Why is it bad to believe in omens. Should you believe in bad omens? - What is superstition

From time immemorial, signs and superstitions have existed among various peoples, and belief in them often reaches the point of absurdity. People are susceptible to them for a variety of reasons. Some - from the desire for easy luck and profit, others - out of fear of certain events, and still others simply remembered what their grandmother told them in childhood, and have no weighty reason not to trust her words. So is it really worth believing in folk signs and trying to understand the meaning of the signs of fate in order to avoid misfortune and catch luck by the tail?

Common superstitions and their connection to reality

One of the most common superstitions is associated with black cats crossing the road. Most likely, it has a reference to the Middle Ages, when people were afraid of witches.

According to legends, they had the opportunity to reincarnate in these animals. By the way, in Ancient Egypt, cats, regardless of their color, were considered sacred animals, and the thought that they could bring bad luck would seem rather strange to the Egyptians.

Also, one of the most popular superstitions is the concept of "knocking on wood." Allegedly, undesirable events can be avoided in this way. This sign is associated with ancient legends that tell that good spirits live in the trees, helping to scare off bad luck.

The worst superstitions are associated with the 13th number, which falls on Friday. According to statistics, about 17 million people in America alone are afraid of this date.

However, it is not associated with any particular event. The number 13 has long established itself as unlucky: Judas was the 13th companion, he is also mentioned in the 13th Scripture, and the 13th chapter of the Gospel tells about his betrayal.

In Kabbalah there were 13 evil spirits, and in the 13th chapter of the Apocalypse it is said about the Antichrist. The crucifixion of Jesus happened on Friday. It is likely that in connection with all this, the belief about a bad day arose in the 19th century.

Signs and superstitions worth believing in

There are signs and superstitions that literally may not be worth believing in, but it is sometimes necessary to adhere to them. Some of them are related to pregnancy.

It is believed that if a pregnant woman plays with cats, the child will be born unhappy. It is safe to say that this process is unlikely to affect the happy fate of the child, but it is quite possible to become infected with toxoplasmosis from an animal, which is extremely undesirable during this period.

Another belief: so that a child is not born clubfoot, one cannot sit cross-legged. This sign has more to do with the health of the mother: in this position, blood circulation in the limbs is impaired, and given that the load on them is already constantly increased, varicose veins may develop.

Another popular omen says: you cannot show your child to anyone until he is six weeks old and the rite of churching has been performed, otherwise he may be jinxed.

It is best to really follow it: during this period, the child's body is weakened, and strangers can bring an infection into the house.

When do omens come true?

Formal logic, based on clear rules and laws, refutes the myth of omens. But at the same time, psychologists tend to believe that a person attracts what he constantly thinks about.

Therefore, signs really tend to come true for those people who believe in them. Sprinkled salt and are sure that you will quarrel with someone? Most likely, this will happen, because you have already set yourself up for a quarrel with someone close to you.

Found a coin and are sure that it is for some joyful event? You will expect something pleasant, and it will also happen, because every day is filled with many good moments, but you do not always pay attention to them.

Therefore, if we really believe in omens and superstitions, then only in those that carry something good with them.

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Is it possible to believe the signs to an Orthodox person?

Most superstitions are inherited from paganism or are associated with life circumstances. These include belief in a lucky rabbit's foot or other talismans, fortune telling on bones. The priests are concerned not only with everyday signs, but with persistent superstitions associated with Orthodox rituals.

There are also curious signs: For example, a cat crossed the road or spilled salt, so expect trouble. Also, if a person steps on your foot, then you will definitely quarrel, sit on the path, etc. Don't believe in this paganism. Signs are a sin and they have nothing to do with the Church.

We commemorate the dead, getting drunk to the point of disgrace. Where is the joy of faith and spiritual life here? Only the sin of superstition.

The attitude of the church fathers to superstitions, omens and fortune-telling

Orthodox priests believe that believing inomens is a sinand a temptation unworthy of a true Christian. The word superstition is consonant with the word vanity. Such believers violate Christ.

