Your Superstitions and Strange Beliefs - or how to ward off bad luck, wicked juju, and the evil eye

Also people with raw talent fascinate me. People who seem like they were literally born to do one specific thing and are wicked savants at it. I wonder if it's really just a coincidence of the perfect alignment of cultural, economic and genetic factors or of there's something more.
Some people are definitely natural born prodigies but they still have to discover their talent and be able to exploit it which also takes some luck as well. Even Mozart had to work hard and study. a savant like him still needed the right circunstances to fulfill his potential but it doesn't mean that all the kids who are taught early and work hard will become as good as him.

Thats probably why the concept of multiverses is becoming a popular cope. You only have one life, one set of circunstances but maybe in another universe you discovered your hidden talent early and became rich and famous for it even when in this life you never found your true passion and are unfilfilled. Its a comfortimg escapist fantasy.


Unfortunately, I also feel like a lot of people will discount those experiences these days by saying "Oh you must have seen that place online/in a video and forgot" and just write it off.
Everyone before "current era" was clearly retarded and didn't know anything. Those silly people didn't have google so their thousands of years of accumulated experiences don't count
 
Same. When I was little I thought I was psychic, but as an adult I think it's more something that is part of the "collective human unconsciousness" or something because a bunch of other people all over the world and throughout history have had the same or similar experiences.
Unfortunately, I also feel like a lot of people will discount those experiences these days by saying "Oh you must have seen that place online/in a video and forgot" and just write it off.
I think that some people are destined to remain ignorant and will live lives full of experiences to reinforce those beliefs.

One time I was wiping off my eye makeup and the liquid eyeliner was a terrible formulation so a really sharp piece got into my eye, I spent around 6 minutes trying to get it out before lying down to calm myself and I asked God to help me and that very second the discomfort went away.

I do think there is a collective unconscious but I also believe that some people are psychic and can also have a psychic link with another person. I’ve turned on the TV before and heard someone repeat back word for word what I have just said or what I dreamed while I was dozing.
 
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to not whistle after nightfall
This is another one of those "Why do so many different cultures with limited to no contact prior to global connectivity hold this same belief?" things.

that names hold power
FACT.
I think also for this reason you should be careful in naming your kids, and translate out full names when making those decisions.

E.g. Using the Fake Person Generator I got "Tim Winchester", "Kathy Hall" and "Gertrude Alvarado". Match the person to the name "translation".

"The strong spear from a dry land"
"The one from the white town* who honors God"
"The hidden, pure one*"

*Debated translation

the phenomena of areas of both high and low strangeness.
YUP.
 
I thought the eye as a symbol was meant to ward off envy and hatred? Like a protective talisman or something.

Speaking of which, nothing too crazy, but I always keep a tuft of my cat’s fur with me in my bag. I’m also scared to look in the mirror if it’s dark. No Ouija boards.
You're talking about the protective talisman AGAINST the evil eye.

The evil eye is an energy, you can't see it or touch it or sell it, like the eye charms and talismans.

More about trivia evil eye here:

The Greek traditional belief of the evil eye dates back to at least the 6th century BC, the Classical Antiquity, or the time period that encompassed the Classical Era in Ancient Greece, when it commonly appeared on drinking vessels.

During this time, the Greek civilization was at its intellectual peak. A common theme in literature at the time was that the eyes were a source of deadly rays that could bring harm to others. Plutarch, the Ancient Greek writer, is one of those who wrote about this concept. The belief in the evil eye tended to spread as Alexander the Great brought the Greek culture to the East.

The Greek Orthodox Church has recognized the kako mati since the establishment of the faith. The church calls it Vaskania (pronounced Vas-ka-nee-a) and has a special prayer made especially to help cure those who have fallen under the curse.

The Light Blue: Color of the sky – symbolizes truth and therefore it provides direct protection against the evil eye, while the dark blue color symbolizes water as it is an universal solvent.

The evil eye is part of the Greek culture, deeply ingrained among Greek people. It is believed that the evil eye can strike anyone at any given moment.

The evil eye is the belief that someone can catch the evil eye curse or Matiasma from someone else’s jealous compliment or envy. If a person has caught the evil eye they will usually feel bad physically or mentally. Or in simple terms bad things happen.

