Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings/Conspiracy Theories Book II

What Is Superstition?

A superstition is "abelief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown,trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation"or "an irrational abject attitude of mind toward thesupernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition." Often, it arises from ignorance, a misunderstanding of science orcausality, a belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which isunknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surroundingluck, prophecy, and certain spiritual beings, particularly the beliefthat future events can be foretold by specific (apparently) unrelatedprior events. The word superstition is often used to refer to areligion not practiced by the majority of a given society regardlessof whether the prevailing religion contains alleged superstitions.

The superstitious practice of placing arusty nail in a lemon is believed to ward off the evil eye and evilin general, as detailed in the folklore text Popular Beliefs andSuperstitions from Utah.

Identifying something as superstitionis generally pejorative. Items referred to as such in common parlanceare commonly referred to as folk belief in folkloristics.

Etymology

The word superstition was first used inEnglish in the 15th century, borrowed from French superstition whichcontinues Latin superstitio.

The earliest known use as an Englishnoun is found in Friar Daw's Reply (ca. 1420), where the fouregeneral synnes are enumerated as Cediciouns, supersticions, þeglotouns, & þe proude.

While the formation of the Latin wordis clear, from the verb super-stare, "to stand over, stand upon;survive", its original intended sense is less clear. It can beinterpreted as "'standing over a thing in amazement orawe", but other possibilities have been suggested, e.g. thesense of excess, i.e. over scrupulousness or over-ceremoniousness inthe performing of religious rites, or else the survival of old,irrational religious habits.

The earliest known use as a noun isfound in Plautus, Ennius and later by Pliny, with the meaning of artof divination. From its use in the Classical Latin of Livy and Ovid,it is used in the pejorative sense that it holds today, of anexcessive fear of the gods or unreasonable religious belief, asopposed to religio, the proper, reasonable awe of the gods. Ciceroderived the term from superstitiosi, lit. those who are "leftover", i.e. "survivors", "descendants",connecting it with excessive anxiety of parents in hoping that theirchildren would survive them to perform their necessary funeraryrites. While Cicero distinguishes between religio and superstitio,Lucretius uses only the word religio (only with pejorative meaning).Throughout all of his work, he distinguished only between ratio andreligio.

The Latin verb superstare itself iscomparatively young, being "perhaps not ante-Augustan",first found in Livy, and the meaning "to survive"is even younger, found in late or ecclesiastical Latin, for the firsttime in Ennodius. The use of the noun by Cicero and Horace thuspredates the first attestation of the verb. It doesn't exclude thatthe verb might have been used after the name.

The word superstitio, or superstitiovana "vain superstition", was applied in the 1stcentury to the officially outlawed religious cults in the RomanEmpire. This concerned the religion of the druids in particular,which was described as a superstitio vana by Tacitus, and EarlyChristianity, outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica in AD 80 by Domitian.