Today in class we recognized that the Etruscan religion was gloomy and weirdly superstitious. The Etruscans thought they could discover the will of the Gods by means of augury, that is by watching the flight of birds and by examining the entrails of animals. OK, sure this is a little strange. I'm guessing again that many of you haven't done anything quite like this. And if you have, perhaps we should talk tomorrow about it?
In any case, even if we aren't quite as strange as the Etruscans, we all no doubt have our personal superstitions or somewhat odd traditions before we do something or when we're approaching anything in life.
What superstitions do you have? How did they develop and what are they for?
I have many superstitions, but I have 3 major ones that are most important to me. The first superstition is that I always touch my autographed Lebron James sneakers before sneakers before my game then I touch my own sneakers. It's kind of like in Like Mike when Calvin touches his shoes and says "let me be like Mike," referring to Michael Jordan of course. This tradition began as when I did it the first time and I scored 28 points in a game in 7th grade. My second superstition is that I pat the the ball once before every throw I make in football. It started the first time I threw a football and I have done it ever since. My final major superstition is that I make wishes at 11:11 am everyday and I wish for the same thing every time, for all of my favorite teams to win their respective championships. These are my superstitions.
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ReplyDeleteI have a few superstitions. I kind of do them in an order before my basketball games. First, I give thanks to my "Pistol" Pete Maravich poster before I leave my house for all the inspiration he gives me constantly. This developed when I played a great game after giving thanks to it once. When I get to the gym, I pray to the basketball gods in the locker room pre-game. I ask them for one thing: excellence. I honestly don't know how this developed. Finally, when I go out on the court, I kiss center court during warmups. This is one way I give appreciation and love to the game. I don't know how this one developed either.
ReplyDelete- J��rdan Valdés #3
I have a few superstitions that I can think of right now though I probably have so many that some of them that have just become normal to me. I knock on wood if I say something that I don't want to have happen. if I do not then it will happen. I hold my breath whenever I pass by a cemetery. I'm not quite sure why I do that I just believe its bad luck. I believe that trouble comes in threes. My family has strange traditions on holidays, things that we do no matter how old we are. I believe that Mondays are evil, that they are the worst day of the week and bad things will happen on Mondays. But other than that I am now quite sure what other strange things I do, I don't cut up animals or anything.
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of superstions. The first is that whenever I have something important or I'm doing something that is challenging for me I always listen to music. When I listen to music I understand the topic and do better on whatever it is I'm doing. This started when I was nine or ten when my dad drove me to all my sports games and we would always have music. Whether it was Elton John or top 40 radio it always got me ready to play and I still try to listen to music before anything that is important to me happens. I don't think I have any other superstions, if I think of one I'll add it later.
ReplyDeleteI don’t have many superstitions but growing up I was always taught to check if the floor was cold before I stepped onto it. When the floor was cold I had to wear shoes or sock because the more I expose my foot to the cold ground I had a higher chance of getting arthritis.
ReplyDeleteI find one superstition very interesting, spilling salt. Why would spilling salt summon demons? How would that superstition come about? My theory on this is that salt was an extremely useful, and maybe expensive condiment. It would often be used to preserve things when there were no refrigerators. It would be bad to spill it, as it was so necessary. So I believe it may have developed to avoid spilling such a precious resource. People would use the demons to cause people to be more careful around salt.
ReplyDelete~Pen Robinson
I don’t really have any superstitions; I believe that something will or will not happen and that jinxes and/or knocking on wood or anything else can’t stop it from happening. I think I believe in coincidence and luck – not necessarily that a person him/her self is lucky but that good things may happen to them, which is just as likely as bad things happening to them. I myself don’t think that the actual act of doing a routine (like Solomon’s or Jordan’s) before a game or another event will itself be the deciding factor if you win or don’t win or if something good or bad happens to you, etc. but rather that the act of doing it has a psychological effect. If you believe that it benefits you, you will it to benefit you which may subconsciously improve your efforts in whatever you are doing.
ReplyDeleteI have very few superstitions but my main superstition is a common one:knocking on wood/jinxes. I believe so strongly about this that whenever I hear someone of the same belief/team/fan group call something before it has happened, I almost order them to knock on wood in multiples of 3. I have absolutely no clue how the multiples of 3 got in there, but they are there and so I must oblige. The origins of me knocking on wood began when I was around 8 and I was playing pool. I had heard that knocking the wood that surrounded the pocket your opponent was aiming for was good luck so I did it. Then I found myself knocking on wood for other things more and more often until it became part of me and my family's everyday life.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any superstitions. I don't believe that superstitions control the future. There's nothing harmful about a black cat walking in front of you, unless you trip over it, and the only thing wrong with opening an umbrella inside is that it's kind of hard to fit open umbrellas through doorways. However, I always knock on wood and hold my breath as I go by graveyards. I don't actually believe in these superstitions, but doing these things is more fun than not doing them.
ReplyDeleteI don’t really have specific superstitions. This does not really mean that I am not at all superstitious. I don’t actually believe that one seemingly unrelated action or event can effect another, but when I start to think about something that I might be nervous about I can start to obsess over whatever the thing is and what I might do to create a higher likelihood of everything turning out ok. A good example of this is studying for tests in subjects that I am not that great at. I think that being unnecessarily precise in different areas of my studying would probably fall under compulsion rather than superstition, but that’s about as close as I can really get. I try to avoid the supernatural as much as possible. Anyone else that is a bit obsessive about random things will know what I am talking about.
ReplyDeleteAs a person who has lived in India for 3 years, I can without doubt tell you that India has some very weird superstitions. Of course, there was that superstition about black cats. But then it got stranger. There were some superstitions that I thought were plain stupid, such as (India has many different superstitions inside a region, or a family. These are some of the superstitions my dad's side of the family believed in):
ReplyDelete-You can't go to the barber on tuesdays
-You can't cut your nails on Saturday.
You can't eat meat (or any type of poultry, not even eggs.) on Thursday and Saturday.
Those are just a few. But I don't believe in those superstitions. I also don't know how these came to be. But nevertheless, these superstitions are funny sometimes, cause when my dad and my family were in India (EVERYBODY is related to each other in India- It's really weird and random.) and he saw one of his buddies or relatives at the barber shop on tuesday, he would freak out and get angry at them. So.......yeah
I do not believe in superstitions, nor do I have any. I play basketball, and every time I go out on the court I make sure to get myself in the right mindset, because i know it's all up to me and that nothing that i do before or after the game will matter when I'm performing in it. I believe that superstition is just belief in yourself, for example, Solomon touches his autographed shoes and his shoes before he plays every basketball game. I think when he does that he's making himself believe that he can be like Lebron James, the shoes aren't doing anything, his own mind is telling him that he is that good, and that he can be Lebron. So with that, no I do not believe in any type of superstition, but I believe in myself, my mind, and the minds of all others that are determined to do something and will do whatever it takes to get it done.
ReplyDeleteBooooooooo!!!
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