Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Black Cat Superstition

By Russ D. Edwards

Most people will not admit to being superstitious. Perhaps that's because the definition of superstition' is an unreasonable belief based on stupidity or fear, or both. Nobody wants to appear ignorant or fearful. Yet you may find well-educated, awfully successful people who will not walk under a ladder or who will bury the pieces of a damaged mirror or who throw salt over their shoulders if salt is spilled. You'll find people who, if a black pussy crosses their path, turn around and go home or take another route to their destination.

Black cats are somehow related to noxious, with magicians, and even with sickness. Black doggies have been assigned the blame for everything from a run of bad luck to the plague and all of the wrongs of the planet.

Actually, superstitious beliefs change from country to country and even from area to area. Having a black cat cross your trail in England or Japan is claimed to bring' luck, but having a black pussy cross your path in America and some other EU nations is believed to bring' luck.

Having a black moggy cross your trail isn't the only legend that relies on black cats :

* In Scotland, it is thought that a unusual black cat on your porch brings prosperity. * Italians believe that when a black pussy sneezes, all who hear it'll have good luck. * Egyptians believe that the life-giving rays of the sun are kept in the eyes of a cat at night. * In Ireland, slaughtering a moggy brings seventeen years of bad luck. * In America, it's 'bad' luck to see a white cat at night, but 'good' luck to dream about a white moggy.

ancient Egyptians worshiped pussies, and anyone that snuffed out a cat was executed. In the Middle Ages, when magicians turned into a concern, the black moggy was linked to magicians and to devil. Some assumed that a magician has the power to transform herself into the form of a black moggy, so that the notion that a black pussy that crossed your trail was basically a camouflaged magician was born.

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