The fear of Friday the 13th or
triskaidekaphobia is the basis for one of my favorite superstitions, which
reportedly began with the Knights Templar, a monastic military order
founded in Jerusalem in 1118 C.E., whose mission was to protect Christian
pilgrims during the Crusades. Over the next two centuries, the Knights
Templar became extraordinarily powerful and wealthy. Threatened by that
power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the
mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13,
1307 - Friday the 13th.
It should be noted that while the Knight’s legend is
true and Philip did order their extermination for heresy, some scholars
say that the story only evolved into a full blown superstition in the late
19th century, possibly through the Knights association with the Order of
Free Masons. Nevertheless, to this day, it is difficult to find a building
with a 13th floor, an airport with a gate 13, or commercial airliners with
a 13th isle. You will also note that most hotels and hospitals routinely
skip room 13, and in Italy you can’t buy a lottery ticket with the number
13. For those who scoff at the fear of number 13, one only has to remind
them of the ill fated Apollo 13 space mission.
Did you know that in merry old England, there were
always 13 steps up to the gallows and tradition called for executions to
be performed on Friday? Then again in the same period most folk believed
that witches could only do their magik when in groups of 12, with the 13th
spot assigned to the Devil. Of course, it is commonly accepted that Jesus
was crucified on a Friday, while Cabalists believe that Eve tempted Adam
with the forbidden fruit on Friday as well. I won’t even go near the
connections between my favorite bad girl, Lilith and both Friday and the
number 13. To that list of bad Fridays you can add the day that the
biblical flood of Noah began, as well as the confusion at the Tower of
Babel. Of course, not all Fridays are bad, if a child is born on Good
Friday and baptized on Easter Sunday, you can expect them to have
miraculous powers of healing. Add to that another old English custom, cut
your hair on Good Friday and you will not have a headache all year!
Mankind is a superstitious lot, but much of the
superstition of old is lost today, and for good reason. For instance, it
was considered bad luck to see an ambulance a hundred-fifty years ago, and
you would be expected to hold your breath, pinch your nose after one
passed, until your path was crossed by a black dog! That being said, there
would be an awful lot of asphyxiations in Manhattan on any given day,
where ambulances are plentiful and untethered black dogs are not. The
meaning of course was lost in history and holds no relevance today, but
there was a time when the uneducated might see the logic to these actions.
And while it is not common to find people carrying an acorn in their
pocket to assure long life and good fortune, it is fairly common to find
otherwise rational humans wearing Amber beads as a necklace to protect
them from illness or misfortune today. Returning to Friday phobias, you
might find it amusing that a hundred years ago, changing the linens on
your bed on a Friday was believed to be the cause of bad dreams.
I know, you personally are not superstitious, but try
these old wives tales just for fun. If you are a single female, think of
five or six names at random who you may someday marry. Now take an apple
by the stem and begin to twist the fruit while reciting those names in any
order you please. The custom suggests that when the stem breaks off and
the apple falls, the name being recited is that of the intended. Silly,
right? Then I won’t give you the names of people whom this has worked for
over the years, for good or bad! Just as silly, if you want to know the
sex of your unborn child, suspend a wedding band from a piece of thread
and hold it suspended over the palm of subject. If the ring moves in a
circular motion or an oval, the baby will be a girl, but if it swings in
straight lines, it will be a boy. Hmmm.
Many times superstitions can be found in bountiful
numbers surrounding common household objects. One of my favorites is the
broom. For instance, if you are of child bearing age and want to have
kids, don’t stand too close to someone sweeping… if the person sweeps over
your feet, you will have no natural offspring. Likewise, when you move,
you should never bring your old broom along, buy a new one and you will
have better luck. And I love this one, If you have had an unwelcome guest,
sweep out the room after they leave and throw the dust out the door or
window… they will never stay in that room again! Of course, they could
return to sleep in your room, there is no superstition for that.