Its violation is a sin not recognized by many. People do not recognize that all power is from God, and endow objects and animals with divine power. The proliferation of heresies, which are superstitions, is a lie about God.

In difficult life situations, people resort to the help of wizards and sorcerers. It's heavy too sin and superstition : a manifestation of distrust in God. All trials are given from above, trying to avoid them with the help of cunning, a person harms himself even more. In distress, it is better to go to church, confess and receive communion.

Advice. Go to confession at church!

The Holy Church warns against fortune-telling. It is believed that they are the essence of the mockery of the dark forces over a person. Fortune-telling, a person entrusts his fate to evil spirits. If the prognosis of the sorcerer is unfavorable, she may program for failure. Negative omens are programmed in the same way.

The essence of the sin of superstition in the fact that it takes the believer away from true, genuine knowledge, replaces the high with an alluring magical ritual. It is scary when church shrines are used in magical rites, especially in black magic. This is the murder of the soul and an outrage against the purest that people have.

Damage and evil eye

Anyone will feel uncomfortable if they say that he was bewitched or jinxed. Often people see the root of troubles and problems in the fact that they have corrupted it, justify themselves. It is much more difficult to say: I have lived wrongly, and this is the result of my sinfulness.

The sin lies with the one who is engaged in divination and magic. Such people put their will above the divine will.

Can the Orthodox believe in omens related to the horoscope? Seemingly harmless, horoscopes make us prejudiced towards other people and towards ourselves.

How not to fall into sin and stop believing in omens?

Cause of the sin of superstition - spiritual ignorance. A person becomes superstitious because of self-doubt and lack of trust in God.

Often people receive knowledge about Christianity not from Orthodox fathers, but from illiterate grandmothers in the church. And if such a grandmother is also a witch?

Ignorant rules are also sinful because they can turn a sane, but unchurched person away from Orthodoxy.

It is amazing, but today many people, like centuries ago, believe in omens and other superstitions. The reason for this is, apparently, the fact that few of us think about the origin and history of superstition. At the same time, it is quite obvious that they were born out of delusion and were supported by it for millennia. The source of this delusion was the inability of primitive man to establish causal relationships in nature. At an early stage of its development, humanity was distinguished by the amazing naivety inherent in young children. Everyone noticed for their child extremely strange judgments about the world around them. For example, children believe that the wind blows because the trees swing their branches. Here cause and effect are mistakenly defined, which is quite natural for a child's mind, which is not adapted to the logical thinking of an adult. Needless to say, sometimes adults themselves reason, ignoring any logic.

Primitive and modern people

The thinking of primitive people is characterized by exactly the same illogicality, the lack of the ability to notice dependence or regularity in events, the inability to draw causal relationships between the observed phenomena. Archaeologists have every reason to believe, for example, that the prehistoric people who created the first drawings on the walls of caves 35,000 years ago were incredibly naive.

The troglodytes of this era, apparently, did not know the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. Sexual intercourse existed for a person by itself. It was a kind of action, which was prompted by the dark forces of nature and which was associated with the risk of loss of the penis (it was assumed, among other things, that the vagina is fed by male genitals). Childbirth was associated with the activities of spirits that give life to a new being.

It is curious that modern peoples, leading the traditional way of life of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, are just as illogical, and this has been proven by simple tests. For example, the tested opponent was asked to answer the question: “At the pole, all animals are white. What color is the polar bear? " The answer to this is always the same: a person says that he has not been to the Pole and cannot know what kind of bears there are. Primitive man was also incapable of coming to generalizations. Gradually illogical prohibitions - taboo - were born. Very often, among modern peoples at the tribal stage of development, there are taboos associated with the intake of one or another type of food. You cannot eat such and such foods on Wednesday, and others on Friday, etc. Obviously, this prohibition is related to elemental food poisoning.

