Superstitious Gestures

Ever wondered why we do some of the odd things we do?

No, not those odd things ... they're best kept between you and your therapist! I mean superstitious gestures ... like touching wood, crossing your fingers for luck, spitting (ugh) for luck and the rest.

Read on to see where these superstitious gestures originated.

Breaking a Mirror

"To let a mirror fall and be broken is even now regarded as unfortunate, though not so ill-starred an accident as among the people of earlier days, who believed that the party to whom the mirror belonged would lose his best friend.

"In the Mémoires de Constant, premier Valet de Chambre de I'Empereur sur la Vie privée de Napoleon, (Paris, 1830), Buonaparte's superstition respecting the looking-glass is particularly mentioned:--"During one of his campaigns in Italy he broke the glass over Josephine's portrait. He never rested till the return of the courier he forthwith despatched to assure himself of her safety, so strong was the impression of her death upon his mind."

"The origin of this superstition is very simple. Looking-glasses are and always have been implements of divination; to break one is therefore accounted most disastrous, because it is the destruction of a means of knowing the will of the gods. In his Greek Antiquities, Potter says:-- When divination by water was performed with a looking-glass, it was called Catoptromancy: sometimes they dipped a looking-glass into the water, when they desired to know what would become of a sick person: for as he looked well or ill in the glass, accordingly they presumed of his future condition. Sometimes, also, glasses were used, and the images of what should happen, without water."

Spilling the Salt

"If, whilst at dinner, you should be so unfortunate as to spill the salt, and it falls towards your right-hand or left-hand neighbour, it is accounted an unlucky omen. Why, nobody can say--with any show of good reasoning. Salt has always figured prominently in religious rites and ceremonies. Both Greeks and Romans mixed salt with their sacrificial cakes, being, as an element, a necessary concomitant of the sacrifice, not a mere adjunct. Thus in the Ferialia, or offerings to the Diis Manibus, when no animal was slain:

"That the flour and salt were both designed as propitiatory offerings to redeem them from the vengeance of the Stygian or infernal gods, may be proved from a like custom in the Lemuria, another festival to the same Diis Manibus, where beans are flung instead of the flour and salt; and when flung, the person says:

"That a Pagan should come to regard salt as an emblem of redemptive power is, therefore, not surprising; and from this it is but a step to the belief that a spilling of it at table should be an omen of serious import. In olden times salt was regarded as incorruptible, and it became the symbol of friendship; consequently an overturning of the salt-cellar betokened the breaking of friendship. But there was a "counter" stroke available. If the man towards whom the salt falls will, without hesitation or remark, take up a single pinch of salt between the finger and the thumb of his right hand and cast it over his left shoulder, the threatened misfortune will be averted. Tradition has it that the left shoulder is selected to appease the devil.'

"Such superstitions are among those complex growths of ideas, the disentanglement of which is quite an impossibility. There are nations to whom salt was an almost sacred symbol; there are others--Egypt, for instance--to whom it was a common metaphor for calamity and desolation. But as a superstition it has some peculiar, insistent force, for the spilling of salt is a common accident, and it is by no means uncommon to see the rite of throwing over the left shoulder carried out immediately; not, it is true, with any real fear of evil, but in order, as one lady put it, "to be on the safe side." Some writers believe that da Vinci's picture of the Last Supper, in which Judas Iscariot is represented as overturning the salt, is the real origin of the salt superstition."

Touching Wood

This practice originates from the Ancient Britons who believed that trees had spirits. They would touch the trees out of respect to the spirits. The practice has remained over the years with people touching trees and later wood for luck.

Stumbling and Falling

"When Julius Caesar landed at Adrumetum in Africa, he tripped and fell on his face. This would have been considered a fatal omen by his army, but with admirable presence of mind he exclaimed, "Thus I take possession of thee, O Africa." 

"When William the Conqueror leaped upon the shore at Bulverhythe, he fell on his face, and a great cry went forth that it was an ill omen; but the Duke exclaimed, 'I have taken seisin of this land with both my hands.'"

Spitting

"Labourers in the North of England would often spit on a coin "for luck," especially if it were a coin they found on the highway. To trace this habit to its source is practically impossible. Spittle among the ancients was esteemed a Charm against all kinds of fascination: so Theocritus,

"And thus Persius upon the custom of Nurses spitting upon Children:

"Spitting, according to Pliny, was superstitiously observed in averting witchcraft and in giving a shrewder blow to an enemy. Hence seems to be derived the custom our Bruisers have of spitting in their hands before they begin their barbarous diversion, unless it was originally done for luck's sake. Several other vestiges of this superstition, relative to fasting Spittle, mentioned also by Pliny, may yet be placed among our vulgar customs."

Extracts from The Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs, by T. Sharper Knowlson [1910] 

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