“Superstition . . . if it carries a single enduring connotation it is one of disapproval. From almost the very beginning, it was not a compliment to call someone superstitious.” So asserts Stuart Vyse in Chapter 1 of Superstition, a Very Short Introduction. Yet is it so negative to think that someone is being excessively superstitious? As I child I didn’t think so.
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And I didn’t grow up in a hamlet in the country but the city of Liverpool. My parents were wary of old folk-history omens and signs at that time embedded in the asphalt. I can still see the look of disapproval, on my father’s face, about opening an umbrella indoors as this signalled bad luck would be brought to the house. Whilst my mother frowned at me for not throwing salt over my shoulder if I’d spilt any during dinner.
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And I didn’t grow up in a hamlet in the country but the city of Liverpool. My parents were wary of old folk-history omens and signs at that time embedded in the asphalt. I can still see the look of disapproval, on my father’s face, about opening an umbrella indoors as this signalled bad luck would be brought to the house. Whilst my mother frowned at me for not throwing salt over my shoulder if I’d spilt any during dinner.
Even reaching adolescence I would avoid walking under ladders and experience a mild apprehension on Friday the 13th. Yet my family laced their seriousness with humour. These ‘beliefs’ were adhered to when there was a stronger sense of community and neighbourhood. Once that bond weakened and society became more atomised then superstition lessened its grip. Superstition had to more and more compete with the reasoning of the scientific community. Forms of ‘magical thinking’ (Though not the imagination) were superseded by logic, reason and the magical charm of technology.
However, superstition still influences our choices and decisions in the modern world. We employ it as a form of control and inner security. It can have a beneficial psychological effect for some of us when we attend a job interview, perform on stage or compete in sport. That’s the benign outcome of superstition – the clutching of the rabbits paw, the stroking of a lucky charm or even eating a favourite food build up our confidence and we succeed at our task.
“We know that superstition arises during periods of stress and anxiety. If employing a superstition helps tamp down our anxieties, it might improve performance.”
Yet as Stuart Vyse succinctly points out superstition grew out of the darker practices of magic, astrology and religion. Aided by these powerful forces wars, plagues, the inquisition and witch hunts flourished during the decline of paganism and the ascendance of Christianity.
“Nero began to punish Christians who were in the grip of a new and powerful superstitio. Then when Christianity became the official religion, Roman religious cults were scorned for being a pagan religion and the word superstitio was used against those who had said this of Christians.”
Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) was published in 1486. A book that spoke of the methods of trying suspected witches. It became as popular as the Bible.
Vyse remarks that when the witch trials ended so did a 200 year old period of describing foreign religious practices to be superstious. But The Enlightenment, with its spread of rational inquiry, did not mean the end of superstition only but a new form of attachment to superstition and magic. Moving on to the 19th century the popularisation of spiritualism created a deep interest in the supernatural and superstitious behaviour. And what now of the 20th and 21st century?
“There will always be some people who – like creationists – look to religious texts rather than science for their understanding of the natural world, but the evidence suggests that science – not religion provides our clearest understanding means ‘bad science’ rather than bad religion.”
Superstition, a Very Short Introduction believes that superstition causes little harm and might be of psychological benefit for those that are anxious. However it still means we could fall prey to dangerous irrational thinking. The current dissemination of unscientific and gut reaction theories about climate change or vaccination policy indicates unreason and for Vyse it’s a “falling back into the brutal worlds of the past.”
This book is a concise and pithy consideration of our changing attitudes to superstition: sharply written, detached, sane and serious and not without a dry sense of humour in its attempt to keep us vigilant - especially about number 13. I mean it’s just a number and that elevator panel, in a Las Vegas hotel, pictured in the book, may have left it out. But once we get out at 12 and ascend the stairs it awaits our fate.
- Alan Price.
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