Superstitions also hold sway over Magik in many
cases. (and yes, before we go further, it is Magik… Magic is an illusion
but Magik is super natural). Many rituals require the lighting of candles,
but did you know that if a candle blows out during a ritual, it suggests
that evil is in the room? If you are a little unsettled with the concept
of magik and how it can affect you, simply take a small flower pot and
plant some clover in it. As long as one stem has a four leafed clover, you
are safe from outside interference. This is basically the same principal
as growing shamrocks in your home, if you are a Celt. Only good luck and
positive magik can exist in the same space as the clover or shamrock! And
if you find a cricket in your house, do it no harm, like the clover, it
wards off negative energy and brings good fortune.
Superstitions concerning house and home are obviously
the most common. In Asia, a picture of an Elephant is good luck, as long
as its head faces the door. Probably more interesting, there are cave
paintings and relief carvings of elephants in the same regions and while
sometimes thought to be thousands of years old, all the animals are facing
the entrance.
Doors are often significant, for instance western
cultures believe it is bad luck to leave through the back door of a home,
if you entered through the front. Doors also play into the death rituals
of many cultures, in many places a dead body is never carried out through
a door, it must be passed through a window instead. Likewise, the Celts
believe that at the moment of death, all the windows of the home should be
opened fully, so that the soul can begin its trip without any obstacles.
Likewise, a soul finds it difficult to leave if the doors or windows are
locked at the time of his or her death.
Good luck and bad luck are obviously in the eye of
the beholder as well as the time in which they live. In most of the world,
the horseshoe is considered good luck if you hang it over the doorway to
your home; in most of Europe the horseshoe is hung with the open side
down, but in Celtic countries the superstition calls for the opposite,
with the open side up, so that the good luck does not run out. In Eastern
Europe you might find a horseshoe hung in the bedroom… there they believe
it will prevent nightmares. Of course, Europe has many enlightening tales,
for instance, all of those ivy covered cottages you see are more than just
picturesque. Ivy is cultivated to grow on homes because it creates a
barrier to reflect any evil or negative magik (what it does to the
structure of the house is another matter).
Even the simple act of knitting has its
superstitions. It is bad luck to leave a project unfinished, the intended
recipient will have bad luck as long as the project goes unattended.
Stabbing your needles into the balls of yarn you are working with is
equally unlucky for anyone you might make something for from that yarn. If
you don’t want to have your lover walk away, simply do not knit him a pair
of socks, if you do he will wander, the old wives tale goes. On the other
hand, if you want to tie someone to you, simply weave a single strand of
hair into something you are knitting for him and he will be bound to you
as long as he has the garment. Finally, you are admonished from ever
knitting something intended for the use of a child before that offspring
is conceived.
Even a visit to the garden is filled with
superstitions. Lettuce for instance is believed to be magik. It has
healing powers, can be used to arouse love and counteract the effects of
too much wine. It can promote child bearing and mixed with other greens
can help to bring on labor in the expectant mother. The onion is also
filled with magik, it can cure a person suffering from a fever, simply cut
the onion in half and put it under the patients bed; or it can be used to
grant wishes, if burned properly by the light of the full moon.
This of course brings us to the more mysterious of
herbs, beginning with the Mandrake, which can cure sterility in men and
cause barren women to conceive. It can be used as an aphrodisiac as well
as a fertilization herb, and was used by clairvoyants to increase their
ability to see the future. Mistletoe is equally powerful, is believed to
ward off damage from lightening, can cure many diseases not to mention the
fact that any fair maid who stands under it can’t refuse the amorous
advances of a man who claims the privilege of a kiss and sometimes
something more.
Mirrors are of particular interest in superstitions
in history; young women are warned not to look at themselves in a mirror
illuminated only by candle light and mirrors should be covered in
thunderstorms because they attract lightening strikes. Of course the
broken mirror is 7 years bad luck and the mirror is most often said to be
a gateway between this world and the next, but only those strong in
character should tempt fate by looking to the other side.
