• The superstition with gloves had to do with the age of chivalry. Knights used to wear a lady’s glove on top of their helmets. It is bad luck if a glove is dropped then picked up by yourself because it was a custom that a lady drops her glove so a lover could pick it up.
• People in medieval times thought that witches could change into animals. They thought that witches were in the same group as bats. This is why it was considered bad luck if someone saw a bat in flight or heard their screams.
• It was believed that horses repelled witches. This is where the superstition of the lucky horseshoe comes from. If a horseshoe was placed over a door, the witch would not enter.
• However, the horseshoe had to be iron and it had to come out by natural means. It must be placed at a certain angle and driven with iron nails. If it faced up then the luck wouldn’t spill out.
• The phrase “bless you” actually comes from a superstition. People thought that when a person sneezed, it was a gateway for the Devil to possess the person’s body. “Bless you”, prevents this from happening.
• The mirror was thought to reflect the soul of a person. If the glass was broken, then the soul was not attached to the body. The person must wait seven hours before picking up the glass and burying them. This is equivalent to seven years of bad luck.
• Black cats were thought to be allies with witches. If a black cat crossed the path, then it would cut the person’s connection to God as well as heaven. This is why many black cats were killed and the owners of those cats were punished.
• In medieval times, a ladder represented the gallows. If someone walked under the ladder then he/she would soon die by being hanged. The ladder also formed a triangle that consisted o...
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...e other hand, if her head itches, then that means she will be beaten. If a dog runs in between a woman’s legs then it means that her husband will beat her.
• In Germany, it was believed that if a pregnant woman were to walk over a grave then the child will die. Also, if she goes to a cloth bleaching area, then her children will come out pale. During labor, the woman should put on the slippers of her husband.
• There were many superstitions that had to do with newborn children and their care. If a newborn was laid on its left side then it will become clumsy as it grows up. If a child is called a dummy or a worm then he/she will not grow properly.
• Certain days of the calendar were considered bad luck for ventures. Clothing that is made on Christmas Eve., was considered to repel insects. If you bathe in cold water on Easter then the rest of your year will be healthy.
Witchcraft had always fascinated many people and been a very controversial topic in North America during (seventeenth) 17th century. Many People believe that witchcraft implies the ability to injure or using supernatural power to harm others. People believed that a witch represents dark side of female present and were more likely to embrace witchcraft than men. There are still real witches among us in the Utah whom believe that witchcraft is the oldest religion dealing with the occult. However the popular conception of a witch has not changed at least since the seventeenth century; they still caused panic, fear and variety of other emotions in people…………………….
Many believed that these witches observed a nocturnal Sabbath where they worshipped the devil and paid their homage to him. They were also accused of being an organization known for its cannibalistic practices of infanticide incest. Another component of this cumulative concept was the belief of the flight of witches. The belief for this was contributed to by the assumption that witches took flight from their homes to goto nocturnal meetings without their absence from home being detected. The belief in “flying night witches” was shared by many cultures in the modern world. These women were referred to as strigae, which was one of the many Latin terms for witches. As the reader first opens the legal foundations of witch-hunting, one finds that historically it was a judicial process from discovery to elimination. Levack states that before the thirteenth century European courts used a system of criminal procedure that made all crimes difficult to prosecute.
Because these witches were servants of the devil, they were thought to be the enemies of God and Christianity; they were the "ultimate heretics" (265). The "witch craze" era lasted for about 200 years, from 1560-1760 all over Euro...
Witchcraft is said to be the most widespread cultural phenomenon in existence today and throughout history. Even those who shun the ideas of witchcraft cannot discount the similarities in stories from all corners of the globe. Witchcraft and its ideas have spread across racial, religious, and language barriers from Asia to Africa to America. Primitive people from different areas in the world have shockingly similar accounts of witchcraft occurrences. In most cases the strange parallels cannot be explained and one is only left to assume that the tales hold some truth. Anthropologists say that many common elements about witchcraft are shared by different cultures in the world. Among these common elements are the physical characteristics and the activities of supposed witches. I will go on to highlight some of the witch characteristic parallels found in printed accounts from different parts of the world and their comparisons to some famous fairytales.
It is one thing to believe in witches, and quite another to believe in witch-smellers.
