My mother was one of the most superstitious people I have ever known. Living with her provided me with many opportunities to become familiar with her superstitions and see the effect they had upon her.
Some of these came from her time in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) during the Second World War. If a fork was dropped from the dinner table, it had to be stopped from making a ringing sound as this was held to signify (cause?) the death of a sailor. She had not simply become superstitious during that period, however. She told me that her mother, who died when I was a baby, had also been deeply superstitious. Her superstitions therefore seemed to have been learned at an early age and added to and reinforced later on in life.
This began to have an impact on me when I was recruited into some of the actions that were thought to be necessary in relation to her superstitions. One of these involved the dropping of a glove. I clearly recall standing with her in our hallway, as a young child, preparing to go shopping, when she dropped one of her gloves. She believed it was bad luck to pick it up herself, so I was asked to do this for her. This was not deemed to bring me bad luck, however, quite the opposite. If I picked it up and performed the correct action, I was told I could gain good luck. She would tell me to ‘rub it on wood and it’s sure to come to good’ and I had to rub it on a nearby door or table. Other actions, or better to say avoidances, included not opening an umbrella indoors or putting new shoes on a table. A knife could not be received or given as a gift, a halfpenny or some such, had to be given in return so that it technically became a purchase, as the giving of it as a gift could result in injury and not simply for the obvious reasons.
Gradually I began to notice the anxiety she felt if a superstition went against her and especially if she was not able to cancel its effect. Later on, I began to realise just how anxious a person she was in many ways, especially when it came to doing what she believed to be the right or the wrong thing. I eventually realised there was a strong connection between those two things which I will come to.
Even at an early age I had an instinctive resistance to these beliefs and sometimes I would refuse to pick up the dropped glove. This did not go down well! I fairly quickly began to wonder how superstition was supposed to work and how this strange thing called luck, whether good or bad, could possibly operate. How could the breaking of a mirror, supposedly bringing seven years bad luck, influence whether someone lost their job 2 years later, or broke a leg? Other than having an influence on a person’s general state of mind which might therefore influence behaviour that might then contribute to the causing of that outcome, there could surely be no direct connection.
The other factor for me was that both my parents were devout Methodists. I was brought up in a local church where the teachings about a caring and loving God colour my memories. For me this strongly conflicted with the seemingly random and impersonal nature of superstition. I could see how the existence of physical laws, such as gravity, might cause injury or death but I could not see why God would establish these other remote and quite random connections that almost seemed to be deliberately designed to trip people up. Even now with our growing understanding of the quantum nature of reality and the idea that a butterfly beating its wings over one ocean might cause a hurricane over another, I still see no reason why the kind of connections that superstition supposes, could possibly exist, there being no physical connection.
Thinking Aloud 