalypse episode, the Mayans believed that the 13th Bak Tun (which was a specific period of time) would bring the end of the world. Some ancient societies associated the number 13 with femininity, and specifically with menstrual cycles, which were considered unlucky. Women probably also consider menstrual cycled unlucky or at the very least inconvenient. There are approximately 13 menstrual cycles in an average year. There’s even a name for the phobia regarding the : . In our secret societies episode we talked about Friday the 13th of October, 1307, the date on which King Philip the fourth of France rounded up, tortured, and executed French . He owed them money, so he used some trumped up charges as an excuse to erase his debt.

Knock on wood The Celts and various pagan tribes believed that and spirits lived in trees, and knocking on a tree was a method of arousing, awakening or invoking a spirit.Although it just seems like that would kind of piss them off. People always knocking on my tree while I’m trying to sleep. I’d be more likely to you then give you good luck, but that’s me. There’s another theory that may come from a game called tiggy touchwood, similar to a game of tag in which touching a piece of wood would make you safe. I recommend you don’t suggest a game of tiggy touchwood to anyone. Touching wood in public it’s not a good idea. It certainly doesn’t make you safe.

Breaking a mirror is seven years bad luck The reflection in a mirror was long thought to not only represent a reflection of the body, but also the soul. So damage a mirror, and you damage the soul of anyone who looked into it. Have you ever broken a mirror? So why seven years…well, supposedly the Romans believe that your life and health renewed every seven years—every seven years was a new beginning—so breaking a mirror was the same as destroying one cycle of life. plus, mirrors were expensive.

This idea of losing your soul was really popular in the Middle Ages. That was why you covered your mouth when you yawned and when you sneezed, and why people would say “bless you“ after a sneeze. Everyone just walked around terrified that their soul could escape their body at any time, and you had to lock that sucker down. They even believed that the soul left the body during sleep, which accounted for dreams. I guess your soul was off having crazy adventures, showing up naked to class or whatever.

Why do we wish on shooting stars? Ptolemy believed that the gods peer down on the earth through cracks in the sky, and that’s how shooting stars got through, so the best time to make a wish was when the gods were watching. Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician and astronomer, so that should give you a sense of how advanced we were as a species circa 100 AD. He believed the Earth was the center of the universe, and that the universe itself was a series of nested spheres. Like cosmic Russian dolls. Interestingly, here’s something I never thought about: what do you think happens to astronaut feces that accumulates on the international space station? They gather it in bags and then eject it from the facility, and much of it finds its way to earth, burning up in the atmosphere. So if you wish on shooting stars, you may have wished on space poop.

Let’s talk a little more about cats: Cats have been considered powerful creatures and fetishized since the ancient Egyptians.

Black cats, as previously mentioned, aren’t universally viewed as bad luck.. in Japan, they’re good luck, similar to the Japanese waving cat, those little ceramic cats with a lifted paw, also very popular in , called maneki-Neko, which supposedly bring prosperity. There are many legends about the origin of Maneki Neko, but it seems to come from the Ancient Japanese belief that if a cat washes its face, it will rain. Rain brings in customers to shops, which brings money to a business. so if a cat raises its paw, as it would when it washes itself, that’s a sign of impending good fortune. I feel like most people don’t go shopping in the rain, so any benefit from this is going to be minimal.

Why shouldn’t a bride see the groom before the wedding? Many people think it’s just to avoid him having second thoughts. Maybe she’s not looking her best that day, and he sobered up. Honestly, if that’s the case, the superstition should be “the bride should always see the room right before the wedding.“ Because if he’s going to have second thoughts based on the way you look in one particular moment, you might as well get rid of this douchebag before you say “I do.”

Lucky rabbits foot So a rabbit’s foot is an example of a , an object of luck or protection. It’s also an example of totemism, the fetishizing of a particular animal that can supposedly protect you or imbue you with some specific trait. Whether it’s rhino horn as nature’s Viagra, or in this case the foot of a rabbit. The rabbit’s foot belief foot most likely started out as a phallic symbol of fertility...rabbit are famously prolific breeders. Seems like it would make more sense to carry a rabbit’s penis, But no one does that, because that would just be weird. We’re very discriminating when it comes to the severed body parts we carry.The most likely origin is in the hoodoo , which was practiced by enslaved New World African-Americans, the religion is similar to but not the same as voodoo. I know a guy who carried lucky rabbits foot. I’m skeptical. He was not super lucky. And hey, It wasn’t obviously very lucky for the rabbit, but you know. Good luck with that. Don’t open an umbrella indoors? This seems to be related to the fact that the first umbrellas had sharp metal spokes, and hair trigger spring mechanisms. Snapping one open doors could break fragile objects like vases etc, or take an eye out, especially if there were a child standing nearby. But it seems like it would be easier just to tell people, hey, don’t open umbrellas indoors because that would be a really stupid thing to do. It’s kind of depressing that people have to believe that there will be some kind of mystical, paranormal consequence if they don’t do the smart thing. “Don’t jump off a cliff, because ghost hang out at the bottom of cliffs!” Walk under a ladder This one seems kind of obvious. Walking under a ladder is dangerous. You could get a paint can dropped on your head. Similar to the superstition about putting your shoes on the table. Apparently It’s bad luck to put shoes on the table. How is this even a problem? Who needs to be told not to put ? So this one supposedly had its roots in Christianity. The idea of the holy Trinity, which is often depicted as a triangle. A ladder against a wall forms a triangle, and walking under one would be like breaking the Trinity. another possibility is that a ladder against a wall resembles the gallows, and walking under one symbolizes being hung. Seems far-fetched, but whatever. In some traditions, if you accidentally walk under a ladder, you have to walk backwards under it to reverse the curse. Which is even more dangerous, illustrating the silliness of superstition.

What’s the connection between cracks and mothers backs? Cracks have always been considered sketchy. Obviously you could trip on a crack, and kids are stupid, so it makes sense to try to create some kind of Pavlovian fear-response linked to the idea of stepping on cracks. Let’s traumatize them by making them imagine their mother as a paraplegic but hey, you’ll save them from mild ankle sprains. Cracks have also traditionally been viewed as the separation between worlds or realms. Spirits and demons reside underground. But in that case it seems like a good idea to step on cracks...stamp that demon back down and block up his hole. So maybe it should be “Step on a crack, send that demon back.”

Salt over your shoulder Spilling has long been considered a bad , possibly due to the idea that Judas spilled salt at the last supper. I’m not sure if you’re sensing a theme here, but Judas is not super popular. More likely it just has to do with the fact that salt was super valuable and expensive in ancient times. In fact, the word “salary“ comes from the mistaken belief that Roman soldiers were often paid insult. So back then would be like spilling cocaine now. And spilling cocaine is definitely unlucky, because everyone in the party is going to want to kick your ass. What’s weird is the idea that if you spilled salt, you should immediately throw salt over your left shoulder. So you shouldn’t spell salt because it’s valuable, but if you do spill salt, you should then waste more salt. Doesn’t make sense. Regardless, throwing salt over your left shoulder seems to come from the idea that the devil is always looking over your left shoulder, waiting for the opportunity to compel you to do mischief. Spilling salt is bad, and it gives him a an opening. So If you spill salt, toss some sort of your shoulder into the face of the devil who and put that horny bitch in his place. I didn’t promise that any of these were going to make sense.