"Three on a match." "Knock on wood." "April Fool." The use of phrases such as these are such common occurrences today that few would begin to consider them superstitions. Yet each of these, and hundreds of other, benign statements and common practices like New Year's Day, Easter, and Christmas, are traceable to pagan rituals or the response of the early Christian church to them.
It has been claimed that "the true origin of superstition is to be found in early man's effort to explain Nature and his own existence; in the desire to propitiate Fate and invite Fortune; in the wish to avoid evils he could not understand; and in the unavoidable attempt to pry into the future." Indeed, our inability to explain or comprehend those things which happen around us provide for the perpetuation, rational or not, of superstitions and mythical beliefs. According to Maple,
The origins of our superstitions are lost in time and those beliefs which have survived are often relics of ancient cultures and long vanished ways of life. Above all, however, they remain outward expressions of the tensions and anxieties that rend humanity as it struggles down the corridor of life from birth to death, buffeted by the winds of chance.
In all superstitions or superstitious behaviors there exists an element of fear, a degree of ignorance, and enough contagion to allow for their adoption over time. Because "man's curiosity is in excess of his capacity to interpret Nature and life," early mankind animated all things around itself--trees, rivers, rocks and mountains, animals, even other humans--with living spirits. Life, it might be argued, "remains an impenetrable mystery with incomprehensible rules, and the vast majority of individuals implicitly accept the existence of an external power which in some mysterious way influences their lives and . . . (can) be influenced by the human will."
The word "superstition" is derived from Latin-...