For example, perhaps there was an occasion that you were dressed up and someone told you that you looked nice. A few minutes later you spilled coffee down the front of yourself. Or maybe someone commented on how beautiful your new vase was and a while later it fell to the ground shattering into a thousand pieces. Greeks also believe that children are especially vulnerable to the evil eye and that it can cause hurt and illness.

When babies are born, Greeks will have a blue eye pinned at the top of the pillow from the moment they are born. And if you come down with sudden horrible headaches, weakness or illness but you can’t find logical explanation for your strange state, Greeks will say you have been evil eyed or “Matiasmenos”. Meaning the eye have been placed upon you. This is the belief of the evil eye in simple terms.

So you have been affected by the evil eye, now what?? In every Greek home there are Greek blue eye charms everywhere. We also have a few at home. They are beautiful and an wonderful gift to receive or give, a true symbol of love and protection towards another person or family.

Generally speaking, the Greek Eye charms are placed in homes, offices, cars, schools, on your clothing, on your body to protect yourself from the evil eye. The eye is said to reflect the evil around you. The charms come in the form of decorative wall hangings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, kolomboi worry beads carried by most Greek men, wall art, pillows, etc.

Other ways to get rid of the evil eye is to consult with usually a Greek grandparent, who knows the prayers to relieve you. The Greek evil eyes are cast away through the process of Xematiasma. First the healer says the prayer with mention of your name. Then they take a deep dish full of water and let a drop of olive oil fall into the water, performing the sign of the cross three times and spits in the air three times. Another way to ward off the evil eye is spitting.

Spitting it is believed to chase away the evil and misfortune. For example: when someone talks about bad news (deaths, accidents, etc), the others listening to the news should slightly spit three times saying “ftou ftou ftou”.

Another example regarding spitting is that when someone compliments your baby or child or even an adult for their beauty, successes or fortunes, that person giving the compliments must also spit three times on the complimented person so that he doesn’t give him the evil eye and he is also reassuring the recipient of the compliment that they mean well in their compliments.
 
Spitting it is believed to chase away the evil and misfortune. For example: when someone talks about bad news (deaths, accidents, etc), the others listening to the news should slightly spit three times saying “ftou ftou ftou”.
The more I learn about Greeks, the more I realize Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows is a realistic representation of what a Greek vampire would actually be.
 
- i don't eat chicken and eggs together, nor mammals with milk of their kind. i find it distasteful.

- i don't plant anything in a pot in which another plant has died. i will use that pot for something else.

- i don't share my full name, and i only provide it when it's absolutely necessary or required.

- i don't swat at bees, and i thank them when they visit my plants.

- i don't wear or carry gold. i believe that gold has a corrupting influence on its bearer.

- if i have something weighing on my mind, i will sit down with a deck of cards and play solitaire while i contemplate a solution. interestingly, a deck of tarot cards is comprised of the major arcana (the cards assigned individual titles such as the hermit and the hanged man), and of the minor arcana, which is the four suits of cards in a traditional deck of playing cards; the coins (or diamonds), the cups (or hearts), the swords (or spades), and the wands (or clubs). i don't claim to practice divination, but i've found that how the cards fall during solitaire provides a curious bit of insight into whatever it is that's on my mind at the moment.

- i'm not religious, but i've been given a st. christopher medal every time that i've travelled abroad, and i've seen the effect that it has on others, so i give them as gifts to my friends and family when they travel abroad.
 
This is something that a lot of medics think and have seen. Gravely ill people often rally before they die. I will bet there’s some work done on it somewhere.
I wouldn't call it common but terminal lucidity does definitely happen sometimes.

The National Institute on Aging in the US gave out a big grant to study it but I don't think that trial has concluded yet. In the context of palliative care there's a bunch of crap going on physiologically when a patient is dying from multiple organ system failure, so it'd be hard to pinpoint an exact mechanism.

I'm more interested in why terminal lucidity and near-death experiences occur for some people but not others.
 
