We humans are a superstitious lot. We love things that make us shiver and if we run out of those kinds of things, someone steps forward to think up some new ones. I guess we need a certain level of that superstitious nonsense to make our lives a little more interesting and give us something to chitchat about with our friends. I’m all for bizarre and crazy superstitions but I decided to do a little research to try and determine where they actually originated. I’ve had a little success and I’ll pass that information along to you now.
FOUR LEAF CLOVERS
A lot of things from the ancient world are laid at the feet of the Druids. They seem to be a catchall for anything that no one can identify or explain. Well, it appears that the four-leaf clover superstition actually did originate with the Druids. During many of their rituals several times a year they gathered at Oak tree groves to settle disputes and make other sacrifices. They ended these gatherings by looking for four leaf clovers because they believe it helped the owner to perceive evil spirits and witches so they could avoid them. Sounds good to me but I.ve found a number of them over the years and I have yet to see any evil spirits or witches. All I ever saw were bitches not witches. I guess I’m no Druid.
KNOCKING ON WOOD
Some claim that this superstition came from a religious source during the Middle Ages. I assume it was because Christ was crucified on a wooden cross, but it certainly didn’t bring him much luck. Both Native Americans and the ancient Greeks developed the belief independently that oak trees were the domain of important gods. By knocking on wood, they were communicating with the gods to ask for forgiveness. The Greeks passed the tradition along to the Romans and it became part of European lore. The religious types adopted it for their own use as they are apt to do even now.
Even celebrities, my readers favorite topic, believe in superstitions.
First on my list is John Madden former coach of the Oakland Raiders football team. He wouldn’t let the team leave the locker room until running back Mark Van Egan had belched. I’d love to hear the backstory on how that developed.
Tennis player Jimmy Connors wouldn’t compete in a tennis match without a little note from his grandmother tucked into his sock.
Former Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan always wore the shorts from his college basketball uniform under his professional uniform. “As long as I have these shorts on… I feel confident,” he said.
Tennis player John McEnroe thinks it’s bad luck to play a match on Thursday the 12th. He is also careful to avoid stepping on the white lines of the tennis court. Strange but true.
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The only superstition in my family was that if we kids made a great deal of noise and commotion, there would be hell to pay. Especially if the head god (my father) happened to be napping. There would be no luck but bad luck then.
Since yesterday’s posting was all about people and how and when they lost their virginities, I thought today I would do a short but interesting look at the history of “kissing”. It was always among my favorite things and the older I got the higher up my list of favorite things it went.
I guess we should start with the Garden of Eden and Adam. Scripture says that God breathed the “spirit of life” into him and it might explain why many religious ceremonies include kissing.
A Canadian anthropologist demonstrated that 97% of women shut their eyes during a kiss but only 37% of men did.
As with many things it seems the Romans got involved with kissing early on. A husband returning from work would kiss his wife on the lips to see if she’d been drinking during the day. The Romans had three different types of kisses: abasium, the kiss on the lips; osculum, a friendly kiss on the cheek, anduavium, the full mouth and tongue. Emperor Tiberius once banned the practice of kissing after an epidemic of lip sores.
Kissing at one point was frowned upon because it had been used as a sign of betrayal by Judas Iscariot. He identified Jesus to his enemies in the garden of Gethsemane by kissing him.
Kissing under the mistletoe is an English tradition and started with the kissing bough, which had mistletoe at its center. When the Christmas tree replaced the kissing bough, the mistletoe was salvaged.
How and where you kiss used to be a sign of where you stood in the social pecking order. Equals kissed each other on the cheek. The lower you ranked to another person, the lower you had to kiss him. Thus, a slave would kiss his masters’ feet, and a prisoner not even allowed to do that. They were forced to kiss the ground near the foot.
Alice Johnson, a 23-year-old American waitress, won a car in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after kissing it for 32 hours and 20 minutes in a 1994 competition. She loosened four teeth in the process.
An American insurance company discovered that men were less likely to have a car accident on their way to work if they were kissed before they set off.
In Sicily, members of the Mafia have stopped kissing each other because the way they kiss was a dead giveaway to the police, and mobsters were getting arrested.
The first film kiss was in, appropriately enough, the 1896 movie The Kiss. The participants were John C. Rice and Mae Erwin.
My last entry will give all of you a reason to kiss a little more often. Kissing can prevent illnesses. When you absorb other people’s saliva, you also receive their enzymes, which gives you their immunities like a kind of antibiotic. Unfortunately kissing can also pass on diseases too.
These are 10 items that are truly miscellaneous. As I gather all of my trivia together there are always a few things that can’t be categorized, and I thought I’d share some of them with you today. Here they are . . .
Charles E Weller is best known for a single sentence he created, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” It was invented for use as a typing exercise.
The original name of the Girl Scouts was the “Girl Guides’.
Robert L. Ripley was the first person inducted into the National Trivia Hall of Fame in 1980.
Did you know that the only two letters that are not on a telephone are the Q & Z.
The initials M. G. On the famous British automobile stand for the Morris Garage.
It was in 153 B.C. the Romans first marked January 1st as the beginning of the new year.
How many of you know that the group motto for the Salvation Army is “Blood & Fire”?
The middle day of a non-leap year year is July 2nd. There’s 182 days before it, and 182 after it.
Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Gen. George Patton were dyslexic?
In 1871 the rickshaw was invented by American Baptist missionary Jonathan Goble. He had a Japanese carpenter build the original rickshaw for his invalid wife in Yokohama.
