Are you superstitious? Do you look for "signs" in your daily life? Do you believe in astrology, tarot, etc.?

I'm actually not superstitious on a conscious level; I was being a little facetious in today's entry. But there is something about breaking glass that gets to me. It's not logical and I don't really believe it any more than I really believe in monsters hiding under the bed, but it gets to me on an emotional and irrational level.

What about you? Are there particular situations that make you feel like you're having a premonition of something bad about to happen?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Answers

There's been three times I've dreamed of being at someone's funeral or wake, only to find out later that they'd passed away a few weeks before my dream. (My family are all still back in the Middle East, so I don't know right away who's passed away or what. My mom doesn't like to relay 'upsetting news' by phone, so sometimes it's a year before I find out.) Now, everytime I dream of someone dying or being seriously ill, it makes me wonder. I also believe in the 'evil eye'. I really think you have to have a middle eastern background to fully appreciate the power of the 'evil eye'.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I'm actually not superstitious on a conscious level.

What about the battery fairies? Or the spiders that come back to life and jump out of the toilet, biting you on the butt?

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Those things are entirely real, David. That's different. Do not mock the battery fairies or the toilet spiders.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I am superstitious, and I do take things as "signs", and I half- believe in astrology, tarot, etc (mostly I think they're tools that point you to examine some specific aspect of your life; most of us usually have something going on that could use some examination, which is why the generalizations manage to be useful sometimes), but I'm also a firm believer in natural phenomena. If I had a passel of pyrex come down out of a cabinet, and I lived in California, I'd wonder about the current seizmic state of the world, and I'd also be checking my shelves with a level.

I go through tons of lightbulbs when I'm stressed. I chalk that up to natural phenomena as well, but I admittedly have a broader definition of natural than some.

This ties in with the "Gift of Fear" thread, too. If I have a bad vibe, I listen to it. Sometimes it just means a cold front is coming in (increasing barometric pressure makes me jumpy), and sometimes, in retrospect, it sure did seem like an indicator that something bad was coming.

I will change plans if I have a really bad feeling about something. The way I figure it, I'm either right and so I've done a good thing by changing my plans, or the bad feeling is going to stick with me and I'm not going to enjoy whatever I was supposed to do, so I can't really lose there. I also have bad feelings about NOT doing things (like, I'm going to be really sorry if I don't do X). Maybe it's a premonition, maybe it's my subconscious telling me that X is for the best even if I don't want to do it, either way, it's almost always to my advantage. Sometimes that feeling lands me in a chain of "coincidences" (I don't really believe in them) that provides me with an important opportunity or vital piece of information. I don't know, I don't have a solid explanation for any of it.

I frequently have dreams of things that later happen. It's the most annoying kind of deja-vu, because I don't remember the dream until the thing happens, but then I remember dreaming it, I remember when I dreamed it, I remember what I was thinking ("damn, this is boring," or "who the hell is that?" are frequent ones), and no matter how hard I try, those 20-40 seconds are exactly like the dream. It gets freaky when the dream happened long before I knew the people/places in the dream. Maybe there's lots of those dreams that I don't remember, but do give me the good/bad vibe that I act on later.

Maybe I'm just a freak.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I used to be superstitious, but then I found out it was bad luck, so I stopped.

Sorry, old joke.

I just believe in the law of averages. If a bunch of great things happen all in a row, it'll all balance out eventually. Likewise if a bunch of sucky things happen.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I'm not really superstitious, but I believe things happen for a reason. Fate, providence, whatever.

Case in point: I was going to buy a laptop a month or two ago. I drove all over town looking for one, found the one I wanted and they were out of stock. No laptop for me. The next day, I had to do $500 in repairs on my car, which I couldn't have afforded had I bought the laptop.

Another: Today I was about to buy $100 worth of Reverend Horton Heat merchandise (I *need* that jacket damnit.) but the website fucked up on my request the first time. The second time I tried I accidentally closed my window. The third time I stopped halfway through and decided to just try to buy stuff at the show next week first. An hour later, driving through the parking lot, I clipped the curb and ripped a gigantic hole in my rear right tire.

So I still have enough cash to get new tires, because I was having problems with the Rev's website.

Now if I could just get ahold of my old man (thank god I'm dating a tire mechanic, eh?) I'd be all set, but he's got his damned phone off.

Jackass.

.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

I'm definitely superstitous. Mostly in little ways--I wear a blue bead at all times, it's an old (origins vague) ward against evil and/or bad luck. I generally believe in a loose kind of world karma, and I do think that the energies of people or places can affect you.

Oh, and my mother always claimed that it was bad luck to exit a building by a different door than you entered. That's a hard one to manage a lot of the time, especially on campus.

My one big superstition has to do with spiders--I really do feel that it's bad luck to kill spiders in the house. It's my strongest superstitious belief, and also the one I feel the most ridiculous about. But the spider infestation in my apartment over the last few months has been driving me batty for this reason--I'm afraid to kill them, I'm afraid not to kill them, I don't always have time or energy for the INS-style spider deportations, and I can't quite get rid of the feeling that the sudden upsurge in spider population is some kind of omen.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

Lynn,

I think that's fascinating -- and I've had a lot of those same types of moments.

This is different from superstition (in my humble opinion) -- but would be a great thread about intuition and such.

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001

This is always an intriguing premise -- because of my work, some folks presume astrology is superstition. For me (and clients and readers), it's just geometry and calendars together. I have no problem with anyone who doesn't care for astrology, but narrow- mindedness is ever so tiresome. Superstition, having to do with other folklore is always interesting. Whatever works.

Ironically, on both sides of my family there are serious scientists who married into what amounts to a very, very informal shall-we-say astrology-sympathetic sorority. One uncle eventually ran the main lab at NASA, another worked at one of those secret university-funded labs making gizmos to send into outer space (the words microwave, radar and laser can indeed have sinister connotations). We have GREAT conversations about planetary orbits, sun signs, lunar angles and the like.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001

Puhhleeez. Isn't it just a little more than geometry and calendars? Anyone can track heavenly bodies, but only people who assert that these bodies have some lasting influence on the outcome of everyday life are called astrologers. I'm not saying you're not right about it being different from superstition, clearly those are two different animals, but calendars and geometry? No way that's all it's about.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001

I started work at my current job on the Friday the 13th. I knew it was a bad omen. It was just a matter of time. I got notice in April that I'm getting layed off. My last day is (all together now): Friday the 13th (this Friday). OK, so it took fifteen years, but it's still bad luck, right? ;)

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2001