Similar, the little people. They are, or were real. There's gotta be a reason why so many civilizations - even those spread out with no contact we know of back in the day - talk about little people who also exist like humans, but aren't humans.
  • Gnomes, kobolds, goblins, duendes, etc. in Europe
  • Huldufólk in Iceland
  • Menehume in Hawaii
  • Ta'ai in in Taiwan
  • Korpokkur in Japan
  • Chaneque, alux, canotila, etc. in the Americas
Also trolls are an ancestral memory of neanderthals, just look at 'em.
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Got the bigger noses than humans, the larger skulls and bigger bones, they're hairier, they lived in colder climates (which explains the "not liking sun" stuff), we've found evidence of humans eating them and them eating us...
In a similar vein, I've always believed that folk and fairy tale characters (think cryptids, the big bad wolf, think people like Paul Bunyan or Hansel and Gretel) all had some basis in reality - it's possible, for example, that in medieval Germany there were a pair of siblings actually named Hansel and Gretel who met a lot of people, and as the generations went on from oral tradition, story after story was added until we got what the Brothers Grimm collected when they wrote their fairy tales to promote the culture of a wider Germany during the Romantic Era. Likewise, there could have been a really tall man in Colonial America who had stories made up about him because he was a really hard worker, or a massive wolf in medieval Europe who killed a lot of people and livestock. Likewise, someone thinks they see Bigfoot when they see a bear at night or something while they're drunk. Not everything is supernatural; some things just come from human imaginations and blowing it up as you misremember details as the years go by - you don't remember every detail; that's not how people's brains work. You just remember generally what happened. Especially during times when most people were illiterate.

Like what many people have said in this thread, I would NEVER play around with ouija boards. I don't really view this as a "superstition" as it ties into my religious values; the Bible itself warns about things like this. If I'm visiting someone, and they break one of these things out, that is a cue to get out and never go back there.

In a similar vein, I have always been unsettled by cemeteries. Never figured out why.
 
I believe inanimate objects can be imbibed with a sort of consciousness after exposure to people over many years, that's why you'll never see me fucking with the giant dinosaur statues at abandoned amusement parks. That and the fact they've had a hard enough life, being left to rot in the elements and get vandalized and graffitoed...
There's a belief in Japan about 100 years and the kami but I don't quite remember how the process is supposed to work.

Likewise, someone thinks they see Bigfoot when they see a bear at night or something while they're drunk.
If you ever hear a woman screaming in the woods, no you didn't.
Yes, it could be a woman, but it might also be a mountain lion in heat.
 
I believe that the different gods of mythology and legend can be traced right into our current religions by their actions. I don't just mean historically, which you can easily trace, but I mean literally as gods moving from one set of believers to the next.
 
There's a belief in Japan about 100 years and the kami but I don't quite remember how the process is supposed to work.
tsukimogami. They are a yokai. When an object falls in disuse and its neglected for too long they might come back as hauntings.



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If you ever hear a woman screaming in the woods, no you didn't.
Yes, it could be a woman, but it might also be a mountain lion in heat.
In heat? Cool. Let's go Beavis, we're gonna score either way.

On a real note, there have been a ton of 911 calls in my area because people don't know what coyotes sound like apparently and they think someone's getting murdered.
 
A lot of the ones I have are real culture specific, like don't ever touch a prayer thread wrapped round a tree, avoid banyan trees at night, don't touch statues on crossroads, never leave the house left foot first if you're going on a trip.

Many where I'm at refuse to admit they have a 13th floor. My girlfriend's apartment building goes from 12, 12B, 14. It's really common.

I also believe that the evil eye/nazar is a real deal 🧿
Other than that I've had a couple uncanny experiences with tarot readings. I don't really believe in it, it's all psychological, but I don't really ever wanna get read again lol
 
i used to have terrible nightmares growing up and nothing would make them go away. then one day i got a dreamcatcher during a school field trip i hung it up on my wall and after that the nightmare stopped. it was hard to believe at first so i took it down and hid it in another room and the nightmares came back. so ever since then i have kept it hung up and have not had a nightmare since.
 
-I will never pee in a natural body of water bc I don't want to piss off or disrespect the water spirits.
-Saint Anne oil (not Christian).
-Natural hagstones are good luck.
-I believe most mined metals are toxic to faeries except for pure silver and gold. Because the mined metals come from our rape of the earth. We were so shitty we made them leave.
-Moss from a good person's headstone gives you good luck and protection.
-When crows fly towards the shore, good weather is on the way.
-You can treat/cure a toothache by chewing the wood of a tree that had been struck by lightning.
-Putting a silver coin in an animal's water can make them healthier or treat/cure an illness.
-Squirrels running across your path is good luck.
-Every bite that is served during a wake or funeral reception goes towards the release of the soul if it is suffering in Purgatory.
-Tuesday is the best day for a wedding.
 
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