Superstitions
My mother, my grandmother and my grandfather too, handed down superstitions. I remember my Mom passed them on with a bit of a grin. She may have believed them and may not, but my Grandma was deadly serious about them and often frightened by them.
She had halves of things. She had whats without whys. A new religion replaced the old belief systems of the native peoples of many lands, including those of my heritage and much was taken and much diluted and only the shells and leavings remained.
That glimmers remain after generations of loss is a tribute to how strong those beliefs once were. But are what’s left only nonsense superstitions that no one takes seriously?
Don’t give a knife to a friend. It’ll cut the friendship. Don’t open an umbrella in the house. Knock on wood. Throw salt over your left shoulder. Wash your face in the May morning dew.
Sympathetic magic links one object to another. Ophiel quotes the Kahunas when he calls these links sticky threads. If you want to accomplish something in a realm where you have no way of working, perform a like deed in the realm to which you have access. What is done here affects what is done there. If you wanted to cut a friendship, you could give a knife with full intent. The knife, a tangible cutting tool would then stand for the desired outcome, a cut.
If cutting the friendship is not your aim, ask a penny for the gifted knife. That means your friend is buying it, true, but more than that, he is giving you a token of Venus (copper), which creates a link between the object (copper) and the intended desire which is that the friendship continue in loving and caring ways since love is under the rulership of Venus whom your friend is honoring with the copper.
Opening an umbrella outside on a sunny day, with intent, is a spell for rain and opening one inside the house (where it can not rain) sends a muddled message to the helper spirits that they interpret as best they can and it may be misfortune rains down on the one who performs this. (Don’t worry too much about all this. If your magic is so strong that you can accidentally cast spells, you might need to worry, but I don’t know very many who do that. It takes focus, will, and lots of energy to cast a successful spell and they seldom succeed accidentally).
Knock on wood to let a tree spirit know you are there. This is
done on those times when you’ve said something out loud. It’s done on the off
chance that a mischievous spirit has heard you and will carry out the thing you
spoke – usually a thing you’ve spoken that you hope won’t happen. Knocking on
the tree appeases the spirit and lets him know you don’t want what you have
spoken and that you know he is listening.
If you have spilled salt, it is said a harmful spirit is near, or
one full of tricks. Throwing salt over your left shoulder is said to blind the
wicked spirit and he will leave. You don’t want Coyote or Loki listening in on
your plans. This is especially important when creating a magic circle for
magic. Spilled salt can be a warning to you from your guardians, letting you
know, opportunists are near. Salt is a wonderful protective substance. Don’t
leave home without it.
Keep in mind that these have been handed down to us and even the
most pious Christians sometimes use these old spells without understanding
them. Obviously there must have been real power in them at some point when
these were known in their complete forms.
One dear friend in her late seventies who recently passed away
told us once, “Those old superstitions! That dumb dinner we used to have? The
shingles would fly off the roof!” She was a Christian and often wrote Psalms to
Jesus, but she remembered her family having the dinner of the ancestors in late
October or early November at the time we know of as Samhain. This is a time to
honor ancestors and it is know the veil is thin and they may visit if they have
not reincarnated. Why shingles flew off the roof I can’t say. She wouldn’t talk
more about “those old superstitions” and was glad to be rid of them. Her
ancestors may have had reasons for the dumb supper, which, unexplained and
hidden as it must have been in the middle of the new religion they’d come to,
had done nothing but frighten this woman when she was a young girl. She only
wanted to forget. Superstition implies something believed in for which there is
no credence, but “shingles flew off the roof”. This much she admitted.
What other superstitions have been given that can have hidden
knowledge in them. Hidden like the star in an apple. How about apple a day
keeps the doctor away? There is a Norse myth about a Goddess named Idunna. The
apples in her orchard keeps the Gods healthy and young. The Handmaiden, Gna is
a messenger. She rides Hoof Flourisher, her sky galloping steed. And she drops
an apple with its message of fertility. A woman is cast out of a garden when
she discovers the fruit. Is it the star inside that holds the wisdom? What else
has been hidden for us to find once more?
Forgotten ways have left their trail. Gathered up in halves and
tied in bundles. Do you have a family superstition handed down to you?
Try to trace it back to a long-forgotten magical way.
“There’s dough on the straw if the cake is not done. It’s a testing
is all.”
“Science then and that’s worse… But I still think it witchcraft.
The cake tasted of strawberries and honeycomb and it the middle of winter. And
she divined it with a broom straw.”
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