So the other day I smashed my full length mirror on the way back up to York, by cramming giant bags into my not so giant car with the gusto of a baggage handler loading a Boeing 747. Curse my landlord for not providing a mirror (or a desk…) in my room! I freaked out a little: seven years bad luck? I have a degree to finish, a husband to find and a poodle to feed. Years of breaking stuff and generally screwing up more than usual was not an attractive prospect for my clumsy self.
And then it dawned on me; it’s only a superstition. Just some strange tradition that has been passed down the sands of time, like a fairy story. An ancient method of preventing bad luck and bringing good fortune that none of us really understand. Yet this only marginally calmed my unease. I definitely believe in luck itself: driving up the M1 I witnessed a squirrel attempt some Watership Down strategy and bolt across the whole length of the busy motorway, completely unharmed. Definite luck. So if I believe in luck, surely it makes sense to believe supposed methods to bring it about?
The superstitious among us insist on avoiding black cats. We irrationally judder a bit inside when someone opens an umbrella indoors. And we downright refuse to walk under a ladder, despite veering unpredictably into the pedestrian next to us. These beliefs contradict natural science which so many of us believe over religion, and yet we still opt to act upon them anyway. But do we even know where these superstitions originate, let alone why we do them? If you’re curious, I’m going to save you a trip round the internet, and inform you where some common attempts to bring luck and avoid evil forces come from. Touch wood.
Popular superstitions here in the UK, much like Chinese whispers, change as they are passed from ear to ear. Touching wood has two visible origins; Pagan and Greek, though the principle behind both is very similar. Greeks believed touching wood was a communication with Zeus, to protect them from adversity, and Pagans believed a touch of wood was a communication with the spirits that live in the trees, thanking them for continued protection and good luck. Spirits and gods play a big part in the ancient roots of superstition – at the other end of the scale, opening an umbrella indoors is widely seen to be unlucky – this is because, in sunnier places once upon a time, umbrellas were early sun-blockers, and opening them inside was deeply offensive to the sun-gods. Now knowing the origin, it feels ridiculous to follow such a superstition with no belief in such thing.
A superstition you’re most likely to slip up on and do after a trip to the Topshop shoe section with the student loan through is place shoes on a table. Massive no-no. An old wives tale that can be traced back to mining in the North of England, it has been said that when a miner died, his shoes were placed on the table as a mark of respect. Therefore placing shoes on the table was seen as bad taste, or tempting fate.
Another relatively modern superstition that we still do today to attempt to control our fate is avoiding walking under a ladder. Ladders were used to help hang criminals on the gallows, so quickly became an accompanying symbol of death. It was said that if you walked under a ladder, the hangman would notice you. Phrased like that, it seems absurd that we have been letting such a silly superstition cause mayhem on pavements and building sites everywhere.
And as for the mirror, the broken object of my concerns? It’s unfortunate for us ham-fisted individuals that they are glass-based and therefore easily breakable. Mirrors were seen by the Romans as representing the soul, which regenerates every seven years. With shattering the mirror, you guessed it; your soul is shattered too. As ridiculous as many superstitions seem now, no one wants a broken soul. Thankfully, there are remedies for this: grind your mirror to dust, or knock a broken piece on a tombstone. I’ll try not to look too deranged when I do this.