Very superstitious

[pegkerr]

misia has an interesting post here which starts out:

"I've noticed, over the years, that I am not the only person I know who works little bits of private magic/juju here and there as a regular part of life. I don't mean just superstition, I mean deliberate little invocations or charms or rituals or prayers that are designed to produce specific results, and that you do without making a big deal out of it, just an everyday thing. Some of them are intended to benefit me, others are intended to benefit other people.

She asked her readers to comment what sorts of things they do. I couldn't think of a magical ritual I have, to speak of, but I noted this: I frequently fight the urge to yawn when I pass a cemetary. I read when I was a kid about an old superstition that ghosts hover around your mouth to count the fillings in your teeth when you yawn, and so you are not supposed to yawn near a cemetary. Of course, passing a cemetary and thinking "Don't yawn," makes the compulsion that much worse.

Anyway, drop by misia's post and add your mite. The whole thread is quite interesting.

Comments

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

That's only the second time I've heard about the yawning thing. :) The other time was when I was a kid in North Carolina, and the other kids said not to yawn near a cemetery, because the ghosts would come in.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

You know what's weird? I yawn every single time we say the Lord's Prayer. I think this cannot be good. We say it every morning at the end of devotions, and somewhere along the line my husband commented that I always yawned in the middle of it somewhere. So now I always think "don't yawn" and as you pointed out, this never works.

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

Interesting... I do lots of little magics in my house, daily. Like, hmmmm. When cooking, I always stir things clockwise and generally in multiples of 3. I bless the food as I cook it. I blow kisses into my knitting. I've got charms all over the bloody house. I'm sure there's more, I just don't even think about it anymore so much is ingrained.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

That is a fascinating thread. I've learned a few new superstitions (there's something playful about them, isn't there?) I'd never heard the business about holding one's breath or not yawning while passing cemetaries. I don't seem to have taken any harm thereby.

[surely-i-jest.livejournal.com]

The way we always heard it was that you had to hold your breath. Or you might die or something--the consequences were a little fuzzy.

This was especially fun on the way to one of the cities where we always had soccer tournaments. We took a bunch of little 2-lane Iowa highways, and at one point you came down a hill alongside a biiiiiiig graveyard...and at the bottom was a stop sign, where we had to turn right onto another highway, and go along the graveyard again. Finally, some of my teammates and I decided we could breathe as long as we were past the sidewalk at the edge of the graveyard--"we're not really next to it now, are we?"