If a modern man eats a banana and feels unwell, he will logically conclude that the banana is spoiled. People with primitive thinking never looked for easy ways, because they were simply Unknown to them. Prehistoric man decided that bananas should not be eaten on Fridays or Saturdays, i.e. they should not be eaten on a specific day of the week when the nutritional properties of the fruit suddenly disappear.

Gradually, from taboos and other illogical ideas about the world, stable superstitions, omens and prejudices were born. They are closely interconnected, similar to each other, rarely found separately. Nevertheless, it is necessary to distinguish between these concepts.

Superstition is an unfounded belief in causal relationships that are actually absent from nature. Superstitions are very persistent because they feed on coincidences, unusual phenomena, etc. There are many amazing things in life, and it is this that serves as the basis for the emergence of superstitions. Prejudice is a deep-seated superstition and requires no factual evidence. He is a delusion that one wants to believe in the force of habit.

Superstition comes from surprise, and prejudice from blind ignorance. A person prone to prejudice deliberately emphasizes the role of the mystical in any events, while simple superstitions do not need excessive mysticism. A sign is an interesting, well-aimed observation, which is either false in its essence, or true, but incorrectly explained by the superstitions or prejudices existing among the people.

Superstitions associated with cats

Numerous associated with the image are indicative. There was no country where this animal was not given special attention. It is surrounded by an aura of mystery, serves as the main character in many myths, fairy tales, legends and beliefs. At all times, the cat has been of interest to people of art, because thanks to it they could better understand human nature.

If we return to domestic culture, then it should be noted that the animal was an indispensable companion of the Russian woman - the mistress of the house. Hence, numerous entertaining observations arose concerning the habits of the animal and subsequently served as the basis. The most common claim is that a cat washing itself invites guests. Let us recall the observation of Tatyana Larina from Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin": A cutesy cat, sitting on the stove, Purring, was washing his stigma with his paw: That was an undoubted sign to her that guests were coming.

Where the belief came from is not difficult to understand from Pushkin's lines. Tatyana awaits the arrival of guests and illogically notices signs in the animal's behavior that may indicate an upcoming event. This is how the national omen was born in due time. The owner rarely paid attention to her cat during the day. The woman was constantly burdened with worries. She cooked, cleaned the house, looked after the children. Even when a woman had a free minute, she could not find her cat - the animal disappeared somewhere. But now the family is preparing for the arrival of guests. Everything has been redone, and the hostess sits, waiting for the visitors. Now a cat certainly catches her eye.

And the cat is busy with its usual business - washing. The movements of the paws are reminiscent of inviting ones. The hostess believed that. This is how a superstitious omen was born, despite the fact that in reality cats are very clean and wash often, without waiting for visitors.

Not out of nowhere a sign arose that a black cat is a sign of trouble. In ancient times in Russia, cats were very dear, the hostess would never have kicked this useful animal out of the yard. The cats themselves rarely ran far from their yard and almost never appeared on the streets. If the cat ran all over the village, leaving its home, then this could only mean some great misfortune: the death of the owners, fire, etc. Needless to say, the omen always came true in ancient times.

But gradually the number of stray cats multiplied without any objective reasons, and superstition grew into a prejudice devoid of any sense. Naturally, it became ridiculous to panic over every cat you saw, which is why the tenacious prejudice has spread exclusively to black cats. The black color has long served as a symbol of misfortune, which is why it is so easy to slander any black animal, to reproach for human troubles.

In medieval Europe, black cats were destroyed, believing that they were turning into witches hurrying to the Sabbath. In our country, black cats are no longer lucky. The result of the mass extermination of cats was the uncontrolled reproduction of mice, rats and other rodents that carried pathogens of infectious diseases, primarily the plague bacillus (Yersinia). Exterminating black cats, as well as others, man punished himself for stupidity with the "black death", which destroyed in just a few years 25 million people in Europe alone.

As you can see, prejudice is not only ridiculous, but also dangerous. They whip up fears, driving people into frenzy and fits of hysterical rage. Superstitions and prejudices have a depressing effect on mental activity, negatively affect the work of consciousness and subconsciousness. The nervous reaction of a person becomes, under the influence of instilled fears, unpredictable for himself.