Even the simple act of sneezing has superstitious
meanings. “If you sneeze on a Monday, you sneeze for danger; Sneeze on a
Tuesday, you will kiss a stranger. Sneeze on a Wednesday, sneeze for a
letter; sneeze on a Thursday, something better; Sneeze on a Friday, sneeze
for sorrow, but sneeze on Saturday see your sweetheart tomorrow. But never
sneeze on Sunday, fore the Devil will dominate over you all week. “ And
remember to always place a guarded hand over your mouth as you sneeze or
your soul may escape your body, thus the custom of saying “Bless You!” to
drive the Devil away.
Do you believe that a wild bird flying into your home
is a harbinger of death? If not, you are probably not Italian. On the
other hand if you think it might be true if the bird were specifically a
robin, then you are probably of Greek ancestry.
Then we have the “rules” of the dead and dying! Did
you know that in most European cultures, burying a woman in a black dress
will only cause her to return to haunt her family? Did you know that the
tradition of placing coins on a recently deceased person’s eyes is to keep
the eyes shut, because if he can still see, he will do all in his power to
take someone he sees with him? And mirrors are always covered when a
family member dies because there is too great a possibility that the
deceased will return to watch the family through this portal between
worlds. Ironically, throughout the globe, to dream of death is a sure sign
of birth, but to dream of birth is a sign of death. And if you touch the
corpse of a loved one before burial, you can be sure you will not dream of
them in the future.
Here are just a few more on the topic of death. You
should never count the number of cars in the funeral cortege, it is bad
luck. You should never hold a funeral on a Friday and thunder after a
funeral is a sign that the soul has successfully completed it journey to
the next world. And never ever wear new shoes to a funeral. If the
gravesite is found covered with flowers, the recently interred had lived a
good life, but if you find only weeds, the body buried there has sins to
pay for before the flowers will grow. If you dream of the dead, and they
only are speaking to you, pay careful attention, he or she has something
important to say that you should act upon.
Hopefully, you have heard enough by this point. So
what does any of this have to do with the paranormal? If you are
interested in the question of life after death, survival of the human
consciousness, etc. it all has a place. There are no unreasonable
superstitions; it is not a good idea to walk under a ladder and virtually
every superstition has some fact based belief associated with it. The
trick here is to play the devil’s advocate, or at least the
anthropologist, and look into the “why” of a given superstition,
remembering that at the time it was conceived, there may have been plenty
of good reasons to believe it was sound advice and not just make-believe.
As an example, covering your mouth when you sneeze is a good practice
today, not because it keeps your soul in place, but rather keeps your
germs to yourself and prevents to some degree widespread infection of
those around you. Someplace in time the reasoning became muddled, but the
advice is still very good.
Being wary of Fridays that fall on the 13th day of
the month was probably good practice once, given what was known to happen
on that day. If I were a midwife in merry old England in the burning
times, you would probably find me all comfy in a shallow cave on that day,
knowing the sheriff was abound with writs of witchcraft in his back
pocket. It was certainly not a bad idea or unfounded.
But does this really have anything at all to do with
the paranormal? Again, that depends on what you find in your research. We
can’t take anything at face value, but we can expect that some of those
seeds of truth do indeed reflect practices that grew from their
understanding of some paranormal occurrences. Local superstitions are a
great example of this; I certainly would think it more logical to begin an
investigation at a site where locals centered a superstition than a place
where there were no reports, although I would want to be open minded to
accept other explanations for what they believe. The superstition
surrounding the “Jersey Devil,” sounds farfetched, but recent claims that
a bigfoot has been seen in the area actually are lent credence by those
earlier tales.
The world is filled with stories that on the face of
it are unbelievable, yet there is always that little seed of truth; that
is what we have to focus upon in our work. The existence of an old wives
tale or superstition only helps to magnify and clarify, if we do the job
correctly. All too often “Facts” are discarded for lack of corroboration,
when in truth we simply did not work hard enough to find it. So enjoy the
superstitions at hand, but don’t disregard them entirely; they could be
the key to new discoveries.
