Opus 2016-99: Sources of Superstition

The history of humanity is marked by people looking for meaning.  It doesn’t even require leisure or wealth.  At the upper levels of academia it might be called philosophy.  In the hovels of poverty it would be labeled superstition.  At either extreme and in between it is a search for meaning.

I recently read a post at Buzzard Bushcraft on superstitions and traditions about knives.  He gave fifty.  Superstition is based on an attempt to try to find out the reasons for things that don’t make sense, coincidences we don’t understand.  It involves forces and fairies.  It has omens and ogres.  There has to be a reason why people seem to die in three’s.  There must be a cause for the string of bad news and events.  If we can’t see a reason we make one up.  It starts with a duffer joking about the golf gods.  It becomes an obsession with certain rituals and habits at every tee.

Even people with a background in science have superstitions.  They might be too embarrassed to share them with you but they exist. 

I am not a superstitious person yet I find myself personifying my car.  This is how it starts.  When it likes me I can picture my car straining to make it to the gas station on nothing but fumes.  I can sense it deliberately causing friction to wear out a bearing when it is mad at me.  I begin to believe that the bump in the rug is a sign that the rug is out to get me.  Are there really gremlins in the dryer that turn all my tee shirts inside out?  It is a natural progression of thought.

It is a search for meaning.

Belief in the God of the Bible puts superstition at bay.  I still believe in demons.  That is not superstition.  I am aware that they can cause harm but ultimately I don’t fear them because they are not infinite or divine.  God is.  That transforms superstition into rational thought.  It gives me a reason for things.  I may not understand but someday I will and God does now.

So don’t break any mirrors, walk under any ladders, step on a crack or forget to knock on wood.  God needs a good laugh.

homo unius libri