The people who were often thought to be the accusers of witches were commonly believed to be men wishing to suppress unruly women. This may be true, but is far more indirect and subtle than popularly believed.
Witchcraft was practiced and believed in, ages before Christianity first appeared. However, it did not fade away with the introduction of Christianity in the sixth century. Even though it was presented and seen as a crime it was not treated as one. The existence of witches and their terrifying abnormal powers in the Elizabethan-Jacobean period prompted the belief in superstitions like: Witches can fly, which clarified how they could get immediately to the desired and far destinations in a blink of an eye, they were also admitted to preserve Crows, Bats, and Mice in order to use them for malicious spells. Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth was surprisingly blamed for witchcraft because most people at that time believed that a sixth finger was developing on her fifth finger. Also, she had a noticeable and strangely looking mole on her neck. In the age of Shakespeare, witchcraft started to be considered more seriously as the authorities penalized anyone connected to this evil deed, viewing witchcraft as an insult to their Christianity. Scot Reginald defines witchcraft as
Witchcraft and witches have been spoken of for centuries. The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word 'which' could be fictional stories of black magic and ugly creatures riding around on broomsticks, however, to the people of Salem, Massachusetts in 1690 witches were no more fictional than you and I.
Urban legends are the supernatural folklore of our modern society. From one generation to the next, they orally travel throughout the world, constantly changing from one region to the next. Although cultural variations exist, the core of all these urban legends remains the same, to unveil the universally known individual and societal fears. “The Graveyard Wager” is a timeless urban legend told again and again, and the one of which I will explore more in depth.
Next, symbolism is always an integral part of any Poe story. The most obvious of symbolic references in this story is the cat’s name, Pluto. This is the Roman god of the underworld. Pluto contributes to a strong sense of hell and may even symbolize the devil himself. Another immensely symbolic part of “The Black Cat” is the title itself, since onyx cats have long connoted bad luck and misfortune. The most amazing thing about the symbolism in this story or in any other of Poe’s is that there are probably many symbols that only Poe himself ever knew were in his writings.
“livestock die because of witchcraft, family members turn against each other because of witchcradt, servants defy masters because of witchcraft. For every ill in Salem, witchcraft is the scapegoat.’ (56)
For many centuries to the present day, Christians have lived in fear of witches. They were known as to be the devils child who only practiced black magic and thought of as the Christians “persecution”. Witches have been known to mankind since the 1200’s. Throughout the 1400’s, the examination of witches was more focus and moved from the Jews. In the church’s law, it was stated that the belief of existence and practices of witchcraft was “heresy”. Because of what the Christians believed, churches would then torture and hunt down anyone who they thought were witches and killed the many women and only a few of the men. They even made them make the confession of flying through the midnight sky, being in love with the devil himself, practicing black magic and even turning into animals.
Although most of the stereotypes of witches can be traced to the Middle Ages, it does not mean that people during this time came up with the description of a witch without prior historical influence. In order to understand what happened during the Middle Ages to create the images of a witch that we know today, it is necessary to go back to pre-Christian times.
Psychological susceptibility to various faiths in the fact that human life is exposed to supernatural forces that affect a person's fate, and often prejudge its outcome, always existed in all human societies and cultures. One of the major determinants of this psychological susceptibility is superstitions that appear as the main engines of believe in the intervention of supernatural forces in human’s life. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica (2010) ‘superstition’ could be defined as ‘belief, half-belief or practice’, which does not have any rational explanation or basis. Despite this fact, according to Behringer (2004) the amount of believers in witchcraft and superstitions are significantly higher than in XVII century.
Superstitions, what are they and where did they come from? Are they true are they false or is there some sort of reasoning behind them? Or are they simply just a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. I mean ….. awww man (meeoow) there goes a black cat man talk about bad luck it just took off with any luck that I had, (gosh darn – click fingers well lets see if its true…Mrs Maslen whadda ya reckon am I gonna get an A for this or what? C’mon c’mon you can tell me. Damn you cat (shake fist meeooow). Where did that superstition come from? For heavens sake how pathetic is it! Anyways for most people these are simply old wives tales and silly misconstrued stories, happenings and events. But for others these are real, they believe every word of these.