It's been over a decade so this has been cleared as a safe topic. Muahahah!
It's March 1st here. Growing up I always remembered my parents saying "White Rabbits" on the first of any month containing an "R". I still think of this on the first of every month. So this brought into my head the idea of superstitions.
Are there any superstitions you personally believe in?
Even if you don't believe in them, are there any you follow? And why?
Societal pressure/politeness/just because?
I like black cats. That's a superstition I don't follow. I won't walk under a ladder though. I don't feel like that's following superstition because it just seems stupid and dangerous. How is that a superstition? It's not about luck. It's just a dumb thing that you shouldn't do. If I break a mirror I might have seven years bad luck if I take that long to replace it. .
Basically, I don't think I really follow any superstitions. If I do, it's probably more my own personal hangups and not traditional superstitions.
Vibing_V wrote:
Are there any superstitions you personally believe in?
Even if you don't believe in them, are there any you follow? And why?
Societal pressure/politeness/just because?
I've slowly divested myself of superstitions. I really can't think of any that I believe in or even recognize. Tossing salt over the shoulder was probably the last thing I stopped doing.
I do have anxiety that people only pretend to tolerate me due to social convention, but that's not really a superstition so much as it's paranoia and low self-esteem.
I probably mentioned last time round that I'm not superstitious, but I still inexplicably check for more magpies whenever I see one. That's still true to an extent, though where I live now, magpies seem to the the most common bird, so I'm doing less magpie counting as of late.
Somebody at work opened up a new umbrella inside a few weeks back, and I was surprised that nobody told them they can't do that. I guess all these silly superstitions are still engrained.
One that I've only heard about since the last hot topic of this nature was from an ex housemate. If you drop a knife, you're not allowed to pick it up yourself. I'd often come home to one or two butter knives on the kitchen floor and be instructed to pick them up ASAP. I know think about this whenever I drop cutlery myself. Superstition is fucking strange!
The RDM has all sorts of residual sports superstitions from college when he was living in a house full of sports fans. One of the most persistent ones is that you can't change the channel during a sporting event, even during commercials. If someone does, you have to change the channel back, then change it again, and change it back a second time. This has no guarantee of success, though.
The RDM has been right: 263,194,431,295,771,222,402,819,021,768 times.
WaWard wrote:The RDM is too damn right all the time.
I guess I sometimes get those "don't jinx it" feelings. Like if you want good weather and it looks like you're going to get it and it feels like you'll jinx it by talking about it.
Damien reminded me of an old superstition we jokingly told crews when I was a backpacking instructor.
In New Mexico, there's a landmark called the Urraca Mesa. Urraca is Spanish for magpie, after the numerous birds that you really do see everywhere. We would tell backpackers that the Anasazi believed that if a magpie called your name from the top of the mesa, that you were not long for this world.
This was especially funny if there was anyone in the group named "Carl".
What's that "white rabbits" thing, I've never heard of it before.
I don't think I'm superstitious, at least I'm not aware of it if I'm following some kind of superstitious rituals. But where do we draw the line between mere irrational cultural traditions and actual superstition?
Damien wrote:I probably mentioned last time round that I'm not superstitious, but I still inexplicably check for more magpies whenever I see one. That's still true to an extent, though where I live now, magpies seem to the the most common bird, so I'm doing less magpie counting as of late.
Somebody at work opened up a new umbrella inside a few weeks back, and I was surprised that nobody told them they can't do that. I guess all these silly superstitions are still engrained.
One that I've only heard about since the last hot topic of this nature was from an ex housemate. If you drop a knife, you're not allowed to pick it up yourself. I'd often come home to one or two butter knives on the kitchen floor and be instructed to pick them up ASAP. I know think about this whenever I drop cutlery myself. Superstition is fucking strange!
What's that magpie thing, and why can't you pick up a dropped knife yourself? That last one sounds more like something a parent would tell their kids to make sure they don't clumsily cut themselves.
Damien wrote:I probably mentioned last time round that I'm not superstitious, but I still inexplicably check for more magpies whenever I see one. That's still true to an extent, though where I live now, magpies seem to the the most common bird, so I'm doing less magpie counting as of late.
Somebody at work opened up a new umbrella inside a few weeks back, and I was surprised that nobody told them they can't do that. I guess all these silly superstitions are still engrained.
One that I've only heard about since the last hot topic of this nature was from an ex housemate. If you drop a knife, you're not allowed to pick it up yourself. I'd often come home to one or two butter knives on the kitchen floor and be instructed to pick them up ASAP. I know think about this whenever I drop cutlery myself. Superstition is fucking strange!
What's that magpie thing, and why can't you pick up a dropped knife yourself? That last one sounds more like something a parent would tell their kids to make sure they don't clumsily cut themselves.
The magpie thing is based on a nursery rhyme/poem. One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.
Basically, the number of magpies you see at once signifies a fortune. If you see one magpie, it's bad luck. Two magpies is good luck. Three or more is kinda' ambiguous. Richard Herring once did a very tedious half of a show about just this rhyme.
The knife thing may have been something Jewel's parents made up, for all I know.
I've never heard the white rabbits thing either, but I guess all countries/cultures have their own shit.
Yeah, the superstition is more that walking under a ladder will result in subsequent bad luck. Like "oh blast I got cancer, I knew I should have walked around that ladder!"
I'm a superstitious girl,
I'm the worst in the world
Never walk under ladders,
I keep a rabbit's tail
I'll take you up on a dare,
Anytime, anywhere
Name the place, I'll be there,
Bungee jumping, I don't care!
Aside for the obvious reasons, these Des'ree lyrics always bothered me because I thought it was meant to be a rabbit's foot. That's a fucking stupid one anyway. One everybody hears of but probably doesn't know anybody who practices. Horseshoe about the door or a "lucky clover" seems more reasonable.
Lord Golbez wrote:I've seen people with lucky rabbit's foot as a kid. Haven't seen one in a long time.
Yeah. Me either. Not since the 90s. Probably has something to do with animal rights groups getting pissed off about it. At least I remembering hearing they wanted to put a stop to it.
smeared ink wrote:Yeah, the superstition is more that walking under a ladder will result in subsequent bad luck. Like "oh blast I got cancer, I knew I should have walked around that ladder!"
Ex post facto justification is the lifeblood of any superstition.
Another superstition I've realised I still hold (despite knowing full well it's all bollocks) is that it's bad luck to have Christmas decorations up after the 12th day of Christmas. This extends to clothing, so Christmas socks have a ridiculously long lifespan. Was packing for Japan yesterday and realsied I didn't have enough pairs of pants for every day. I instantly dismissed the Christmas pudding ones, as wearing them would be bad luck. Fucking silly, but I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it in March
A nurse got angry with me last week because I said my shift that night had been fairly quiet. I forgot nurses are deeply superstitious of the "q word", because they think as soon as someone says it the shit really hits the fan for their unit. It's their version of saying bloody mary, beetlejuice, or candle ja