Misgiving

Stress, deep depression, melancholic states, nervous breakdowns and other mental disorders are often the reason that we “have a bad omen”, which in reality does not mean anything. When a person constantly thinks about an impending disaster, when he succumbs to pessimistic moods, his misgivings invariably come true. Our life is completely subordinate to our psyche. Depression of the brain leads to the fact that we make mistakes, fatal mistakes, begin to feel bad, do not control our actions.

In such a depressed state, any misfortune can happen to a person. And this will only strengthen his faith in signs. The prejudice will take root, and it will be almost impossible to get rid of it. A person will no longer be able to believe that he himself caused unhappiness with his ridiculous superstitious suspicions, only by the tense expectation of a great disaster.

But it has long been noticed by intelligent people who are not prone to superstitious fears that our thoughts govern our own destiny and affect the mental attitude of a person. The aphorism says: the expectation of death is worse than death itself. Let's think about why this is happening. The explanation of the phenomenon is extremely simple: thoughts of an imminent death depress the psyche and have an extremely negative effect on the body. Perhaps death is indeed much better than fear? Many other examples can be cited of how a person with the power of thought brings down countless troubles upon himself. That is why psychologists advise thinking more about the good and forgetting the bad as soon as possible. This means that one should not pay attention to signs and superstitions.

Bad omens began to appear hundreds of years ago, when people began to associate certain actions with further misfortune that happened to them. This was explained by the influence of dark otherworldly forces, which are forces that seek to destroy human lives. But is it really so?

Common signs

It's a bad omen to come back! You've probably heard this from your grandmother or mom. If you had to return home after the traversed path in order to pick up a thing forgotten in a hurry, then the parents gave instructions to look in the mirror or sit down for a while on a chair.

In this way, you can deceive the dark forces that were determined to destroy your further path. This sign is several hundred years old, but there is still no confirmation of it. An even more terrible omen is considered to be a black cat that crossed the road. However, as interpreted in modern times, this only indicates that the animal is running about its business or hastily trying to pass a busy road. Black has always scared people. He spoke of misery and evil. For this reason, no one wanted to have an animal of this color at home. But on the other hand, a cat is the embodiment of kindness. She protects the home from dark forces and protects the tranquility of the owners (according to the same signs). Therefore, one cannot say that a cat brings misfortune, even if it is a stranger.

Believe it or not?

Believe in bad omens or not, it's up to you. Just keep in mind one important detail: the inner attitude can do a lot. For example, you sprinkled salt in the kitchen in the morning, and the omen speaks of a quarrel for this reason. You start to cheat yourself, get upset, annoyed. As a result, you break off on a loved one, which leads to a quarrel. On the other hand, in a hurry, you may not even see the fallen salt shaker and spend the whole day in peace. This suggests that you have instilled in yourself an approaching misfortune and are waiting for it, ready for it. In the future, you will mistake any trouble for the action of dark forces that made you sprinkle salt.

What is the best way to proceed?

If you come across a woman with an empty bucket, do not rush home screaming.

Say hello to your fellow traveler and smile at her, she will reciprocate you. You will see how pleasant it is, and the bad omen will no longer seem so terrible. Sprinkled salt? Think that you are in a hurry, you need to slow down so that nothing falls out of your hands. And just stroke or give her a piece of bread, breaking all the stereotypes.

Bad omens - a reason to laugh?

Why don't you make it a joke? For example, a cat crossed your path. Think about the positive: she was without an empty bucket, and you were not at the intersection of the cemetery at night. Laugh at yourself, tell your friends about it. Optimism in life will never be superfluous, and then bad omens will bring you not experiences, but positive emotions. After all, the stress in our life is enough to pay attention to such little things. And you will immediately understand that it is easier and simpler this way, and let the grandmothers retain their faith in omens, who cannot be convinced otherwise.