Recently, I've been thinking about how random our superstitions really are. When did black cats get such a bad rap? And why is walking under a ladder a bad idea? So I decided to risk my luck and delve into the histories of our strange beliefs.
Ever since, well, forever, we’ve been trying to make sense of our chaotic world with explanatory stories and rules. Something bad happen? Maybe it was that mirror I broke last week. Having a really horrible day? Every Friday the thirteenth must be full of evil spirits waiting to harm us. While there are various theories about exactly when and why these sorts of ideas started, I found some historically based and highly entertaining tales that shed some light on how we’ve spun our superstitions.
Friday the Thirteenth
Some claim this supposedly cursed day has biblical roots, with good reason. Adam and Eve’s booting from the Garden of Eden went down on a Friday, as did Noah’s flood and Jesus’s crucifixion. Okay, so they’ve got the whole Friday thing covered, but what about the number thirteen? Some historians credit our favorite crew from The Da Vinci Code, the Knights Templar, for this day’s particularly ominous vibe.
We’ve been fretting over this day since October 13, 1307, when the king of France seized and threw hundreds of knights in dungeons, including their last grand master, Jacques DeMolay, according to Dungeon, Fire, and Sword, a book about the Knights Templar during the Crusades. Starting on this day, DeMolay was held and tortured for seven years and ultimately burned at the stake. Legend has it that before his execution, DeMolay cursed the Pope and the king to die within the year. They did. Does his curse live on?
Witches on Broomsticks
Speaking of being burned at the stake …where’d the whole image of hat-wearing women riding their cleaning equipment come from? The first witches were pagans, a word whose origin actually means villager, rustic, and civilian, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Original witches were just that—country people. Sorta like country dwellers are today (no offense), they were a little slow when it came to fashion trends. While city folk quit donning the once-fashionable pointy black hats we now associate with Halloween, the country crew kept on wearing them, and pretty soon, the people and the hats were synonymous (kind of like cowboys and cowboy hats are). As for the broomstick, that image has historical roots as well. Country folks in the middle of their harvest ritual were often seen—you guessed it—hopping up and down on brooms in the fields. Guess we added the flying part later.