Are you left-handed? I’ve been reading up on left-handedness and right-handedness after watching my two grandsons play in a Little League baseball game. I began wondering why we become one or the other. I was apparently born left-handed, but my father changed all that. When I was about 11 years old, he decided that in order for him to have a lifelong golfing partner he had to teach me how to play golf. Unfortunately, we weren’t a wealthy family, and I was taught to golf using right-handed clubs. After a time, I made the adjustment and moved on with my life. Later in my Little League years I was a pitcher. In one game I actually pitched half of the game right-handed and the second half left-handed. I’ve been ambidextrous ever since.
I decided to look a little further into the history of left-handedness and here’s the result . . .
In ancient Egypt artwork and hieroglyphics, it appears that most Egyptians were right-handed. They portrayed their enemies as left-handed, which can be seen as derogatory.
The ancient Greeks never crossed their left leg over their right, because they believed a person’s sex was determined by their position in the womb with the female, or “lesser sex”, sitting on the left side of the womb.
The Romans also had a bias against left-handedness. Roman customs required that when entering a friend’s home, it should be done placing the right foot forward. Also, Romans should always turn their head to the right when sneezing. The Latin word for left was sinister (meaning evil or ominous), the word for right was dexter (meaning skillful or adroit). Even the word ambidextrous literally means “right-handed with both hands”.
The Anglo-Saxon root for left is lyft, which means “weak”, “broken,” or “worthless”. Riht is for right and means “straight”, “just”, or “erect”.
The Bible is totally biased in favor of right-handed people. Both the Old and New Testaments always refer to “the right hand of God”. There is also a distinction made even in religious art. Jesus and God are nearly always drawn giving blessings with their right hand, and the devil is usually portrayed doing evil with his left.
I feel a bit slighted by all of those old-time religious fanatics and the Bible as well. It seems to me that the Greeks, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and damn near anyone else had been brainwashed with the idea that left-handedness is evil. Even the Muslims require that you only eat food with the right hand. Just one more reason for me to take anything said by any organized religion as utter and complete nonsense.
LEFTIES ARISE AND PROCLAIM YOUR LEFTINESS TO THE WORLD
Over the years I’ve voiced my opinions concerning people obsessed with the supernatural and occult. Unfortunately, I haven’t always been kind in my criticisms and opinions about them. I’ve never been a believer of these superstitions like black cats walking in front of me or walking under a ladder. I always thought them silly, without basis in fact, just superstitious nonsense passed down from generations who apparently didn’t have a clue either. I hate to admit it, but I may have to eat my words.
While I totally scoff at almost everything superstitious, I discovered quite by accident that I’ve been paying closer attention to one superstition over the years and didn’t realize it. My obsession is and has been the number three. For most of my life I considered that my lucky number and if something occurred where I had to make choices and the number three was involved, I always picked number three. I don’t know why, it wasn’t planned, and I really didn’t realize the extent of the human races’ obsession with that number until now. So, I decided to do a little more research which opened my eyes even further. Here’s my homage to the number 3.
THE GENIE GAVE ME THREE WISHES
Three is the average number of seconds visitors to an Art gallery spent in front of each painting. Triceratops means three horned faces. Three goals are a hat trick. A triathlon is a three-part swim, run, and cycle competition. Any national flag made of three bands of color is a tricolor. The Three Musketeers in the novel by Alexander Dumas’s are Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Dante’s Divine Comedy is structured around the number three, alluding to the holy Trinity. That book has three parts; Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso – each divided into 33 cantos in terza rima (three-line stanzas).
In Greek mythology, the three Fates control birth, life, and death; the three Furies upheld sacred laws; and the three Graces bestowed beauty and charm. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans all had Trinity’s of God’s. Jupiter’s symbol is a three-forked bolt of lightning, Neptune’s a three-pronged trident, and Pluto’s, a three headed dog. Hindus worship the trinity of Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the Perseverer; and Shiva, the Destroyer.
In Christianity, Christ represents one third of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost); he was visited by three wiseman at his birth; 33 years later, after Judas betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver and Peter denied him three times, he was crucified at 3 PM and rose from the dead three days later.
Time is threefold: past, present, and future. Pythagoras called three the perfect number, denoting beginning, middle, and end. The strongest shape is a triangle. The three states of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. Earth is the third planet from the sun. White light is made from three primary colors: red, blue, and green. The three primary colors of pigment are red, yellow, and blue, whose totality is black.
I suspect that all of the number three’s I listed above are only a small sampling of the use of the number three. Over the course of my existence, I’ve been subconsciously pelted with the number three in virtually every phase of my life. How could I not have three as my favorite number? Brainwashing at its absolute best.
As I’ve repeatedly stated I am a huge fan of Thanksgiving. I am also a huge fan of debunking silly and unusual superstitions when I find them. I found one about Thanksgiving after reading a book in my collection. For most of my life I looked forward to Thanksgiving dinner and always made a point of collecting the wishbone. I was told as a kid by people who I trusted, Mom and Dad, that if I won the larger half of the wishbone after it was broken I would have good luck. I did it year after year and we made quite a thing of it but now I come to discover I was lied to. Here’s the truth of the matter . . .
Two people make a wish, and then grab the two long ends of the wishbone and pull. The one who breaks off the larger piece of the bone gets his or her wish. You must be sure the bone is dry – a day in the sun or on the stove dries it perfectly. The bone must be from the collarbone of a hen or a rooster. All of my family loved the routine of pulling the wishbone of the turkey after their meal. “Spoiler Alert”, turkey collarbones don’t work. I know this is devastating news to all of you but the truth will out. Here’s a short history lesson . . .
The Etruscans, those folks that came before the Romans, had a Hen Oracle. That person was often called upon to reveal hidden and magical knowledge. A hen or rooster was killed, the entrails examined – for what, no one can fathom – and the birds collarbone put in the sun to dry. The wishbone was then pulled apart as it is today. The Romans actually stole this custom from the Etruscans and it then spread throughout the Roman Empire and where did it end up, on this blog today.
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