Kathy Martin's Blog - Posts Tagged "chilean-pine"
The Subversive Power of Superstitions
There’s a room in my house that is currently off limits to visitors and for once it’s not because I’ve been lax with the housework. Instead, it’s because I don’t want anyone to see the Christmas angel that I forgot to pack away with all the other decorations on Twelfth Night. The sensible thing, of course, would have been to take the angel down the moment I realised it was still there but I couldn’t do that because of an old superstition that says that having missed the official take-down day of January 6th, ill-luck will befall me if I remove it before February 2nd, which is the Feast of Candlemas.
The odd thing about this is that I don’t consider myself a particularly superstitious individual. I don’t carry lucky charms, am sceptical about the supernatural and like to think I have a healthy disregard for old wives’ tales. And yet, on closer examination, it becomes apparent that much of my life is governed by them. If I see a lone magpie in my garden, for example, I feel compelled to ask it ‘where’s your wife?’ on the grounds that a ‘married’ magpie will not be alone and as we all know, a lone magpie signifies bad luck.
Perhaps more bizarrely, if I am out and about and notice a monkey puzzle tree, otherwise known as a Chilean pine, my immediate reaction is to touch my collar and say out loud the name of any dog I know. This is because a long time ago someone told me that monkey puzzle trees are bad luck but their damage can be averted by the collar-touching, dog-naming technique. Quite why this perfectly harmless tree should be considered a portent of doom I cannot say, nor why canines and collars should have any power to combat their ill-effects. In any case, I’m fairly certain I have some of the salient details of this particular superstition muddled up but none of this prevents me from leaping into action the moment I catch sight of the Chilean pine’s distinctive branches.
Then there’s the matter of salt. If I happen to spill some salt I can’t just wipe it up and get on; oh, no, that would be far too easy. What I feel I have to do is draw a cross in the salt, scoop some of it up and then hurl it over my left shoulder. It makes no sense at all and in fact just exacerbates the mess caused in the first place by the salt spillage. Nevertheless, that’s what I do because when I was a child I saw someone else do it.
Much the same applies to my tradition of bashing in the bottom of a boiled egg to ensure that ‘the witch can’t go to sea’. I don’t know who the (presumably minuscule) witch is, or why she’d be reckless enough to attempt an ocean excursion in my discarded eggshell, but it’s something I did as a child and old habits die hard. In fact my octogenarian father still practices witch-marine prevention whenever he eats a boiled egg so there’s probably little chance that I’ll ever kick the habit.
Do I genuinely believe that anything bad will happen if I fail to observe any of these superstitions? No, of course I don’t because despite all evidence suggesting the contrary, I am a rational human being. All the same, that angel isn’t coming down a day before Candlemas. Just in case.
The odd thing about this is that I don’t consider myself a particularly superstitious individual. I don’t carry lucky charms, am sceptical about the supernatural and like to think I have a healthy disregard for old wives’ tales. And yet, on closer examination, it becomes apparent that much of my life is governed by them. If I see a lone magpie in my garden, for example, I feel compelled to ask it ‘where’s your wife?’ on the grounds that a ‘married’ magpie will not be alone and as we all know, a lone magpie signifies bad luck.
Perhaps more bizarrely, if I am out and about and notice a monkey puzzle tree, otherwise known as a Chilean pine, my immediate reaction is to touch my collar and say out loud the name of any dog I know. This is because a long time ago someone told me that monkey puzzle trees are bad luck but their damage can be averted by the collar-touching, dog-naming technique. Quite why this perfectly harmless tree should be considered a portent of doom I cannot say, nor why canines and collars should have any power to combat their ill-effects. In any case, I’m fairly certain I have some of the salient details of this particular superstition muddled up but none of this prevents me from leaping into action the moment I catch sight of the Chilean pine’s distinctive branches.
Then there’s the matter of salt. If I happen to spill some salt I can’t just wipe it up and get on; oh, no, that would be far too easy. What I feel I have to do is draw a cross in the salt, scoop some of it up and then hurl it over my left shoulder. It makes no sense at all and in fact just exacerbates the mess caused in the first place by the salt spillage. Nevertheless, that’s what I do because when I was a child I saw someone else do it.
Much the same applies to my tradition of bashing in the bottom of a boiled egg to ensure that ‘the witch can’t go to sea’. I don’t know who the (presumably minuscule) witch is, or why she’d be reckless enough to attempt an ocean excursion in my discarded eggshell, but it’s something I did as a child and old habits die hard. In fact my octogenarian father still practices witch-marine prevention whenever he eats a boiled egg so there’s probably little chance that I’ll ever kick the habit.
Do I genuinely believe that anything bad will happen if I fail to observe any of these superstitions? No, of course I don’t because despite all evidence suggesting the contrary, I am a rational human being. All the same, that angel isn’t coming down a day before Candlemas. Just in case.
